Diving Deep into the Disturbed Mind of Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Final Prologue
I began my blog by talking about the power of perspective; how everything we learn from history, literature, art, and science can add something to our ongoing, living, breathing narrative.
With our assortment of lenses, we traveled back into time and took a look at Prussia, we journeyed through space and talked about how awesome chess and service dogs are and we analyzed one of my favorite subjects in the world…Classical Russian Literature.
I hope that you have enjoyed the journey and I hope you have taken something from the experience. At the very least, I hope that you will continue to use these tools and encourage yourself to think and learn in weird and interesting ways, because, ultimately, that is how we truly enjoy and experience life.
It’s boring to be “normal” by watching football and reality television that is just basically rotting your brain. Watch a documentary. Try something new. You should be learning something new about the world, about yourself or about life every day or -no offense- you are doing something very wrong.
Now take my hand as we dive into one final location. Let us dig deep and burrow into the psyche of one of Mankind’s most brilliant (if not disturbed) writers.
A Painful Philosophy Poetically Processed by Prose
Dostoevsky was the child of an upper-middle-class family. Although they weren’t rich, he had enough to be better educated than most of his peers. Due to his father being a doctor that worked in a hospital, Fyodor was exposed to the brutal reality of pain and suffering very early in his youth.
With a sharp brain and determination, Dostoevsky originally went to college to become an engineer. Although smart enough and capable enough to continue his path to being a “working-class man” like his father, Dostoevsky wasn’t content with his job.
Most of all, the driving force behind Dostoevsky was the brutal experience he endured as a young man in a Siberian worker camp (think of a prototype for the future concentration camps) for political dissidents. He would be haunted for the rest of his life by that dark period of his life.
After that painful experience, he finally decided, already a middle-aged man, to finally pursue his passion and write all of his famous novels. He had the heart of a writer, he was cast under the spell of prose and he was swayed by the lingering, gentle sounds and images only a soulful poem can bring to life.
Here is a short but sweet education video by the School of Life that captures the major highlights of his life and his major works (and the philosophy behind his individual stories): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMmSdxZpseY
While you are checking stuff out, I found a great blog post right here on Medium that talks about Dostoevsky as well: https://medium.com/@spencerbaum/the-ethics-of-social-reform-in-crime-and-punishment-fab749e6c98a
I think that the writer of this blog post, Spencer Baum, summarizes the brilliance of Fyodor’s writing best when he points out how Dostoevsky focuses on providing the “practical perspective” on philosophical and moral quandaries we all wrestle with such as theft, murder and committing a crime (Crime and Punishment really focuses on this idea but Brothers Karamozov, my personal favorite book of Dostoevsky’s, always touches on this ideas).
At the end of the day, Crime and Punishment was the first real “adult” book I read. I remember reading it in Middle School and being blown away by this whole other world.
I loved how textured and how detailed his world was and how I felt absorbed by the swirling array of different scenes, people and emotions. His world was so brutal and yet captivating.
I guess I am biased because, for me, it was the first real step toward leaving the precipice of adolescence and becoming an adult. I learned so much from his books, intrinsic, hard to articulate thoughts and philosophical quandaries but my brain still absorbed them nonetheless.
It was the first time I truly fell in love with a book and I guess that dark, bittersweet taste got me hooked from the start.
No matter where life takes me and no matter what profession I may do, I will always think of the following quote by another Classical Russian Literature giant, Anton Checkov:
Ultimately, we should end this blog with a wise quote by the man himself and I think this summarizes a lot of truisms we can find in average day life:
Thanks for tagging along with me on this weird, quirky but strangely insightful journey!
My parting words to you are: Never stop yelling into the void. It is only when you grow silent and give up that you have finally been defeated.
