Unraveling Dostoevsky: Finding a Common Thread Among the Author’s Life and Writing

Order from chaos. Sense from obscurity. Hope from suffering. The greatness of the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky of the 19th century continues to elude those who would otherwise criticize the famed author for possessing a “faulty psychology” and a “diseased mind.”1 Indeed, the core of Dostoevsky’s confidence ran in direct opposition to the thriving popularity in certain destructive ideologies of his day. Nietzscheism in particular was a budding system, in which the origin of good and evil was displaced, and the existence of heaven was entirely discounted. But the eye that does not look above hasn’t the ability to see rightly below.

Dostoevsky’s unconformity to such a worldview is certainly the basis for the widespread depreciation of some of his more compositional approaches. Vladamir Nabakov in the 20th century disparaged the worlds of Dostoevsky as “created too hastily without any sense of that harmony and economy which the most irrational masterpiece is bound to comply with.”2 This lack of organization and coherency is further evidenced by the copious amount of commentaries in his diaries, letters to family and friends, journal articles, and notebooks. For the contemporary scholar, it would appear that the acclaimed novelist had no compass guiding his disorderly mind. Yet these very letters and diaries offer insight into the author’s life and clues into the import of his thinking. Furthermore when we see that his fiction reflects similar themes from his life, we may be able to begin to piece together the puzzle of this man’s bewildering intellect. There can, in fact, be found a unifying philosophy behind the mind of Dostoevsky and his search for truth. 

We might begin to notice the writer’s disorganization by his notes. In preparation for his novels, he would write by hand a profusion of sporadic notes on any blank corner of paper available to him – in notebooks, loose pieces of folded or creased paper, on book margins, and even on envelopes. These were far from neat arrangements of linear text. 

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The image is a page of notes for the fifth chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, his last novel, and probably written sometime in 1879. It is a maze-like clutter of text, very chaotic and disorganized. Even if you could read the Russian, there are no clear indications of how the various texts connect. The notes are scattered across the page, the text facing different directions, and some are circled or crossed over. On top of this, Dostoevsky tended to sketch pictures throughout his notebooks. A drawing of a gothic steeple is depicted in the top left corner of this page. It makes one wonder how these could conceivably become part of the linear text we find in his novels.

Throughout his life, Dostoevsky also composed many letters, diaries and journals, many of which contain harrowing accounts of his turbulent world. His letters for instance address a host of various life experiences spanning from his childhood to his death, and contain perplexing assessments of the Russian society in which he lived. Between 1876 and 1881, Dostoevsky published his own journal called A Writer’s Diary, a series of wide-ranging and disjointed topical meditations, including several pieces of fiction. The following image shows one of Dostoevsky’s letters, written in 1863, although it is unknown to whom the author wrote.

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As mystifying as the papers of Dostoevsky seem to be, a proper methodical approach will aid the scholar in deciphering the rhyme or reason behind his writings. When we are able to find adequate translations of the text, it is possible to identify recurring themes. The author’s letters for instance provide not only personal records of his hardships and circumstances but extensive musings over philosophical and religious themes. In detecting the overarching ideas surrounding the author’s work, it is also helpful to incorporate one or more of his novels. Writing in the form of narrative fiction was one of the most effective means of illustrating his positions when other methods fell short. 

We find these unifying themes in all of the author’s work to be the purifying effect of suffering, the destructiveness of evil, and love as essential to unity and salvation. The author’s main point of focus was what constituted the Russian soul.

