1821 1881 Russian writer.
Russian writer, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1877). In the stories "Poor People" (1846), "White Nights" (1848), "Netochka Nezvanova" (1846, unfinished) and others, he described the suffering " little man"as a social tragedy. In the story "The Double" (1846) he gave a psychological analysis of a split consciousness. A member of M. V. Petrashevsky's circle, Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death penalty, replaced by hard labor (1850 54) followed by service as a private. In 1859 he returned to St. Petersburg. "Notes from House of the Dead" (1861 62) o tragic destinies and the dignity of a person in hard labor. Together with his brother M. M. Dostoevsky, he published the “soil” magazines “Time” (1861 63) and “Epoch” (1864 65). In the novels “Crime and Punishment” (1866), “The Idiot” (1868), “Demons” (1871 72), “Teenager” (1875), “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879 80) and others, there is a philosophical understanding of the social and the spiritual crisis of Russia, a dialogic clash of original personalities, a passionate search for social and human harmony, deep psychologism and tragedy. Journalistic "Diary of a Writer" (1873 81). Dostoevsky's work had a powerful influence on Russian and world literature.
Biography
Born on October 30 (November 11, new year) in Moscow in the family of the staff doctor of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Father, Mikhail Andreevich, nobleman; mother, Maria Fedorovna, from an old Moscow merchant family.
He received an excellent education at the private boarding school of L. Chermak, one of the best in Moscow. The family loved to read and subscribed to the magazine “Library for Reading,” which made it possible to get acquainted with the latest foreign literature. Of the Russian authors, they loved Karamzin, Zhukovsky, and Pushkin. The mother, a religious nature, introduced the children to the Gospel from a young age and took them on pilgrimages to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.
Having had a hard time with the death of his mother (1837), Dostoevsky, by the decision of his father, entered the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School, one of the best educational institutions of that time. New life was given to him with great effort, nerves, and ambition. But there was another life - internal, hidden, unknown to others.
In 1839, his father unexpectedly died. This news shocked Dostoevsky and provoked a severe nervous attack - a harbinger of future epilepsy, to which he had a hereditary predisposition.
He graduated from college in 1843 and was enlisted in the drafting department of the engineering department. A year later he retired, convinced that his calling was literature.
Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor People, was written in 1845 and published by Nekrasov in the Petersburg Collection (1846). Belinsky proclaimed "the emergence... of an extraordinary talent...".
Belinsky rated the stories “The Double” (1846) and “The Mistress” (1847) lower, noting the lengthiness of the narrative, but Dostoevsky continued to write in his own way, disagreeing with the critic’s assessment.
Later, “White Nights” (1848) and “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849) were published, which revealed features of Dostoevsky’s realism that distinguished him from among the writers of the “natural school”: in-depth psychologism, exclusivity of characters and situations.
Successfully started literary activity ends tragically. Dostoevsky was one of the members of the Petrashevsky circle, which united adherents of French utopian socialism (Fourier, Saint-Simon). In 1849, for participating in this circle, the writer was arrested and sentenced to death, which was later replaced by four years of hard labor and settlement in Siberia.
After the death of Nicholas I and the beginning of the liberal reign of Alexander II, the fate of Dostoevsky, like many political criminals, was softened. His rights to the nobility were returned to him, and he retired in 1859 with the rank of second lieutenant (in 1849, standing at the scaffold, he heard a rescript: “... a retired lieutenant... to hard labor in fortresses for... 4 years, and then private").
In 1859 Dostoevsky received permission to live in Tver, then in St. Petersburg. At this time, he published the stories "Uncle's Dream", "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" (1859), and the novel "The Humiliated and Insulted" (1861). Almost ten years of physical and moral torment sharpened Dostoevsky's sensitivity to human suffering, intensifying his intense search for social justice. These years became for him years of spiritual turning point, the collapse of socialist illusions, and growing contradictions in his worldview. He actively participated in public life Russia, opposed the revolutionary democratic program of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, rejecting the theory of “art for art’s sake,” arguing social value art.
After hard labor, "Notes from the House of the Dead" was written. The writer spent the summer months of 1862 and 1863 abroad, visiting Germany, England, France, Italy and other countries. He believed that historical path, which Europe went through after the French Revolution of 1789, would be disastrous for Russia, as well as the introduction of new bourgeois relations, the negative features of which shocked him during his trips to Western Europe. Russia’s special, original path to “earthly paradise” is Dostoevsky’s socio-political program in the early 1860s.
"Notes from the Underground" was written in 1864. important work to understand the writer’s changed worldview. In 1865, while abroad, in the resort of Wiesbaden, to improve his health, the writer began work on the novel Crime and Punishment (1866), which reflected the entire complex path of his inner quest.
In 1867, Dostoevsky married Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, his stenographer, who became a close and devoted friend to him.
Soon they went abroad: they lived in Germany, Switzerland, Italy (1867 71). During these years, the writer worked on the novels “The Idiot” (1868) and “Demons” (1870 71), which he finished in Russia. In May 1872, the Dostoevskys left St. Petersburg for the summer for Staraya Rusa, where they subsequently bought a modest dacha and lived here with their two children even in winter. The novels “The Teenager” (1874 75) and “The Brothers Karamazov” (1880) were written almost entirely in Staraya Russa.
Since 1873, the writer became the executive editor of the magazine "Citizen", on the pages of which he began to publish "The Diary of a Writer", which at that time was a life teacher for thousands of Russian people.
At the end of May 1880, Dostoevsky came to Moscow for the opening of the monument to A. Pushkin (June 6, on the birthday of the great poet), where all of Moscow gathered. Turgenev, Maikov, Grigorovich and other Russian writers were here. Dostoevsky's speech was called by Aksakov "a brilliant, historical event."
The writer's health deteriorated, and on January 28 (February 9, n.s.) 1881, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg. He was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Name: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Age: 59 years old
Place of Birth: Moscow
A place of death: Saint Petersburg
Activity: Russian writer
Family status: was married
Fyodor Dostoevsky - biography
At the first meeting with my future wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, Dostoevsky told her, a complete stranger and unknown girl, the story of your life. “His story affected me creepy impression“I felt a chill run through my skin,” recalled Anna Grigorievna. “This seemingly secretive and stern man told me his entire past life in such detail, so sincerely and sincerely that I was involuntarily surprised. Only later did I understand that Fyodor Mikhailovich, completely alone and surrounded by people hostile to him, at that time felt a thirst to openly tell someone a biography about his life...”
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in 1821 into the once noble noble family of the Dostoevskys, whose family came from the Russian-Lithuanian gentry. The chronicles mention the fact that back in 1506, Prince Fyodor Ivanovich Yaroslavich granted his voivode Danila Rtishchev the family coat of arms and the vast estate of Dostoevo near present-day Brest, and from that voivode the entire large Dostoevsky family came. However, by the beginning of the century before last, only one coat of arms remained from the family inheritance, and the father of the future writer, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, was forced to feed his family with his own labor - he worked as a staff doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital on Bozhedomka in Moscow. The family lived in a wing at the hospital, and all eight children of Mikhail Andreevich and his wife Maria Fedorovna were born there.
Fyodor Dostoevsky - childhood and youth
Fedya Dostoevsky received a decent education for noble children of that time - he knew Latin, French and German. The children were taught the basics of literacy by their mother, then Fyodor, together with his older brother Mikhail, entered the Moscow private boarding school of Leonty Chermak. “The humane attitude towards us, children, on the part of our parents was the reason that during their lifetime they did not dare to place us in a gymnasium, although it would have cost much less,” Fyodor Mikhailovich’s brother, Andrei Dostoevsky, later wrote in his memoirs about the biography.
Gymnasiums did not enjoy a good reputation at that time, and they had the usual and ordinary corporal punishment for any slightest offense. As a result, private boarding houses were preferred.” When Fedor turned 16, his father sent him and Mikhail to study at Kostomarov’s private boarding school in St. Petersburg. After completing their studies, the boys moved to the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School, which was then considered one of the privileged educational institutions for the “golden youth”. Fyodor also considered himself among the elite - primarily the intellectual one, since the money his father sent was sometimes not enough even for the most necessary things.
