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100-401: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky , was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature , as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Dostoevsky's literary works explore

200-528: A katorga prison camp in Omsk , Siberia, followed by a term of compulsory military service. After a fourteen-day sleigh ride, the prisoners reached Tobolsk , a prisoner way station. Despite the circumstances, Dostoevsky consoled the other prisoners, such as the Petrashevist Ivan Yastrzhembsky, who was surprised by Dostoevsky's kindness and eventually abandoned his decision to kill himself. In Tobolsk,

300-601: A collection of essays, but funds were lacking, and the Diary was published in Vladimir Meshchersky 's The Citizen , beginning on 1 January, in return for a salary of 3,000 rubles per year. In the summer of 1873, Anna returned to Staraya Russa with the children, while Dostoevsky stayed in St Petersburg to continue with his Diary . In March 1874, Dostoevsky left The Citizen because of the stressful work and interference from

400-495: A dropped pen holder. After another haemorrhage, Anna called the doctors, who gave a poor prognosis. A third haemorrhage followed shortly afterwards. While seeing his children before dying, Dostoevsky requested that the parable of the Prodigal Son be read to his children. The profound meaning of this request is pointed out by Joseph Frank : It was this parable of transgression, repentance, and forgiveness that he wished to leave as

500-466: A final visit to a gambling hall in Wiesbaden. Anna claimed that he stopped gambling after the birth of their second daughter, but this is a subject of debate. After hearing news that the socialist revolutionary group "People's Vengeance" had murdered one of its own members, Ivan Ivanov, on 21 November 1869, Dostoevsky began writing Demons . In 1871, Dostoevsky and Anna travelled by train to Berlin. During

600-508: A fresh independent publication—impartial, freestanding, sustainable, and not subservient to any authority. At the same time, it would appeal to common people and inspire the study of their lives and life principles. Mikhail Dostoevsky was convinced that all flaws in Russian society had come from "apathetic" cosmopolitanism . Vremya became one of the most popular magazines in the early 1860s with approximately 4000 subscribers. Officially Mikhail

700-464: A job as a lieutenant engineer and lived with Adolph Totleben in an apartment owned by Dr. Rizenkampf, a friend of Mikhail. Rizenkampf characterised him as "no less good-natured and no less courteous than his brother, but when not in a good mood he often looked at everything through dark glasses, became vexed, forgot good manners, and sometimes was carried away to the point of abusiveness and loss of self-awareness". Dostoevsky's first completed literary work,

800-733: A journal, but "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo" were not published until 1860. Notes from the House of the Dead was released in Russky Mir (Russian World) in September 1860. Humiliated and Insulted was published in the new Vremya magazine, which had been created with the help of funds from his brother's cigarette factory. Dostoevsky travelled to western Europe for the first time on 7 June 1862, visiting Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, Wiesbaden, Belgium, and Paris. In London, he met Herzen and visited

900-674: A last heritage to his children, and it may well be seen as his own ultimate understanding of the meaning of his life and the message of his work. Among Dostoevsky's last words was his quotation of Matthew 3:14–15 : "But John forbad him, saying, I have a need to be baptised of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness", and he finished with "Hear now—permit it. Do not restrain me!". His last words to his wife Anna were: "Remember, Anya, I have always loved you passionately and have never been unfaithful to you ever, even in my thoughts!" When he died, his body

1000-465: A lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk , which gained him entry into Saint Petersburg 's literary circles. However, he was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle , that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia . Dostoevsky was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at

1100-530: A letter asking to resign his post. Shortly thereafter, he wrote his second novel, The Double , which appeared in the journal Notes of the Fatherland on 30 January 1846, before being published in February. Around the same time, Dostoevsky discovered socialism through the writings of French thinkers Fourier , Cabet , Proudhon and Saint-Simon . Through his relationship with Belinsky he expanded his knowledge of

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1200-550: A letter from the Tsar commuting the sentence. Dostoevsky later described the experience of what he believed to be the last moments of his life in his novel The Idiot . The story of a young man sentenced to death by firing squad but reprieved at the last moment is recounted by the main character, Prince Myshkin, who describes the experience from the point of view of the victim, and considers the philosophical and spiritual implications. Dostoevsky served four years of exile with hard labour at

1300-536: A liver ailment, Mikhail collapsed after hearing that an important article was rejected by the censorship. Three days later, at the age of 43, he died. Fyodor Dostoevsky recalled his brother as a persistent, hard-working and energetic man, "a connoisseur of European languages and literature", and a harsh critic of his own writing. According to Fyodor, Mikhail did not consider himself an accomplished writer, and for that reason he stopped writing fiction and concentrated on publishing activities. They were close friends. In

