Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (????? ??????????? ????????????, sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky {{Audio|ru-Dostoevsky.ogg|listen}}) (November 11, (October 30, Old Style), 1821, – February 9, (January 28, O.S.), 1881, St. Petersburg, Russia) was one of the greatest of Russian writers, whose works have a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century fiction. Often featuring characters with disparate and extreme states of the mind, his works exhibit both an uncanny grasp in human psychology as well as penetrating analyses in the politics, social and spiritual state of Russia of his time. Many of his best-known works are prophetic as precursors of modern-day thought and preoccupations. He is sometimes said to be a founder of existentialism, most notably in Notes from Underground, which has been described by Walter Kaufmann as "the best overture for existentialism ever written".

Works and Influence

Dostoevsky's influence cannot be overemphasized—from Herman Hesse to Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, 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, Joseph Conrad and, more ambiguously, D.H. 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 à 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 Christians (prince Myshkin, Sonya Marmeladova, Alyosha Karamazov), self-destructive nihilists (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.

Related Topics:
Herman Hesse - Marcel Proust - William Faulkner - Albert Camus - Franz Kafka - Henry Miller - Yukio Mishima - Gabriel García Márquez - Vladimir Nabokov - Henry James - Joseph Conrad - D.H. Lawrence - Ernest Hemingway - Herman Melville - Self-effacing - Christians - Nihilists - Debaucher

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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 realist 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 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.

Related Topics:
Realist - Suicide - Russian Orthodoxy - Czarism - Bakhtin - Polyphonic

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By common critical consensus one among the handful of universal world authors, along with Dante, Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Victor Hugo and a few others, Dostoevsky has decisively influenced 20th century literature, existentialism and expressionism in particular.

Related Topics:
Dante - Shakespeare - Miguel de Cervantes - Victor Hugo - Existentialism - Expressionism

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