Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)

Major works:
Notes from the Underground(1864)
Crime and Punishment (1866)
The Idiot (1868)
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

Biographical Notes

Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, the second child of seven; his father, something of a tyrant, was a raging alcoholic who worked as a doctor in a hospital for the poor.  In his childhood young Fyodor was exposed to a great variety of unfortunates in the sketchy neighborhood of this hospital—criminals, orphans, inmates of a lunatic asylum, and other "down and outers."  He attended the Military Engineering Academy in St. Petersburg from 1838 to1843, and he served briefly in the Russian army as a lieutenant. His writing career began with the translation of Honoré de Balzac's novel, Eugénie Grandet in 1844, followed by a number of original works, the critically well-received novel Poor Folk (1846), The Double (1846), and a number of excellent short stories. In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested for treason, largely for his membership in the liberal socialist group, the Petrashevsky Circle. After being subjected to a terrifying mock execution, he was sent to a Siberian labor camp for four years, where he repudiated his youthful radicalism and experienced a profound religious conversion.  After the stretch in a labor camp followed four more years of forced enlistment as a private in a Siberian military unit. 

Following his decade in Siberia, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 a changed man, no longer a liberal thinker but more nearly a reactionary conservative, rooted deeply in the Russian Orthodox religion.  He resumed his writing career by editing and contributing to the journals Time and Epoch, both of which he founded with his brother, Mikhail.  Dostoevsky was at first sympathetic with the Russian intellectuals of the 1860s who came to be known as "nihilists," though he soon mocked and condemned their radicalism quite roundly in Notes from the Underground. The mature Dostoevsky, in Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, grappled profoundly and intensely with complexities of the human soul, torn between opposing forces of rational, intellectual thought and mystical, transcendent spirituality.

Like Flaubert, Dostoevsky was an epileptic (as is Mishkin, the central character of The Idiot) , and he also suffered pressing financial difficulties from the 1860s forward, much exacerbated by recurring bouts of compulsive gambling. He was in acute financial distress during the time he composed Crime and Punishment, which may have contributed to the novel's dark and frenetic intensity.  Dostoevsky has been recognized as a truly great novelist from his time forward, in Russia and abroad, but in the latter half of the twentieth century his reputation soared especially in the West, partly as his message on "spiritual malaise" became more relevant in the post-nuclear modern world after WWII, and even more from our recognition of his genius in portraying the complexity of human psychology with unprecedented depth. 

Political/philosophical background

Dostoevsky's involvement with the treasonous Petrashevsky circle in the 1840s had its roots in dissatisfaction with the oppressive reign of Tsar Nicholas I, and while the "circle" mainly read and discussed works of literature and philosophy, the crux in Dostoevsky's arrest was his role in obtaining a printing press to disseminate revolutionary pamphlets urging the overthrow of the tsar.  The radical intellectuals of the 1860s Dostoevsky became familiar with as editor of Time and Epoch, however, were far more extreme.  These Russian intellectuals of the 1860s became known as nihilists (the Latin root "nihil" means "nothing"), and they scorned all authority and tradition, religious and moral, believing in " reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination."  They rejected the notion that human nature included a spiritual dimension, believing human behavior is determined mainly by reason and self-interest, and that morality could be reduced to the utilitarian and "scientific" principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number." They held that society should be reconstructed on purely rational and scientific principles (a la Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill).

Dostoevsky portrays these intellectuals of the '60s quite vividly in Notes from the Underground, which may be considered a direct precursor to Crime and Punishment.  Some credit Dostoevsky as being a "founding father" of modern existentialism based on his portrayal of the unnamed Underground Man's alienation and despair, and Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment seems in many ways a continuation or expansion of the Underground Man as radical intellectual. Dostoevsky was much admired by German philosopher Nietzsche, and as we will see in the novel, Raskolnikov espouses what would be described at some length by Nietzsche in the 1880s as the Übermensch ("overman" or "superman"), a superior man who is "above" human morality.  

Psychological depths: Dostoevskyan realism

Reacting against the nihilist notion that human behavior is determined by reason and self-interest, Dostoevsky's mature fiction conveys more modern ideas of human psychology as far more complex, much less predictable, and far more prone to irrational and often darker influences that defy easy understanding. (Freud was an avid admirer of Dostoevsky as well). His experiences in Siberia, mingling closely with thieves, murderers, rapists, and psychotics, showed him human corruption he thought "rational progress and social reform were powerless to redeem," and thus, for Dostoevsky, only spirituality and religion could bring about the needed moral redemption of the sinful. While some critics question Dostoevsky's effectiveness in portraying Raskolnikov's redemption in credible fashion especially in the epilogue chapters, no one can question the keenly insightful realism in the depiction of Raskolnikov's anguish and torment in Parts I-VI of Crime and Punishment. 

There is certainly realism in Dostoevsky's portrayal of 19th-century Russian intellectuals and of the seamier side of mid-century life in St. Petersburg-its drunkenness, urban poverty, prostitution, social injustice, and more, but some of Dostoevsky's critics early on condemned his work as departing from realism in his "capacity for dramatic excess and grotesque fantasy" (xxv).  With some reason, Dostoevsky has been seen by many as following too closely in the steps of the ever-excessive Charles Dickens he so thoroughly admired.  And compared with the stark realism of Flaubert, Dostoevsky may indeed seem "out there" at times.  In truth, however, Dostoevsky's own conception of realism was not so dependent upon the objective external depiction of reality per se or the avoidance of the sensational or fantastic.  As W. J. Leatherbarrow notes, Dostoevsky "certainly recognized that, unlike many other realistic novelists, he avoided in his works strict verisimilitude and a preoccupation with everyday trivialities, preferring instead to concentrate upon abnormal characters in extreme situations.  But he defended this choice, conceding that 'I have entirely different notions of reality and realism from those of our realists and critics,' and arguing that 'what most people regard as fantastic and exceptional is sometimes for me the very essence of reality.'  In a comment in his notebooks, written towards the end of his life, he went even further, declaring, 'I am a realist in a higher sense; that is, I depict all the depths of the human soul'" (xxvi).  A daunting objective, no doubt, but as I believe we will see both with both Russian giants of the novel, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Crime and Punishment does indeed make good on this claim of portraying the "depths of human soul."

A few themes, motifs, and features to consider as you read Crime and Punishment

The subjective immediacy of Dostoevsky’s portrayal of Raskolnikov with almost claustrophobic intensity.

Raskolnikov’s divided personality: the intellectual vs. the “natural" self, “superman” vs. meek and submissive louse, and more.

Symbolic characters, particularly representing different aspects of Raskolnikov (doubling and mirroring); symbolism in St. Petersburg representing facets of Raskolnikov as well.

The importance of dreams—some symbolism here too.

Dostoevsky’s portrayal of the radical intellectual, privileging reason and intellect.

Psychological realism: modern self-consciousness, self-analysis, self-absorption, and existentialist isolation.

Guilt!  Of course!  The need for expiation.

Suffering, not reason, as the path to happiness.

Crime and Punishment as detective novel: psychological acuity in Detective Porphyry, especially.

Elements of melodrama: exaggerated extremes?

Sonya as angel/whore (literally).

The psychosomatic: connections between mental or spiritual state and physical health.

Sudanese novelist Leila Aboulela's assertion that the novel is "A powerful theological warning against the arrogance of reason. Crime and Punishment is a big novel on the meaning of life."

The epilogue: satisfying and effective—or not?