Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821 in Moscow. His father was a retired military doctor Mikhail Andreevich (participant Patriotic War 1812), and his mother was Maria Fedorovna (nee Nechaeva). Mikhail was the first child in the family, and Fedor was the second.

Throughout his life, the two older brothers remained the closest people.

There were 8 children in the family.

The father of the family was a strict man. He established order at home and demanded that everyone strictly observe it. But she was a kind and loving mother. There was also a nanny hired from Moscow bourgeois women, whose name was Alena Frolova. Dostoevsky remembered her with the same tenderness as Pushkin remembered Arina Rodionovna. It was from her that he heard the first fairy tales: about the Firebird, Alyosha Popovich, the Blue Bird. Often in the evenings, family readings were held in the Dostoevsky family.

Literary interests were determined early. Under the influence of Walter Scott and A. Radcliffe, Fedorov wrote novels "from Venetian life." The journal "Library for Reading", ordered for the sons by the father, provided an acquaintance with the latest foreign literature:

O. de Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffmann.

The historian Karamzin, writers and poets Derzhavin, Lazhechnikov, Zagostin, Zhukovsky and, of course, Pushkin were read. Younger brother Fyodor Mikhailovich, Andrei Mikhailovich wrote that “Brother Fedya read more historical, serious works, as well as novels that came across. Brother Mikhail loved poetry and wrote poetry himself ... but they put up with Pushkin, and both, it seems, then knew almost everything by heart ... ". The death of Alexander Sergeevich by young Fedya was brought up as a personal grief.

Andrei Mikhailovich wrote: “Brother Fedya, in conversations with his older brother, repeated several times that if we didn’t have family mourning (his mother, Maria Fedorovna, died), he would ask his father’s permission to mourn for Pushkin.”

Since 1834, young Fedor and Mikhail have been placed in a private boarding school by L.I. Chermak, one of the best in Moscow, where they studied until 1837. The boarding house was located on Basmannaya street.

His fellow student V.M. Kachenovsky told about the Dostoevsky boarding house: “... It was a serious, thoughtful boy, blond, with a pale face. He was little interested in games: during recreation he did not leave, he did not leave almost books, spending the rest of his free time in conversations with the senior pupils of the boarding school ... ”.

Dostoevsky grew up in a "Russian and pious" family, where they got acquainted with the Gospel "almost from the first childhood."

“I was only ten years old when I already knew almost all the main episodes of Russian history from Karamzin, which my father read aloud to us in the evenings. Every time a visit to the Kremlin and Moscow cathedrals was something solemn for me, ”the writer recalled.

Every Easter, the mother took her sons on a pilgrimage to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

In the winter of 1837, Fyodor Mikhailovich's mother died, and this period is considered to be the end of the writer's childhood. And exactly one year later, together with his brother Mikhail, he goes to St. Petersburg and enters the Engineering School. But Mikhail cannot be enrolled there for health reasons, and he was forced to enter the engineering cadets in Reven (now Tallinn).

For the first time, Fedor was separated from his brother for a long time. However, the connection between the brothers was not interrupted thanks to a lively correspondence, where the work of Homer and Racine, Goethe and Balzac was discussed. Hugo and Schiller, whom the young Dostoevsky "raved about" and whom he "learned everything by heart." These letters express ideas that determined spiritual search throughout life: "Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you will unravel it all your life, do not say that you have wasted time; I am engaged in this secret, because I want to be a man.

In the early summer of 1839, his father died.

The future writer endured this tragedy very hard, especially since there were persistent rumors that Mikhail Andreevich was killed by his own peasants in the village of Darovoye (Tula province), which they bought in 1831 and in which little Fedya spent every summer.

And it was with the death of his father that the first attack of epilepsy was connected, which haunted Fyodor Mikhailovich until the end of his life.

The Engineering School was located in the Mikhailovsky Castle, where Tsar Paul 1 was killed. Pushkin. however, St. Petersburg powerfully attracted Dostoevsky to itself. But it was Petersburg Meshchansky and Podyachesky streets, where he settled his future heroes.

One of the happiest moments in the first years of Dostoevsky's life and study in St. Petersburg was communication with the romantic poet I.N. Shidlovsky.

Here is what he wrote to his brother Mikhail: "... Oh, what a frank, pure soul! ... Oh, if you knew those poems that he wrote last spring ...".

Grigorovich, who studied with him: “Fyodor Mikhailovich even then showed signs of unsociableness, avoided taking part in games, sat deep in a book and looked for a secluded place ... In reactionary times, he could always ... be found ... with a book. And again: "His erudition amazed me."