Unlike Mikhail, who did not attach any importance to this of great importance, Fedor was embarrassed by his old dress and the constant lack of cash. During the day, the brothers went to school, and in the evenings they often visited literary salons, where at that time the works of Schiller, Goethe, as well as Auguste Comte and Louis Blanc, French historians and sociologists fashionable in those years, were discussed.
The brothers' carefree youth ended in 1839, when news of their father's death came to St. Petersburg - according to the existing “family legend,” Mikhail Andreevich died on his Darovoye estate at the hands of his own serfs, whom he caught red-handed stealing timber. Perhaps it was the shock associated with the death of his father that forced Fyodor to move away from evenings in bohemian salons and join socialist circles, which were then active in large numbers among students.
The circle members talked about the ugliness of censorship and serfdom, the corruption of officials and the oppression of freedom-loving youth. “I can say that Dostoevsky never was and could not be a revolutionary,” his classmate Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky later recalled. The only thing is that he, as a noble man of feeling, could be carried away by feelings of indignation and even anger at the sight of injustices and violence committed against the humiliated and insulted, which was the reason for his visits to Petrashevsky’s circle.”
It was under the influence of Petrashevsky’s ideas that Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote his first novel, “Poor People,” which made him famous. Success changed the life of yesterday's student - the engineering service was over, now Dostoevsky could rightfully call himself a writer. The name of Dostoevsky in his biography became known not only in the circles of writers and poets, but also among the general reading public. Dostoevsky's debut turned out to be successful, and no one had any doubt that his path to the top literary fame will be straight and easy.
But life decreed otherwise. In 1849, the “Petrashevsky case” broke out - the reason for the arrest was the public reading of Belinsky’s letter to Gogol, prohibited by censorship. All two dozen of those arrested, and Dostoevsky among them, repented of their passion for “harmful ideas.” Nevertheless, the gendarmes saw in their “disastrous conversations” signs of preparation for “unrest and riots that threaten the overthrow of all order, the violation of the most sacred rights of religion, law and property.”
The court sentenced them to death by shooting on the Semyonovsky parade ground, and only at the last moment, when all the convicts were already standing on the scaffold in death row clothes, the emperor relented and announced a pardon, replacing the execution with hard labor. Mikhail Petrashevsky himself was sent to hard labor for life, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, like most “revolutionaries,” received only 4 years of hard labor followed by service as an ordinary soldier.
Fyodor Dostoevsky served his term in Omsk. At first he worked in a brick factory, firing alabaster, and later worked in an engineering workshop. “For all four years I lived hopelessly in the prison, behind the walls, and only went out to work,” the writer recalled. - The work was hard, and sometimes I was exhausted, in bad weather, in wetness, in slush, or in winter in unbearable cold... We lived in a heap, all together, in the same barracks. The floor is dirty to an inch, the ceiling is dripping - everything is dripping. We slept on bare bunks, only one pillow was allowed. They covered themselves with short sheepskin coats, and their legs were always bare all night. You'll tremble all night. I count those 4 years as the time during which he was buried alive and closed in a coffin...” During hard labor, Dostoevsky’s epilepsy worsened, attacks of which later tormented him all his life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Semipalatinsk
After his release, Dostoevsky was sent to serve in the seventh Siberian linear battalion at the Semipalatinsk fortress - then this town was not known as a training ground nuclear tests, but as a run-of-the-mill fortress that guarded the border from raids by Kazakh nomads. “It was a half-city, half-village with crooked wooden houses,” recalled Baron Alexander Wrangel, who served as the prosecutor of Semipalatinsk at that time, many years later. Dostoevsky was settled in an ancient hut, which stood in the most bleak place: a steep wasteland, shifting sand, not a bush, not a tree.
Fyodor Mikhailovich paid five rubles for his premises, laundry and food. But what was his food like! A soldier was then given four kopecks for welding. Of these four kopecks, the company commander and cook kept one and a half kopecks for their benefit. Of course, life was cheap then: one pound of meat cost a penny, a pound of buckwheat cost thirty kopecks. Fyodor Mikhailovich took home his daily portion of cabbage soup. porridge and black bread, and if he didn’t eat it himself, he gave it to his poor mistress...”
It was there, in Semipalatinsk, that Dostoevsky first fell seriously in love. His chosen one was Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of a former gymnasium teacher, and now an official in the tavern department, exiled from the capital to the ends of the world for some sins. “Maria Dmitrievna was over thirty years old,” recalled Baron Wrangel. - Quite a beautiful blonde of medium height, very thin, passionate and exalted in nature. She caressed Fyodor Mikhailovich, but I don’t think she deeply appreciated him, she simply took pity on the unfortunate man beaten down by fate... I don’t think that Maria Dmitrievna was in any serious way in love.
Fyodor Mikhailovich mistook the feeling of pity and compassion for mutual love and fell in love with her with all the fervor of youth.” Painful and fragile. Maria reminded the writer of his mother, and in his attitude towards her there was more tenderness than passion. Dostoevsky was ashamed of his feelings for married woman, was worried and tormented by the hopelessness of the situation. But about a year after they met, in August 1855, Isaev died suddenly, and Fyodor Mikhailovich immediately proposed marriage to his beloved, which, however, the widow did not immediately accept.
They got married only at the beginning of 1857, when Dostoevsky received an officer rank and Maria Dmitrievna gained confidence that he could provide for her and her son Pavel. But, unfortunately, this marriage did not live up to Dostoevsky’s hopes. Later he wrote to Alexander Wrangel: “Oh, my friend, she loved me infinitely, I loved her also without measure, but we did not live happily with her... We were positively unhappy together (according to her strange, suspicious and painful- fantastic character), - we could not stop loving each other; even the more unhappy they were, the more attached they became to each other.”
In 1859, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg with his wife and stepson. And he discovered that his name was not at all forgotten by the public; on the contrary, the fame of a writer and a “political prisoner” accompanied him everywhere. He began writing again - first the novel “Notes from the House of the Dead”, then “Humiliated and Insulted”, “Winter Notes on summer impressions" Together with his older brother Mikhail, he opened the magazine “Time” - his brother, who bought his own tobacco factory with his father’s inheritance, subsidized the publication of the almanac.
Alas, several years later it turned out that Mikhail Mikhailovich was a very mediocre businessman, and after his sudden death, both the factory and the editorial office of the magazine were left with huge debts that Fyodor Mikhailovich had to take on. Later, his second wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, wrote: “To pay these debts, Fyodor Mikhailovich had to work beyond his strength... How would my husband’s works benefit artistically if he, without these debts incurred, could write novels without rushing through, scanning and finishing before sending them to press.
In literature and society, Dostoevsky’s works are often compared with the works of other talented writers and Dostoevsky is reproached for the excessive complexity, intricacy and congestion of his novels, while others’ works are polished, and Turgenev’s, for example, are almost jewelry-honed. And rarely does it occur to anyone to remember and weigh the circumstances under which other writers lived and worked, and under which my husband lived and worked.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky - biography of personal life
But then, in the early 60s, it seemed that Dostoevsky had a second youth. He amazed those around him with his ability to work; he was often excited and cheerful. At this time she came to him new love- this was a certain Apollinaria Suslova, a graduate of the boarding school for noble maidens, who later became the prototype for both Nastasya Filippovna in The Idiot and Polina in The Player. Apollinaria was the complete opposite of Maria Dmitrievna - a young, strong, independent girl.
And the feelings that the writer experienced for her were also completely different from his love for his wife: instead of tenderness and compassion - passion and desire to possess. In her memoirs about her father, Fyodor Mikhailovich’s daughter Lyubov Dostoevskaya wrote that Apollinaria sent him “a declaration of love” in the fall of 1861. The letter was found among my father's papers - it is written simply, naively and poetically. At first impression, we see a timid young girl, blinded by the genius of the great writer. Dostoevsky was touched by Polina's letter. This declaration of love came to him at the moment when he needed it most..."