1400-466: A local prince, his progeny then taking the name "Dostoevsky" based on a village there called Dostojewo  [ pl ] (derived from Old Polish dostojnik – dignitary). Dostoevsky's immediate ancestors on his mother's side were merchants; the male line on his father's side were priests. In 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoevsky enrolled in Moscow's Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there he

1500-531: A new "expanded edition" in 1995 with non-Western selections. Major survey anthologies today, including those published by Longman, Bedford and Norton, showcase several hundred authors from dozens of countries. The explosive growth in the range of cultures studied under the rubric of world literature has inspired a variety of theoretical attempts to define the field and to propose effective modes of research and teaching. In his 2003 book What Is World Literature? David Damrosch understands world literature to be less of

1600-406: A new Institute for World Literature, offering month-long summer sessions on theory and pedagogy, had its inaugural session at Peking University in 2011, with its next sessions at Istanbul Bilgi University in 2012 and at Harvard University in 2013. Since the middle of the first decade of the new century, a steady stream of works has provided materials for the study of the history of world literature and

1700-505: A nine-year-old girl had been raped by a drunk, he was asked to fetch his father to attend to her. The incident haunted him, and the theme of the desire of a mature man for a young girl appears in The Devils , The Brothers Karamazov , Crime and Punishment , and other writings. An incident involving a family servant, or serf , in the estate in Darovoye, is described in " The Peasant Marey ": when

1800-473: A particularly scathing one from Belinsky) Dostoevsky's health declined and his seizures became more frequent, but he continued writing. From 1846 to 1848 he published several short stories in the magazine Notes of the Fatherland , including " Mr. Prokharchin ", " The Landlady ", "A Weak Heart", and " White Nights ". The negative reception of these stories, combined with his health problems and Belinsky's attacks, caused him distress and financial difficulty, but this

1900-595: A position to buy the vacated land. The serfs were acquitted in a trial in Tula , but Dostoevsky's brother Mikhail perpetuated the story. After his father's death, Dostoevsky continued his studies, passed his exams and obtained the rank of engineer cadet, entitling him to live away from the academy. He visited Mikhail in Reval (Tallinn) and frequently attended concerts, operas, plays and ballets. During this time, two of his friends introduced him to gambling. On 12 August 1843 Dostoevsky took

2000-604: A process of trade and exchange, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the term in their Communist Manifesto (1848) to describe the "cosmopolitan character" of bourgeois literary production, asserting that: In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climates. ... And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from

2100-400: A quarrel with Turgenev and again lost much money at the roulette table. At one point, his wife was reportedly forced to pawn her underwear. The couple travelled on to Geneva . In September 1867, Dostoevsky began work on The Idiot , and after a prolonged planning process that bore little resemblance to the published novel, he eventually managed to write the first 100 pages in only 23 days;

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2200-680: A result, he obtained the right to publish books and to marry, although he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. Maria married Dostoevsky in Kuznetsk on 7 February 1857, even though she had initially refused his marriage proposal, stating that they were not meant for each other and that his poor financial situation precluded marriage. Their family life was unhappy and she found it difficult to cope with his seizures. Describing their relationship, he wrote: "Because of her strange, suspicious and fantastic character, we were definitely not happy together, but we could not stop loving each other; and

2300-420: A short but intimate affair, which peaked in the winter of 1862–1863. Suslova's dalliance with a Spaniard in late spring and Dostoevsky's gambling addiction and age ended their relationship. He later described her in a letter to Nadezhda Suslova as a "great egoist. Her egoism and her vanity are colossal. She demands everything of other people, all the perfections, and does not pardon the slightest imperfection in

2400-440: A short novel focused on gambling addiction, by November, although he had not yet begun writing it. One of Dostoevsky's friends, Milyukov, advised him to hire a secretary. Dostoevsky contacted stenographer Pavel Olkhin from Saint Petersburg, who recommended his pupil, the twenty-year-old Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina . Her shorthand helped Dostoevsky to complete The Gambler on 30 October, after 26 days' work. She remarked that Dostoevsky

2500-510: A speech. He was appointed an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , from which he received an honorary certificate in February 1879. He declined an invitation to an international congress on copyright in Paris after his son Alyosha had a severe epileptic seizure and died on 16 May. The family later moved to the apartment where Dostoevsky had written his first works. Around this time, he

