Biography Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich
(1821 – 1881)
Dostoevsky Feodor Mikhailovich (1821-81), Russian writer, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1877). In the stories “Poor People” (1846), “White Nights” (1848), “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849, not finished), etc. described the suffering of the “little” man as a tragedy social. In the story “The Double” (1846) he gave a psychological analysis of the split consciousness. Member of the circle of MV Petrashevsky, Dostoevsky in 1849 was arrested and sentenced to death, replaced by hard labor (1850-54) followed by a rank-and-file service. In 1859 he returned to St. Petersburg. “Notes from the Dead House” (1861-62) about the tragic fate and dignity of a man in penal servitude. Together with his brother, M. M. Dostoevsky published “soil” magazines “Time” (1861-63) and “Epoch” (1864-65). In the novels ” deep psychology and tragedy.
DOSTOEVSKY Fyodor Mikhailovich [October 30 (November 11) 1821, Moscow January 28 (February 9) 1881, St. Petersburg, was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra], a Russian writer.
“I came from a family of Russian and pious”
Dostoevsky was the second child in a large family (six children). Father, the son of a Uniate priest, a doctor at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor (where the future writer was born), in 1828 received the title of hereditary nobleman. A mother from a merchant family, a religious woman, took children to the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra every year, taught them to read from the book “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testament” (in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, the memoirs of this book are included in the story of the Elder
Since 1832, the family spent summer every year in the village of Darovoe (Tula Province), bought by the father. Meetings and conversations with the peasants were permanently deposited in Dostoevsky’s memory and later served as creative material (the story “The Man of the Maries” from the “Diary of the Writer” for 1876).
The beginning of the teaching
In 1832 Dostoevsky and his elder brother Mikhail (see M. Dostoevsky) began to study with the teachers who came to the house, from 1833 they studied at the boarding house of NI Drususov (Sushara), then at the boarding house of LI Tchermak. The atmosphere of educational institutions and isolation from the family caused a painful reaction in Dostoevsky (compare the autobiographical features of the hero of the novel “Teenager”, experiencing deep moral upheavals in the “Tushara boarding house”). However, the years of study are marked by an awakened passion for reading. In 1837 the writer’s mother died, and soon his father drove Dostoevsky with his brother Mikhail to Petersburg for continuing education. The writer did not meet with his father, who died in 1839 (according to official information, he died of an apoplexy stroke, according to family legends, he was killed by serfs). Dostoevsky’s attitude to his father,
In the Engineering School (1838-43)
Since January 1838 Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School (later always always believed that the choice of the institution was erroneous). He suffered from a military atmosphere and drill, from disciplines alien to his interests and from loneliness. As his schoolmate, artist KA Trutovsky, testified, Dostoevsky kept himself closed, but he struck his comrades with his reading, and a literary circle formed around him. The first literary plans took shape at the school. In 1841, at an evening held by his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky read excerpts from his dramatic works, which are known only by the names “Maria Stewart” and “Boris Godunov”, giving birth to associations with the names of F. Schiller and A. Pushkin, apparently, the deepest literary hobbies of the young Dostoevsky; read also by NV Gogol, E. Hoffmann, V. Scott, George Sand, V. Hugo. At the end of the school, having served less than a year in the Petersburg engineering team, in the summer of 1844 Dostoevsky resigned in the rank of lieutenant, deciding to give himself completely to literary creation.
The beginning of literary work
Among the literary predilections of Dostoevsky that time was O. de Balzac: by translating his story “Eugenia Grande” (1844, without indicating the name of the translator), the writer entered the literary arena. Simultaneously, Dostoevsky worked on translating the novels of Eugene Sue and George Sand (did not appear in the press). The choice of works testified to the literary tastes of the novice writer: he was not alien to romantic and sentimentalist styles in those years, he liked dramatic collisions, large-scale characters, an action-dramatic narrative. In the works of George Sand, as he recalled at the end of his life, he was “amazed… by the chaste, highest purity of types and ideals and the modest charm of the strict, restrained tone of the story.”
