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Fyodor Dostoevskij
(1821-1881) |
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The Russian writer
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in the Hospital for the
poor in Moscow on October 30, 1821. He
was to be the second of seven children. His childhood has been
described by himself as happy and peaceful where he held
particular warm feelings towards his two
older siblings Misya and Varenka. Other sources put weight on
the despotic father.It is said that the
father, a physicist who had retired to his estate in the province of Tula, was
murdered by his own serfs in 1839 because of his hot
temperedness and irritable state of mind.
The mother, on the other hand, is described as tender and
sensitive with a literary and musical
talent. She died in 1837 when young Fyodor was only fifteen
years old.
In 1831 Fyodor and his brother Mikhail (1820-1864) were sent to
boarding schools in Moscow. After the
death of their mother in 1837 they started preparatory school in
St. Petersburg. Then, in 1838, Fyodor was
admitted to St. Petersburg's Academy of Military Engineers,
leaving Misya behind. Our hero graduated
in 1843 from the Academy as lieutenant, and was assigned to a
military department in St. Petersburg where he worked for a
year. Dostoevsky soon realized that working in a department gave no
creative satisfaction. He wanted to write
and work as an author. His new career started by translating
Honoré de Balzac's
Eugenie Grandet in 1843 and George Sand's La dernière
Aldini in 1844. Now he also started on
his first novel,
Poor Folk, which was published in
1846. Up to the point of his arrest in 1849,
Dostoevsky published amongst other works, The Double,
A Strange Wife, A Faint Heart and The
Jealous Husband. At this time he was also
acquainted with the utopian socialist M. V.
Butashevich-Petrashevsky and Dostoevsky seems to have
been one of the strongmen in the
Petrashevsky group. This association got him four years in
Siberian prison.
By 1857 things started to look better. February 6 Dostoevsky
married the widow Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva
and two months later regained his rights of a nobleman. In
August The Small Hero was
published, he was released from army service in March 1858 and
was allowed to return to St. Petersburg
in December. In 1862 he made his first trip abroad to Germany,
England, Switzerland, and Italy. He
started an affair with the young student Apollinaria Suslova
which he regarded as his intellectual
equal - apart from being a good looking woman who followed her
passions... Dostoevsky also started the review Time which
published
The Insulted and the
Injured and A Silly Story in 1861.The period of relative prosperity and happiness stopped abruptly
in 1864 when first Dostoevsky's wife
Maria Dmitrievna, and then brother Mikhail, died. A further blow
was when Apollinaria Suslova declined his
marriage proposal in 1865. Dostoevsky was all alone, left with
his brother's debts. He now resorted to gambling as a way
out from his economical difficulties, but
to no avail of course. He also signed a slave contract with a
publisher for a new novel. As
time went by, and running out, he had to hire a stenographer in
order to get the novel ready in time.
That stenographer was the nineteen year old Anna Grigorievna
Snitkina. Together they worked hard for a
month and the same day the contract expired out Dostoevsky
delivered the manuscript for The
Gambler to the publisher. Had he not done so, the
publisher would have
gained the rights to Dostoevsky's work. Intense work then
transformed into intense love and Fyodor
asked Anna to marry him. She accepted and the wedding stood in
February 15 1867. Except for the last ten years, the Dostoevsky
family suffered from economical difficulties
caused by brother Mikhail's debts, the always begging
step-son Pavel (from the marriage with
Isaeva) and Fyodor's gambling spree. But they always seemed to
manage and things got better after the
publishing of The Devils in 1871-1872. They also
was extremely unlucky regarding their
three children. Sofia was born in Geneva in 1868, but lived for
only three months. The next year, in
Dresden, the daughter Lyubov was born. She had a nervous
breakdown when her
father died and never recovered. The relation between her and
Anna was thereafter tense. In 1875
Aleksey was born, but met death three years later in fever.
Dostoevsky was supposedly a good father,
a modern husband for his time; a house rule was that at dinner
they never talked about things that the
children wouldn't understand. The last years of his life,
Dostoevsky finally saw both artistic and economical success
coming his way. In 1879 he began publishing
The Brothers Karamazov
in The Russian Messenger which received
great reviews, and Anna started to sell books in the
countryside. Dostoevsky
also gained reputation as a speaker and gave lectures which the
listeners enjoyed greatly. But his health
was never good and deteriorated even further in 1880. Fyodor
Mikhailovich Dostoevsky died in the
evening of January 28 1881. He was buried in the cemetery of
Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
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