Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский
Testimonials
“Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss!”
~Albert Einstein
“Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I’ve anything to learn.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche
“The real nineteenth century prophet was Dostoevsky, not Karl Marx.”
~Albert Camus
“Since I was little I’ve liked Russian Literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favorite author, and he is the one — I still think — who writes most honestly about human existence.”
~Akira Kurosawa
“He had a wonderful flair for comedy mixed with tragedy; he may be termed a very wonderful humorist, with the humor always on the verge of hysterics and people hurting each other in a wild exchange of insults.”
~Vladimir Nabokov
“...the Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum.”
~Count Melchoir de Vogue
“In truth, my husband and I were persons of “quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views.” But we always remained ourselves, in no way echoing nor currying favor with one another, neither of us trying to meddle with the other’s soul, neither I with his psyche nor he with mine. And in this way my good husband and I, both of us, felt ourselves free in spirit.”
~Anna Grigoryevna Dostoyevskaya
“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened one hundred years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone.”
~James Baldwin
“The further we venture in Dostoevsky, the further we venture in ourselves. Only when we get close to our true self, and it is only when we have attained a realization of our common kinship with universal humanity, that we really draw near the master. One who knows himself well, knows Dostoevsky well, for if any man has succeeded in realizing the quintessence of man, it surely is him. The road towards the understanding of his work leads through all the purgatories of passion, through the hell of tribulation, through every realm of earthly torment: the torment of mankind, the torment of humanity, of the artist and the ultimate, most agonizing torment of all, the torment of God. The way is dark; if we are not to lose the trail we must light it from the fires within, fanning them to a blaze of our passionate desire for truth. We must first explore the intricacies of our own personality, before hazarding ourselves into his.”
~Stefan Zweig
“The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.
“It is directly obvious that [Dostoevsky] is the greatest writer ever born.”
~Virginia Woolf
Personal notes + references
Transcript:
Brother! I have not become downhearted or low-spirited. Life is everywhere life, life in ourselves, not in what is outside us. There will be people near me, and to be a man among people and remain a man for ever, not to be downhearted nor to fall in whatever misfortunes may befall me — this is life ; this is the task of life. I have realised this. This idea has entered into my flesh and into my blood. Yes, it’s true ! The head which was creating, living with the highest life of art, which had realised and grown used to the highest needs of the spirit, that head has already been cut off from my shoulders. There remain the memory and the images created but not yet incarnated by me. They will lacerate me, it is true ! But there remains in me my heart and the same flesh and blood which can also love, and suffer, and desire, and remember, and this, after all, is life. On voit le soleil! Now, good-bye, brother! Don’t grieve for me!
…When I look back at the past and think how much time has been wasted in vain, how much time was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in ignorance of how to live, how I did not value time, how often I sinned against my heart and spirit, — my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, each minute might have been an age of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! Now, changing my life, I am being reborn into a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I shall not lose hope, and shall preserve my spirit and heart in purity. I shall be reborn to a better thing. That is my whole hope, my whole comfort!
From Dostoevsky’s letter written at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg to his brother Mikhail on December 22, 1849. He had been condemned to death (only to be revealed as a mock execution at the last moment) and had written a farewell the day before his supposed execution. [x]
Crime and Punishment:
Young Carol Kane as Sonya:
Additional resources + links:
In what order should you read Dostoevsky?Why Dostoevsky Hated Intellectuals
The Brothers Karamazov fanartist blog
“What do you get out of Dostoevsky?”
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