Triumphant debut
In the winter of 1844, Dostoevsky conceived the novel Poor People, which he began to work on, suddenly, unexpectedly, but gave himself up to it unreservedly. Even in the manuscript DV Grigorovich, with whom he at that time was sharing an apartment, delivered a novel to NA Nekrasov, and together they did not stop reading the Poor Folks all night long. In the morning they came to Dostoevsky to express his admiration. With the words “The new Gogol has appeared!” Nekrasov gave the manuscript to VG Belinsky, who told PV Annenkov: “… the novel reveals such secrets of life and characters in Russia, which before him and dreamed no one.” The reaction of Belinsky’s circle to Dostoevsky’s first work became one of the most famous and had a long resonance of episodes in the history of Russian literature: almost all the participants, including Dostoevsky, later returned to him in both memories and works of art, describing him in both a direct and a parody manner. The novel was printed in 1846 in the Petersburg collection of Nekrasov, provoking noisy arguments. The reviewers, although they noted certain miscalculations of the writer, felt a tremendous talent, and Belinsky directly predicted a great future for Dostoevsky. The first critics rightly noted the genetic connection of Poor People with Gogol’s Overcoat, referring to the image of the protagonist of the half-dead official Makar Devushkin, ascending to the heroes of Gogol, and the wide influence of Gogol’s poetics on Dostoevsky. In the depiction of the inhabitants of the “Petersburg corners”, in portraying a whole gallery of social types, Dostoevsky relied on the traditions of the natural school (expository pathos), but he himself emphasized, that in the novel the influence of Pushkin’s “Stationmaster” also affected. The theme of the “little man” and his tragedy found Dostoevsky’s new twists, which, in the first novel, enable us to discover the most important features of the writer’s creative style: concentration on the hero’s inner world in conjunction with the analysis of his social fate, the ability to convey the elusive nuances of the state of actors, the principle of confessional self-disclosure characters (it is not accidental that the form of “novel in letters” was chosen), a system of doubles “accompanying” the main characters.
In the literary circle
Entering the circle of Belinsky (where he met with IS Turgenev, VF Odoevsky, II Panayev), Dostoevsky, according to his later confession, “passionately accepted the whole doctrine” of the critic, including his socialist ideas. At the end of 1845 at the evening at Belinsky he read the chapters of the story “The Double” (1846), in which he first gave a deep analysis of the split consciousness, foreshadowing his great novels. The story, first interested Belinsky, eventually disappointed him, and soon came the cooling in Dostoevsky’s relationship with the critic, as well as with all his surroundings, including Nekrasov and Turgenev, who ridiculed Dostoevsky’s morbid suspiciousness. Oppressively acted on the writer’s need to agree to almost any literary work. All this was painfully experienced by Dostoevsky. He became “
Dostoevsky and Petrashevsky
In 1846, Dostoevsky approached the circle of the Beketov brothers (among the participants, AN Pleshcheev, AN and VN Maikov, DV Grigorovich), in which not only literary but also social problems were discussed. In the spring of 1847, Dostoevsky began to visit the “Fridays” of MV Petrashevsky, in the winter of 1848-49 the circle of the poet SF Durov, which also consisted mainly of Petrashevists. At meetings that were of a political nature, the problems of the emancipation of the peasants, the reform of the court and censorship, the treatises of the French socialists, the articles of AI Herzen, the then banned Belinsky’s letter to Gogol, the plans for the distribution of lithographed literature were conceived. In 1848 he entered a special secret society, organized by the most radical Petrashevsky NA Speshnev (who had a significant influence on Dostoevsky); society set as its goal “
Under investigation and in penal servitude
After eight months in the fortress, where Dostoevsky was brave and even wrote the story “The Little Hero” (published in 1857), he was found guilty “in the intention to overthrow… the state order” and was initially sentenced to death, replaced already by scaffold, after “terrible, immensely terrible minutes of waiting for death,” 4 years of hard labor with the deprivation of “all the rights of the state” and the subsequent surrender to the soldiers. Katorga served in the Omsk fortress, among criminals (“it was suffering inexpressible, infinite… every minute was gravitating like a stone in my heart”). Experiencing emotional upheavals, longing and loneliness, “judging yourself,” “rigorous revision of the old life,” a complex range of feelings from despair to belief in the speedy realization of a high calling, all this spiritual experience of the island years became the biographical basis of the “Notes from the Dead House” (1860-62), a tragic confessional book, which already amazed contemporaries with the courage and strength of the writer’s spirit. A separate topic of the “Notes” was the profound class division of the nobleman with the common people. Although Apollon Grigoryev exaggerated in the spirit of his own convictions, when he wrote that Dostoevsky “achieved a passive and psychological process to the point that he merged completely with the people in the” Dead House “, but the step to such a rapprochement through the consciousness of the community of destiny was made. Immediately after liberation, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother about the “people’s types” taken from Siberia and the knowledge of the “black, miserable life” experience, which “will reach entire volumes”. In the “Notes” reflects the coup d’etat in the mind of the writer, which he described as “a return to the people’s root, to the recognition of the Russian soul, to the recognition of the spirit of the people.” Dostoevsky clearly saw the utopianism of revolutionary ideas, with which he later sharply polemicized.