Their relationship lasted three years. At first, Polina was flattered by the adoration of the great writer, but gradually her feelings for Dostoevsky cooled. According to the biographers of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Apollinaria was waiting for some kind of romantic love and met real passion mature man. Dostoevsky himself assessed his passion this way: “Apollinaria is a great egoist. The selfishness and pride in her are colossal. She demands everything from people, every perfection, and does not forgive a single imperfection in respect for others. good features, she herself relieves herself of the slightest responsibilities towards people.” Leaving his wife in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky traveled around Europe with Apollinaria, spent time in casinos - Fyodor Mikhailovich turned out to be a passionate but unlucky gambler - and lost a lot at roulette.
In 1864, Dostoevsky’s “second youth” unexpectedly ended. In April, his wife Maria Dmitrievna died. and literally three months later, brother Mikhail Mikhailovich died suddenly. Dostoevsky subsequently wrote to his old friend Wrangel: “... I was suddenly left alone, and I simply became scared. My whole life was turned in two at once. The one half I crossed had everything I lived for. and in the other, still unknown half, everything is alien, everything is new, and not a single heart that could replace both of them for me.”
In addition to mental suffering, the death of his brother also entailed serious financial consequences for Dostoevsky: he found himself without money and without a magazine, which was closed for debts. Fyodor Mikhailovich proposed to Apollinaria Suslova to marry him - this would also solve the issues with his debts, because Polina was from a fairly wealthy family. But the girl refused; by that time, not a trace remained of her enthusiastic attitude towards Dostoevsky. In December 1864, she wrote in her diary: “People are telling me about FM. I just hate him. He made me suffer so much when it was possible to do without suffering.”
Another failed bride of the writer was Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, a representative of the ancient noble family, sister of the famous Sofia Kovalevskaya. According to the writer’s biographers, at first things seemed to be heading towards a wedding, but then the engagement was called off without explanation. However, Fyodor Mikhailovich himself always claimed that it was he who freed the bride from this promise: “This is a girl of high moral qualities: but her beliefs are diametrically opposed to mine, and she cannot give them up, she is too straightforward. It’s unlikely that our marriage could be happy.”
From life's hardships, Dostoevsky tried to hide abroad, but creditors pursued him there too, threatening deprivation of copyright, inventory of property and debtor's prison. His relatives also demanded money - the widow of his brother Mikhail believed that Fedor was obliged to provide her and her children with a decent existence. Desperately trying to get at least some money, he entered into enslaving contracts to write two novels at once - “The Gambler” and “Crime and Punishment”, but soon realized that he had neither the moral nor the physical strength to meet the deadlines set by the contracts. Dostoevsky tried to distract himself by playing, but luck, as usual, did not favor him, and, losing his last money, he became increasingly depressed and melancholy. In addition, due to his undermined mental balance, he was literally tormented by epileptic attacks.
It was in this state that 20-year-old Anna Grigorievna Snitkina found the writer. Anna first heard the name of Dostoevsky at the age of 16 - from her father Grigory Ivanovich, a poor nobleman and petty St. Petersburg official who was a passionate admirer of literature and was fond of theater. According to her own recollections, Anya secretly took the edition of “Notes from the House of the Dead” from her father, read it at night and shed bitter tears on the pages. She was an ordinary St. Petersburg girl from the middle XIX century- from the age of nine she was sent to study at the School of St. Anna on Kirochnaya Street, then to the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium.
Anyuta was an excellent student, voraciously read women's novels and seriously dreamed of reorganizing this world - for example, becoming a doctor or teacher. Despite the fact that already during her studies at the gymnasium it became clear that literature for her was much closer and more interesting than the natural sciences. In the fall of 1864, graduate Snitkina entered the physics and mathematics department of Pedagogical Courses. But neither physics nor mathematics were good for her, and biology became a torment: when the teacher in the class began to dissect a dead cat, Anya fainted.
In addition, a year later her father became seriously ill, and Anna had to earn money herself to support the family. She decided to leave her teaching career and went to study stenography courses opened by the then famous Professor Olkhin. “At first I was completely unsuccessful at shorthand,” Anya later recalled, “and only after the 5th or 6th lecture did I begin to master this gibberish writing.” A year later, Anya Snitkina was considered Olkhin’s best student, and when Dostoevsky himself approached the professor, wanting to hire a stenographer, he didn’t even have a doubt about who to send to the famous writer.
Their acquaintance took place on October 4, 1866. “At twenty-five minutes past eleven I approached Alonkin’s house and asked the janitor standing at the gate where apartment No. 13 was,” Anna Grigorievna recalled. - The house was large, with many small apartments inhabited by merchants and artisans. It immediately reminded me of the house in the novel Crime and Punishment, in which the hero of the novel Raskolnikov lived. Dostoevsky's apartment was on the second floor. I rang the bell, and the door was immediately opened by an elderly maid who invited me into the dining room...
The maid asked me to sit down, saying that the master would come now. Indeed, about two minutes later Fyodor Mikhailovich appeared... At first glance, Dostoevsky seemed quite old to me. But as soon as he spoke, he immediately became younger, and I thought that he was unlikely to be more than thirty-five to seven years old. He was of average height and stood very erect. Light brown, even slightly reddish hair, was heavily pomaded and carefully smoothed. But what struck me were his eyes; they were different: one was brown, in the other the pupil was dilated throughout the entire eye and the iris was imperceptible. This duality of the eyes gave Dostoevsky’s gaze a kind of mysterious expression...”
However, at first their work did not go well: Dostoevsky was irritated by something and smoked a lot. He tried to dictate new article for the "Russian Messenger", but then, apologizing, he invited Anna to come in the evening, around eight o'clock. Arriving in the evening, Snitkina found Fyodor Mikhailovich in much better condition, he was talkative and hospitable. He admitted that he liked the way she behaved at the first meeting - seriously, almost sternly, she did not smoke and did not at all resemble modern girls with bobbed hair. Gradually they began to communicate freely, and unexpectedly for Anna, Fyodor Mikhailovich suddenly began to tell her the biography of his life.
This evening conversation became the first pleasant event for Fyodor Mikhailovich in such a difficult last year of his life. The very next morning after his “confession” he wrote in a letter to the poet Maikov: “Olkhin sent me his best student... Anna Grigorievna Snitkina is a young and rather pretty girl, 20 years old, of good family, who completed her gymnasium course excellently, with an extremely kind and clear character. Our work went great...
Thanks to the efforts of Anna Grigorievna, Dostoevsky managed to fulfill the incredible terms of the contract with the publisher Stellovsky and write the entire novel “The Player” in twenty-six days. “At the end of the novel, I noticed that my stenographer sincerely loved me,” Dostoevsky wrote in one of his letters. -Although she never said a word to me about it, I liked her more and more. Since my life has been terribly boring and hard for me since the death of my brother, I asked her to marry me... The difference in years is terrible (20 and 44), but I am more and more convinced that she will be happy. She has a heart, and she knows how to love.”
Their engagement took place literally a month after they met - November 8, 1866. As Anna Grigorievna herself recalled, when making an offer, Dostoevsky was very worried and, fearing an outright refusal, first spoke about fictional characters allegedly conceived by him of a novel: they say, do you think that a young girl, let’s say her name is Anya, could fall in love with her tenderly loving, but old and sick artist, who is also burdened with debts?
“Imagine that this artist is me, that I confessed my love to you and asked you to be my wife. Tell me, what would you answer me? - Fyodor Mikhailovich’s face expressed such embarrassment, such heartache that I finally realized that this was not just a literary conversation and that I would deal a terrible blow to his vanity and pride if I gave an evasive answer. I looked at the excited face of Fyodor Mikhailovich, so dear to me, and said: “I would answer you that I love you and will love you all my life!”
I will not pass on tender full of love the words that Fyodor Mikhailovich spoke to me in those unforgettable moments: they are sacred to me..."
Their wedding took place on February 15, 1867 at about 8 pm in the Izmailovsky Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. It seemed that Anna Grigorievna’s joy would have no end, but literally a week later the harsh reality reminded itself of itself. Firstly, Dostoevsky’s stepson Pavel spoke out against Anna, who regarded the appearance of a new woman as a threat to his interests. “Pavel Alexandrovich formed a view of me as a usurper, as a woman who forcibly entered their family, where hitherto he was the complete master,” Dostoevskaya recalled.