2600-399: A strong sense of justice, protected newcomers, aligned himself with teachers, criticised corruption among officers, and helped poor farmers. Although he was solitary and inhabited his own literary world, he was respected by his classmates. His reclusiveness and interest in religion earned him the nickname "Monk Photius ". Signs of Dostoevsky's epilepsy may have first appeared on learning of

2700-528: A time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. Dostoevsky's body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, and numerous other works. His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov , philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche , Albert Camus , and Jean-Paul Sartre , and

2800-495: A translation of Honoré de Balzac 's novel Eugénie Grandet , was published in June and July 1843 in the 6th and 7th volumes of the journal Repertoire and Pantheon , followed by several other translations. None were successful, and his financial difficulties led him to write a novel. Dostoevsky completed his first novel, Poor Folk , in May 1845. His friend Dmitry Grigorovich , with whom he

2900-486: A vast collection of works and more a matter of circulation and reception. He proposed that works that thrive as world literature are ones that work well and even gain meaning through translation. Whereas Damrosch's approach remains tied to the close reading of individual works, a different view was taken by the Stanford critic Franco Moretti in a pair of articles offering "Conjectures on World Literature". Moretti believes that

3000-512: A visit to Belikhov, Dostoevsky met the family of Alexander Ivanovich Isaev and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva and fell in love with the latter. Alexander Isaev took a new post in Kuznetsk , where he died in August 1855. Maria and her son then moved with Dostoevsky to Barnaul . In 1856, Dostoevsky sent a letter through Wrangel to General Eduard Totleben , apologising for his activity in several utopian circles. As

3100-411: A work considered world literature is its circulation beyond its country of origin. For example, David Damrosch states, "A work enters into world literature by a double process: first, by being read as literature; second, by circulating out into a broader world beyond its linguistic and cultural point of origin". Likewise, the world literature scholar Venkat Mani believes that the "worlding" of literature

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3200-447: Is brought about by " information transfer " largely generated by developments in print culture. Because of the advent of the library, "Publishers and booksellers who print and sell affordable books, literate citizens who acquire these books, and public libraries that make these books available to those who cannot afford to buy them collectively play a very important role in the "making" of world literature". Johann Wolfgang Goethe used

3300-435: Is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and hundreds of men. ... I therefore like to look about me in foreign nations, and advise everyone to do the same. National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach. Reflecting a fundamentally economic understanding of world literature as

3400-486: Is the work of French critic Pascale Casanova, La République mondiale des lettres (1999). Drawing on the theories of cultural production developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Casanova explores the ways in which the works of peripheral writers must circulate into metropolitan centers in order to achieve recognition as being world literature. The field of world literature continues to generate debate, with critics such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak arguing that too often

3500-520: Is written for a global audience. In the postwar era, the study of comparative and world literature was revived in the United States. Comparative literature was seen at the graduate level while world literature was taught as a first-year general education class. The focus remained largely on the Greek and Roman classics and the literature of major, modern Western-European powers, but a combination of factors in

3600-550: The Crystal Palace . He travelled with Nikolay Strakhov through Switzerland and several North Italian cities, including Turin, Livorno, and Florence. He recorded his impressions of those trips in the essay " Winter Notes on Summer Impressions ", in which he also criticised capitalism, social modernisation , materialism , Catholicism and Protestantism. Dostoevsky viewed the Crystal Palace as a monument to soulless modern society,

3700-420: The human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia , and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Adolescent (1875), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of

3800-610: The Dead , based on his experience in prison, was published in 1861 in the journal Vremya ("Time") – it was the first published novel about Russian prisons. Before moving in mid-March to Semipalatinsk , where he was forced to serve in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion, Dostoevsky met geographer Pyotr Semyonov and ethnographer Shokan Walikhanuli . Around November 1854, he met Baron Alexander Egorovich Wrangel, an admirer of his books, who had attended

3900-591: The Fatherland , but his banishment ended the project leaving only what was supposed to be the prologue of the novel. Dostoevsky never attempted to complete it leaving only a sketch of the novel behind. The members of the Petrashevsky Circle were denounced to Liprandi , an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Dostoevsky was accused of reading works by Belinsky, including the banned Letter to Gogol , and of circulating copies of these and other works. Antonelli,

4000-584: The Fatherland ; he would receive 250 rubles for each printer's sheet – 100 more than the text's publication in The Russian Messenger would have earned. Dostoevsky accepted. As his health began to decline, he consulted several doctors in St Petersburg and was advised to take a cure outside Russia. Around July, he reached Ems and consulted a physician, who diagnosed him with acute catarrh . During his stay he began The Adolescent . He returned to Saint Petersburg in late July. Anna proposed that they spend