Return to literature
Since January 1854 Dostoevsky served as a private in Semipalatinsk, in 1855 was promoted to non-commissioned officers, in 1856 to ensigns. The following year he was returned nobility and the right to be published. At the same time, he married MD Isaeva, who, before marriage, took an active part in his fate. In Siberia, Dostoevsky wrote the story “Uncle’s Dream” and “Stepanchikovo Village and Its Inhabitants” (both printed in 1859). The central hero of the latter, Foma Fomich Opiskin, an insignificant survivor with the pretensions of a tyrant, a hypocrite, a hypocrite, a maniacal selfishness and a sophisticated sadist, as a psychological type became an important discovery foreshadowing many heroes of mature creativity. In the stories the main features of the famous novels-tragedies of Dostoevsky are outlined: dramatization of the action, scandalous and, at the same time, tragic development of events, a complicated psychological picture. Contemporaries remained indifferent to the “Village of Stepanchikovo…”, interest in the story arose much later, when NM Mikhailovsky in the article “Cruel Talent” gave a deep analysis of the image of Opisan, tendentiously identifying him, however, with the writer himself. A lot of controversy around the “Village Stepanchikovo…” is connected with the assumption of Yu. N. Tynyanov that in the monologues of Oci? Nk the “Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends” NV Gogol are parodied. Tynyanov’s idea provoked researchers to identify a voluminous layer of literary subtext in the story, including allusions associated with the works of the 1850s, which Dostoevsky eagerly followed in Siberia.
Dostoevsky is a journalist
In 1859 Dostoevsky retired “due to illness” and received permission to live in Tver. At the end of the year he moved to St. Petersburg and together with his brother Mikhail began to publish the magazines “Time”, then “Epoch”, combining a huge editorial work with the author’s: wrote publicistic and literary critical articles, polemical notes, works of art. With the closest participation of NN Strakhov and AA Grigoriev, in the course of polemics with both radical and conservative journalism, “soil” ideas developed in the pages of both journals, genetically related to Slavophilism, but permeated with pathos the reconciliation of Westernizers and Slavophiles, the search for a national variant of development and the optimal combination of the beginnings of “civilization” and the nationality, the synthesis that grew out of the ” the “all-humanity” of the Russian people, their ability to “reconcile the view of others.” Dostoevsky’s articles, especially the Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863), written following the first overseas trip of 1862 (Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, England), represent criticism of Western European institutions and passionately expressed faith in Russia’s special vocation, in the possibility of transforming Russian society on fraternal Christian grounds: “the Russian idea… will be a synthesis of all those ideas that… develop t Europe in its individual nationalities. “
“Insulted and Injured” (1861) and “Notes from the Underground” (1864)
In the pages of the magazine “Vremya”, trying to strengthen his reputation, Dostoevsky published his novel “The Insulted and Injured”, the very name of which was perceived by the critics of the 19th century. as a symbol of the entire work of the writer and even wider as a symbol of the “truly humanistic” pathos of Russian literature (NA Dobrolyubov in the article “Hammered people”). Saturated with autobiographical allusions and addressed to the main motifs of the 1840s, the novel was written in a new manner, close to late works: it weakened the social aspect of the tragedy of the “humiliated” and deepened the psychological analysis. The abundance of melodramatic effects and exceptional situations, the pumping of mystery, the randomness of the composition prompted critics of different generations to lower the novel’s value. However, in the following works Dostoevsky succeeded in raising the same traits of poetics to a tragedy height: an external failure prepared the upsets of the next few years, in particular, the short story “Notes from the Underground” printed soon in Epoch, which Rozanov considered “the cornerstone of the literary activity “of Dostoevsky; the confession of the underground paradoxicalist, the man of the tragically torn consciousness, his disputes with the imaginary opponent, as well as the moral victory of the heroine, opposed to the morbid individualism of the “anti-hero”, all this found development in subsequent novels, only after the appearance of which the story was highly appreciated and deeply interpreted criticism.