Unable to interfere with our marriage, Pavel Alexandrovich decided to make it unbearable for me. It is very possible that with his constant troubles, quarrels and slander against me to Fyodor Mikhailovich, he hoped to quarrel us and force us to separate.” Secondly, the young wife was constantly slandered by other relatives of the writer, who feared that she would “cut” the amount of financial assistance that Dostoevsky distributed to them from his fees. It got to the point that after just a month of living together, constant scandals made the life of the newlyweds so difficult. that Anna Grigorievna was seriously afraid of a final break in relations.
The catastrophe, however, did not happen - and mainly thanks to the extraordinary intelligence, determination and energy of Anna Grigorievna herself. She pawned all her valuables in the pawnshop and persuaded Fyodor Mikhailovich to go abroad, to Germany, secretly from his relatives, in order to change the situation and live together at least for a short time. Dostoevsky agreed to escape, explaining his decision in a letter to the poet Maikov: “There are two main reasons. 1) Save not only mental health, but even life in certain circumstances. .. 2) Creditors.”
It was planned that the trip abroad would take only three months, but thanks to Anna Grigorievna’s prudence, she managed to snatch her loved one out of her usual environment for four whole years, which prevented her from becoming a full-fledged wife. “Finally, a period of serene happiness came for me: there were no financial worries, there were no persons standing between me and my husband, there was a complete opportunity to enjoy his company.”
Anna Grigorievna also weaned her husband from his addiction to roulette, somehow managing to evoke shame in his soul for the lost money. Dostoevsky wrote in one of his letters to his wife: “A great thing has happened to me, the vile fantasy that tormented me for almost ten years has disappeared (or, better, since the death of my brother, when I was suddenly depressed by debts): I dreamed of winning everything; dreamed seriously, passionately... Now it's all over! I will remember this all my life and bless you, my angel, every time. No, now it’s yours, yours inseparably, all yours. Until now, half of this damned fantasy belonged to me.”
In February 1868, in Geneva, the Dostoevskys finally gave birth to their first child - daughter Sophia. “But we were not given long to enjoy our cloudless happiness. - wrote Anna Figorievna. - In the first days of May, the weather was wonderful, and we, on the urgent advice of the doctor, took our dear baby to the park every day, where she slept in her stroller for two or three hours. One unfortunate day during such a walk the weather suddenly changed, and apparently the girl caught a cold, because that same night she developed a fever and a cough.” Already on May 12, she died, and the Dostoevskys’ grief seemed to know no bounds.
“Life seemed to have stopped for us; all our thoughts, all our conversations were focused on memories of Sonya and that happy time when she illuminated our lives with her presence... But the merciful God took pity on our suffering: we soon became convinced that God had blessed our marriage and we could hope again have a child. Our joy was immeasurable, and my dear husband began to take care of me just as carefully. just like during my first pregnancy.”
Later, Anna Grigorievna gave birth to her husband two more sons - the eldest Fedor (1871) and the youngest Alexei (1875). True, the Dostoevsky couple once again had the bitter fate of surviving the death of their child: in May 1878, three-year-old Alyosha died from an attack of epilepsy.
Anna Grigorievna supported her husband in difficult moments, and was for him loving wife, and a soul friend. But besides this, she became for Dostoevsky, in modern terms, his literary agent and manager. It was thanks to his wife’s practicality and initiative that he was able to finally pay off all the debts that had poisoned his life for years. Anna Grigorievna started with that. What. Having studied the intricacies of publishing, she decided to print and sell Dostoevsky’s new book herself - the novel “Demons”.
She did not rent a room for this, but simply indicated her home address in newspaper advertisements and paid the buyers herself. Much to her husband’s surprise, literally within a month the entire circulation of the book had already been sold out, and Anna Grigorievna officially established a new enterprise: “F.M. Book Trade Store.” Dostoevsky (exclusively for nonresidents).”
Finally, it was Anna Grigorievna who insisted that the family leave noisy St. Petersburg forever - away from obsessive and greedy relatives. The Dostoevskys chose to live in the town of Staraya Russa in the Novgorod province, where they bought a two-story wooden mansion.
Anna Grigorievna wrote in her memoirs: “The time spent in Russa is one of my most beautiful memories. The children were quite healthy, and throughout the entire winter they never had to call a doctor to see them. which did not happen when we lived in the capital. Fyodor Mikhailovich also felt good: thanks to a calm, measured life and the absence of all unpleasant surprises (so frequent in St. Petersburg), the husband’s nerves became stronger, and epileptic seizures occurred less frequently and were less severe.
And as a result of this, Fyodor Mikhailovich rarely got angry or irritated, and was always almost good-natured, talkative and cheerful... Our everyday life in Staraya Russa everything was distributed according to hours, and this was strictly observed. Working at night, my husband got up no earlier than eleven o'clock. When he went out to drink coffee, he called the children, and they happily ran to him and told him all the incidents that happened that morning, and about everything they saw on their walk. And Fyodor Mikhailovich, looking at them, rejoiced and maintained the liveliest conversation with them.
Neither before nor since have I seen a person who could do it as well as my husband. enter into the worldview of children and thus interest them in your conversation. In the afternoon, Fyodor Mikhailovich called me into his office to dictate what he had managed to write during the night... In the evening, Fyodor Mikhailovich was playing with the children, to the sounds of an organ (Fyodor Mikhailovich himself bought it for the children, and now they are also having fun with it his grandchildren) danced with me the quadrille, waltz and mazurka. My husband especially loved the mazurka and, to be fair, he danced it wildly and enthusiastically...”
Fyodor Dostoevsky - death and funeral
In the fall of 1880, the Dostoevsky family returned to St. Petersburg. They decided to spend this winter in the capital - Fyodor Mikhailovich complained about bad feeling, and Anna Grigorievna was afraid to entrust his health to provincial doctors. On the night of January 25-26, 1881, he was working as usual when his fountain pen fell behind a bookcase. Fyodor Mikhailovich tried to move the bookcase, but strong voltage his throat began to bleed - in last years the writer suffered from emphysema. For the next two days, Fyodor Mikhailovich remained in serious condition, and on the evening of January 28 he died.
Dostoevsky's funeral became a historical event: almost thirty thousand people accompanied his coffin to the Alecheandro-Nevsky Lavra. Every Russian experienced the death of the great writer as national mourning and personal grief.
For a long time Anna Grigorievna could not come to terms with the death of Dostoevsky. On the day of her husband’s funeral, she made a vow to devote the rest of her life to serving his name. Anna Grigorievna continued to live in the past. As her daughter Lyubov Fedorovna wrote, “Mom did not live in the twentieth century, but remained in the 70s of the nineteenth. Her people are the friends of Fyodor Mikhailovich, her society is a circle of departed people close to Dostoevsky. She lived with them. Everyone who works on the study of the life or works of Dostoevsky seemed like a close person to her.”
Anna Grigorievna died in June 1918 in Yalta and was buried in a local cemetery - far from St. Petersburg, from her relatives, from Dostoevsky’s grave, dear to her. In her will, she asked that she be buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, next to her husband, and that a separate monument not be erected, but just a few lines cut out. In 1968 her last will was fulfilled.
Three years after the death of Anna Grigorievna, the famous literary critic L.P. Grossman wrote about her: “She managed to melt Dostoevsky’s tragic personal life into the calm and complete happiness of his last time. She undoubtedly extended Dostoevsky's life. With the deep wisdom of a loving heart, Anna Grigorievna managed to solve the most difficult task - to be the life companion of a neurotic person, a former convict, an epileptic and the greatest creative genius.”
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30 (November 11), 1821 in Moscow. He was the second of 7 children. The writer's father is a doctor (head doctor) at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. In 1828 he received the title of hereditary nobleman. Mother - Maria Fedorovna Dostoevskaya (Nechaeva) died on February 27, 1837 at the age of 37 years.
1837 became important date in the life of F. M. Dostoevsky. In 1837 his mother died. This is the year of the death of A.S. Pushkin. In May 1837, Fyodor Dostoevsky and his older brother Mikhail went to St. Petersburg to enter the Engineering School.
On January 16, 1838, F. M. Dostoevsky was enrolled in the Engineering School. A literary circle is formed around Dostoevsky at the school. In 1839, he receives news of the murder of his father by serfs.