4100-819: The New Testament: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit. Dostoevsky had his first known affair with Avdotya Panaeva , whom he met in the Ivan Panaev 's circle in the early 1840s. He described her as educated, interested in literature, and a femme fatale . He admitted later that he was uncertain about their relationship. According to Anna Dostoevskaya's memoirs, Dostoevsky once asked his sister's sister-in-law, Yelena Ivanova, whether she would marry him, hoping to replace her mortally ill husband after he died, but she rejected his proposal. Dostoevsky and Polina Suslova had

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4200-452: The Russian bureaucracy. In his fifteen months with The Citizen , he had been taken to court twice: on 11 June 1873 for citing the words of Prince Meshchersky without permission, and again on 23 March 1874. Dostoevsky offered to sell a new novel he had not yet begun to write to The Russian Messenger , but the magazine refused. Nikolay Nekrasov suggested that he publish A Writer's Diary in Notes of

4300-698: The aborted execution. They both rented houses in the Cossack Garden outside Semipalatinsk. Wrangel remarked that Dostoevsky "looked morose. His sickly, pale face was covered with freckles, and his blond hair was cut short. He was a little over average height and looked at me intensely with his sharp, grey-blue eyes. It was as if he were trying to look into my soul and discover what kind of man I was." In Semipalatinsk, Dostoevsky tutored several schoolchildren and came into contact with upper-class families, including that of Lieutenant-Colonel Belikhov, who used to invite him to read passages from newspapers and magazines. During

4400-456: The age of three, he had read heroic sagas, fairy tales and legends by his nanny, Alena Frolovna, an especially influential figure in his upbringing and his love for fictional stories. When he was four, his mother used the Bible to teach him to read and write. His parents introduced him to a wide range of literature, including Russian writers Karamzin , Pushkin and Derzhavin ; Gothic fiction such as

4500-702: The brothers Vsevolod and Vladimir Solovyov . Konstantin Pobedonostsev , future Imperial High Commissioner of the Most Holy Synod , influenced Dostoevsky's political progression to conservatism. Around early 1872 the family spent several months in Staraya Russa , a town known for its mineral spa . Dostoevsky's work was delayed when Anna's sister Maria Svatkovskaya died on 1 May 1872, from either typhus or malaria , and Anna developed an abscess on her throat. The family returned to St Petersburg in September. Demons

4600-423: The circle in 1848 and set about creating a secret revolutionary society from amongst its members. Dostoevsky himself became a member of this society, was aware of its conspiratorial aims, and actively participated, although he harboured significant doubts about their actions and intentions. In 1849, the first parts of Netochka Nezvanova , a novel Dostoevsky had been planning since 1846, were published in Notes of

4700-451: The concept of world literature in several of his essays in the early decades of the nineteenth century to describe the international circulation and reception of literary works in Europe, including works of non-Western origin. The concept achieved wide currency after his disciple Johann Peter Eckermann published a collection of conversations with Goethe in 1835. Goethe spoke with Eckermann about

4800-438: The current debates. Valuable collections of essays include: Individual studies include: Mikhail Dostoevsky Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ( Russian : Михаил Михайлович Достоевский ; 25 November 1820 – 22 July 1864) was a Russian short story writer, publisher, literary critic and the elder brother of Fyodor Dostoevsky . They were less than a year apart in age and spent their childhood together. Mikhail Dostoevsky

4900-431: The death of his father on 16 June 1839, although the reports of a seizure originated from accounts written by his daughter (later expanded by Sigmund Freud ) which are now considered to be unreliable. His father's official cause of death was an apoplectic stroke, but a neighbour, Pavel Khotiaintsev, accused the father's serfs of murder. Had the serfs been found guilty and sent to Siberia , Khotiaintsev would have been in

5000-604: The emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism . His books have been translated into more than 170 languages, and served as the inspiration for many films. Dostoevsky's paternal ancestors were part of a Russian noble family of Russian Orthodox Christians. The family traced its roots back to Danilo Irtishch , who was granted lands in the Pinsk region (for centuries part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , now in modern-day Belarus ) in 1509 for his services under

5100-505: The emotions of his listeners." The speech was criticised later by liberal political scientist Alexander Gradovsky, who thought that Dostoevsky idolised "the people", and by conservative thinker Konstantin Leontiev , who, in his essay "On Universal Love", compared the speech to French utopian socialism. The attacks led to a further deterioration in his health. On 6 February [ O.S. 25 January] 1881, while searching for members of