Family catastrophes and a new marriage
In 1863, Dostoevsky made a second trip abroad, where he met AP Suslova (passionate writer in the 1860’s.); their complex relationships, as well as gambling in roulette in Baden-Baden gave material for the novel “The Gambler” (1866). In 1864, Dostoevsky’s wife died and, although they were not happy in marriage, he suffered a loss. Her brother Mikhail died suddenly after her. Dostoevsky took upon himself all the debts for the publication of the magazine “Epoch”, but soon stopped it because of the fall of the subscription and concluded an unprofitable contract for the publication of his collected works, pledging to a certain date to write a new novel. He once again traveled abroad in the summer of 1866, spent in Moscow and in the suburban dacha, all this time working on the novel “Crime and Punishment”, intended for the magazine “Russky Vestnik” MN. Katkov (later all of his most significant novels were published in this magazine). In parallel, Dostoevsky had to work on a second novel (The Gambler), which he dictated to the stenographer A. G. Snitkina (see Dostoyevskaya A. G.), who not only helped the writer, but also psychologically supported him in a difficult situation. After the end of the novel (winter 1867), Dostoevsky married her and, according to NN Strakhov, “a new marriage soon brought him the full family happiness that he so desired.” but also psychologically supported him in a difficult situation. After the end of the novel (winter 1867), Dostoevsky married her and, according to NN Strakhov, “a new marriage soon brought him the full family happiness that he so desired.” but also psychologically supported him in a difficult situation. After the end of the novel (winter 1867), Dostoevsky married her and, according to NN Strakhov, “a new marriage soon brought him the full family happiness that he so desired.”
“Crime and Punishment” (1865-66)
The circle of the main ideas of the novel was hatched by the writer for a long time, perhaps in the most vague form, even from penal servitude. Work on it was carried out with enthusiasm and spiritual uplift, despite the material need. Genetically related to the unrealized concept of “Pyanenkie”, Dostoevsky’s new novel summed up the work of the 1840s and 50s, continuing the central themes of those years. Social motifs received in him an in-depth philosophical sounding, inseparable from the moral drama of Raskolnikov, the “theoretic killer”, the modern Napoleon, who, according to the writer, “ends up getting a message on himself.” in order to perish in penal servitude, but to join again to people… “. The collapse of Raskolnikov’s individualistic idea, his attempts to become the “master of destiny,” to rise above the “creature trembling” and at the same time to make mankind happy, to save the destitute, Dostoevsky’s philosophical response to the revolutionary mood of the 1860s. Having made the “murderer and harlot” the main heroes of the novel and putting Raskolnikov’s inner drama on the streets of St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky placed ordinary life in an atmosphere of symbolic coincidences, insulting confessions and painful dreams, tense philosophical disputes-duels, turning Petersburg, painted with topographical precision, into a symbolic image of a ghost town. The abundance of characters, the system of heroes-twins, the wide coverage of events, the alternation of grotesque scenes with tragic, paradoxical sharpened statement of moral problems, the absorption of the characters by the idea, the abundance of “voices” (different points of view, consolidated by the unity of the author’s position) traditionally considered the best work of Dostoevsky, became the main features of the poetics of a mature writer. Although radical criticism interpreted Crime and Punishment as a tendentious work, the novel was a huge success.