Dostoevsky read at that time Schiller and Shakespeare, Goethe and Balzac. And it was during the years of study that he learned to understand Gogol, or rather, to notice those life situations, which Gogol was so able to embody on paper. While still a cadet, he composed the works “Boris Godunov” and “Maria Steward” that have not come down to us.

After graduating from college, in 1843, Dostoevsky was enlisted in the drawing room of the engineering department, but a year later he quit, together with D.V. Grigorovich (already a well-known writer) rented an apartment and took up writing.

In May 1845, Poor People were written.

Dostoevsky read the novel “Poor People” to Grigorovich, who, in turn, showed it to N.A. Nekrasov, who, with the words “ New Gogol appeared!" took the book to V. G. Belinsky.

Enraptured, V. G. Belinsky called the author to him and said: “Do you understand yourself, ... what you wrote! But maybe you, in your twenty years, already understand this ... The truth is revealed to you and proclaimed as an artist, you got it as a gift, appreciate your gift and remain faithful to "him" and you will be a great writer!

Subsequently, Fedor Mikhailovich recalled: "It was the most delightful minute in my whole life."

The enthusiasm was universal, and Dostoevsky became one of the participants in the so-called 2 natural school". On January 15, 1856, his novel opened "Petersburg Collection", the second almanac of the natural school, where the works of Nekrasov, Turgenev, Panaev, Herzen, Sollogub, Belinsky were collected.

Dostoevsky remained true to his gift, but he parted ways with Belinsky. (See. critical articles In ... Belinsky about the work of F.M. Dostoevsky: about long lengths, "fantastic coloring" disapproved by Belinsky, etc.).

However, later Dostoevsky more than once recalled the great critic with nobility.

"Poor People" opens a whole cycle of works showing the life of various strata of society. Dostoevsky writes the novels The Double, The Mistress, A Novel in Ten Letters, Mr. Prokharchin, Crawlers, and, to the delight of many, several stories about "dreamers." The appearance of works about "dreamers" was preceded by the publication by Dostoevsky of a number of feuilletons under the general title "Petersburg Chronicle" (1847), in which he explained the reason for the appearance of "dreamers" in life. Not feeling in themselves the strength to fight, they ("dreamers") go into their fictional world, fantasies and dreams.

Dostoevsky's most "main" dreamer was main character story "White Nights".

The appearance of "dreaming" in Dostoevsky coincides with the enthusiasm for utopian socialism, participation in the circles of brothers. Beketov, M.V. Petrashevsky, S.F. Durov.

The main authority in the circle br. Beketov was a young critic V.N. Maikov, who put forward psychologism, the study of human nature, as the first task of contemporary literature. Under the influence of his ideas around the journal "Domestic Notes" formed the so-called. "School of sentimental naturalism", of which Dostoevsky became the recognized head.

From the spring of 1847, the writer became a permanent member of the Petrashevsky circle. The meetings discussed political, socio-economic, literary and other problems. Dostoevsky was a supporter of the abolition of serfdom and the abolition of censorship of literature. But unlike the rest of the Petrashevites, he was a vivid opponent of the flat overthrow of the existing government.

In Petrashevsky's circle, Dostoevsky becomes close to Durov, Speshnev, Mombelli, they conceive their own printing house, but do not have time.

On one of the "Fridays" the writer read Belinsky's famous letter to Gogol with sharp criticism of "Selected passages from correspondence with friends." Reading this "criminal" letter became one of the main points of Dostoevsky's accusation.

Early in the morning, at 4 o'clock on April 23, 1849, gendarmes came to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky on the personal order of Tsar Nicholas 1, arrested him and imprisoned him in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Several dozen Petrashevites were arrested along with him.

By decision of the court, Dostoevsky and ten other members of the circle were deprived title of nobility, ranks and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. But this arrest did not break his will in any way: “I see that there is so much vitality in me that you can’t draw it out,” this is a line from a letter written from the fortress to his brother.

The military court recognized Dostoevsky as "one of the most important criminals" and, accusing him of criminal plans against the government, sentenced him to death penalty.

Emperor Nicholas 1 order: "Announce pardon only at the moment when everything is ready for execution." The staging of the death penalty took place on December 22, 1849. And two days later, Dostoevsky was shackled and sent to the Omsk jail, where he was kept until February 1854.

Fyodor Mikhailovich described his life in a Siberian prison in the work “Notes from the House of the Dead” (1860), where he showed not romantic robbers, but the natural life of real thugs who had lost everything human; He also showed quiet and meek people who could not stand the torment of soldier's service and killed their officer. And completely innocent, accused of crimes that they did not commit.

In prison, Dostoevsky was alone. The prisoners often did not want to communicate with him, considering him a person from another world. The “Siberian Notebook” was written there, where he contributed his thoughts, prison songs, proverbs, etc. "Siberian Notebook" and became the main material for the creation of the "Record of the Dead House".