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5200-504: The excitement of reading Chinese novels and Persian and Serbian poetry as well as of his fascination with seeing how his own works were translated and discussed abroad, especially in France. He made a famous statement in January 1827, predicting that world literature would replace the national literature as the major mode of literary creativity in the future: I am more and more convinced that poetry

5300-548: The family bought a dacha in Staraya Russa. In the summer of 1876, Dostoevsky began experiencing shortness of breath again. He visited Ems for the third time and was told that he might live for another 15 years if he moved to a healthier climate. When he returned to Russia, Tsar Alexander II ordered Dostoevsky to visit his palace to present the Diary to him, and he asked him to educate his sons, Sergey and Paul. This visit further increased Dosteyevsky's circle of acquaintances. He

5400-499: The first works of existentialist literature. Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends , and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute . After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed

5500-503: The floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall ... We were packed like herrings in a barrel ... There was no room to turn around. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not to behave like pigs ... Fleas, lice, and black beetles by the bushel ... Classified as "one of the most dangerous convicts", Dostoevsky had his hands and feet shackled until his release. He was only permitted to read his New Testament Bible. In addition to his seizures, he had haemorrhoids , lost weight and

5600-659: The free Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute , forcing the brothers to abandon their academic studies for military careers. Dostoevsky entered the academy in January 1838, but only with the help of family members. Mikhail was refused admission on health grounds and was sent to an academy in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia). Dostoevsky disliked the academy, primarily because of his lack of interest in science, mathematics, and military engineering and his preference for drawing and architecture. As his friend Konstantin Trutovsky once said, "There

5700-422: The government agent who had reported the group, wrote in his statement that at least one of the papers criticised Russian politics and religion. Dostoevsky responded to these charges by declaring that he had read the essays only "as a literary monument, neither more nor less"; he spoke of "personality and human egoism" rather than of politics. Even so, he and his fellow "conspirators" were arrested on 23 April 1849 at

5800-402: The group was "the most innocent and harmless company" and its members were "systematic opponents of all revolutionary goals and means". Dostoevsky used the circle's library on Saturdays and Sundays and occasionally participated in their discussions on freedom from censorship and the abolition of serfdom . Bakunin's description, however, was not true of the aristocrat Nikolay Speshnev , who joined

5900-418: The last moment . He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary , a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction , which led to financial hardship. For

6000-464: The late 1980s and early 1990s led to greater access to the world. The end of the Cold War, the growing globalization of the world economy, and new waves of immigration led to several efforts to expand the study of world literature. This change is illustrated by the expansion of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces , whose first edition in 1956 featured only Western-European and North American works, to

6100-672: The life of Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate child of the landowner Versilov and a peasant mother. It deals primarily with the relationship between father and son, which became a frequent theme in Dostoevsky's subsequent works. In early 1876, Dostoevsky continued work on his Diary . The book includes numerous essays and a few short stories about society, religion, politics and ethics. The collection sold more than twice as many copies as his previous books. Dostoevsky received more letters from readers than ever before, and people of all ages and occupations visited him. With assistance from Anna's brother,

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6200-527: The light of other qualities that one may possess", and later stated "I still love her, but I do not want to love her any more. She doesn't deserve this love ..." In 1858 Dostoevsky had a romance with comic actress Aleksandra Ivanovna Schubert. Although she divorced Dostoevsky's friend Stepan Yanovsky , she would not live with him. Dostoevsky did not love her either, but they were probably good friends. She wrote that he "became very attracted to me". World literature Many scholars assert that what makes

6300-527: The magazine he had founded with Mikhail after the suppression of Vremya , worsened his financial situation, although the continued help of his relatives and friends averted bankruptcy. The first two parts of Crime and Punishment were published in January and February 1866 in the periodical The Russian Messenger , attracting at least 500 new subscribers to the magazine. Dostoevsky returned to Saint Petersburg in mid-September and promised his editor, Fyodor Stellovsky , that he would complete The Gambler ,

6400-534: The members received food and clothes from the Decembrist women, as well as several copies of the New Testament with a ten-ruble banknote inside each copy. Eleven days later, Dostoevsky reached Omsk together with just one other member of the Petrashevsky Circle, the writer Sergei Durov. Dostoevsky described his barracks: In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on

6500-422: The more unhappy we were, the more attached to each other we became". They mostly lived apart. In 1859 he was released from military service because of deteriorating health and was granted permission to return to European Russia, first to Tver , where he met his brother for the first time in ten years, and then to St Petersburg. The short story "A Little Hero" (Dostoevsky's only work completed in prison) appeared in