Dostoevsky’s life was in no way free of troubles, as he endured much suffering and pain, both physically and psychologically. Through the letters that are available to us, we know that Dostoevsky was very open to his friends and family about personal matters, beliefs, and struggles. These correspondences relate the death of his parents, his education, his military experience, his imprisonment and exile, his declining health, his gambling addiction, and much more. In one of the most trying periods of his life, Dostoevsky was imprisoned, accused of participating in a radical intellectual discussion group called the Petrashevsky Circle. In 1849 he was even sentenced to death, and the time of execution is recorded in a letter that he wrote to his brother Michael:

To-day, the 22nd of December, we were all taken to Semjonovsky Square. There the death-sentence was read to us, we were given the Cross to kiss, the dagger was broken over our heads, and our funeral toilet (white shirts) was made. Then three of us were put standing before the palisades for the execution of the death-sentence… Finally, retreat was sounded, those who were bound to the palisades were brought back, and it was read to us that His Imperial Majesty granted us our lives…5

Though he was granted his life at the last moment, Fyodor was thereafter sent to serve at a Siberian labor camp for four years. Such circumstances may have accounted in part for the author’s disordered style. Being falsely accused and spending such time in exile could only leave a damaging mark on one’s psyche. Yet this damage did not prevent Dostoevsky from his spiritual rationale, and in fact it may have strengthened it.

Related to this theme of suffering is Dostoevsky’s notion of evil. He knew the evil of society as few others did. In another letter to his brother from prison on February 22, 1854, Dosteovsky remarks:

What a number of national types and characters I became familiar with in the prison! I lived into their lives, and so I believe I know them really well. Many tramps’ and thieves’ careers were laid bare to me, and, above all, the whole wretched existence of the common people. Decidedly I have not spent my time there in vain. I have learnt to know the Russian people as only a few know them.6

Throughout the 1800s Russia was in a time of reform and reaction to former institutions of government and their values. While many of the youth were fleeing to Europe and adopting its ideologies, abandoning their own people, Dostoevsky considered himself a Slavophile and upheld early Russian orthodoxy. The worst evil for the author was not in individual sins but in severing oneself from this society. In a letter on April 18, 1878 to a group of Moscow Students, he warns the younger generation:

When one of our students thus abjures society, he does not go to the people, but to a nebulous “abroad”; he flees to Europeanism, to the abstract realm of fantastic “Universal Man,” thus severing all the bonds which still connect him with the people: he scorns the people and misjudges them, like a true child of that society with which he likewise has broken. And yet – with the people lies our whole salvation…7

He saw European ideology of his time as embodying this evil. Again, on December 19, 1880 he writes to a doctor the same conclusion: “I hold all evil to be grounded upon disbelief, and maintain that he who abjures nationalism, abjures faith also. That applies especially to Russia…”8 Unfortunately, just after Fyodor’s death, a group known as the People’s Will assassinated the Russian Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky’s own town (as depicted in the image below). This was the sort of revolutionary spirit against which the author fought throughout his whole career.

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In the words of Miriam Taylor Šajković, “Dostoevsky was convinced that in negating Christ and Christian ideals, contemporary civilization was in a confusion of thought and action, and held in the vise of the dialectic of power, a will to power, which was leading man to unmitigated arrogance, irresponsibility, despair, and even suicide.”10

This view of evil is important as we return to the page of notes referred to earlier on the fifth chapter of The Brothers Karamazov. While there is no working translation of this draft, we can deduce from the chapter of the book itself the bulk of its contents. In Book V, Chapter 5, Ivan Karamazov is chatting with his younger brother Alyosha about a poem that he created called “The Grand Inquisitor.” In his poem, Jesus appears in Spain during the time of the Inquisition. A Grand Inquisitor questions Jesus on how it is that he promised the world freedom, but then abandoned them to their own devices. The world in turn rejected Christ and lost faith in him. Still, the Grand Inquisitor recognized the greatest need of mankind: “The care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something before which I or some other man can bow down, but to find something that everyone else will also believe in and bow down to for it must needs be all together… The need for universal union is the third and last torment of men.”11 This section of text and its rich theme would have been reflected on Dostoevsky’s rather convoluted page of notes.