In February 1854, Dostoevsky, by a court decision, was appointed as a private in the Semipalatinsk linear battalion.

Dostoevsky is already known and thanks to this he becomes a friend of the regional prosecutor Wrangel, who was present at the staged execution of the Petrashevites in the winter of 1849. This gave Fyodor Mikhailovich the opportunity to visit high society(he also met Ch.Ch. Valikhanov, a prominent Kazakh figure, with whom he kept in touch even after his exile). Thanks to the beginning of the liberal reign of Alexander 2, Private Dostoevsky received an officer rank on October 1, 1856, and a little earlier he was returned to the noble title.

At the beginning of 1857 Dostoevsky marries. His first wife was the widow of a retired official, Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. He fell in love with her (even when she was married) at first sight. Maria Dmitrievna had a difficult character, and therefore the marriage turned out to be difficult.

Dostoevsky rescues literary work: he makes sketches for the works " Uncle's dream and "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants", which were completed after the exile.

The family settled in Semipalatinsk, and two years later Dostoevsky still seeks his resignation, already in the rank of ensign. He is not immediately allowed to live in St. Petersburg or Moscow, but is settled in Tver (March 1859). However, very soon Dostoevsky sought to move to northern capital, and in the second half of December 1859, exactly 10 years after the "execution" on the Semyonovsky parade ground, he again ended up in St. Petersburg.

Upon his return from Siberia, Dostoevsky actually begins to manage the political magazine Vremya, which was founded by his brother Mikhail in 1861. The ideological platform of the journal is pochvenism: the tragic fragmentation of the intelligentsia and the people - the fruit of Peter's reforms - must be overcome, relying on original national soil.

The Orthodox idea of ​​brotherhood will allow, according to Dostoevsky, the Russian person to realize in the future his national super-task - the idea of ​​universal humanity, that is, the unification and reconciliation of all peoples of the world in a higher synthesis. Dostoevsky developed his views on soil throughout his life.

And the first major work written after the exile was published precisely in the first issues of Vremya in early 1861. It was the novel "Humiliated and Insulted".

Almost at the same time, Notes from the House of the Dead was published, describing the Siberian prison. In 1863, a series of essays "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" was published - about life in European countries seen in the summer of 1862.

In April 1863, the magazine "Vremya" was closed by censors for the article "The Fatal Question", written by N.N. Strakhov and dedicated to the Polish uprising.

In 1864, Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky managed to obtain a license to publish a new magazine - Epoch, in the same year he wrote Notes from the Underground.

In 1864, Dostoevsky's wife, Maria Dmitrievna, died, and on July 22 of the same year, brother Mikhail died of illness. For Fyodor Mikhailovich, this was a heavy blow, and besides, all the main forgotten items associated with the Epoch fell on his shoulders, and in June 1865 the editorial board went bankrupt. In order to get out of the financial impasse, Dostoevsky concludes an agreement with the publisher Stelovsky on the release of his collected works with the obligation to write new novel. This novel became "The Gambler".

Even before the death of his first wife (1862), Dostoevsky met Apollinaria Suslova, who was very attracted to everything revolutionary and immediately fell in love with Dostoevsky, who had recently served his sentence in the political case. Dostoevsky proposes to her, but she rejects it. Apollinaria is the prototype of Polina in the novel The Gambler.

The novel "The Player" is to some extent autobiographical, Dostoevsky himself was a player and lost "to the thread." The novel was written in 28 days. Anna Grigoryevna Snitnikova, who took shorthand of the novel, became the second wife of the writer on February 15, 1867.

Anna Grigoryevna recalled: “Fyodor Mikhailovich, in the first weeks of our married life, walking with me, took me to the courtyard of a house and showed me the stone under which Raskolnikov hid the things stolen from the old woman.”

Work on Crime and Punishment began in 1865 in Wiesbadan, Germany, where Dostoevsky went for treatment. In the center of the novel is a crime, an ideological murder.

“A young man, expelled from university students, ... living in extreme poverty, out of frivolity, out of precariousness in concepts, succumbing to some strange“ unfinished ”ideas that are in the air, decided to get out of his bad position at once” - to kill and rob the old Rostov woman , a nasty "louse" that seizes someone else's eyelid. With her money, Raskolnikov dreams of doing thousands of good deeds, and first of all, saving his beloved mother and sister from shame and poverty.

The second marriage of the writer was truly happy.

From 1867 to 1871, the writer, together with his wife, escaped from loans, spent abroad, only occasionally coming to Russia.

They alternately lived in Dresden, Berlin, Basel, Geneva, and Florence. And only at the end of 1871, after the writer managed to pay off his debts (some of which he had done by playing often in a casino, some was left from his brother), he was able to return to St. Petersburg.