6600-565: The most influential texts of the twentieth century. While Marx and Engels followed Goethe in viewing world literature as a modern or future phenomenon, in 1886 the Irish scholar H. M. Posnett argued that world literature first arose in ancient empires, such as the Roman Empire, long before the rise of the modern national literature. Today, world literature is understood to encompass classical works from all periods, including contemporary literature that

6700-444: The myth of progress, and the worship of empty materialism. From August to October 1863, Dostoevsky made another trip to western Europe. He met his second love, Polina Suslova , in Paris and lost nearly all his money gambling in Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden. In 1864 his wife Maria and his brother Mikhail died, and Dostoevsky became the lone parent of his stepson Pasha and the sole supporter of his brother's family. The failure of Epoch ,

6800-449: The nobility and enabled him to acquire a small estate in Darovoye, a town about 150 km (100 miles) from Moscow, where the family usually spent the summers. Dostoevsky's parents subsequently had six more children: Varvara (1822–1892), Andrei (1825–1897), Lyubov (born and died 1829), Vera (1829–1896), Nikolai (1831–1883) and Aleksandra (1835–1889). Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on 11 November [ O.S. 30 October] 1821 in Moscow,

6900-470: The numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. Martin Puchner has stated that Goethe had a keen sense of world literature as driven by a new world market in literature. This market-based approach was sought by Marx and Engels in 1848 through their Manifesto document, which was published in four languages and distributed among several European countries, and has since become one of

7000-473: The philosophy of socialism. He was attracted to its logic, its sense of justice and its preoccupation with the destitute and the disadvantaged. However, his Russian Orthodox faith and religious sensibilities could not accord with Belinsky's admixture of atheism , utilitarianism and scientific materialism , leading to increasing friction between them. Dostoevsky eventually parted with him and his associates. After The Double received negative reviews (including

7100-637: The request of Count A. Orlov and Tsar Nicholas I , who feared a revolution like the Decembrist revolt of 1825 in Russia and the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The members were held in the well-defended Peter and Paul Fortress , which housed the most dangerous convicts. The case was discussed for four months by an investigative commission headed by the Tsar, with Adjutant General Ivan Nabokov , senator Prince Pavel Gagarin , Prince Vasili Dolgorukov , General Yakov Rostovtsev and General Leonty Dubelt, head of

7200-535: The scale of world literature exceeds what can be grasped by traditional methods of close reading, and advocates instead a mode of "distant reading" that would look at large-scale patterns as discerned from publication records and national literary histories. Moretti's approach combined elements of evolutionary theory with the world-systems analysis pioneered by Immanuel Wallerstein , an approach further discussed since then by Emily Apter in her influential book The Translation Zone . Related to their world-systems approach

7300-430: The school fees, his father borrowed money and extended his private medical practice. Dostoevsky felt out of place among his aristocratic classmates at the Moscow school, and the experience was later reflected in some of his works, notably The Adolescent . On 27 February 1837, Dostoevsky's mother died of tuberculosis . The previous May, his parents had sent Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail to Saint Petersburg to attend

7400-466: The secret police. They sentenced the members of the circle to death by firing squad, and the prisoners were taken to Semyonov Place in Saint Petersburg on 23 December 1849. They were split into three-man groups and the first group was taken in front of the firing squad. Dostoevsky was the third in the second row; next to him stood Pleshcheyev and Durov . The execution was stayed when a cart delivered

7500-631: The serialisation began in The Russian Messenger in January 1868. Their first child, Sofya, had been conceived in Baden-Baden , and was born in Geneva on 5 March 1868. The baby died of pneumonia three months later, and Anna recalled how Dostoevsky "wept and sobbed like a woman in despair". Sofya was buried at the Cimetière des Rois ( Cemetery of Kings ), which is considered the Genevan Panthéon . The grave

7600-553: The study of world literature in translation smooths out both the linguistic richness of the original and the political force a work can have in its original context. Other scholars, on the contrary, emphasize that world literature can and should be studied with close attention to original languages and contexts, even as works take on new dimensions and new meanings abroad. World literature series are now being published in China and in Estonia, and

7700-407: The terrorist organisation Narodnaya Volya ("The People's Will") who would soon assassinate Tsar Alexander II, the Tsar's secret police executed a search warrant in the apartment of one of Dostoevsky's neighbours. On the following day, Dostoevsky suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage . Anna denied that the search had caused it, saying that the haemorrhage had occurred after her husband had been looking for

