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Dostoevsky: A Superlative Writer 1/15/2018 5:40:21 AM
I've been listening to audiobooks of Dostovesky's early, shorter works "The Double" and "Poor People". I've listened to each one at least twice. I'll start "The Gambler", which is not so early, in the next day or two.
These novellas are all new territory for me. I've read Dostoevsky's five major novels with interest and admiration, though not always with enjoyment for at times the tone of his writing has lowered my spirits by several degrees. Perhaps that's true for other readers as well.
Anyhow, these shorter pieces have brought me unexpected insights into his work:
1. For attention to detail, for sensitive perceptions of his characters' inner lives, for ability to shape a story, he was a master at the start of his literary career -- a superlative writer. (He himself thought "The Double" was a failure. On second hearing, I came to disagree. It's the story of a man's increasing descent into mental instability. The story worked well for me once I understood the direction it was taking.)
While reading his major novels, I occasionally thought of D. as a man with a mission and a message. That may have been true, but writing fiction for its own sake appears to have been at the center of his life. He took up a vocation that he must have known at the start would turn out well for him and be of incalculable benefit to many readers.
2. "Poor People" is very good for a beginner. D. avoided the temptation to draw stock characters and stir up sympathy for them. It's the story of a romance that doesn't develop. The main male character exchanges letters with a younger woman, a distant cousin. They use the language of love in their correspondence, yet Makhar, the male, treats his love interest with superiority and condescension, while Varvara finds reasons to scold him for misbehavior at his work and during his free time.
Lack of money is a persistent problem that they never resolve satisfactorally. In fact, to spoil the story, necessity prompts her to leave him for a well-heeled man when she gets the chance.
3. You can put in a thimble what I know about D.'s biography, so I looked him up on Wikipedia and was surprised to learn that he came from an aristorcratic background; his parents were members of the lower Russian nobility. Why, then, didn't he uphold the ideals of the aristocracy? Why did he cultivate a rapport with struggling people?
I got part of the answer when I learned that his father was a doctor who worked with destitute people, some of whom D. got to know when he was young.
Moreover, D.'s choices have something to do with the temperament of an artist. He didn't write according to a formula or follow popular tastes but created stories that were true for him and so were original and would evoke response from, others. What's more, many artists are open to the troubles that afflict the human race and sensitive to feelings that heavy burdens arouse, as well as the dodges people devise to avoid dealing with their problems.
I've read that he took more than a hint from Dickens, who had a grasp of the whole society he lived in and didn't neglect the fate of the poor, as in the case of Jo, the streetsweeeper in "Bleak House".
Along with other merits, D. was a liberator who freed others to explore the environments that surrounded them with sensitivity and a spirit of criticism.
4. D. Published the two works I've become familiar with in 1846, when he was about 25. In 1849, he was sentenced to death because he belonged to a literary association whose members talked about books that had been banned for being critical of the czarist regime. D's life was spared. He spent four years as a prisoner in Siberia and then endured six years of forced military service. He published nothing for ten years. "The Insulted and Injured", another work said to be influenced by Dickens, came out in 1861, and began the stream of novels and shorter pieces (his work has been translated into 170 languages) that readers around the world have come to revere.