On November 29, 1840, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was promoted to non-commissioned officer. And already on August 5, 1841 he was transferred to field engineer-ensign. In August 1842, Dostoevsky's enrollment in engineering building at the drawing room of the Engineering Department.
On October 19, 1844, the highest decree was issued on the dismissal of F. M. Dostoevsky from service for domestic reasons. During this period, he begins to actively engage in creativity. For the first time in the books of the magazine "Repertoire and Pantheon" Balzac's novel "Eugenie Grande" translated by Dostoevsky was published. In 1844 he begins and in May 1845 finishes the novel "Poor People". In the fall of 1845, Fyodor Mikhailovich, together with Nekrasov and Grigorovich, compiled an anonymous program announcement for the Zuboskal almanac. At the same time, the writer met I. S. Turgenev, V. F. Odoevsky, V. A. Sollogub.
In the winter of 1847, a conflict occurred in the relationship between Dostoevsky and Belinsky. In the spring of the same year, the writer begins to attend Petrashevsky’s “Fridays”. The newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" published a cycle of feuilletons by F. M. Dostoevsky under the general title "Petersburg Chronicle".
In July 1847, the writer suffered his first severe seizure of epilepsy. In the period from 1847 to 1849, Dostoevsky wrote a number of works: in the summer of 1847 the story “The Mistress”, in 1848 the story “Someone else’s Wife (Street Scene)”, the story “A Weak Heart” and “Stories of an Experienced Man (From the Notes of an Unknown)”. In 1849, the first two parts of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s novel “Netochka Nezvanova” were published in the January and February books of Otechestvennye zapiski.
On April 29, 1849, the investigation into the Petrashevites case began. December 22, 1849 F.M. Dostoevsky, along with others, was awaiting execution of the death sentence, but according to the resolution of Nicholas I, his execution was replaced by 4 years of hard labor with deprivation of “all rights of fortune” and subsequent surrender to the army. From 1850 to 1854, Dostoevsky, together with Durov, served hard labor in the Omsk fortress.
In the spring of 1857, after lengthy efforts by the prosecutor, the writer was returned to hereditary nobility.
In June 1862, Dostoevsky traveled abroad for the first time. He visited England, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland.
In the winter of 1867, stenographer A. G. Snitkina became the wife of F. M. Dostoevsky. From April 1867 to July 1871, Dostoevsky and his wife lived abroad. During this period, four children were born into their family: on February 22, 1868, daughter Sophia was born, sudden death which (May of the same year) Dostoevsky was very worried about, on September 14, 1869, a daughter, Lyubov, was born, in Russia, on July 16, 1871, a son, Fyodor; on August 12, 1875, a son, Alexei, died at the age of three from an epileptic fit.
The life of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was full of events. A special trait of his character was dedication. This was reflected in all areas of his life. Pronounced Political Views(changed several times), love stories, gambling, and most importantly - literature - this is a list of the main passions of the great writer. His high popularity during his lifetime and conditions of severe poverty, fame as a preacher of the brightest human principles and awareness of his own imperfection, unique writing talent and the need to conclude inhumane contracts with publishers - all this arouses readers’ interest in the fate of Dostoevsky.
On January 14, 1820, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky and Maria Fedorovna Nechaeva got married. He was the son of a priest, she was the daughter of a merchant of the III guild. Both received a good education in their youth.
Mikhail Andreevich, Dostoevsky’s father, graduated from the Moscow department of the Medical-Surgical Academy and became a doctor, despite the fact that several previous generations chose the path of clergy. Still, the young man paid tribute family tradition, having previously studied at a theological seminary, and although he chose a different professional path, Mikhail Andreevich remained a deeply church-going person throughout his life. It was he who instilled high religiosity in his children. He started out as a military medic, but in January 1821 he left the service and opened a practice at the Mariinsky Hospital for the low-income population. A young family settled here, in an outbuilding on the territory of the hospital. And on October 30 (November 11), 1821, the second child of this couple, Fedor, was born here. Dostoevsky's birth took place in a very symbolic place, where he spotted many interesting types for his works.
Childhood
Little Dostoevsky loved most of all the company of his brother Mikhail. Andrei Mikhailovich (younger brother) wrote in his memoirs about how from the very early years The older brothers were friendly. They carried this relationship through all the trials and tribulations adult life. The boys grew up and were raised side by side with each other. Their first mentor was their father. Holding them in the necessary severity, Mikhail Andreevich never used corporal punishment on children and did not hide his strong fatherly love. It was he who taught the older children the basics of Latin and medicine. Later, their education was headed by Nikolai Ivanovich Drashusov, who worked at the Catherine and Alexander schools. They studied French, mathematics and literature. In 1834, the eldest sons left home to study at the Moscow boarding school. Chermak.
In 1837, the mother of the family, Maria Feodorovna, became seriously ill and died of consumption. The death of this wonderful woman, whose love and tenderness was enough for all her offspring, was taken very hard by her relatives. Just before her death, having come to her senses, she wished to bless her children and husband. This sad but deeply touching scene was remembered by everyone who came to say goodbye to Maria Fedorovna.
Almost immediately after this, the father equipped his eldest sons for the journey. Dostoevsky's education was technical and required absence from home. They went to the St. Petersburg boarding house of Koronat Filippovich Kostomarov, where they were supposed to prepare for entrance tests at the Main Engineering School. By this time, both Mikhail and Fedor had already decided that their calling was to work in the literary field, so this prospect upset them a lot, but Mikhail Andreevich considered it the most reasonable. The young people submitted to the will of their parents.
Youth
Having entered engineering school, Dostoevsky did not give up his dreams of writing. He devoted his free time entirely to getting to know the Russian and foreign literature, and also made his first attempts at writing. In 1838, thanks to the interest in this area of art that was kindled among his comrades, a literary circle was created.
The year 1839 brought a new shock to the young man’s life: his father died. According to the official version, he was struck down by apoplexy, but the news reached his sons that he had fallen victim to the massacre of peasants who were taking revenge for “cruel treatment.” This deeply affected Fedor; he will never forget this grief mixed with shame.
Dostoevsky completed his studies in 1843 and immediately received the position of field engineer-second lieutenant. Nevertheless, the dream of devoting myself to art did not leave young man, so he served no more than a year. After his resignation, Fyodor Mikhailovich decided to try to arrange his debut works in print.
Dostoevsky tried to brighten up his student days with work on plays and stories of his own composition, as well as translations of foreign authors. The first experiments were lost, the second were often unfinished. So his debut was “Poor People” (1845). The work was so significant in his life that we recommend that you read it. The manuscript was highly appreciated even by seasoned writers Nekrasov and Belinsky. The famous and venerable critic saw in the author a “new Gogol.” The novel was published in Nekrasov’s “Petersburg Collection” of 1846.
Further creative path The author was not understood by his contemporaries at one time. The next novel, “The Double” (1845-1846), was considered by many to be a very weak work. The type of “underground man” discovered by Dostoevsky was not immediately recognized. Belinsky was disappointed in the talent of the young writer. The newfound glory temporarily faded, and was even secretly ridiculed by some.
Arrest and hard labor
In the salon of Nikolai Apollonovich Maykov, where Dostoevsky was received very warmly, the writer met Alexei Nikolaevich Pleshcheev. It was he who brought the writer together with Mikhail Vasilyevich Petrashevsky. From January 1847, the young man began to attend meetings of the circle gathered around this thinker. The secret society was actively thinking about the future of Russia, about the possibility and necessity of carrying out a revolution. Various forbidden literature was in use here. At that time, the famous “Letter of Belinsky to Gogol” caused a special resonance in society. Reading it in this circle was partly the reason for further sad events. In 1849, the Petrashevites became victims of the government’s repressive struggle against dissent and were imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and then, after considering their case, they were sentenced to civil (deprivation of the rank of nobility) and death (by shooting) punishment. It was subsequently decided to change the sentence due to mitigating circumstances. On December 22, 1849 (January 3, 1850), the convicts were taken to the Semenovsky parade ground and the verdict was read to them. Then they announced the replacement of drastic measures with compromise ones - exile and hard labor. Dostoevsky spoke about the horror and shock experienced during this procedure through the lips of his hero, Prince Myshkin, in the novel “The Idiot” (1867-1869).
