Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is a Russian novelist with Ukrainian roots and, along with Tolstoy, the greatest representative of Russian realism. He remained known as a publicist and novelist and one of the most significant writers that ever existed.
He is thought to have had a major influence on literature in the world, and few recent writers have been able to resist this, most notably in movements such as existentialism and expressionism.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821 in Moscow to the father of a doctor Mikhail, who was born in Ukraine, and his mother Maria Fedorovna, a cheerful woman who loved poetry but unfortunately died in 1837 of a drought.
Michael was a representative of the lower nobility and is presumed to have been killed for financial reasons by powerful people who knew him. They are believed to have taken advantage of his alcohol addiction and wanted to portray everything as suicide. Fyodor was strongly connected with his father, and after his death he experienced epilepsy for the first time.
He had a hard life, and in addition to the poverty he struggled with on a daily basis, he suffered from epilepsy and still had to face the death penalty in one of the worst prisons in Siberia. As if all this was not enough, Fyodor also had to face the death of his closest family members.
Wanting to please his father when he was only sixteen, he enrolled in a military academy, after which he attended an engineering academy. Despite joining the army and the need to study engineering, Fyodor already felt that great love and future profession lay in writing.
He began with a translation of Balzac's work "Eugenia Grandet", and at the beginning of his work he imitated Gogol's way of writing and realism, so he advocated advanced divisions in society, as evidenced by the novel "Poor People".
At that time, he approached the utopian socialists led by Petraševski. From the mentioned period, the novel "Dvojnik" should be singled out, in which he shows the disintegration of Goliathkin's personality, who falls into schizophrenia, and as a result of all that, reality and imagination begin to intertwine.
Participation in Petrashevsky's socialist circle played a major role in his life, for which he was sentenced to death in 1849, after which he was pardoned and exiled to Siberia for ten years.
Returning from prison, which he described in his work "Records from the Dead Home", he condemned and abandoned revolutionary thinking, the novel "Demons" and embarked on the path of mysticism, seeking a way out in Orthodoxy and standing by the emperor and Slavism.
Despite returning from prison and a fresh start, Fyodor had a number of private problems, so he got into financial trouble due to gambling debts and to escape from creditors he went on a trip to Europe, visiting countries like Italy, England, Germany and France.
The difficult financial situation affected his work, which could be seen in the work "Humiliated and Offended", which lags behind many of his works.
The most famous works are the novels: "Humiliated and Insulted", "Crime and Punishment", "Rages", "Young Man", "Idiot" and "Brothers Karamazov", his last and most famous work, which is left unfinished. There are also short stories: "Double", "White Nights",
"Netočka Nezvanova" (unfinished) and "Zapisi iz podzemlja".
He died February 9, 1881, of an epileptic seizure.