![]() Epileptic seizures recurred sporadically throughout his life, and Dostoyevsky's experiences are thought to have formed the basis for his description of Prince Myshkin's epilepsy in his novel The Idiot and that of Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov, among others.Īt the Saint Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering, Dostoevsky was taught mathematics, a subject he despised. ![]() Its acceptance appears to be based on a similar account that appears in "Notes From the Underground." Most now believe that Mikhail died of natural causes, and a neighboring landowner invented the story of his murder so that he might buy the estate inexpensively.ĭostoevsky had epilepsy and his first seizure occurred when he was nine years old. Most critics reject this version of events. According to a popular account, they became enraged during one of his drunken fits of violence, restrained him, and poured vodka into his mouth until he drowned. Though it has never been proven, it is believed by some that he was murdered by his own serfs. Shortly after his mother died of tuberculosis in 1837, Dostoevsky and his brother were sent to the Military Engineering Academy at Saint Petersburg. ![]() There are many stories of Dostoevsky's father's despotic treatment of his children although letters and personal accounts demonstrate that they had a fairly loving relationship. The young Dostoevsky loved to spend time with these patients and hear their stories. Though his parents forbade it, Dostoevsky liked to wander out to the hospital garden, where the suffering patients sat to catch a glimpse of sun. This urban landscape made a lasting impression on the young Dostoevsky, whose interest in and compassion for the poor, oppressed and tormented was apparent. The hospital was located in one of the city's worst areas local landmarks included a cemetery for criminals, a lunatic asylum, and an orphanage for abandoned infants. Dostoevsky's father Mikhail was a retired military surgeon and a violent alcoholic, who had practiced at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow. He feared that rationalism would lead to disastrous consequences in Russia because, as he famously put it, “Without God, everything is permitted.”ĭostoevsky was the second of six children born to Mikhail and Maria Dostoevsky. ![]() His novel, Besy, (literally, “Demons”) translated as either The Devils or The Possessed, is often credited with foreseeing the coming of communism to Russia. Rather than argue with socialist ideology, Dostoevsky was satisfied to simply describe human irrationality, which could not be redeemed by merely changing the social order. Dostoevsky's response, as in his Notes from Underground, was simply to portray human irrationality. Progressives of all stripes, taking their cue from Jean Jacques Rousseau, held that human beings were basically good, but that society was corrupt therefore by changing the social conditions, people's natural goodness would shine through. His greatest concern appears to have been the loss of spiritual values, especially by the rationalists of his day. He is sometimes said to be a founder of existentialism, most notably in Notes from Underground, which has been described by critic Walter Kaufmann as "the best overture for existentialism ever written." Ironically, it was not a worldview which Dostoevsky personally endorsed.Īfter his arrest and exile to Siberia, his work took a dramatic shift. Many of his best-known works are prophetic as precursors of modern-day thought and preoccupations. Often featuring characters with disparate and extreme states of the mind, his works exhibit both an uncanny grasp of human psychology as well as penetrating analyses of the political, social, and spiritual state of Russia during his time. His works had a profound and lasting impact on twentieth-century thought and fiction. Knut Hamsun, Richard Brautigan, Charles Bukowski, Albert Camus, Orhan Pamuk, Sigmund Freud, Witold Gombrowicz, Franz Kafka, Jack Kerouac, James Joyce, Czesław Miłosz, Yukio Mishima, Alberto Moravia, Iris Murdoch, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marcel Proust, Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Wisława Szymborska, Irvine Welsh, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cormac McCarthy, Ken Keseyįyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ( Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский, sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky listen ▶) (November 11, 1821, – February 9, 1881) was a nineteenth century Russian novelist considered by many critics to be among the greatest writers of his or any age. Philosophers: Mikhail Bakunin, Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aleksandr Herzen, Konstantin Leontyev, Sergei Nechaev, Mikhail Petrashevsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Tikhon of Zadonsk Hoffmann, Mikhail Lermontov, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Pushkin, Writers: Miguel de Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Friedrich Schiller, Honoré de Balzac, Nikolai Gogol, Victor Hugo, E.T.A.
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