On December 24, 1849, the convicts were sent from St. Petersburg. In mid-January they carried out the transfer in Tobolsk. Some Decembrists served their sentences there. Their noble and wealthy spouses were able to get a meeting with the new martyrs for freedom of belief and give them bibles with hidden money. Dostoevsky kept the book all his life in memory of his experiences.
Dostoevsky arrived in Omsk to serve hard labor on January 23, 1850. Aggressive and rough relationships between prisoners and inhumane conditions of detention were reflected in the young man’s worldview. “I count those 4 years as the time during which I was buried alive and buried in a coffin,” Fyodor frankly told his brother Andrei.
In 1854, the writer left the Omsk prison and headed to Semipalatinsk, where he settled in the military field. Here he met his future first wife, Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. She saved Dostoevsky from unbearable loneliness. Fedor sought to return to past life and writing activities. On August 26, 1856, on the day of his coronation, Alexander II announced a pardon for the Petrashevites. But, as usual, secret police surveillance was established over each person involved in the case in order to ensure their reliability (it was removed only in 1875). In 1857, Dostoevsky returned his title of nobility and received the right to publish. He was able to obtain these and other freedoms largely thanks to the help of friends.
Maturity
Dostoevsky began his “new” life in the summer of 1859 in Tver. This city is an intermediate point before returning to St. Petersburg, where the family was able to move in December. In 1860, Fyodor Mikhailovich published a collection of his works, consisting of 2 volumes, and the “re-debut” and return to the forefront of the literary capital was “Notes from the House of the Dead” (1861), published in 1861-1862 in the magazine “Time”, belonged to Dostoevsky's brother. The description of the life and soul of hard labor caused a wide resonance among readers.
In 1861, Fedor began helping Mikhail in the publishing craft. The literary and critical departments were under his leadership. The magazine adhered to Slavophile and pochvenniki (the term appeared later) views. They were promoted to the masses and developed by the most zealous employees Apollo Grigoriev and Nikolai Strakhov. The publication actively polemicized with Sovremennik. In 1863, Strakhov’s article “The Fatal Question” (regarding the Polish uprising) appeared on the pages of the media, causing loud criticism. The magazine was closed.
At the beginning of 1864, the Dostoevsky brothers managed to obtain permission to produce new magazine. This is how “Epoch” appeared. The first chapters of Notes from Underground appeared on its pages. Contrary to expectations, the magazine was not as popular as Vremya, and the death of Mikhail, Apollo Grigoriev and financial difficulties served as reasons for closure.
In the summer of 1862, Dostoevsky went on a trip to Europe to improve his failing health. It was not possible to fully implement his plans; in Baden-Baden, he was overcome by a painful inclination - playing roulette, which clearly did not help improve his condition. The luck that smiled on him quickly gave way to a series of constant losses, which led to a serious need for money. Dostoevsky was tormented by a passion for cards for nine years. The last time he sat down to play in Wiesbaden was in the spring of 1871, and after another defeat, he was finally able to overcome his passion for gambling.
Mikhail died in July 1864. This was the second blow for the writer this year, because he also buried his beloved wife. Fedor really wanted to support his brother’s family. He took upon himself the responsibility of sorting out his debts, and became even closer to the widow and orphans, comforting them in every possible way during this difficult period.
Soon Dostoevsky met and began a relationship with Anna Snitkina, which culminated in marriage. She was a stenographer and typed the novel “The Gambler” (1866): within just one month, he came up with the entire novel, and she typed the dictated text.
The last and most significant works in the writer’s work, not just works, but practically projects, were “The Writer’s Diary” and the “Great Pentateuch.” The Diary was essentially a monthly journal of philosophical and literary journalism. It was published in 1876-1877 and 1880-1881. It was distinguished by its versatility and multi-genre nature, as well as the wide variety of topics covered. “The Pentateuch” is 5 large-scale works by the author:
- "Crime and Punishment" (1866),
- "The Idiot" (1868),
- "Demons" (1871-1872),
- "Teenager" (1875),
- "The Brothers Karamazov" (1879-1880).
They are characterized by ideological-thematic and poetic-structural unity, therefore these novels are combined into a kind of cycle. The choice of title echoes the “Pentateuch of Moses” (the first five books of the Bible for Jews and Christians: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). It is known that the author was jealous of the success of Tolstoy’s epic, so he decided to write something that would surpass the count’s large-scale plan, but the strict framework of the contract and the need for money forced him to release the novels separately, and not as a single piece.
Characteristic
Contemporaries noted the inconsistency of the writer’s character; he had an extraordinary psychotype. Gentleness and kindness were mixed with hot temper and self-criticism. It is noteworthy that the first impression of a meeting with Dostoevsky almost always became disappointing: his discreet appearance ensured that all the interesting qualities and personality traits of this creator began to appear later, with the appearance of a certain degree of trust to the interlocutor. On the inconsistency of the appearance and soul of the writer Vsevolod Sergeevich Solovyov:
In front of me was a man with ugly and at first glance simple face. But this was only the first and instant impression - this face was immediately and forever imprinted in memory, it bore the imprint of an exceptional, spiritual life.
Our hero gave himself a unique description, speaking as a person “with with a tender heart, but do not know how to express their feelings.” All his life he judged himself harshly for his shortcomings and complained about his hot temper. He was best able to express his feelings on paper, namely in his works.
Dostoevsky’s friend Dr. Riesenkampf said this about the writer: “Fyodor Mikhailovich belonged to those individuals around whom everyone lives well, but who themselves are constantly in need.” Incredible kindness, as well as inability to handle money, constantly pushed the writer to unforeseen expenses as a result of the desire to help all the poor people he met, petitioners, provide best conditions servants.
Dostoevsky's gentleness and loving heart were most evident in his attitude towards children, whom he adored. Before the appearance of his own offspring in the family, all the writer’s attention was paid to his nephews. Anna Grigorievna talked about her husband’s unique ability to instantly calm the child, the ability to communicate with them, gain trust, and share interests. The birth of Sophia (the first daughter from her second marriage) had a beneficial effect on the atmosphere in the Dostoevsky family. Fyodor Mikhailovich always arrived in the best mood when he was next to the girl, and was extremely ready to bestow care and affection on everyone around him, which in general is difficult to attribute to his constant state. His relationships with women were not always smooth sailing. His passions noted periodic changes in mood and frequent criticism of them.
The writer’s friends also noted his quarrelsomeness and high demands on people from his social circle. This pushed him all his life to seek relationships close to ideal, in order to create a family with his chosen one, which would become the stronghold of their harmonious existence.
Relationship
As a rule, biographers claim that there are three women of Dostoevsky: Maria Isaeva, Apollinaria Suslova and Anna Snitkina.
In Omsk, yesterday's convict met the beautiful Maria Isaeva. A feeling flared up between them, but she was married to a drunkard and weak-willed man A.I. Isaev. Their couple served as the prototype for the Marmeladovs from Crime and Punishment. In May 1855, the official got a job in Kuznetsk, where he moved with his family. He died in August of the same year. Dostoevsky immediately proposed to his beloved, but she hesitated, the reason for this was the disastrous state of affairs of the groom and the lack of hope for their speedy recovery. Hastily trying to improve his situation, the man in love was able to convince the woman of his worth. On February 6, 1857, Fyodor and Maria got married in Kuznetsk.
This union did not bring happiness to either him or her. The spouses had almost no agreement on anything and lived separately almost all the time. Maria refused to accompany her husband on his first trip abroad. Upon his return home in September 1862, he found his wife in very painful condition: A woman fell ill with consumption.