7800-469: The trip, he burnt several manuscripts, including those of The Idiot , because he was concerned about potential problems with customs. The family arrived in Saint Petersburg on 8 July, marking the end of a honeymoon (originally planned for three months) that had lasted over four years. Back in Russia in July 1871, the family was again in financial trouble and had to sell their remaining possessions. Their son Fyodor

7900-454: The winter in Staraya Russa to allow Dostoevsky to rest, although doctors had suggested a second visit to Ems because his health had previously improved there. On 10 August 1875 his son Alexey was born in Staraya Russa, and in mid-September the family returned to Saint Petersburg. Dostoevsky finished The Adolescent at the end of 1875, although passages of it had been serialised in Notes of the Fatherland since January. The Adolescent chronicles

8000-491: The works from writer Ann Radcliffe ; romantic works by Schiller and Goethe ; heroic tales by Miguel de Cervantes and Walter Scott ; and Homer 's epics . Dostoevsky was greatly influenced by the work of Nikolai Gogol . Although his father's approach to education has been described as strict and harsh, Dostoevsky himself reported that his imagination was brought alive by nightly readings by his parents. Some of his childhood experiences found their way into his writings. When

8100-501: The young Dostoevsky imagines hearing a wolf in the forest, Marey, who is working nearby, comforts him. Although Dostoevsky had a delicate physical constitution, his parents described him as hot-headed, stubborn, and cheeky. In 1833, Dostoevsky's father, who was profoundly religious, sent him to a French boarding school and then to the Chermak boarding school. He was described as a pale, introverted dreamer and an over-excitable romantic. To pay

8200-640: Was "burned by some fever, trembling and feeling too hot or too cold every night". The smell of the privy pervaded the entire building, and the small bathroom had to suffice for more than 200 people. Dostoevsky was occasionally sent to the military hospital, where he read newspapers and Dickens novels. He was respected by most of the other prisoners, but despised by some Polish political prisoners because of his Russian nationalism and anti-Polish sentiments. After his release on 14 February 1854, Dostoevsky asked Mikhail to help him financially and to send him books by Vico , Guizot , Ranke , Hegel and Kant . The House of

8300-600: Was a frequent guest in several salons in Saint Petersburg and met many famous people, including Countess Sophia Tolstaya , Yakov Polonsky , Sergei Witte , Alexey Suvorin , Anton Rubinstein and Ilya Repin . Dostoevsky's health declined further, and in March 1877 he had four epileptic seizures. Rather than returning to Ems, he visited Maly Prikol, a manor near Kursk . While returning to St Petersburg to finalise his Diary , he visited Darovoye, where he had spent much of his childhood. In December he attended Nekrasov's funeral and gave

8400-471: Was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor, and in 1818 he was appointed a senior physician. In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. In 1828, when his two sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, were eight and seven respectively, he was promoted to collegiate assessor, a position which raised his legal status to that of

8500-671: Was born on 16 July, and they moved to an apartment near the Institute of Technology soon after. They hoped to cancel their large debts by selling their rental house in Peski, but difficulties with the tenant resulted in a relatively low selling price, and disputes with their creditors continued. Anna proposed that they raise money on her husband's copyrights and negotiate with the creditors to pay off their debts in installments. Dostoevsky revived his friendships with Maykov and Strakhov and made new acquaintances, including church politician Terty Filipov and

8600-511: Was born on 25 November 1820 in Moscow , where his father was a surgeon at the Mariinsky Hospital. Mikhail received a home education. He began to write poetry at the age of nine. In 1834 he was sent to the boarding school of L. Chermak, where he stayed until 1837. Then his father took him and his younger brother Fyodor to Saint Petersburg. He intended to enter the Petersburg's Academy of Engineering, but

8700-554: Was diagnosed with early-stage pulmonary emphysema , which his doctor believed could be successfully managed, but not cured. On 3 February 1880 Dostoevsky was elected vice-president of the Slavic Benevolent Society, and he was invited to speak at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial in Moscow. On 8 June he delivered his speech , giving an impressive performance that had a significant emotional impact on his audience. His speech

8800-515: Was elected to the board of directors of the Slavic Benevolent Society in Saint Petersburg. That summer, he was elected to the honorary committee of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale , whose members included Victor Hugo , Ivan Turgenev , Paul Heyse , Alfred Tennyson , Anthony Trollope , Henry Longfellow , Ralph Waldo Emerson and Leo Tolstoy . Dostoevsky made his fourth and final visit to Ems in early August 1879. He

