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Fyodor Dostoevsky[[Image:Dostoevsky 1872.jpg|framed|right|Fyodor Dostoevsky. Portrait by Vasily Perov, 1872]] Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский, sometimes Transliteration of Russian into English Dostoyevsky ) (born November 11, (October 30, Julian calendar), 1821, Moscow; died February 9, (January 28, Julian calendar), 1881, Saint Petersburg, Russia) was one of the greatest of Russian literature. He is sometimes said to be a founder of existentialism. == Biography == Fyodor was the second of seven children born to Mikhail and Maria Dostoevsky. Shortly after his mother died of tuberculosis in 1837, he and his brother Mikhail were sent to the Military Engineering Academy at St. Petersburg, and they lost their father, a retired military surgeon who served as a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow, in 1839. While not known for certain, it is believed that Mikhail Dostoevsky was murdered by his own serfs, who reportedly became enraged during one of Mikhail's drunken fits of violence, restrained him, and poured vodka into his mouth until he drowned. Another story was that Mikhail died of natural causes, and a neighboring landowner invented this story of a peasant rebellion so he could buy the estate cheaply. Regardless of what may have actually happened, Sigmund Freud focused on this tale in his famous article, ''Dostoevsky and Parricide'' (1928). Dostoevsky was arrested and imprisoned in 1849 for engaging in revolutionary activity against Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. On November 16 that year he was sentenced to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group, the Petrashevsky Circle. After a mock execution in which he faced a staged execution by firing squad, Dostoevsky's sentence was commuted to a number of years of exile performing hard labor at a katorga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia. The incidence of epilepsy seizures, to which he was predisposed, increased during this period. He was released from prison in 1854, and was required to serve in the Siberian Regiment. Dostoevsky spent the following five years as a corporal (and latterly lieutenant) in the Regiment's Seventh Line Battalion stationed at the fortress of Semey in Kazakhstan. This was a turning point in the author's life. Dostoevsky abandoned his earlier radical sentiments and became deeply conservatism and extremely religious. He later formed a peculiar friendship with another archconservative, Konstantin Pobedonostsev. He began an affair with, and later married, Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the widow of an acquaintance in Siberia. In 1860, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he ran a series of unsuccessful literary journals with his older brother Mikhail. Dostoevsky was devastated by his wife's death in 1864, followed shortly thereafter by his brother's death. He was financially crippled by business debts and the need to provide for his brother's widow and children. Dostoevsky sank into a deep depression, frequenting gambling parlors and accumulating massive losses at the tables. To escape creditors in Petersburg, Dostoevsky traveled to Western Europe. There, he attempted to rekindle a love affair with Apollinaria (Polina) Suslova, a young university student with whom he had had an affair several years prior, but she refused his marriage proposal. Dostoevsky was heartbroken, but soon met Anna Snitkina, a nineteen-year-old stenographer whom he married in 1867. This period resulted in the writing of his greatest books. From 1873 to 1881 he vindicated his earlier journalistic failures by publishing a monthly journal full of short stories, sketches, and articles on current events — the ''Writer's Diary''. The journal was an enormous success. In 1877 Dostoevsky gave the keynote eulogy at the funeral of his friend, the poet Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, to much controversy. In 1880, shortly before he died, he gave his famous Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. In his later years, Fyodor Dostoevsky lived for a long time at the resort of Staraya Russa which was closer to St Petersburg and less expensive than German resorts. He died on January 28 (Julian calendar), 1881 and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St. Petersburg, Russia. ==Influence== Dostoevsky's influence cannot be overemphasized—from Herman Hesse to Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Yukio Mishima and Gabriel García Márquez—virtually no great 20th century writer has escaped his long shadow (rare dissenting voices include Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James, and, more