This document is incomplete and, in its present state, of minimal value. Many works on the life of Dostoevsky are drawn from poorly sourced materials. I hope to include notes from far better biographies in the future.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (in “Latinized” Russian: Fёdor Mihajlovič Dostoevskij) is one of the most important figures in world literature, and closely associated with his beloved Russia.
According to some biographers Dostoevsky was prone to
drink and a gambler who wrote about men with even more anti-social tendencies
than himself. According to these accounts, he more closely resembles the
orgy-loving father Fyodor Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s last novel than the
religious and pure son Alyosha in the same novel.
Other biographers insist Dostoevsky remained true to his Orthodox religion — and its accompanying guilt. Not that either alternative seems cheerful, I cannot say without doubts which view is accurate. It is up to historians and biographers, aided by whatever records exist, to determine what made Dostoevsky so cheerful a writer.
It is possible that his life made him what he was: bitter, cynical, miserable…. Any number of negative adjectives can be applied to Dostoevsky. The defining moments in Dostoevsky’s life were the murder of his father and his own imprisonment for treason.
His father was an army doctor, who demanded order and morality. While Dostoevsky was studying at an army school, his father was killed by serfs on the family estate. This murder made no sense to Dostoevsky. He never escaped a fascination with murder and crime, trying to understand why the poor might be illogically violent. Much of Dostoevsky’s writings deal with death as a result of his obsession to understand it.
In 1846, after serving in the army, Dostoevsky wrote Poor Folk, a psychological novel. It was recognized as a masterpiece by many, and secured a good income for the author. It would be nearly two decades between this success and his next popular novel. One reason for this dramatic gap in creativity is Dostoevsky’s involvement in the political upheavals of Russia.
With money came access to Western European ideas and culture. Dostoevsky, like many of the Russian middle-class, found himself wanting Russia to adopt Western political structures. He began writing and publishing calls for democratic reforms, an illegal and dangerous undertaking. Because of such activities, Dostoevsky and other writers were arrested, tried, and convicted as traitors to the tsar. On the day of his planned execution, Dostoevsky was bound and blindfolded, waiting to die. Then, a messenger came to deliver word of a commuted sentence from the tsar. The writer was sent to Siberia, after a severe emotional torture the tsar had planned all along.
While in Siberia, Dostoevsky’s political and philosophical views changed radically. In fact, his views began to mirror those of his father. Dostoevsky became a nationalist; he believed that Russia would become the primary world power within his lifetime. More importantly, he believed that Russia was a chosen nation, with a sacred future blessed by God. Dostoevsky became a religious zealot, telling all who would listen that suffering as the only way to purify a sinful soul. Russia’s suffering made the country pure.
Notes from Underground, published in 1864, reflects the pain and suffering of a man — but not Dostoevsky, as is often assumed. The narrator is fictional, the values expressed in contrast to the writer’s own religion. It is a study of what Dostoevsky thought the human condition was creating, not what humanity should become.
Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in 1866 to illustrate how suffering leads to redemption of a lost soul. The book’s anti-hero, Raskolnikov, commits an irrational murder. Dostoevsky did not want to trivialize the crime, but instead wanted to explore the process of redemption. Unlike Camus’ The Stranger, Raskolnikov’s crime is meant from the beginning to test his beliefs. For Raskolnikov, murder is an experiment in morality.
Sometimes, Dostoevsky gave little thought to what he wrote, especially when writing merely to settle gambling debts. Dostoevsky could write novels at incredible speeds, when he had to pay bills. At other times, he gave a great deal of thought to philosophy and human nature.
One very important note to students: do not confuse the writer with his characters. The existential ideas presented in Dostoevsky’s works are not his own, in fact they often conflict with his beliefs. Remember this, and it changes how one approaches his works. Walter Kaufmann describes Dostoevsky as follows:
Dostoevsky himself was a Christian, to be sure, and for that matter also a rabid anti-Semite, anti-Catholic, and anti-Western Russian nationalist. We have no right whatsoever to attribute to him the opinions of all of his most interesting characters.
— Existentialism; Kaufmann, p. 14