During this journey, Dostoevsky finishes writing the novel The Idiot, which was published in the journal Russky Vestnik in 1868.

Here is what Dostoevsky wrote about the intentions of this work: the main idea novel - to portray a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult than this in the world, and especially now. All writers, not only ours, but even all European ones, who just did not undertake to portray the positively beautiful, always gave in. Because this task is immeasurable.

In 1871, Dostoevsky wrote the novel "Demons".

In 1873, Prince Meshchersky, the owner of the conservative magazine Grazhdanin, offered Dostoevsky to become the editor of his magazine. Fyodor Mikhailovich. missing you public life gladly accepts his offer.

On the pages of this magazine is printed "The Diary of a Writer". Stories, for example, "The Meek", "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree." In April 1874 Dostoevsky left the magazine.

Since 1872, the Dostoevsky family spends every summer (and even the winter of 1874-75) in a small town Staraya Russa that in the Novgorod province.

Here Dostoevsky and his family rested from the hectic Petersburg life, and later he bought a house here. One metropolitan acquaintance of Dostoevsky was extremely surprised that famous writer wanders around the city and looks for his cow that did not return home.

It was here that many chapters of The Brothers Karamazov and the novel The Teenager were written.

N.A. Nekrasov suggested publishing "Teenager" in "Notes of the Fatherland", to which Dostoevsky agreed with pleasure, especially since this was the resumption of relations between the two writers 30 years later.

December 27, 1877 N.A. Nekrasov died. And Dostoevsky said with deep regret that they spent their whole lives apart. Dostoevsky wrote a lot about the great poet in his diary.

In the 1870s, Dostoevsky is at the peak of his talent. He is elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences in the Department of the Russian Language and Literature

In 1877, the Dostoevsky family moved to a house on the corner of Kuznechny Lane and Yamskaya Street (which now bears the name of the great writer) - Kuznechny Lane, 5. The Brothers Karamazov, a novel that is the result of Dostoevsky's creative path, was written here.

L. Grossman noted that in most of Dostoevsky’s works, “the path of the human soul descending into underworld sinful wanderings for rebirth to a new life, enlightened to the end by the suffering experienced ”(Creativity of Dostoevsky. - Odessa, 1921. - P. 108). This gave the right to speak in connection with Dostoevsky about the mystery novel, building in a certain sense in the image of the ancient medieval religious drama. At the same time, the writer studied “from all novels: tabloid and psychological, picaresque and sentimental, adventurous and philosophical, epistolary and memoirs” (L.P. Grossman, poetics of Dostoevsky).

As early as the end of 1879, doctors examining Dostoevsky noted that he had a progressive lung disease. He was advised to avoid physical activity and fear emotional disturbances.

On January 26, 1881, Dostoevsky, who often worked at night, accidentally dropped his pens on the floor. Trying to get it, he moved a heavy bookcase with books. the physical exertion caused the throat to bleed. This led to a sharp exacerbation of the disease. The bleeding then stopped, then resumed again. On the morning of January 28, Dostoevsky said to his wife: "... I know, I must die today!" At 8:38 pm on the same day, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky died. Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the great writer.

time, he will trample them all into the mud. After the scene with Turgenev, there was a complete break between the circle and Dostoevsky; he never looked at it again. Caustic epigrams rained down on him, he was accused of great pride. After a quarrel with Belinsky's circle, Dostoevsky changed his circle of acquaintances and at the end of 1846. converges with the Beketov brothers - Andrei Nikolaevich - in the future a great botanist and Nikolai Nikolaevich - a great chemist.
Dostoevsky - the dreamer is among the Petrashevites. The participation of the writer in revolutionary circles was absolutely normal, and that Dostoevsky, as he was in the late forties, was bound to end up among the Petrashevites sooner or later. The authorities are detaining all Petrashevists - revolutionaries. Most of them were sentenced to death.
Dostoevsky was in the second three and he had no more than a minute to live. He remembered this last minute his brother's life, and only now, on the scaffold, awaiting the death penalty, he realized how much he loves him.
December 17, 1849 the general-auditoriat - the highest military court - sentenced to death 21 Petrashevsky, including Dostoevsky. But later Nicholas I decided to pardon them all. Fedor Mikhailovich was sent to hard labor for 8 years. Nicholas I imposed a resolution: "Send to hard labor for four years, and then as a private."
While in hard labor in Tobolsk, an unforgettable event took place, which after the scaffold played a very important role in Dostoevsky's spiritual biography. The wives of the Decembrists Zh. A. Muravyov, P. M. Annekov with their daughter and N. D. Fonvizina achieved a secret meeting with the Petrashevites at the prison superintendent's apartment. In the “Diary of a Writer” for 1873, Dostoevsky recalled: “We saw THESE major sufferers who voluntarily followed their husbands to Siberia. They blessed us new way, baptized and clothed each with the Gospel - the only book allowed in prison. For four years she lay under my pillow in hard labor "
With great risk, the doctors of the Omsk military hospital, the staff doctor I. I. Troitsky and the senior paramedic A. I. Ivanov, tried to help the prisoner Dostoevsky, often hospitalizing him as a patient, in dire need of medical care. Some sources noted that Fyodor Mikhailovich was applied physical strength which ruined his health.
February 15, 1854. The writer left Omsk province forever. The term of hard labor has expired. Dostoevsky was sent by stage to Semipalatinsk.
At first, the writer did not go out into the city much. His neighbor was a young soldier, a baptized Jew N.F. Katz. Katz had a samovar, he treated his silent friend to tea.