The world of great novels
In the years 1867-68. written the novel “Idiot”, whose task Dostoevsky saw in “the image of a positively beautiful person.” The ideal hero Prince Myshkin, “Prince Christ”, “good shepherd”, personifying forgiveness and mercy, with his theory of “practical Christianity”, does not stand up to the clash with hatred, anger, sin and plunges into insanity. His death sentence to the world. However, according to Dostoevsky’s remark, “wherever he has left the unsuspecting line everywhere, he has left no trace of him.” The next novel “The Possessed” (1871-72) was created under the impression of the terrorist activities of S. G. Nechaev and the secret society organized by him “The People’s Massacre,” but the ideological space of the novel is much wider: Dostoevsky comprehended both the Decembrists and P. Ya. Chaadaev, and the liberal movement of the 1840s, and the 1960s, interpreting revolutionary “demons” in a philosophical and psychological vein and entering into controversy with the very artistic fabric of the novel with the development of the plot as a series of catastrophes, the tragic movement of the heroes’ destinies, an apocalyptic reflection “cast” on developments. Contemporaries read The Possessed as an ordinary antinigilistic novel, passing by its prophetic depth and tragedy. In 1875, the novel “Teenager” was printed, written in the form of a young man’s confession, whose consciousness is formed in the “ugly” world, in an atmosphere of “general decay” and “accidental family.” The theme of the disintegration of family ties was continued in Dostoevsky’s final novel The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80), conceived as an image of ” our intellectual Russia “and at the same time as the novel about the life of the protagonist Alyosha Karamazov. The problem of” fathers and children “(the” children’s “theme was intensely tragic and at the same time optimistic in the novel, especially in the book” The Boys “), and The conflict of rebellious atheism and faith passing through the “crucible of doubt” reached a climax and predetermined the central antithesis of the novel: the opposition of the harmony of the universal brotherhood based on mutual love (the elder Zosima, Alyosha, the boys), the painful disbelief, doubts in Bo and the “peace of God” (these motifs culminate in Ivan Karamazov’s “poem” about the Grand Inquisitor.) The novels of a mature Dostoevsky are a whole universe, imbued with the catastrophic worldview of its creator. The inhabitants of this world,
“Diary of the writer.” End of the road
In 1873 Dostoevsky began to edit the newspaper-magazine “Citizen”, where he did not confine himself to editorial work, deciding to publish his own publicistic, memoirs, literary critical essays, satires, stories. This diversity was “bathed” by the unity of intonation and views of the author, who conducts a constant dialogue with the reader. This was how the “Diary of a Writer” was created, to which Dostoevsky devoted a great deal of energy in recent years, turning it into a report on his impressions of the most important phenomena of social and political life and presenting his political, religious, and aesthetic beliefs on his pages. In 1874 he refused to edit the journal because of collisions with the publisher and deterioration of health (in the summer of 1874, then in 1875, 1876 and 1879 he went to be treated in Ems), and at the end of 1875 he resumed work on the “Diary” which had a huge success and prompted many people to enter into correspondence with its author (conducted “Diary” with interruptions until the end of life). In society, Dostoevsky acquired a high moral authority, was perceived as a preacher and teacher. The apogee of his lifetime fame was a speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1880), where he spoke of “all-humanity” as the highest expression of the Russian ideal, of the “Russian wanderer” who needed “world-wide happiness.” This speech, which caused a huge public outcry, turned out to be Dostoevsky’s will. Full of creative plans, intending to write the second part of The Brothers Karamazov and publish The Diary of a Writer, in January 1881 Dostoevsky died suddenly. with interruptions until the end of life). In society, Dostoevsky acquired a high moral authority, was perceived as a preacher and teacher. The apogee of his lifetime fame was a speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1880), where he spoke of “all-humanity” as the highest expression of the Russian ideal, of the “Russian wanderer” who needed “world-wide happiness.” This speech, which caused a huge public outcry, turned out to be Dostoevsky’s will. Full of creative plans, intending to write the second part of The Brothers Karamazov and publish The Diary of a Writer, in January 1881 Dostoevsky died suddenly. with interruptions until the end of life). In society, Dostoevsky acquired a high moral authority, was perceived as a preacher and teacher. The apogee of his lifetime fame was a speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1880), where he spoke of “all-humanity” as the highest expression of the Russian ideal, of the “Russian wanderer” who needed “world-wide happiness.” This speech, which caused a huge public outcry, turned out to be Dostoevsky’s will. Full of creative plans, intending to write the second part of The Brothers Karamazov and publish The Diary of a Writer, in January 1881 Dostoevsky died suddenly. The apogee of his lifetime fame was a speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1880), where he spoke of “all-humanity” as the highest expression of the Russian ideal, of the “Russian wanderer” who needed “world-wide happiness.” This speech, which caused a huge public outcry, turned out to be Dostoevsky’s will. Full of creative plans, intending to write the second part of The Brothers Karamazov and publish The Diary of a Writer, in January 1881 Dostoevsky died suddenly. The apogee of his lifetime fame was a speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1880), where he spoke of “all-humanity” as the highest expression of the Russian ideal, of the “Russian wanderer” who needed “world-wide happiness.” This speech, which caused a huge public outcry, turned out to be Dostoevsky’s will. Full of creative plans, intending to write the second part of The Brothers Karamazov and publish The Diary of a Writer, in January 1881 Dostoevsky died suddenly.
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