ambiguously, David Herbert Lawrence). American novelist Ernest Hemingway also cited Dostoevsky in his autobiographic books, as a major influence on his work. Essentially a writer of myth (and in this respect sometimes compared to Herman Melville), Dostoevsky has created an opus of immense vitality and almost hypnotic power characterized by the following traits: feverishly dramatized scenes (conclaves) where his characters are, frequently in scandalous and explosive atmosphere, passionately engaged in Socratic dialogues ''a la Russe''; the quest for God, the problem of Evil and suffering of the innocents haunt the majority of his novels; characters fall into a few distinct categories: humble and self-effacing Christianity (prince Myshkin, Sonya Marmeladova, Alyosha Karamazov), self-destructive nihilism (Svidrigailov, Smerdyakov, Stavrogin, the underground man), cynical debauchers (Fyodor Karamazov), rebellious intellectuals (Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov); also, his characters are driven by ideas rather than by ordinary biological or social imperatives. Dostoevsky's novels are compressed in time (many cover only a few days) and this enables the author to get rid of one of the dominant traits of realism prose, the corrosion of human life in the process of the time flux — his characters primarily embody spiritual values, and these are, by definition, timeless. Other obsessive themes include suicide, wounded pride, collapsed family values, spiritual regeneration through suffering (the most important motif), rejection of the West and affirmation of Russian Orthodoxy and Czarism. Literary scholars such as Mikhail Bakhtin have characterized his work as 'polyphonic': unlike other novelists, Dostoevsky does not appear to aim for a 'single vision', and beyond simply describing situations from various angles, Dostoevsky engendered fully dramatic novels of ideas where conflicting views and characters are left to develop unevenly into unbearable crescendo. By common critical consensus one among the handful of universal world authors, along with Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Victor Hugo and a few others, Dostoevsky has decisively influenced 20th century literature, existentialism and expressionism in particular. ==Major works== * ''Poor Folk'' (1846) * ''The Double: A Petersburg Poem'' (1846) * ''Netochka Nezvanova'' (1849) * ''The Village of Stepanchikovo'' (or ''The Friend of the Family'') (1859) * ''The Insulted and Humiliated'' (or ''The Insulted and the Injured'') (1861) * ''The House of the Dead'' (1862) * ''A Nasty Story'' (1862) * ''Notes from Underground'' (or ''Letters from the Underworld'') (1864) * ''Crime and Punishment'' (1866) * ''The Gambler (novella)'' (1867) * ''The Idiot (novel)'' (1868) * ''The Possessed'' (or ''Demons'' or ''The Devils'') (1872) * ''The Raw Youth'' (or ''The Adolescent'') (1875) * ''The Brothers Karamazov'' (1880) ==External links and references== * [http://www.FyodorDostoevsky.com FyodorDostoevsky.com] - The Definitive Dostoevsky fan site * [http://Dostoyevsky.thefreelibrary.com/ Fyodor Dostoevsky's brief biography and works] *Project Gutenberg e-texts of [http://www.gutenberg.net/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=314 some of Fyodor Dostoevsky's works] * [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=Dostoyevsky%2c+ Selected Dostoevsky e-texts from Penn Librarys digital library project] *[http://ilibrary.ru/author/dostoevski/ Full texts of some Dostoevsky's works in the original Russian] *[http://www.fmdostoyevsky.com Fyodor Dostoyevsky] - Biography, ebooks, quotations, and other resources * ''Crime and Punishment,'' Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage Classics, 1992, New York. * ''Crime and Punishment,'' Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, introduction by Joseph Frank. Bantam Books, 1987, New York. *[http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/RUSS/Moscow/2001PhotoAlbum/StPetersburg/Dostoevsky_GogolSights/ Some photos of places and statues that are reminiscent of Dostoevsky and his work] 1821 births 1881 deaths Russian novelists Russian short story writers bs:Fjodor Dostojevski Fyodor DostoevskyGoogled "Fyodor Dostoevsky" and "Fyodor Dostoyevsky": 22,800 hits and 13,400, respectively. Hence "dostoYevsky" is a redirect. user:Koyaanis Qatsi :Good enough for me! On the story of his "execution", it seems to me that he was about to be hanged rather than shot, but I don't feel certain enough to change that in the article. Also I may have read somewhere that the last minute reprieve was pre-planned. user:Eclecticology ::The execution was to be by shooting and not