Fyodor Dostoevsky Life
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born October 30, 1821, in Moscow's Hospital for the Poor. He was the second of seven children born to a former army surgeon, who was murdered in 1839 when his own serfs poured vodka down his throat until he died.
Dostoyevsky's paternal lineage was descended from the multi-ethnical and denominational Lithuanian nobility from the Pinsk region, however the family had fallen on hard times and had been reduced to the class of non-monastic clergy. Dostoyevsky's paternal great-grandfather and grandfather practised as priests in the Ukrainian town of Bratslava, where his father was born.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born and raised within the grounds of the Mariinsky hospital.
It was neither a wealthy nor a poor home. In his childhood, Dostoyevsky often went with his family on summer visits to the estate in Darovoye. At the age of three he discovered heroic sagas, fairy tales, legends and began developing a deeply ingrained piety under the influence of nannies. He was soon obsessed with tales. The nanny Alina Frolovna and the serf and farmer Marei from Darovoye, the latter of whom helped him to fight his early hallucinations, possibly caused by the terrible tales and gothic literature, were influential in his childhood. Dostoyevsky also discovered the miserable hospital garden, which was separated by a large fence from their protected private garden. His parents forbade him to have contact with those on the other side, intending to shield their children from uncontrollable influences.
He was educated at home and at a private school.
On 27 September 1837 his mother died of tuberculosis. Dostoeyvsky contracted a serious throat disease soon after.
His mother's sudden death was devastating for Dostoyevsky, and he had to leave private school for a military school.
Fyodor's father also placed much value on a good education. He sent Fyodor first to a French boarding school and then to the best private high school in Moscow, the "College for Noble Male Children". As the school was too expensive, he had to get loans, take advances and extend his private practice. When the thirteen-year-old Dostoyevsky arrived at this famous college, he experienced an inferiority complex towards his more aristocratic classmates. This feeling was often documented in his works, especially The Adolescent.
Following a boarding school education in Moscow with his older brother Mikhail, Fyodor was admitted to the Academy of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg in 1838. He completed his studies in 1843, graduating as a lieutenant, but was quickly convinced that he preferred a career in writing to being mired in the bureaucratic Russian military.
His parents introduced him to Russian literature at an early stage, including Karamzin's Russian Tales, Pushkin, Derzhavin, as well as the works of the English novelist Ann Radcliffe and the works of the German Friedrich Schiller. Dostoyevsky was impressed by the latter's play "The Robbers", which he saw at the age of 10. Fyodor and his brother Mikhail both enjoyed Pushkin's poems, which they learned for the most part by heart; Pushkin's death was a shock for the whole family.
On April 23, 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested with other members of the Petrashevsky circle and was sentenced to death. He was placed in solitary confinement in the Petropavlovsky Fortress for eight months. During this time, Tsar Nikolai I changed his sentence but ordered that this change only be announced at the last minute. On December 22, Dostoevsky and his fellow prisoners were led through all the initial steps of execution, and several of them were already tied to posts awaiting their deaths when the reprieve was sounded.
Dostoevsky's sentence of eight years' hard labor in a Siberian prison was reduced to four, followed by another four years of compulsory military service. During the latter, he married the widow Marya Dmitrievna Isaeva, with whom he returned to St. Petersburg in 1859.
Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1854 as a writer with a religious mission and published three works that derive in different ways from his Siberia experiences: The House of the Dead, (1860) a fictional account of prison life, The Insulted and Injured, which reflects the author's refutation of naive Utopianism in the face of evil, and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
In 1855 he met and fell in love with Maria Dmitrievna Isaev, who would later become his wife. Isaev, though unhappily, was married to an abusive alcoholic. Dostoevsky and Isaev's love affair lasted through many trials, and they were eventually married in February of 1857, while Dostoevsky was still in exile. Their life together lasted until April 15, 1864 when Maria lost her battle with consumption, which she had been suffering from for years. Dostoevsky wold marry again.
In 1857 Dostoevsky married Maria Isaev, a 29-year old widow. He resigned from the army two years later. Between the years 1861 and 1863 he served as editor of the monthly periodical Time, which was later suppressed because of an article on the Polish uprising.
In 1864-65 his wife and brother died and he was burdened with debts, and his situation was made even worse by gambling. From the turmoil of the 1860s emerged Notes from the Underground, psychological study of an outsider, which marked a watershed in Dostoevsky's artistic development. The novel starts with the confessions of a mentally ill narrator and continues with the promise of spiritual rebirth. It was followed by Crime and Punishment, (1866) an account of an individual's fall and redemption, The Idiot,(1868) depicting a Christ-like figure, Prince Myshkin, and The Possessed, (1871) an exploration of philosophical nihilism.
His second wife was Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, whom he met as the stenographer he had hired to speed up the process of completing a novel which he was contracted to deliver on a deadline. Despite their age difference (she was twenty, he was forty four) they fell in love and were marriedin in February of 1867.
In April, 1867, the Dostoevskys left Russia for Europe. The move was financed by Anna's financial savvy, and by her using the money from her dowery and by pawning everything she owned. They would stay in Europe for four years instead of the few months that was originally planned. They finally returned to Russia in the spring of 1871, after suffering the loss of an infant daughter, the birth of a second one (Lyubov), and before the birth of their second child, Fyodor.
By the 1870s, Dostoevsky had become a famous writer. Oddly, his fame was balanced by a quiet domestic life. Dostoevsky was a tender and tranquil husband and a playful father, fond of reading to his children. Even his happy years were not free of tribulations.
Dostoevsky's near-execution and his terrible years of imprisonment made an indelible impression on him, converting him to a lifelong intense spirituality. These beliefs formed the basis for his great novels.
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