Fedor Dostoïevski

Fedor (Fiodor) Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski (in) is a writer Russian, born with Moscow on October 30th from the Calendrier Julien/November 11th 1821 and died in Saint-Pétersbourg on January 28th of the Calendrier Julien/February 9th 1881. He is generally regarded as one of the largest Russian novelists, and influenced many writers and philosophers.

Biography

Youth and first writings

His/her father, Mikhaïl Andréiévitch Dostoïevski, army medical officer at the hospital of the poor of Moscow, have two villages, acquired in 1831: Darovoié and Tchermachnia. In 1839, he is assassinated by serfs of Darovoié, after he had maltreated them. His/her mother, Maria Fedorovna Netchaiev, died of tuberculosis two years earlier, in 1837.

After make a success ofhaving made a success of of it the examination of entry, Dostoïevski between at the University of the Engineer S soldiers of Saint-Pétersbourg in 1838. In 1842, it is named second lieutenant and enters as a draftsman to the direction of the Genius. In 1844, it requires its retirement to be able to devote itself to its first novel, the Poor People . Published in 1846, this one was an unquestionable success and was worth with its author to be noticed by the poet Nikolaï Nekrassov and the influential one criticizes Vissarion Belinsky. Its following novels ( the Double and the Landlady ) were not same success.

In 1847, it attends the circle of the Socialist utopian Mikhaïl Petrachevski, civil servant at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This same year, it makes its first crisis of epilepsy, at 26 years.

Imprisonment and the bagne

In April 1849, the members of the Petrachevski circle are stopped, including Dostoïevski which is him also stopped and imprisoned. After a show of Execution on the place Semenov, on December 22nd 1849, the tsar having grâcié the prisoners at the time when they were going to be carried out, the sentence is transformed into a Exil several years and the sorrow commuted to deportation in a bagne of Siberia.

In 1850 it arrives at Omsk ( Souvenirs of the house of dead the , 1860), episode reported in the romantic cycle the light of right the of Henri Troyat. However the bagne of the tsar Nicolas Ier, even if it is very hard, does not have great a deal to see with Soviet the Gulag future. The corporal punishment is saved Dostoïevski on the intervention of Mr. de Grave, an officer of French origin.

In the hutments it shares its life with convicts of common right, it writes in its correspondence: I did not waste my time: I learned with knowing the Russian people well, as perhaps little know it. . What obliges the intellectual of living room which it was to be begun its evolution: I was guilty, I am full aware of it… I was condemned legally and in good justice… My long experience, painful, painful, returned my clearness to me… It is my cross, I deserved it… The bagne took to me much and inculcated much.

After the bagne

Its sorrow finishes in 1854 and it is affected as officer with a regiment of Siberia. It again starts again to write: the Memories of the house of dead the , fictionalized account of its life to the bagne, then a comedy, the borough of Stepantchikovo and its inhabitants . In 1857 he marries Maria Dimitrievna Isaeva.

In 1860, it obtains its retirement as second lieutenant and the authorization to return to live with Saint-Petersbourg, under the monitoring of the secret police. It joins again then with the liberals and founds with his Mikhaïl brother a moderate and nationalist review, Time . This review will be prohibited in 1863. The come to power of the new tsar Alexandre II in 1855 brings many reforms in Russia. Serfdom is abolished in 1861. In spite of these political expansions, one assists with the emergence of revolutionary movements violent one, which worries much Dostoïevski.

Years of wandering

In 1862, it goes in Europe for the first time and meets Apollinaria Souslova. His wife dies in 1864, then her Mikhaïl brother in 1865. It is covered with Dette S and must provide what to live with the woman and the children of her brother. To escape the creditors, it continues to travel and tries to make fortune with the caster. One finds echoes of his morbid passion of the play in the Player (1866) and the Teenager (1875). It re-examines Apollinaria (Pollina) Suslova which refuses its proposal of Mariage.

These years of wanderings and disorders mark Dostoïevski deeply. Its aversion for Europe and the democracy grows. It publishes celebrates it Carnets of the basement which is to some extent an answer to the novel That to make? of the revolutionist Tchernitchevski. According to Dostoïevski, the democratic equality does not erase the violence of the human reports/ratios but exacerbates it on the contrary.

Maturity

It engages Anna Grigorievna Snitkine as secretary and it becomes his wife in 1867. Thanks to its practical spirit and with its will, the situation of the household improves. Dostoïevski gives up the play and starts to work regularly, publishing its most succeeded works: Crime and Châtiment , the Idiot , the Demons (also called Had the ). This last novel is inspired by a tragic fact various: the assassination by his of one of the members of the revolutionary group of Netchaïev. Its novel is completed by The Brothers Karamazov , which it publishes in the 60 years age. In 1880, its Speech on Pouchkine , where Dostoïevski evokes its vision on the role of Russia in the world made of him a national hero.

He succumbs to a hemorrhage the January 27th 1881 of the Calendrier Julien (February 9th 1881 of the Gregorian Calendrier) and is buried with Saint-Pétersbourg. Its funerals which take place on January 31st are followed by: 30000 people.

Work

Sources: Dostoïevski reader

Before being a writer, Dostoïevski was a reader impassioned, and this as of adolescence. One thus finds a touching evocation of the happiness of the reading in Netotchka Neznavona . Dostoïevski had an excellent knowledge of the European literature of its time. Balzac, Dickens, Victor Hugo, E.T.A. Hoffmann appears among its favorite authors. In its first years, he was also readily reader of popular novels, in particular of the French feuilletonists Eugene Sue or Paul de Kock.

Honore de Balzac has however a determining influence on the Russian writer who translates as of 1844, Eugenie Grandet, work which it takes as a starting point to write its first novel with success: the Poor People. J. - W. Bienstock, will see in Balzac a source of inspiration of Dostoïevski, so much in the form (one finds in the Poor people of the expression of the father of the human Comedy) that in the content.

It is as at its Russian predecessors Pouchkine and Gogol as it will draw a share of its literary inspiration, in particular the realistic mixture of styles S, Grotesque S and epic S characteristic of this Russian tradition.

It is also necessary to stress the importance of its interest for the theater (Racine, Shakespeare, Schiller, Molière in particular). In fact its novels are frequently presented in the form of dramatic continuations of scenes almost entirely dialogued. One still meets traditional devices of the theater such as the Quiproquo or the hidden witness.

With this passion for the reading that for literary criticism and the ideological debate is added in general. In the Memories of the house of dead the , the narrator reports the intense emotion which it feels when it manages to get for the first time since many years a literary review. Allusions to the contemporary literature strew work with Dostoïevski, in the form of parody, of direct or implicit attack, in particular against the Romantisme. It is an important dimension of the work of Dostoïevski which does not appear immediately to the reader of today.

Romantic style

One of the characteristics more striking novels dostoïevskiens is the excess of the characters and the situations. One thus meets the discharged nihilist ones, femmes fatale, mothers prostituant their children, of the become inveterate alcoholics, many characters in extreme cases of the madness (megalomania, mania persecution, sadism…), but also of the " saints" incarnating the Christian ideal, the such starets Zossima or prince Mychkine. The murders, the sudden ruins, the cancelled marriages, the fatal diseases, the suicides follow one another, sometimes with the limit of probability. The intensity of these scenes is still recorded by the use of the narration to the first anybody ( the Player , the teenager , Humiliés and Offended inter alia) or by the use of the dialog.

The characters of Dostoïevski have moreover the characteristic to evolve/move during the novel, and often radically, such Raskolnikov of Crime and Châtiment. This feature marks a deep rupture with the literary tradition which privileges the unit and the coherence of the characters, and opens towards literary modernity.

Another striking aspect is the considerable place reserved for the dialogs. Thus the Russian critic Mikhaïl Bakhtine was brought to define the concept of Dialogisme to characterize the romantic style of Dostoïevski. The Dostoïevskien novel is presented in the form of a confrontation from “existential” points of view between the various characters, points of view which are expressed in different styles. The burlesque one thus can côtoyer the tragedy, or sentimentalism cynicism. Dostoïevski takes a care particular to the realism of the dialogs, by using popular expressions, digressions, interruptions.

Each character is defined compared to the others, by imitation or opposition. Many novels (often burlesques) are built on the relations of love and hatred between two very similar or complementary characters: the Double , of course, but also the borough of Stépantchikovo or the eternal husband . One also finds long scenes implying of the discussions surging with many characters ( the Idiot or the Demons ). But Dostoïevski was also one of the first to present novels in the form of monolog ( the manuscript of the underground , soft the , the teenager ). Even in these monologs the dialogical principle is with work: the narrator applies to an imaginary public, answers his objections, seeks to allure it or to defy it.

The romantic style of Dostoïevski rises from these characteristics. The confrontation of characters incarnating of the different positions involves a large variety of the styles, from one work to another but also within the same text. Grotesque episodes or buffoons are inserted in the middle of dramatic scenes ( the borough of Stepantchikovo ), as in the parts of Shakespeare. Lastly, one also notes, in the novels of Dostoïevski, the characteristics suitable for the publication in the form of serial: expansion of the intrigues, digressions, but also of the inconsistencies, characteristics which one can find in other contemporary works such as the house of rough wind of Dickens or the fair with vanities of Thackeray.

The relation of the Man in the world

Finally it is necessary to note the unusual place which occupy the philosophical, religious and political topics. One can see on the contrary the will there not to exclude from the literary field an essential dimension of the human existence, opening the way with the novels of Hermann Broch and Robert Musil.

It is at the time of its passage to the bagne that the spiritual force of Dostoïevski develops. It does not become hardened, it does not revolt and accepts the revelations which arrive to him little by little, on Russia, the Russian people, Russian monarchy and the religion. He writes in a correspondence: I swear you that I will not lose hope and will keep pure my spirit and my heart… I must live… These years will not be sterile. At the bottom of its hell, it meets the Christ, and its renewed faith from now on will guide it in its private life, its life of writer and its political life: … it is nothing more beautiful, deeper, moreover sympathetic nerve, more reasonable, more virile and more perfect than Christ… From now on, I will not write any more stupid things.