8900-449: Was finished on 26 November and released in January 1873 by the "Dostoevsky Publishing Company", which was founded by Dostoevsky and his wife. Although they accepted only cash payments and the bookshop was in their own apartment, the business was successful, and they sold around 3,000 copies of Demons . Anna managed the finances. Dostoevsky proposed that they establish a new periodical, which would be called A Writer's Diary and would include

9000-463: Was greatly alleviated when he joined the utopian socialist Beketov circle, a tightly knit community which helped him to survive. When the circle dissolved, Dostoevsky befriended Apollon Maykov and his brother Valerian . In 1846, on the recommendation of the poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev , he joined the Petrashevsky Circle , founded by Mikhail Petrashevsky , who had proposed social reforms in Russia. Mikhail Bakunin once wrote to Alexander Herzen that

9100-551: Was later dissolved but in 1986 the International Dostoevsky Society donated a commemorative plaque. The couple moved from Geneva to Vevey and then to Milan before continuing to Florence. The Idiot was completed there in January 1869, the final part appearing in The Russian Messenger in February 1869. Anna gave birth to their second daughter, Lyubov , on 26 September 1869 in Dresden. In April 1871, Dostoevsky made

9200-653: Was met with thunderous applause, and even his long-time rival Turgenev embraced him. Konstantin Staniukovich praised the speech in his essay "The Pushkin Anniversary and Dostoevsky's Speech" in The Business , writing that "the language of Dostoevsky's [Pushkin Speech] really looks like a sermon. He speaks with the tone of a prophet. He makes a sermon like a pastor; it is very deep, sincere, and we understand that he wants to impress

9300-409: Was no student in the entire institution with less of a military bearing than F.M. Dostoevsky. He moved clumsily and jerkily; his uniform hung awkwardly on him; and his knapsack , shako and rifle all looked like some sort of fetter he had been forced to wear for a time and which lay heavily on him." Dostoevsky's character and interests made him an outsider among his 120 classmates: he showed bravery and

9400-445: Was not accepted because he was diagnosed with Tuberculosis after medical examinations. In 1842 he married Emily von Ditmar with whom he had two sons, Fyodor and Mikhail, and three daughters, Catherine, Maria and Varvara. In 1849 he was arrested, along with his brother, because of his connections to the Petrashevsky Circle . In 1861 he started a magazine titled Vremya ( Russian : Время , lit. Time ). Dostoevsky wanted to create

9500-421: Was of average height but always tried to carry himself erect. "He had light brown, slightly reddish hair, he used some hair conditioner, and he combed his hair in a diligent way ... his eyes, they were different: one was dark brown; in the other, the pupil was so big that you could not see its color, [this was caused by an injury]. The strangeness of his eyes gave Dostoyevsky some mysterious appearance. His face

9600-918: Was pale, and it looked unhealthy." On 15 February 1867 Dostoevsky married Snitkina in Trinity Cathedral, Saint Petersburg . The 7,000 rubles he had earned from Crime and Punishment did not cover their debts, forcing Anna to sell her valuables. On 14 April 1867, they began a delayed honeymoon in Germany with the money gained from the sale. They stayed in Berlin and visited the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden , where he sought inspiration for his writing. They continued their trip through Germany, visiting Frankfurt , Darmstadt , Heidelberg and Karlsruhe . They spent five weeks in Baden-Baden , where Dostoevsky had

9700-534: Was placed on a table, following Russian custom. He was interred in the Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Convent , near his favourite poets, Nikolay Karamzin and Vasily Zhukovsky . It is unclear how many attended his funeral. According to one reporter, more than 100,000 mourners were present, while others describe attendance between 40,000 and 50,000. His tombstone is inscribed with lines from

9800-465: Was publisher and editor, but the editorial work was mostly borne by his brother, who worked as columnist, critic, essayist and writer all at once. Vremya was banned in April 1863 following the publication of an article by Nikolay Strakhov . In 1864 Dostoevsky established the magazine Epokha ( Epoch ). On 19 July 1864, under the strain of financial obligations arising with the magazine, and suffering from

9900-533: Was sharing an apartment at the time, took the manuscript to the poet Nikolay Nekrasov , who in turn showed it to the renowned and influential literary critic Vissarion Belinsky . Belinsky described it as Russia's first " social novel ". Poor Folk was released on 15 January 1846 in the St Petersburg Collection almanac and became a commercial success. Dostoevsky felt that his military career would endanger his now flourishing literary career, so he wrote

10000-476: Was the second child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevskaya (born Nechayeva). He was raised in the family home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, which was in a lower class district on the edges of Moscow. Dostoevsky encountered the patients, who were at the lower end of the Russian social scale, when playing in the hospital gardens. Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age. From

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