The owner of the Russian Land, there is only one Russian.

So it was, is and will be.

Great writer who received a great world recognition. Abroad, people even study Russian on purpose in order to read his books in the original.

He was the second son in the family, was born in 1821, in Moscow, at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. His father worked in this hospital as a staff doctor. In 1828, the father receives hereditary nobility. Mother was of merchant origin.

Fedor began to study at early age. The mother taught the alphabet of the future writer, and French in Drashusova half board. In 1834, together with his brother Mikhail, he entered the boarding school of Chermak, where he was very fond of literature.

When the writer was 16, his mother dies, which undoubtedly affected his morale. At the same time, Fedor entered the St. Petersburg Engineering School. In St. Petersburg, among his classmates, he gained a reputation as an "unsociable person."

In 1841 Dostoevsky became an officer. In 1843 he graduated from college, and entered the service in the St. Petersburg engineering team, where he was engaged in affairs in the drawing department. A year later, he resigns, and decides to earn a living, exclusively by creativity.

At the beginning of his career, he entered Belinsky's circle, where he was well received in the new team. However, soon, Dostoevsky's relationship with the circle deteriorated. It is worth noting that it was not without reason that he was a member of Belinsky's circle. In his youth he was an opponent royal power, he was attracted by the ideas of socialism. Due to the involvement of Fyodor Mikhailovich in the Petrashevsky case, he was arrested.

The future classic spent eight months in the Peter and Paul Fortress. He should have been executed, but last moment the sentence was reduced, and he went to hard labor. Fedor Mikhailovich spent four years in Omsk, in " Dead House". It is worth saying that, despite the fact that he was in hard labor, his attitude towards the royal power has changed a lot, and in better side. Dostoevsky entered our history as an ideological monarchist and a Slavophil who sang of the virtues of the Russian people.

In 1854, after the end of hard labor, he was enlisted as a private in a Siberian line regiment. A few years later, he was restored to the rights that he had been deprived of during the investigation, and received the rank of ensign. A little later he retired. For some time he lives abroad, where he continues to engage in creativity and establish a personal life.

He is the author of many novels that are read all over the world, Dostoevsky is a recognized classic. Great master psychological novel. He had a difficult life path, thanks to which he was able to write such wonderful works. In the circle of Petrashevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich went through the temptation violent change society, in hard labor he knew all the hardships of prison life, was one step away from death ... Having experienced all this, the writer was able to acutely feel the danger of the power of an idea over a person.

In the center of his novels, as a rule, there is a mysterious person obsessed with a certain idea. Often these theorists themselves become victims of their ideas. So it was with our hero himself, who had been in hard labor ...

The author died in 1881, as a result of a ruptured pulmonary artery. His death excited the whole of Petersburg. The whole city mourned for the dead writer. Even the deputies took part in the funeral procession. He was buried in the Necropolis of the Masters of Arts of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The monument to Dostoevsky was erected in 1883.

Introduction

All works of F.M. Dostoevsky can be reduced to two "eternal questions": the question of the existence of God and the question of the immortality of the soul. Undoubtedly, they constitute the dominant, to which all other creative tasks writer. In fact, these two questions are the same problem. Indeed: if there is a God, the soul is immortal; if there is no God, the soul will die. The heroes of Dostoevsky, both positive and negative, are the personification of this torment, the embodiment of this main spiritual mystery. Their constant concern and inevitable occupation is the solution of the question: is there a God, is there immortality, or is there nothing of the kind.

Analysis of F.M. Dostoevsky is impossible without an analysis of his religious and philosophical worldview. This topic is discussed in this thesis.

The work consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. In my work, I have singled out in a separate chapter detailed consideration"Legends of the Grand Inquisitor" as key to understanding religious views F.M. Dostoevsky.