But this discovery of Christ, is not, as one could suppose it at first sight, a return to the religion. On the contrary. Kirilov, character of the Possédés imagines that dying Jesus did not find himself with the Paradise: the natural laws, known as the engineer, made live Christ in the middle of the lie and die for a lie . What makes say to Albert Camus analyzing the work of Dostoïevski, that “Jesus incarnates well all the human drama. he is the perfect man, being that which carried out the condition absurdest. He is not the God-man, but the God-man. And like him, each one of us can be crucifié and deceived - is to a certain extent. ”

The question of Christ, and the existence of God, is in fact in the middle of its reflection, as Dostoïevski itself affirms it, speaking about the Karamazov : “the principal question which will be continued in all the parts of this book is that even from which I suffered consciously or unconsciously all my life: the existence of God. ”

Dostoïevski thinker?

When one seeks to define the thought of Dostoïevski, one encounters from the start a difficulty: its novel comprises very few direct interventions of the author as one often finds some in the novels of the 19th century. They are not “novels with thesis”, but of the novels where are opposed in a dialectical way of the different points of view. Thus, in The Brothers Karamazov, Aliosha the believer opposes Ivan the skeptic, but the author made of each one a coherent character and concerning. Nothing would be thus more misleading than to lend to Dostoïevski the opinions its characters. It is with more the greatest caution that it is necessary to read quotations extracted from its novel.

These established precautions, one can nevertheless support that there exists well a thought orignale at Dostoïevski, in particular within sight of its influence on many philosophers such as Nietzsche, Camus, the existentialists or Rene Girard. It is through its novel catch as a whole and not in the words of its characters that this thought should be sought, mainly of an ontological nature , even anthropological.

One of the ideas forces of Dostoïevski is the existence at any human being of an innate need for imitation. The topic of the imitation is recurring in its work, which it is of a historical character (Napoleon i in Crime and Châtiment , Rothschild in the teenager ) or about another romantic character ( the Double , Netotchka Nezvanova , the Eternal Husband , etc) This need for imitation carries in him a tension between admiration and competition which can degenerate into passion fusion like of keen hatred. It is by locating this topic in the work of Dostoïevski (inter alia authors) that Rene Girard worked out his concept of mimetic Désir . For Dostoïevski as for Rene Girard, only the imitation of the Christ, because of her nature at the same time divine and human, sublime and humble, can emerge on a company right and without violence.

According to Dostoïevski, the democratic society in which Russia is brutally projected during the years 1850 makes only return the conflicts plus violent one. She indeed promises with each one an equal right to the success and glory: freed serfs, small civils servant, poor students feel with equality with the noble ones or the high bourgeoisies. Inevitably, the obstacles and social rigidities generate frustrations and bitterness then (cf the manuscript of the underground ). It is there the starting point of the concept of Ressentiment at Nietzsche.

Lastly, one will underline the proximity of the thought of Dostoïevski of the Existentialisme, so much so that one could count it among the founders of this philosophy, as well as Soren Kierkegaard. Indeed for Dostoïesvki, the man builds himself through his dialectical reports/ratios with others, by imitation or opposition. Contrary to the majority of the novelists who sought to build perfectly homogeneous and defined literary “types”, Dostoïevski underlines contrary to the characters which “build themselves”, through their acts and their social interactions. It also shows the share of anguish associated with the free-referee (see for example celebrates it apologue of Large Inquisiteur in The Brothers Karamazov ).

Quotations

  • “But then, that will become the man, without God and immortality? All is allowed, consequently, all is licit? ” (Dmitri Karamazov in Rakitine, The Brothers Karamazov ; XI, IV: The anthem and the secrecy);

  • “I will triumph over all my pain right to be able to say " I suis" ”. (Dmitri Fiodorovitch Karamazov, marked wrongly of parricide);

  • “the beauty is a enigma”, (L. Mychkine; the Idiot );
  • “I admit that twice two four is an excellent thing, but if it is necessary all to rent, I would say to you that twice two five is also a charming thing. ” ( notebooks of the basement );
  • “Dostoïevski is the only person who taught me something in psychology” (Friedrich Nietzsche);
  • “Our desires are almost always erroneous because of an erroneous design of our interests. ” ( notebooks of the basement ).

  • “If God did not exist, all would be allowed. ” Dostoïevski

Chronology of works

Correspondence

  • Correspondence , in 3 volumes, Bartillat Edition, 2003. Integral presented and annotated by Jacques Catteau; translated from Russian by Anne Coldefy-Long-handled scythe

Notebooks

  • Dostoïevski. Notebooks. Paris: editions Payot and Rivages, 2005. Extracts of the notebooks of the author of 1872 to 1881.

See too

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