"From his weight, love becomes distressed, and with the knowledge of his grief he burns his own time, his world." - Stefan Zweig.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in a shelter for the poor. His father, Mikhail Andreyevich, is of a gentry, and in the veins of his mother, Marina Feodorovna, he has a peasant blood. There is no mention of his early childhood in this shelter, but the Illustrated scenes are testimony to those years of poverty in which the two Dostoevsky brothers grow up. For this period, the writer does not share in his work, these early years remain as a wound in the soul of the sensitive child, unheard of human pain. Later, as a young man, Dostoevsky joined the army for several rubles. For this period, Zweig writes: "For several years he has been in this black formless puppet state of loneliness and silence, attacking him with hypochondria, a mystical fear of dying, often a horror of the world, often by himself, an exaggerated shiver of chaos in his own chest. "
Dostoevsky as a child
Meanwhile, he is involved in the translation of Balzac's "Eugenie Grande" and Schiller's "Don Carlos". In 1844, he wrote the poem "Poor People" - a creation that was created with love, suffering and fervor. For this first attempt, Nekrasov tells Bellinski: "A new Gogol has appeared." But suffering always persecutes Dostoevsky throughout his life, and at this moment of light and acknowledgment a test appears.
In 1849, Dostoevsky was condemned to death by shoot, along with the socialists, utopian from the circle of Petrashevski. Four months rot in the Petropavlov fortress while hearing the judgment. Then, on the Shemon's Square, when they tie all the prisoners on the stakes and cover their faces, after these preparations, they read their pardon and the replacement of the prison sentence with Siberian labor. Those minutes of expectation Dostoevsky describe in "Idiot" - what he would have done for that minute, he had done it forever, and that if he was not in front of the rifle, how would his life pass.
Political prisoners in Siberia
This is how this new life begins; four years spent in the "The House of the Dead", in the lower world; shadow between shadows, nameless and forgotten. Dostoevsky dies physically there, exhausted, his illness grows even more and wasting his powers, but his suffering purifies him spiritually. From this suffering that has accompanied him throughout his life, he gives a small share to each of his heroes, because there, between the four wooden walls, he understands that it is only by suffering that man can redeem his guilt and ripen for a new life. His powers are exhausted to the limit, but his spirit is brilliant and does not cheat him.
Isaeva, Dostoevsky's wife
Even when he is almost released, Dostoevsky marries, but has no right to publish to support himself. And here is the portrait of his wife Isaeva: "A sick and libelous woman who reluctantly replies to his compassionate love. In this decision, a dark tragedy of self-sacrifice is concealed forever by curiosity and honor, and only by some hints in "The Unsulted and humiliated" one can foretold the silent heroism of this fantastic sacrifice. "
When Dostoevsky returns to Petersburg, it floods the wave of glory from"Notes from the Dead". Immediately afterwards, he begins to publish with his brother a magazine, which almost writes for itself and which is forbidden for a short time. After the appearance of the Notes as a luminous ray in his suffered soul, a new misfortune followed - his wife died, and shortly after, his brother was leaving this world. Dostoyevsky is struggling with the support of two families, but his inability to maintain them financially, and his own creditors have forced him to leave his beloved Russia and go abroad. What kind of hatred he has experienced in every country he have been staying in, and how harshly he read Russian newspapers so that he can at least feel the events that happen there, to breathe the air there ...
Anna Grigoryevna, Dostoevsky second wife
At that time, his stenographer Anna Grigoryevna, became his second wife, but after this short joy he had a new test - their first child died in poverty a few days after his birth. In this miserable picture of idleness and hope for survival, constantly attacked by his illness, Dostoevsky writes "Crime and Punishment", "Idiot", "Demons" because "work is his salvation and his sorrow"
When he returned to Russia, he was 52 years old and sick, and for one year he wrote "Brothers Karamazov" - the top of his work and his last work. Soon all Russia is shocked by the novel, critics have an extraordinary interest and a respect for the genius, but there is still little to live on ... Exhausted from life struggles for physical survival, disease and the country, the biggest prize in life that Dostoevsky receives, was unexpectedly awarded on the day of his speech in memory of Pushkin: "The next day the word is given to Dostoevsky and he grabs it like a lightning in demonic intoxication ... With the flashes of ecstasy, which suddenly bursts like a storm from his quiet, squeaky voice proclaims he holy missions Russian forgiveness as decimated throw the audience to its feet. The room is shaken by the explosion of excitement, women kiss their hands, a student falls in front of him, all the other speakers refuse to speak. The exaltation grows infinitely and the halo of the head with a thorn wreath flares fiery. "
Dostoyevsky's funeral
Shortly after this speech, Dostoevsky died on February 10, 1881, and three weeks later, an assassination was committed against the king; the first signs of the revolution destroying Russia, which Dostoevsky predicts. Judging by his life, a brief characterization of Dostoevsky's work can be given in three words: grief, love and suffering. Each character carries some of his features: Raskolnikov is a hypochondriac, Prince Myshkin - an epileptic, Ivan Karamazov - eternally squatting between faith and unbelief, Alyosha Karamazov is a prototype of his beloved son who died when he was three years old - every page of grief suffering and with it . Dostoevsky is not only a rare talent and genius in the literature, he is a psychologist, a forensic, a public figure and, above all, a Christian. Although it is his words: " I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it."