And in the same summer of 1863 (during his second trip to Europe) in Baden-Baden, Dostoevsky met Appolionaria Prokofievna Suslova and fell passionately in love with her. It is difficult to imagine people with less similar views than this couple: she is a feminist, a nihilist, he is a believing conservative who adheres to patriarchal views. However, they became attracted to each other. He published several of her works in Time and Epoch. They dreamed of a new trip to Europe, but some difficulties with the magazine, and most importantly - serious condition Maria Dmitrievna forced them to abandon their original plans. Polina went to Paris alone, Fyodor returned to St. Petersburg in need. They wrote letters to him and invited him to come over, but quite unexpectedly for the writer, news from Polina stopped coming. Excited, he hurried to Paris, where he learned that she had met a Spanish student, Salvador, and became a victim of unrequited love. This is how their romance ended, and the story of this complex relationship received a literary interpretation in “The Player.” At the same time, his wife’s consumption progressed. In the fall of 1863, the Dostoevskys moved to Moscow, where it was more convenient to create acceptable conditions for the patient and care for her. On April 14, 1864, Maria Dmitrievna had a seizure. She died on the 15th.
Although their seven-year union could not be called successful, the widower continued to love his wife and experienced her death very painfully. He remembered the deceased exclusively with kind and warm words, although some gossips they claimed that Maria had been mentally ill all her life, so she could not make her husbands happy. The only thing that Dostoevsky endlessly regretted was that his marriage with Isaeva turned out to be childless. The writer captured his love for this woman in his works; his wife served as a prototype for many of his heroines.
The death of his wife and the subsequent death of his brother fell heavily on Dostoevsky’s shoulders. He could only forget himself in his work, and besides, the writer was in dire need of money. At this time, the publisher Fyodor Timofeevich Stellovsky offered the writer a financially lucrative contract to publish the complete collection of his works at that time. Despite the oppressive conditions, namely: extremely strict time frames and the requirement to provide a new, previously unpublished novel within a short period of time, the writer agreed. During the same period, work began on Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky suggested publishing this novel to the editor of the Russian Messenger, Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov. In connection with everything that was happening, by the beginning of October 1866, the material promised to Stellovsky was not ready, and only a month remained. The writer would not have been able to cope with the operational work if it were not for the stenographer Anna Grigorievna Snitkina. Collaboration brought Dostoevsky very close to this girl. In February 1867 they got married.
Fyodor Mikhailovich finally found long-awaited happiness and a serene existence in the bosom of his family. For Anna, this period of life did not begin so wonderfully; she experienced strong hostility from her husband’s stepson, Pyotr Isaev, who had long lived at the expense of his stepfather. To change the oppressive situation, Snitkina persuaded her husband to go abroad, where they subsequently spent four years. It was then that the second period of passion for roulette began (it ended with a refusal to gamble). The family was in need again. Things were improved by his arrival in St. Petersburg in 1897, because the writer again actively took up writing.
This marriage produced four children. Two survived: Lyubov and Fedor. Eldest daughter Sophia died when she was only a few months old; her youngest son Alexei lived less than three years.
He dedicated his exceptional work “The Brothers Karamazov” to Anna, and she, already a widow, published her memoirs about Fyodor Mikhailovich. Dostoevsky's wives appear in all of his works, except perhaps his early ones. Fatal passion, fate and difficult character Maria formed the basis for the image of Katerina Ivanovna, Grushenka, Nastasya Filippovna, and Anna Grigorievna is the spitting image of Sonechka Marmeladova, Evdokia Raskolnikova, Dashenka Shatova - the angel of salvation and martyrdom.
Philosophy
Dostoevsky's worldview underwent serious changes throughout the writer's life. For example, political orientation was subject to revision and was formed gradually. Only the religiosity nurtured in the writer as a child grew stronger and developed; he never doubted his faith. We can say that Dostoevsky's philosophy is based on Orthodoxy.
Socialist illusions were debunked by Dostoevsky himself in the 60s; he developed a critical attitude towards them, perhaps because they were the reason for his arrest. Traveling around Europe inspired him to think about bourgeois revolution. He saw that it did not help the common people in any way, and as a result, he developed an irreconcilable hostility towards the possibility of its accomplishment in Russia. Soil ideas, which he picked up during his work with Apollo Grigoriev in magazines, partly served as the basis for Dostoevsky’s later worldview. Awareness of the need to merge the elite with common people, attributing to the latter a mission to save the world from harmful ideas, returning to the bosom of nature and religion - all these ideas appealed to the writer. He felt his era was a turning point. The country was preparing for shocks and a reshaping of reality. The writer sincerely hoped that people would follow the path of self-improvement, and the new time would be marked by the degeneration of society.
There was a process to isolate the very essence, the quintessence of Russian national consciousness, the “Russian idea” - a name proposed by the author himself. For Dostoevsky, it is closely connected with religious philosophy. Arseny Vladimirovich Gulyga (Soviet philosopher, historian of philosophy and literary critic) explained Dostoevsky’s pochvenism this way: this is a call for a return to the national, this is patriotism based on moral values.
For Dostoevsky, this idea of free will, inseparably linked with an unshakable moral law, became fundamental in his work, especially in his later works. The writer considered man a mystery; he tried to penetrate into his spiritual nature, throughout his life he strove to find the path of his moral development.
On June 8, 1880, at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, the author read “Pushkin’s Speech,” which reveals to the reader his true views and judgments, as well as the essence of life, according to Dostoevsky. It was this poet that the author considered true national character. In the poetry of Alexander Sergeevich, the writer saw the path of the fatherland and the Russian people prophetically outlined. Then he brought out his main idea: transformation should be accomplished not through changing external factors and conditions, but through internal self-improvement.
Of course, according to Dostoevsky, the main help on this path is religion. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin said that the “noise” created by the polyphony of characters in the writer’s novels is covered by one voice - that of God, whose word comes from the author’s soul. At the end of “Pushkin’s Speech” it is said that to be Russian means...
To strive to bring reconciliation to European contradictions completely, to indicate the outcome of European melancholy in our Russian soul, all-human and reuniting, to accommodate all our brothers with brotherly love, and in the end, perhaps, to utter the final word of great, common harmony, brotherly final agreement of all tribes according to Christ's gospel law!
Interesting facts from the life of the writer
- In 1837, Pushkin, Dostoevsky’s favorite author, tragically passed away. Fyodor Mikhailovich perceived the death of the poet as a personal tragedy. He later recalled that, if not for the death of his mother, he would have asked his family to mourn the writer.
- It should be noted that the dreams of the eldest sons about a literary career were not at all perceived by their parents as a whim, but in the situation of need into which the family gradually descended, it forced Mikhail Andreevich to insist on the boys receiving an engineering education that could provide them with a financially reliable and sustainable future.
- The writer's first completed work in the field of translation was Balzac's Eugenie Grande. He was inspired by the author of this work's visit to Russia. The work was published in the publication “Repertoire and Pantheon” in 1844, but the name of the translator was not indicated there.
- In 1869 he became a father. Interesting things from the writer’s personal life are described by his wife in her memoirs: “Fyodor Mikhailovich was unusually gentle towards his daughter, fussed with her, bathed her, carried her in his arms, rocked her to sleep and felt so happy that he wrote criticism to Strakhov: “Oh, why are you not married, and why don’t you have a child, dear Nikolai Nikolaevich. I swear to you that this is 3/4 of life’s happiness, but the rest is only one quarter.”
Death
The author was first diagnosed with epilepsy while still in prison. The illness tormented the writer, but the irregularity and relatively low frequency of seizures had little effect on his mental abilities (only some memory deterioration was observed), allowing him to create until the end of his days.
Over time, Dostoevsky developed a lung disease - emphysema. There is an assumption that he owed its aggravation to an explanation with his sister V.M. Ivanova on January 26 (February 7), 1881. The woman persistently persuaded him to give up the share of the Ryazan estate inherited from his aunt Alexandra Fedorovna Kumanina to his sisters. The nervous situation, the conversation with his sister in a raised voice, the complexity of the situation - all this had a detrimental effect on the physical condition of the writer. He had a seizure: blood came down his throat.
Even on the morning of January 28 (February 9), the hemorrhages did not go away. Dostoevsky spent the entire day in bed. He said goodbye to his loved ones several times, feeling the approach of death. By evening the writer died. He was 59 years old.
Many wished to say goodbye to Dostoevsky. Relatives and friends arrived, but there was much more strangers- those who even then immensely revered the amazing talent of Fyodor Mikhailovich, who admired his gift. Among those who came was the artist V. G. Perov, he painted the famous posthumous portrait author.