Life path f.m. Dostoevsky and features of his work

Dostoevsky Fedor Mikhailovich was born on October 30 (November 11, NS) in Moscow into the family of the head physician of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Father, Mikhail Andreevich, nobleman; mother, Maria Feodorovna, from an old Moscow merchant family. He received an excellent education in the private boarding school of L. Chermak, one of the best in Moscow. The family loved to read, subscribed to the magazine "Library for Reading", which made it possible to get acquainted with the latest foreign literature. Of the Russian authors, they loved N. Karamzin, V. Zhukovsky, A. Pushkin. Mother, a religious nature, from a young age introduced the children to the Gospel, took them on a pilgrimage to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

Hardly survived the death of his mother (1837), Dostoevsky, by the decision of his father, entered the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School, one of the best educational institutions that time. New life was given to him with a great strain of strength, nerves, ambition. But there was another life - inner, secret, unknown to others.

In 1839, his father died unexpectedly. This news shocked Dostoevsky and provoked a severe nervous attack, a harbinger of future epilepsy, to which he had a hereditary predisposition.

He graduated from college in 1843 and was enlisted in the drawing room of the engineering department. A year later, he retired, convinced that his vocation was literature.

Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor People, was written in 1845 and published by N. Nekrasov in the Petersburg Collection (1846). Belinsky proclaimed "the appearance ... of an extraordinary talent ...". The novels The Double (1846) and The Mistress (1847) were rated lower by Belinsky, noting the length of the narrative, but Dostoevsky continued to write in his own way, disagreeing with the critic's assessment.

Later, White Nights (1848) and Netochka Nezvanova (1849) were published, which revealed the features of Dostoevsky's realism that distinguished him from among the writers of the "natural school": in-depth psychologism, exclusivity of characters and situations.

Successfully started literary activity ends tragically. Dostoevsky was one of the members of the Petrashevsky circle, which united adherents of French utopian socialism (Fourier, Saint-Simon). In 1849, for participating in this circle, the writer was arrested and sentenced to death, which was then replaced by four years of hard labor and a settlement in Siberia.

After the death of Nicholas I and the beginning of the liberal reign of Alexander II, the fate of Dostoevsky, like many political criminals, was mitigated. His noble rights were returned to him, and in 1859 he retired already with the rank of second lieutenant (in 1849, standing at the scaffold, he heard a rescript: "... a retired lieutenant ... to hard labor in fortresses for ... 4 years, and then private).

In 1859, Dostoevsky received permission to live in Tver, then in St. Petersburg. At this time, he publishes the novels "Uncle's Dream", "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" (1859), the novel "Humiliated and Insulted" (1861). Nearly ten years of physical and mental suffering sharpened Dostoevsky's susceptibility to human suffering, intensifying his strenuous search for social justice. These years became for him years of spiritual change, the collapse of socialist illusions, the growth of contradictions in his worldview. He actively participates in the public life of Russia, opposes the revolutionary democratic program of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, rejecting the theory of "art for art's sake", asserting the social value of art. After hard labor, "Notes from dead house". The writer spends the summer months of 1862 and 1863 abroad, visiting Germany, England, France, Italy and other countries. He believed that the historical path that Europe passed after french revolution 1789, would be disastrous for Russia, as well as the introduction of new bourgeois relations, negative traits which shocked him during his trips to Western Europe. Russia's special, original path to "earthly paradise" was Dostoevsky's socio-political program in the early 1860s.

In 1864, Notes from the Underground were written, an important work for understanding the writer's changed outlook. In 1865, while abroad, in the resort of Wiesbaden, to improve his health, he began work on the novel Crime and Punishment (1866), which reflected the whole complex path of his inner quest.

In 1867, Dostoevsky married Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, his stenographer, who became his close and devoted friend.

Soon they go abroad: they live in Germany, Switzerland, Italy (1867-1871). During these years, the writer worked on the novels The Idiot (1868) and Demons (1870-1871), which he finished in Russia. In May 1872, the Dostoevskys leave St. Petersburg for the summer for Staraya Rusa, where they subsequently buy a modest dacha and live here with their two children even in winter. The novels The Teenager (1874-1875) and The Brothers Karamazov (1878-1879) were almost entirely written in Staraya Rusa.

Since 1873, the writer became the executive editor of the magazine "Grazhdanin", on the pages of which he began to publish the "Diary of a Writer", became a teacher of life for thousands of Russian people.

At the end of May 1880, Dostoevsky went to Moscow for the opening of the monument to A. Pushkin (June 6, the birthday of the great poet), where all of Moscow gathered. Turgenev, Maikov, Grigorovich and other Russian writers were here. Dostoevsky's speech was called by I. Aksakov "brilliant, historical event"Unfortunately, the writer's health soon deteriorated, and on January 28 (February 9, NS), 1881, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg.

