MENTPSYCH Meet Your Self
You must have noticed that Fyodor Dostoevsky was a complex and fascinating character if you’ve ever opened one of his books. His writings have a distinctively Russian manner of letting the reader scrutinize and inspect the lives of the characters, learning a little bit more about life in the process. The situation has changed now. Here are eleven facts about the man himself that you need to be aware of.
At age 25, he had his first book published.
Dostoevsky had a head start because he was born into a noble household and had a natural education while still a child. He attended a military engineering institution even though that was not what he should have studied; he did not train to be a writer. Before leaving his engineering position, he began translating French works into Russian before turning to literature. However, at the age of 25, he quit translating in favor of fiction writing since it offered him a better life. The title of this first book was Poor Folk, and it is frequently referred to be the first Russian “social novel.”
In 1864, he authored one of the earliest existentialist books.
Notes from Underground, widely regarded as the first existentialist novel, was written by Dostoevsky not long after Soren Kierkegaard produced the texts that served as the foundation for existential philosophy. The fundamental tenet of the philosophy is that each individual is accountable for giving life purpose and that individuals are the foundation of philosophical thought. We can all immediately name a few existentialist classics, such The Trial, The Stranger, or Waiting for Godot, but Dostoevsky actually invented the genre in 1864 with Notes from Underground.
He had previously been sentenced to death.
Dostoevsky was a member of a literary group that worked toward social reform in the 1840s. They discussed future social transformation, such as ending censorship and serfdom, while reading forbidden books at a time when these notions were particularly dreadful for those in authority due to the political climate in Europe. When they were discovered, they were immediately taken into custody and given a death sentence. An order to halt the execution from the Tsar was sent by a courier just before it was due to take place. Dostoevsky was sentenced to eight years of arduous labor in Omsk, Siberia, rather than losing his life.
His literary interests were significantly encouraged by his parents.
Dostoevsky’s parents, who were wealthy, as was already established, placed a high value on their children’s education. When he was only three years old, his nanny started reading him old sagas and fairy stories, and when he was four years old, his mother used the Bible to teach him how to read and write. He developed a lifelong love of literature as a result of the early exposure his parents gave him to authors from over the world, including Cervantes, Goethe, and Homer in addition to Russian literary giants like Alexander Pushkin, who is widely regarded as the father of Russian literature.
He was epileptic.
While Fyodor Dostoevsky’s body was undoubtedly in poor condition, his mind was in much better shape than virtually everyone else’s. At the military academy, his illness first became apparent in contrast to the other, healthy young men there, and then, in 1839, when he was age 18, he periodically began to experience seizures. His seizures worsened while he was imprisoned in Siberia, and although he was intended to rejoin the military upon his return, he was immediately discharged due to bad health. He did, of course, manage to live a full life, but at the end of it, his illness began to take hold of him, and a string of additional difficulties led to his death in 1881 at the age of 59.
Many other writers found great inspiration in him.
In the same way that Dostoevsky stood on the shoulders of the giants whose works he read as a youngster, he would someday become one of the giants who would inspire and support countless other literary greats. He was referred to as a “blood relative” by Franz Kafka, and Dostoevsky’s impact on his writing is evident. He is regarded as one of the great prose masters by James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, and Nietzsche and even Freud admired him more for his ability to subtly incorporate the complex and dark facets of human psychology into his works.
He was asked by Tsar Alexander II to instruct his sons.
Dostoevsky’s renown spread worldwide in the latter years of his life, and his writing was well-liked in both Russia and the rest of Europe. He frequently traveled to Western Europe, especially to the German spa town of Bad Ems to receive medical attention for his ailment. After one of these journeys, Tsar Alexander II invited him to read from one of his upcoming works when he returned to Russia. When he was delighted with the reading, he requested him to instruct his two sons. This was Dostoevsky’s ultimate networking opportunity, and it significantly expanded the number of prominent figures he could call friends.
The Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale included him as an honorary committee member.
His fame only grew even as his health deteriorated. He also won a number of outstanding awards in 1879, a year that was severely marred by the passing of his son Alyosha, including being named to the honorary committee of the Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale. His inclusion in this group placed him alongside writers like Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Longfellow, and Alfred Tennyson, to name a few. Victor Hugo had formed it the year before, and it still exists today with the main objective of defending the rights of authors and other creatives.
He had a number of affairs.
Dostoevsky had two marriages, the second one occurring after the death of his first wife in 1864, although this in no way restricted his relationships. Before getting married, he had his first relationship with a woman about whom he was apprehensive, and she later declined his marriage proposal. While still married to his first wife, he moved on to his next two relationships, one with a humorous actress and the other with a person he adored despite what he thought of as her enormous ego. His extramarital affairs came to a stop once he met Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, his second wife, who was a stenographer on his book The Gambler. When she was 21 years old, she wed him, and he passed away when she was 35. She vowed never to wed another person.
Orthodox Christianity captivated his intense fascination.
Dostoevsky was also interested in religion, notably the Russian Orthodox Church, in addition to human psychology. He was an ardent Orthodox child, but as he encountered parts of the Church he didn’t like, such the priests at his Siberian work camp, his devotion began to shift. Even though the specifics of his theological system appeared to have changed, he continued to have a strong attachment to Christ as a figure. Despite the fact that he writes extensively on the issue, he never expresses his core convictions, leaving them up to debate to this day.
Source: theculturetrip.com