hanging. He didn't actually ''face'' the firing squad though - he was in the second group to be executed and the reprive came when the first group was being aimed at. You're right though that the reprieve was probably pre-planned - it wasn't all that uncommon for the Tsar to show mercy in this way for added drama.user:Parsley Interesting. I don't know anything about the man's life, though I'm not averse to looking it up. user:Koyaanis Qatsi :I've made a couple of changes. Thus far, the only mention I've found of the exact type of "execution" was that of a firing squad, so I left that alone. It was planned ahead of time; seemingly, they hadn't intended to execute him. I have some more information that I plan on including later when I dig up my other sources. user:AmonZ I've changed "Bibliography" to "Major works" because a complete bibliography would be huge and unwieldy - see http://www.kiosek.com/dostoevsky/bibliography.html. This new heading is supposed only to cover the books of his which are best known or most critically acclaimed. For this reason I removed some works, e.g. "Bobok", which I don't think satisfy either category. Of course the matter is to some degree subjective and I'm sure there are people who are better qualified than me to edit the list. user:Lfh I deleted the phrase about being pardoned. In the usual English legal usage, to be pardoned is to be completed forgiven for the crime. This is not consistent with having the sentence commuted to hard labor. It's possible he was pardoned after serving some time, which would mean reducing his sentence term and restoring any legal rights lost as felon. It may also be the Russian legal system was quite different, but in any case different wording would be needed to not be misleading to English-language readers. User:Loren Rosen * Was he really devastated by the death of Maria? I seem to recall reading that it was a fairly loveless marriage after the return to St. Petersburg. Also, I think it's worth amending to make clear that the army service following his release was compulsory(i.e. part of his sentence) and his return to St. Petersburg occured only after petitioning the Tsar for permission. User:Parsley User:Frogus: I think the sentence " (rare dissenting voices include Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James and, more ambiguously, David Herbert Lawrence)" is confusing - in what way do they dissent?? Does this mean that they have not been influenced at all by Dostoevsky, or does it mean that they claim not to have been, or just that they don't like him or what?? ---- I have reverted the edit "Sometimes thought to be a founder of existentialism". It's far more accurate than saying he's merely an existentialist, for it's hard to see if Dostoevsky ever considered himself one. User:Mandel 17:34, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC) == Netochka Nezvanova == Netochka Nezvanova links to an article about some software artist, not about the book. == Dosteovsky's Mother == I remeber reading that his mother died of Consumption, and this was the basis for so many of his female characters to have this disease. Anybody know more about this? ---- ==Influence== The section entitled "Influence" is ambiguous and strange. It states many things, but never goes on to elucidate them, and it seems to be merely the viewpoint of the writer, rather than general critical consensus. Why, for example, and in what way, is Dostoevksy "a writer of myth" like Melville? How has he influenced expressionism? How has he influenced Kafka, Hesse or Proust? The wording is somewhat bombastic but unclear. What can - for instance - "the corrosion of human life in the process of the time flux" mean? And then there's the problematic "only Dostoyevski has engendered fully dramatic novels of ideas where conflicting views and characters are left to develop even unto unbearable crescendo". All in all, either the writer should clarify what he or she has written, or this section must be rephrased. User:Mandel 06:50, May 26, 2005 (UTC) ==Consistent spelling?== Even though other resources may vary in the details of the Romanization of his name, I think we should pick "Dostoevsky" and stick to it rather than having it three different ways throughout the article. :Done. User:Sholtar | User_talk:Sholtar 03:35, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC) See other meanings of words starting from letter: FFA | FB | FC | FD | FE | FG | FH | FI | FJ | FK | FL | FM | FN | FO | FP | FR | FS | FT | FU | FW | FX | FY | FZ |Words begining with Fyodor_Dostoevsky: Fyodor_Dostoevsky Fyodor_Dostoevsky Fyodor_Dostoevsky_(old) Fyodor_Dostoevsky_(old)
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