To determine the essence and features of Dostoevsky's work, let us cite the opinion of M.M. Bakhtin.

When reviewing the extensive literature on Dostoevsky, one gets the impression that it is not about one author-artist who wrote novels and stories, but about a whole series of philosophical speeches by several authors-thinkers - Raskolnikov, Myshkin, Stavrogin, Ivan Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor, etc. For literary-critical thought, Dostoevsky's work broke up into a number of independent and contradictory philosophies represented by his characters. Among them, the philosophical views of the author himself are far from in the first place. For some, the voice of Dostoevsky himself merges with the voices of one or another of his heroes, for others it is a kind of synthesis of all these ideological voices, for others, finally, it is simply drowned out by them. They argue with the heroes, they learn from the heroes, they try to develop their views to a complete system. The hero is ideologically authoritative and independent, he is perceived as the author of his own full-fledged ideologeme, and not as an object of Dostoevsky's final artistic vision. For the critics' minds, the direct full-fledged intentionality of the hero's words breaks the monologic plane of the novel and calls for an immediate response, as if the hero were not the object of the author's word, but a full-fledged and full-fledged bearer of his own word.

The multiplicity of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness, the genuine polyphony of full-fledged voices, indeed, is the main feature of Dostoevsky's novels. Bakhtin M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky's creativity. M.: Milestones, 2001. Not a multitude of destinies and lives in a single objective world in the light of a single author's consciousness unfolds in his works, but it is precisely the plurality of equal consciousnesses with their worlds that are combined here, while maintaining their non-fusion, into the unity of some event. The main characters of Dostoevsky, indeed, in the very creative concept of the artist, are not only objects of the author's word, but also the subjects of his own directly meaning word. The word of the hero, therefore, is by no means exhausted here by the usual characteristic and plot-pragmatic functions, but it does not serve as an expression of the author's own ideological position (as in Byron, for example). The hero's consciousness is given as another, alien consciousness, but at the same time it is not objectified, it does not close, it does not become simple object author's consciousness.

Dostoevsky is the creator of the polyphonic novel. He created an essentially new novel genre. That is why his work does not fit into any framework, does not obey any of those historical and literary schemes that we are accustomed to applying to the phenomena of the European novel. A hero appears in his works, whose voice is constructed in the same way as the voice of the author himself is built in a novel of the usual type, and not the voice of his hero. The hero's word about himself and about the world is just as full-weighted as the usual author's word; it is not subordinated to the hero's objective image, as one of his characteristics, but it does not serve as a mouthpiece for the author's voice. He possesses exceptional independence in the structure of the work, it sounds, as it were, next to the author's word and in a special way combines with it and with the full-fledged voices of other characters.

It follows from this that the usual plot-pragmatic connections of an objective or psychological order in Dostoevsky's world are insufficient: after all, these connections presuppose objectivity, the objectification of heroes in the author's intention, they connect and combine images of people in the unity of a monologically perceived and understood world, and not a plurality of equal consciousnesses with their worlds. The usual plot pragmatics in Dostoevsky's novels plays minor role and has special rather than ordinary functions. The last bonds that create the unity of his novel world are of a different kind; the main event revealed by his novel is not amenable to plot-pragmatic interpretation.

The affirmation of someone else's consciousness as a full-fledged subject, and not as an object, is an ethical and religious postulate that determines the content of Dostoevsky's works. The affirmation (and not the affirmation) of someone else's "I" by the hero is the main theme of his work.

The originality of Dostoevsky is not in the fact that he monologically proclaimed the value of the individual (others did this before him), but in the fact that he was able to see it objectively and artistically and show it as another, alien personality, without making it lyrical. without merging his voice with it and at the same time without reducing it to an objectified psychic reality. A high assessment of the individual did not first appear in the worldview of Dostoevsky, but artistic image alien personality for the first time fully realized in his novels.

The era itself made it possible polyphonic novel. Dostoevsky was subjectively involved in this contradictory diversity of his time, he changed camps, moved from one to another, and in this respect coexisted objectively. social life plans for him were the stages of his life path and his spiritual development. This personal experience was profound, but Dostoevsky did not give it a direct monological expression in his work. This experience only helped him to better understand coexisting extensively developed contradictions, contradictions between people, and not between ideas in one mind. Thus, the objective contradictions of the era determined Dostoevsky's work not in the plane of their personal outliving in the history of his spirit, but in the plane of their objective vision as simultaneously coexisting forces (though a vision deepened by personal experience).

