Dostoyevsky and his most outstanding BOOKS
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky born November 11 1821 he was an important Russian novelist who explored human psychology through his works. He is considered one of the greatest writers of the West and of world literature, and therefore in a PROFESSOR we want to bring you a little closer to Dostoyevsky and his most outstanding books.
Crime and Punishment, The Idiot or The Playerare only 3 of the most applauded titles of this renowned author of the realist movement. Above all, the first of them all caused him great international success and boasted him as one of the essential authors of literature.
Index
- Brief biography of Dostoyevsky
- Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky's Most Outstanding Book
- The idiot
- The player
- The Karamazov brothers
- White Nights
Brief biography of Dostoyevsky.
As a writer, his works are qualified as part of the realistic movement, which perfectly reflected Russian society - his native country - of the time. He was brought up by his father, a doctor with great aggressiveness, and by his mother, in whom he found love and affection but died prematurely. When he was widowed, his father began to drink too much alcohol and ended up sending his son to the
St. Petersburg School of Engineers. Dostoyevsky too suffered from epilepsy and his literary creation helped her make intelligent use of his illness, incorporating it into his literature rather than causing it to consume him.Two episodes remarkable mark life and work by Dostoyevski. The first is the brutal death of his father At the hands of some peasants, tortured and murdered, when he was barely 18 years old. This event is presented to him as a revelation and he is about to lose his mind, since he himself had wished for the death of his father and feels guilty for what happened.
The second is located in the year 1849 when he is sentenced to death for his collaboration with various liberal and revolutionary groups. He was pardoned only minutes before the fixed time stipulated for his death, on the gallows on the way to the guillotine. He spent four years in a Siberian prison.
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Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky's most outstanding book.
Dostoyevsky began to write "Crime and Punishment" in 1865 but it was in 1866 when they are published by volumes in the magazine Russki vestnik. The play narrates the life of Rodion Raskolnikov, a student from the Russian capital who is forced to suspend his studies due to the poverty and misery of his family. Since he was so in need of money to pay his expenses, turn to an old moneylender where he pawns some of his objects. His sister Dunia, who wants to help him, marries a wealthy lawyer without consulting him, something that drives the protagonist to anger.
Rodion has airs of greatness and in her anger and delusions, he begins to fantasize about the idea of killing the old moneylender, causing her desire to grow inside her like a seed. The protagonist ends up committing the crime and the memory of him begins to torture him, he tries to prevent the committed act from coming to light. Rodion's pride is unleashed as he contemplates that he has not gotten any satisfaction from his plan. The way in which all these thoughts and feelings are narrated almost as if it were a surgeon, a deep analysis that shows us the Man's struggle against his conscience.
In this novel decaying moral values are reflected of that Russia and supposed the consecration of the author as a novelist and the end of his monetary troubles. At that time, Dostoyevsky had been arrested along with 32 other members of a revolutionary circle, for which he was locked up for a long period of time. In all that time, he suffered several interrogations that would later serve as inspiration for the work "Crime and Punishment".
The idiot.
Published between 1868 and 1869, "The idiot" is considered one of the most brilliant novels of the author. In Russia in the middle of the XIX century Prince Myshkin, suffering from epilepsy, he returns to his native Russia from Switzerland after his stay since he was a child where he has been hospitalized to be treated for his illness. He is heading to the home of his only living relative, whom he does not know in person. The arrival at the house of a man so extravagant because of his exaggerated kindness, upsets the family. Myshkin falls in love with two women, one of them already engaged, and a debate begins to break out over the chosen one that will end, after deciding, in a tragedy.
"The idiot" is embodied in the young Myshkin, who is depicted as a naive and innocent young man, who does not contemplate the evil of the world. He is also related to the figure of Jesus Christ and of a name that manages to believe in an ideal and dedicate his life to consecrate it. He is a character that generates both attraction and repulsion among others, since with his good deeds he makes others aware of his evil deeds.
With this work Dostoyevsky achieves a very important thing: to improve his epilepsy disease and use it for artist creation instead of sinking with it. Writing leads him to face suffering.
The player.
Posted in 1867 "The player" is another of the best Dostoyevsky. Tells the story of Alexei Ivanovich, a young tutor employed by a former Russian general. He travels abroad, where the rich have fun playing roulette, and he becomes addicted to the game as well as falling in love with Polina, a woman who rejects him and encourages him to gamble. The protagonist is forced to end up playing to survive.
The play reflects Dostoyevsky's own addiction to roulette during his stay in Wiesbaden. Again, the writer reflects his most serious problems in his works, which serve as an escape to transform what happens to something artistic.
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The Karamazov brothers.
In december 1877, Dostoyevsky announces that he will begin to write a novel in which he would try to capture a problem that had plagued him throughout his life: the existence of God. So it arises "The Brothers Karamazov", for many, the highest expression of the author's domain of the novel as well as the deepest psychologically.
The novel was published in 1879, shortly before Fyodor Dostoyevsky died. Set in the Russia of XIX, the death of the landowner Karamazov - a cruel and cynical father - falls on two of the sons, who are put under suspicion because they both have more than one motive for killing their father. The third son, the kindest, is released from all charges and projects into the future.
With the novel the preoccupation with Dostoyevsky's philosophical question about God, is a reflection of the need for change in the moral values of the time, a denunciation of the corruption engendered by money and selfishness, among various other issues.
White Nights.
A short novel published in 1848, at the beginning of the author's career. "White Nights" tells the story of Nástenka, an orphan raised by her grandmother who falls in love with the new tenant of the apartment where they live. They are engaged in marriage and the tenant leaves under the promise of returning to marry in a year. The term expires and the girl goes every night to the docks to wait for him, for hers he appears.
On one of these nights she meets a drunk with whom she ends up dating for four nights in a row. The last night, when she believed everything was lost and he is completely in love with her, the tenant shows up. She ends up marrying him and the man's love remains fleeting.
A work that reflects how the protagonist believes have found relief from their loneliness, and yet this ends up being ephemeral. For all these reasons, it is one of the most recommended Dostoyevsky books.
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Bibliography
- Andrade, P. (2014). Dostoyevsky's figure of the idiot and his literary and cinematographic rewritings. Comparative Literature Yearbook (4), 129-151.
- Avilés Farré, J. (1996). The novel as a source for history: the case of "Crime and Punishment" (1866).
- Barros, B. (2011). Analysis and visualization of the discourse in the work "Crime and punishment" by F.M. Dostoevsky. (Doctoral thesis). University of Granada, Granada.
- Biographies and lives (2004-2019). Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Biographies and Lives, the online biographical encyclopedia. Recovered from: https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/d/dostoievski.htm
- Mendez, S. (2005). Ivan Karamazóv: hero-ideologue. Spike (12).
- Sala, A. Narratological analysis of Dostoyevsky's White Nights. Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona.