A Writer's Diary and other works
In 1873 Dostoyevsky assumed the editorship of the conservative journal Grazhdanin (“The Citizen”), where he published an irregular column entitled "Dnevnik pisatelya" (“The Diary of a Writer”). He left Grazhdanin to write Podrostok (1875; A Raw Youth, also known as The Adolescent), a relatively unsuccessful and diffuse novel describing a young man's relations with his natural father.
In 1876–77 Dostoyevsky devoted his energies to Dnevnik pisatelya, which he was now able to bring out in the form he had originally intended. A one-man journal, for which Dostoyevsky served as editor, publisher, and sole contributor, the Diary represented an attempt to initiate a new literary genre. Issue by monthly issue, the Diary created complex thematic resonances among diverse kinds of materiaclass="underline" short stories, plans for possible stories, autobiographical essays, sketches that seem to lie on the boundary between fiction and journalism, psychological analyses of sensational crimes, literary criticism, and political commentary. The Diary proved immensely popular and financially rewarding, but as an aesthetic experiment it was less successful, probably because Dostoyevsky, after a few intricate issues, seemed unable to maintain his complex design. Instead, he was drawn into expressing his political views, which, during these two years, became increasingly extreme. Specifically, Dostoyevsky came to believe that western Europe was about to collapse, after which Russia and the Russian Orthodox church would create the kingdom of God on earth and so fulfill the promise of the Book of Revelation. In a series of anti-Catholic articles, he equated the Roman Catholic church with the socialists because both are concerned with earthly rule and maintain (Dostoyevsky believed) an essentially materialist view of human nature. He reached his moral nadir with a number of anti-Semitic articles.
Because Dostoyevsky was unable to maintain his aesthetic design for the Diary, its most famous sections are usually known from anthologies and so are separated from the context in which they were designed to fit. These sections include four of his best short stories— "Krotkaya" (“The Meek One”), "Son smeshnogo cheloveka" (“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”), "Malchik u Khrista na elke" (“The Heavenly Christmas Tree”), and "Bobok" —as well as a number of autobiographical and semifictional sketches, including "Muzhik Marey" (“The Peasant Marey”), "Stoletnaya" (“A Hundred-Year-Old Woman”), and a satire, "Spiritizm. Nechto o chertyakh Chrezychaynaya khitrost chertey, esli tolko eto cherti" (“Spiritualism. Something about Devils. The Extraordinary Cleverness of Devils, If Only These Are Devils”).
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoyevsky's last and probably greatest novel, Bratya Karamazovy (1879–80; The Brothers Karamazov), focuses on his favourite theological and philosophical themes: the origin of evil, the nature of freedom, and the craving for faith. A profligate and vicious father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, mocks everything noble and engages in unseemly buffoonery at every opportunity. When his sons were infants, he neglected them not out of malice but simply because he “forgot” them. The eldest, Dmitry, a passionate man capable of sincerely loving both “Sodom” and “the Madonna” at the same time, wrangles with his father over money and competes with him for the favours of a “demonic” woman, Grushenka. When the old man is murdered, circumstantial evidence leads to Dmitry's arrest for the crime, which actually has been committed by the fourth, and illegitimate, son, the malicious epileptic Smerdyakov.
The youngest legitimate son, Alyosha, is another of Dostoyevsky's attempts to create a realistic Christ figure. Following the wise monk Zosima, Alyosha tries to put Christian love into practice. The narrator proclaims him the work's real hero, but readers are usually most interested in the middle brother, the intellectual Ivan.
Like Raskolnikov, Ivan argues that, if there is no God and no immortality, then “all is permitted.” And, even if all is not permitted, he tells Alyosha, one is responsible only for one's actions but not for one's wishes. Of course, the Sermon on the Mount says one is responsible for one's wishes, and, when old Karamazov is murdered, Ivan, in spite of all his theories, comes to feel guilty for having desired his father's death. In tracing the dynamics of Ivan's guilt, Dostoyevsky in effect provides a psychological justification for Christian teaching. Evil happens not just because of a few criminals but because of a moral climate in which all people participate by harbouring evil wishes. Therefore, as Father Zosima teaches, “everyone is responsible for everyone and for everything.”
The novel is most famous for three chapters that may be ranked among the greatest pages of Western literature. In “Rebellion,” Ivan indicts God the Father for creating a world in which children suffer. Ivan has also written a “poem,” "The Grand Inquisitor," which represents his response to God the Son. It tells the story of Christ's brief return to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Recognizing him, the Inquisitor arrests him as “the worst of heretics” because, the Inquisitor explains, the church has rejected Christ. For Christ came to make people free (free will), but, the Inquisitor insists, people do not want to be free, no matter what they say. They want security and certainty rather than free choice, which leads them to error and guilt. And so, to ensure happiness, the church has created a society based on “miracle, mystery, and authority.” The Inquisitor is evidently meant to stand not only for medieval Roman Catholicism but also for contemporary socialism. “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor” contain what many have considered the strongest arguments ever formulated against God, which Dostoyevsky includes so that, in refuting them, he can truly defend Christianity. It is one of the greatest paradoxes of Dostoyevsky's work that his deeply Christian novel more than gives the Devil his due.
In the work's other most famous chapter, Ivan, now going mad, is visited by the Devil (Satan), who talks philosophy with him. Quite strikingly, this Devil is neither grand nor satanic but petty and vulgar, as if to symbolize the ordinariness and banality of evil. He also keeps up with all the latest beliefs of the intelligentsia on earth, which leads, in remarkably humorous passages, to the Devil's defense of materialism and agnosticism. The image of the “petty demon” has had immense influence on 20th-century thought and literature.
In 1880 Dostoyevsky delivered an electrifying speech about the poet Aleksandr Pushkin (Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeyevich), which he published in a separate issue of The Diary of a Writer (August 1880). After finishing Karamazov, he resumed the monthly Diary but lived to publish only a single issue (January 1881) before dying of a hemorrhage on January 28 in St. Petersburg.
Assessment
Dostoyevsky's name has become synonymous with psychological profundity. For generations, the depth and contradictoriness of his heroes have made systematic psychological theories look shallow by comparison. Many theorists (most notably Freud) have tried to claim Dostoyevsky as a predecessor. His sense of evil and his love of freedom have made Dostoyevsky especially relevant to a century of world war, mass murder, and totalitarianism. At least two modern literary genres, the prison camp novel and the dystopian novel (works such as Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four), derive from his writings. His ideas and formal innovations exercised a profound influence on Friedrich Nietzsche, André Gide, Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, and Mikhail Bulgakov, to name only a few. Above all, his works continue to enthrall readers by combining suspenseful plots with ultimate questions about faith, suffering, and the meaning of life.
Gary Saul Morson
Additional Reading
Biography
The superior biography of Dostoyevsky (in any language) is the still incomplete multivolume study by Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821–1849 (1976), Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 (1983), Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865 (1986), and Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871 (1995); these volumes also offer excellent portraits of the Russian intellectual milieu and illuminating readings of Dostoyevsky's works. Another good biography is Leonid Grossman, Dostoevsky (1974; originally published in Russian, 2nd ed., 1965). Jessie Coulson, Dostoevsky: A Self-Portrait (1962, reprinted 1975), creates a biography out of Dostoyevsky's letters. One may also consult the diary of Dostoyevsky's mistress, Suslova, mentioned above; and the reminiscences of his second wife, Anna Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences (1975; originally published in Russian, 2nd ed., 1971).