Dostoevsky’s solution to the problems of evil and suffering, and the third theme to be discovered, is a universal love displayed by the common folk. It was during his time of imprisonment that Dostoevsky developed a quasi-Christian idealism, rooted in the bond of love in all of society. Near the end of his life at the Alexander Pushkin memorial celebrations in Moscow, he made a monumental address in honor of the great poet which moved the heart of the audience in Moscow like nothing had before. The following segments, later published in A Writer’s Diary, are an adequate summary of the whole: “To become a true Russian, to become a Russian fully, means only to become the brother of all men, to become, if you will, a universal man”; and again, 

to be a true Russian does indeed mean to aspire finally to reconcile the contradictions of Europe, to show the end of European yearning in our Russian soul, omni-human and all-uniting, to include within our soul by brotherly love all our brethren, and at last, it may be, to pronounce the final Word of the great general harmony, of the final brotherly communion of all nations…12 

Dostoevsky believed that even in the midst of evil and suffering there was hope in the Russian people as long as they lay aside their individualism and pride and show love to all. This was his idea of salvation, and the unifying compass of all of Dostoevsky’s work. It is that which gives his novels their greatest appeal, despite their dense and seemingly erratic composition. Readers of his often bewildering novels will better understand their characters, context, and philosophy when they have a grasp of this central design. Furthermore, for those studying the novels of Dostoevsky, examining the author’s life will be of great benefit, since a study of the author enriches our understanding of the work. And inversely, the thoughts and actions in a story reveal the mind of the writer. 

A final thought must be made before concluding this essay. Dostoevsky’s quasi-Christian convictions fall short of the real truth; and a slight distortion can bring as much damage as a total subversion. For it is not universal love that brings salvation. Salvation from sin and evil, and from God’s wrath, comes only by faith in Jesus Christ. Nor are all people destined to be saved. Clarity in this message would have served the Russian people far better, and a blessing upon any church of Christ in that land that accurately proclaimed it. This is not, however, to discount the work of the great author. Myriads of benefits can be had, and nuggets of truth can be mined, in reading him. As long as doing so may get us a little closer to the truth and bring glory to Christ.  

This is all to say that there was a driving force behind his work, an overarching theme of resistance against a greater evil set in by the philosophies of the age. It simply takes time to see it. Let the reader and fellow scholars not be discouraged by the great perplexity that may face them in their research when they approach a subject like the great Fyodor Dostoevsky.

1. Terras, Victor. “Dostoevsky’s Detractors.” Dostoevsky Studies, University of Toronto, vol. 6, 1985. http://sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/06/165.shtml
2. Nabakov, Vladamir. “Nabokov on Dostoevsky.” The New York Times Magazine, August 23, 1981, Section 6, Page 35. Excerpted from ''Lectures on Russian Literature,'' by Vladimir Nabokov. Nytimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dostoyevsky.html
3. Notes for the 5th Chapter of The Brothers Karamazov. www.fyodordostoevsky.com/images/pics/large5th.jpg 
4. Dostoevsky, F.M. “Letter by the Russian Novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky [Dostoevsky] to an Unknown Addressee; Dated in St Petersburg, 5th December 1863.” The University of Manchester Library, 29 July 2014. https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/Manchester~91~1~424642~189652:Page-of-letter?qvq=q:Letter%20from%20F.%20Dostoyevsky&mi=1&trs=3#
5. ---. Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family & Friends, Tr. by Ethel Colburn Mayne, London: Chatto & Windus, 1914. Hathitrust, 2020, p. 79. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000687551&view=1up&seq=34
6. iBid. 91-92.
7. iBid. 279.
8. iBid. 301-02.
9. The Assassination Attempt on the Emperor Alexander II in St. Petersburg, after a drawing by G. Broling in Illustrirte Zeitung, Leipzig, vol. 76, 1881, p. 262. https://www.dhm.de/lemo/bestand/objekt/zb20_1881_1_262 
10. Šajković, Miriam Taylor. F. M. Dostoevsky: His Image of Man, HathiTrust, 2017. babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002160169.
11. Dostoevsky, F.M. The Brothers Karamazov, Tr. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, New York, North Point Press, 1990. 245, 257.
12. ---. Pages from the Journal of an Author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Tr. by S.S. Koteliansky and John Middleton Murry, Dublin and London, Maunsel and co., ltd., 1916, pp. 66-67. Archive.org, 2008, https://archive.org/details/pagesfromjourna00murrgoog/page/n63/mode/2up

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