Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Samuel Johnson, when he called William Shakespeare the greatest dramatist of Europe, put forth two premises on which he based his judgement: Shakespeare’s profound knowledge of human nature, which according to Johnson, genius alone can provide; and the continuance of Shakespeare’s esteem. Reading Dostoevsky in this century, one could say the same about him. Inspired and influenced by Honerè de Balzac, who is widely accepted to be one of the pioneers of realism in European literature, Dostoevsky has left an indelible mark on the literary world with his works including short stories and novels which dealt with human psychology in its fullest depth and complexity. Born on 11 November 1821, in Moscow to a middle class couple as their second child, Dostoevsky introduced to literary world through legends and fairy tales in childhood. His father, worked as a doctor was a tyrant toward his family, while his mother was a pious woman who died while Dostoevsky was fifteen. As an escape from the oppressive atmosphere of his father's household, he acquired a love of reading, especially the works of Nikolai Gogol, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin and Honerè de Balzac. At his father's insistence, he trained as a military engineer in St. Petersburg. His father was murdered by his own serfs at the family's small country estate while he was in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky rarely mentioned his father's murder in his writings including letters, but Oedipal themes are recurrent in his work, and Sigmund Freud suggested that Dostoevsky's epilepsy was a manifestation of guilt over his repressed wish for his father's death. Working as a military engineer, he first published translation of Balzac’s novel ‘Eugenie ​ Grandet’ in a Russian journal followed by other translations in 1844. Two years later, he ​ published his first novel ‘Poor Folk’, with a clear social message as well as a delicate ​ ​ description of life's tragic aspects as manifested in everyday existence as a naturalistic tale. He became an overnight celebrity when Vissarion Belinsky, the most influential critic of the day, praised ‘Poor Folk’ as Russia’s first social novel and Dostoevsky for his social awareness and ​ ​ declared him the literary heir to Gogol. Success and wide reception of ‘Poor Folk’ made him ​ ​ resign his job in military hoping for a successful literary career, but his second novel ‘The ​ Double’ released after 15 days from the publishing of ‘Poor Folk’ became a failure and came ​ ​ ​ under attacks from various critics including Belinsky. Daniel Kalder wrote “Has anybody else ​ ever suffered such a calamitous decline in popularity as Dostoevsky did in January 1846?” Since then he thrived hard to remain in literary circles but failures of his subsequent works made him to suffer financial crisis and poverty. Dostoevsky’s entrance to Russian literary world was during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, under him the dissent of society was crushed and Dostoevsky experienced the fruits of authoritarian rule of Nicholas while he was growing up. Nicholas, unlike his brother and forerunner Alexander I, grew up during Napoleonic wars and not in the late enlightenment period which contributed him for the adoption of an authoritarian regime. Nicholas embraced a patriarchal authoritarianism rooted in Russian nationalism rather than Western notions of enlightened despotism. Tsar imposed strict censoring and surveillance throughout the country in fear of uprisings and the penetration of revolutionary spirit into his country. Even Alexander Pushkin was sent to exile due his writings and his books were banned. Alexander Milyukov, a contemporary of Dostoevsky, who met the latter in one of the literary circles, gives a vivid description of the political atmosphere in Russia during the 1840s: The rotten pillars of reaction were crumbling one after the other, and all over Europe new life seemed to be in bud. Yet in Russia, at that time, prevailed the most crushing reaction: Science, no less than the Press, could hardly breathe beneath the heavy yoke of the administration, and every sign of mental vitality was stifled. From abroad, a quantity of liberal writings, partly scientific, partly literary were smuggled into the country. In the French and German: papers, people, despite the Censorship, were reading stirring articles; but among ourselves all scientific and literary activity was rendered well-nigh impossible and the Censorship tore each new book to pieces(Mayne,1964,p.271). Dostoevsky was influenced by Belinsky, who heavily critiqued the autocracy of the Russian state and its degradation of the individual. He promoted a philosophy which promoted individual rights, freedoms, and passions above all else. As he states, “What is it to me that the ​ Universal exists when the individual personality is suffering.” Belinsky’s ideas on freedom and ​ the individual passions played an integral role in Dostoevsky’s thoughts which preached the importance of human freedom and passions. Belinsky’s clear influence on Dostoevsky drove him to associate with Petrashevsky Circle, a group of young intellectuals, led by Mikhail Petrashevsky, which met to discuss literary and political readings. He was accused for reading a banned text in circle’s meeting and blamed for anti Tsarist propaganda. In the reactionary political climate of mid-nineteenth-century Russia, such groups were illegal and censorship was prevalent. Dostoevsky and several of his associates were imprisoned and sentenced to death. As they were facing the firing squad, an imperial messenger arrived with the announcement that the Tsar had commuted the death sentences to hard labour in Siberia and compulsory military service. This incident haunted him for the rest of his life. Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be human among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortune befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter- this is what life is, herein lies its tasks. I have come to recognize this(Mochulsky,1971,p.141). Dostoevsky wrote this passage in a letter to his brother Mikhail immediately after he underwent traumatic experience that to face death by firing squad. The execution purported in Semyonovsky Square was terrifyingly real that it induced insanity within his fellow prisoners. This quote shows his strength of character. His life was difficult; stricken by poverty, epilepsy and other calamities including helpless watch of deaths of his beloved ones. It also exposes the significant flaw common to some of his characters and tragic heroes through despair, and weakness before the weight of misfortune, they falter, and commit barbaric acts that render them unfit to operate within the context of humanity. The difficult facts of Dostoevsky’s life are the genesis of all of his work. Circumambulated along his hardships of life and experiences, his characters and their personalities blends with the plot of his every work. In Siberia, he underwent huge transformation; from an atheistic communist to his older faith in Christianity and theology because of the thoughts from New Testament, the only text he was allowed to read. His time in prison greatly challenged the utopian ideals he developed in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky returned to the Orthodoxy of his childhood after experiencing the loving suffering of fellow inmates in Siberia, and he credits such moments as the reason for his Christian faith. Dostoevsky articulates a philosophy that embraces both suffering and faith simultaneously. For him, one finds this philosophy not by logic, but experience. Freshly emerged from prison in 1854, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this mysterious note to friend Natalya Fonvizina “If someone were to prove to me that Christ was outside the truth, and it ​ was really the case that the truth lay outside Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ rather than the truth.” Beginning from a humble and thoroughly Orthodox household in which ​ he nurtured a religious idealism, Dostoevsky matured to a state of bitter cynicism. After receiving an engineering education he did not want, followed by a challenging writing career in St. Petersburg, he turned to nihilistic and socialist thoughts which gained him imprisonment in Siberia. The suffering and grace of this imprisonment inspired Dostoevsky to return to the Orthodoxy of his childhood. This transformation is visible in his works. Malcolm Jones suggests that, “What one observes in Dostoevsky’s novels is a reflection of the process of ​ discovery or rediscovery of the Christian tradition, in the face of its most deadly…opponents.” For years, Dostoevsky struggled with the painful realities of life and the idealism of Christian religion. While Dostoevsky could not intellectually support faith in full, he could not reject the experience of contentment and love he experienced both as a child and in prison a love which transcended all suffering and provided a hope and memory that allowed joy in pain. Some scholars believed that he would never have reached the height of literary success and philosophy if the imprisonment and exile had not divided his life and caused him to revise his principles. Malcolm Jones contends that, “it was from them that he had again received into his ​ soul that Christ whom he first knew in his parents’ home as a child and whom he had nearly lost when, in his turn, he transformed himself into a European liberal.” Although Dostoevsky had endured terrible hardship in Siberia, his gloomy days had been brightened by a deep feeling of love for Maria Isaev who, after the death of her husband became the writer’s first wife in 1857. The happiness with Maria Isaev however lasted only for few years. After their return to St. Petersburg in 1864, she died of illness. That year also witnessed the death of his brother Mikhail, with whom he collaborated to publish two magazines. Brother’s death deprived Dostoevsky a friendship which remained unequalled in his whole life. In subsequent years, Dostoevsky’s financial situation became more desperate due to the debts caused by running the magazines and lower payments he received for his job and writings which forced him to sell the publishing rights of all his works. His craze for gambling developed during his stay at Siberia after the imprisonment, which continued, made his financial situation worse. It was in this atmosphere, that Dostoevsky wrote ‘Notes from Underground’ and ‘Crime and ​ ​ ​ Punishment’. In ‘Notes from Underground’, he satirized contemporary social and political ​ ​ ​