Dostoevsky, and later his second wife, were buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.
Dostoevsky places
The Dostoevsky estate was located in the Kashira district of the Tula province. The village of Darovoye and the village of Cheremoshna, which made up the estate, were bought by Fyodor’s father back in 1831. Here, as a rule, the family spent the summer. A year after the purchase, there was a fire that destroyed the house, after which a wooden outbuilding was rebuilt, where the family lived. The younger brother Andrei inherited the estate.
The house in Staraya Russa was Dostoevsky's only real estate. The writer and his family first came here in 1882. The most halcyon days of his life are associated with this place. The atmosphere of this corner was most favorable for the coexistence of the entire family in harmony and for the work of the writer. “The Brothers Karamazov”, “Demons” and many other works were written here.
Meaning
Dostoevsky did not study philosophy and did not consider his works to be vehicles of corresponding ideas. But decades after its end creative activity researchers began to talk about the formulation of general questions and the complexity of the issues raised in the texts issued by the writer. The writer really gained the reputation of a preacher, an expert on the human soul. Therefore, his novels are still on the lists of the most popular and sought-after works around the world. For a modern writer, it is considered a great merit to earn comparison with this Russian genius. Reading such literature is part of belonging to intellectual circles, because Dostoevsky has become to a certain extent a brand, signifying the exclusivity of the taste of those who give preference to him. The Japanese especially like the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich: and Kobo Abe, both Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami recognized him as their favorite writer.
The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud noted the phenomenal depth of the works of the Russian author and their value for science. He also sought to look deeply into the consciousness of an individual, to study the patterns and features of his work. They both opened and dissected inner world a person as a whole: with all his noble thoughts and base desires.
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In Moscow.
He was the second child of six in the family of a doctor at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, the son of the Uniate priest Mikhail Dostoevsky, who in 1828 received the title of hereditary nobleman. The mother of the future writer came from a merchant family.
Since 1832, Fyodor and his older brother Mikhail began studying with teachers who came to the house; from 1833 they studied at the boarding school of Nikolai Drashusov (Sushara), then at the boarding school of Leonty Chermak. After the death of their mother in 1837, their father took them and their brother to St. Petersburg to continue their education. In 1839, he died of apoplexy (according to family legends, he was killed by serfs).
In 1838, Fyodor Dostoevsky entered the Engineering School in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1843.
After graduating from college, he served in the St. Petersburg engineering team and was assigned to the drawing room of the Engineering Department.
In 1844 he retired to devote himself to literature. In 1846 he published his first work - the story "Poor People", enthusiastically received by the critic Vissarion Belinsky.
In 1847-1849, Dostoevsky wrote the stories “The Mistress” (1847), “Weak Heart” and “White Nights” (both 1848), and “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849, unfinished).
During this period, the writer became close to the circle of the Beketov brothers (among the participants were Alexey Pleshcheev, Apollo and Valerian Maykov, Dmitry Grigorovich), in which not only literary, but also social problems were discussed. In the spring of 1847, Dostoevsky began to attend the “Fridays” of Mikhail Petrashevsky, and in the winter of 1848-1849 - the circle of the poet Sergei Durov, which also consisted mainly of Petrashevsky members. At the meetings, problems of the liberation of peasants, court reforms and censorship were discussed, treatises by French socialists and articles by Alexander Herzen were read. In 1848, Dostoevsky entered a special secret society organized by the most radical Petrashevist Nikolai Speshnev, which set as its goal “to carry out a revolution in Russia.”
In the spring of 1849, along with other Petrashevites, the writer was arrested and imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress. After eight months of imprisonment, where Dostoevsky behaved courageously and even wrote a story " Little hero"(printed in 1857), he was found guilty of "intention to overthrow... the state order" and was initially sentenced to death. Already on the scaffold he was told that the execution had been replaced by four years of hard labor with deprivation of "all rights of fortune" and subsequent surrender to soldiers. Dostoevsky served hard labor in the Omsk fortress, among criminals.
From January 1854 he served as a private in Semipalatinsk, in 1855 he was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and in 1856 to ensign. In 1857, his nobility and the right to publish were returned to him. At the same time, he married the widow Maria Isaeva, who took part in his fate even before marriage.
In Siberia, Dostoevsky wrote the stories “Uncle’s Dream” and “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” (both 1859).
In 1859 he retired and received permission to live in Tver. At the end of the year, the writer moved to St. Petersburg and, together with his brother Mikhail, began publishing the magazines “Time” and “Epoch”. On the pages of Vremya, in an effort to strengthen his reputation, Dostoevsky published his novel “Humiliated and Insulted” (1861).
In 1863, during his second trip abroad, the writer met Apollinaria Suslova; their complex relationship, as well as a gambling game of roulette in Baden-Baden, provided material for the future novel “The Gambler.”
After the death of his first wife in 1864, and then the death of his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky assumed all the debts for publishing the Epoch magazine, but soon stopped it due to a drop in subscriptions. After traveling abroad, the writer spent the summer of 1866 in Moscow and at a dacha near Moscow, working on the novel Crime and Punishment. At the same time, Dostoevsky was working on the novel “The Gambler,” which he dictated to stenographer Anna Snitkina, who became the writer’s wife in the winter of 1867.
In 1867-1868, Dostoevsky wrote the novel “The Idiot,” the task of which he saw as “depicting a positively beautiful person.”
The next novel, “Demons” (1871-1872), was created by him under the impression of the terrorist activities of Sergei Nechaev and the secret society “People’s Retribution” organized by him. In 1875, the novel “The Teenager” was published, written in the form of a confession of a young man, whose consciousness is formed in an environment of “general decomposition.” The theme of the disintegration of family ties was continued in Dostoevsky’s final novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879-1880), conceived as a depiction of “our intelligentsia Russia” and at the same time as a novel-life of the main character Alyosha Karamazov.
In 1873, Dostoevsky began editing the newspaper-magazine "Citizen". In 1874, he abandoned editing the magazine due to disagreements with the publisher and deteriorating health, and at the end of 1875 he resumed work on A Writer's Diary, which he began in 1873, which he continued intermittently until the end of his life.
On February 7 (January 26, old style), 1881, the writer began bleeding from the throat, and doctors diagnosed a ruptured pulmonary artery.
On February 9 (January 28, old style), 1881, Fyodor Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg. The writer was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
On November 11, 1928, on the occasion of the writer’s birthday, the world’s first Dostoevsky Museum was opened in Moscow in the northern wing of the former Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor.
On November 12, 1971, in St. Petersburg, in the house where the writer spent the last years of his life, the F.M. Literary Memorial Museum was opened. Dostoevsky.
In the same year, on the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birth, the Semipalatinsk Literary and Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky was opened in the house where he lived in 1857-1859 while serving in a line battalion.
Since 1974, the Dostoevsky estate Darovoye, Zaraisk district, Tula region, where the writer vacationed in the 1830s, acquired the status of a museum of republican significance.
In May 1980, in Novokuznetsk, in the house that the writer’s first wife Maria Isaeva rented in 1855-1857, the F.M. Literary and Memorial Museum was opened. Dostoevsky.
In May 1981, the Writer's House-Museum was opened in Staraya Russa, where the Dostoevsky family spent the summer.
In January 1983, the Literary Museum received its first visitors. F.M. Dostoevsky in Omsk.
Among the monuments to the writer, the most famous is the sculpture of Dostoevsky State Library named after V.I. Lenin on the corner of Mokhovaya and Vozdvizhenka in Moscow, a monument to Dostoevsky in the park of the Mariinsky Hospital near memorial museum writer in the capital, a monument to Dostoevsky in St. Petersburg on Bolshaya Moskovskaya Street.
In October 2006, a monument to Fyodor Dostoevsky in Dresden, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel.
In the name of the writer in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as in other Russian cities streets are named. In December 1991, the Dostoevskaya metro station was opened in St. Petersburg, and in 2010 in Moscow.
After his death, the writer's widow Anna Dostoevskaya (1846-1918) devoted herself to republishing her husband's books and perpetuating his memory. She died in 1918 in Yalta; in 1968, her ashes, according to her last wish, were reburied in Dostoevsky’s grave.