The world of Dostoevsky is an artistically organized coexistence and interaction of spiritual diversity, and not stages in the formation of a single spirit. Therefore, the worlds of the characters, the plans of the novel, despite their different hierarchical accentuation, in the very construction of the novel lie side by side in the plane of coexistence (like Dante's worlds) and interaction (which is not in Dante's formal polyphony), and not one after another as stages of formation. But this does not mean, of course, that in Dostoevsky's world bad logical hopelessness, ill-conceivedness and bad subjective inconsistency dominate. No, Dostoevsky's world is in its own way just as finished and rounded as Dante's world. But it is in vain to look for a systematic-monological, even if dialectical, philosophical completeness in it, and not because the author did not succeed in it, but because it was not part of his intentions.

He left behind a huge literary legacy, in which criticism has not yet figured out, without even establishing mutual relationship between various works, some of which had the significance of preparatory sketches for later major works. But character traits his works are quite clear. Dostoevsky is essentially a writer-psychologist, a researcher of the depths of the human soul, an analyst of its subtlest moods. Life seems to him unusually complex and spontaneous, full of contradictions and unsolvable mysteries; on the human soul experiencing the complexity and spontaneity of the life process, both the mind and the heart, clairvoyant thought and blind faith act simultaneously. A mysterious mystical beginning, lurking in the depths human personality, owns it no less than external circumstances.

The real and the mystical are constantly juxtaposed in Dostoevsky's novels, sometimes to the point where the boundary between the author's story and the hallucinations of the portrayed hero disappears. By the bifurcation of the human personality, the uncertainty of feelings and aspirations, many of Dostoevsky's heroes, especially Golyadkin in The Double, resemble the heroes of Hoffmann, who, like Dostoevsky, wrote at the time of a painful breakdown of nerves at night. In the depths of life phenomena in Dostoevsky lies the tragic element of fate, leading the most heterogeneous accidents to amazing coincidences which create the decisive motive. The conversation of unknown persons in a tavern about an old pawnbroker makes Raskolnikov think of murder, almost gives ready plan, outlines the framework of the psychological content within which the further action of the novel will develop. And this tragic fatal element manifests itself among the sharp contrasts of hatred and love, bestial cruelty, vices, all kinds of horrors and feats of self-denial, angelic clarity and purity.

Fedor Dostoevsky. Portrait by V. Perov, 1872

The action develops extremely quickly in Dostoevsky; events are piled up in masses at the most insignificant intervals of time, they irresistibly rush forward, not allowing the reader to come to his senses, to dwell on the features that characterize the everyday moods of people famous circle in known era. It is understandable, therefore, that in concentrating all the interest of the story on the transmission of psychological moments, Dostoevsky provides comparatively little everyday material. The desire for truth, for fidelity in the depiction of feeling, far exceeds Dostoevsky's concern for the external methods of artistry.

It also follows from this public importance novels by Dostoevsky. Having made the starting point of his psychological excursions the suffering into which a person is drawn by the external and internal contradictions of life, Dostoevsky took the side of downtrodden and oppressed people, who suffer as much from the fact that they were crushed by everyday circumstances, as from the consciousness of their own human dignity, every minute insulted and trampled, from the consciousness of their right to a meaningful and moral life. Dostoevsky is rooting for a person who comes to terms with the power of things and begins to consider himself an incomplete, not a real person. This is the path to redemption.

Dostoevsky. Demons. Lecture by Lyudmila Saraskina

The forms of suffering in Dostoevsky's depictions are highly varied; their psychological motives are developed in the most bizarre combinations: suffering from love for a person in general, suffering from strong and base passions, from love combined with cruelty and malice, from painful self-love and suspicion, from wolf instincts, on the one hand, and sheep’s humility on the other hand. another. “Man is a despot by nature and loves to be a tormentor,” says Dostoevsky in The Gambler. His "underground man" comes to the assertion that "man passionately loves suffering" - the latter, thus, is raised to the level of non-requirement of human nature.

Suffering gives rise to love and faith, and in them is our justification before the Supreme Being - such is Dostoevsky's philosophy of suffering. There is a lot of cruelty in his novels, but there is also a lot of mercy in them. With the precision of a psychiatrist, the great Russian writer revealed the whole world"blessed", drunkards, voluptuaries, holy fools, idiots, crazy, and each image not only shocks the reader, but also opens his heart to the influence of the rays of gospel love. In Dostoevsky's books we see various types of narrow-minded happy people, heartless egoists, naive dreamers, people of a pure immaculate life, etc. The depiction of this in the highest degree complex world, which becomes close to the reader's heart until it completely merges with him, puts Dostoevsky in the ranks of the primary realists, and his comparison with L. Tolstoy, made by critics, has deep grounds for itself. With all their particular differences, both of them are passionate seekers of that truth and the moral healing of mankind.