Sometimes I sit and imagine what it was like to be Dostoievsky. To live in the heart of Sant Petersburg in 1855, occupy a small studio, write all day, and at night, lit up a candle place it on an old thick wooden table filled with piles of books and manuscripts, and keep on writing.
I see him thinking, looking at the people passing on the street underneath his window, following them with his gaze, analyzing each of their gestures. Dostoievsky was a keen observer, someone well versed in the large spectrum of human emotion. We see it in the way he animates his characters, like a masterful puppeteer he tied up the strings on his character's souls and he plays them skillfully. The way he animates them in his stories is something akin to playing the piano or operating a very complex machine. When I read him I wonder, are these people real? People he met and knew intimately? Was he carrying a notebook everywhere he went and carefully documented the character traits of everyone he met?
-- “But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
"On April 23, 1849, he and the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested. Dostoyevsky spent eight months in prison until, on December 22, the prisoners were led without warning to the Semyonovsky Square. There a sentence of death by firing squad was pronounced, last rites were offered, and three prisoners were led out to be shot first. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered and a messenger arrived with the information that the tsar had deigned to spare their lives. The mock-execution ceremony was in fact part of the punishment. One of the prisoners went permanently insane on the spot; another went on to write Crime and Punishment."
“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-
If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?” -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I see him thinking, looking at the people passing on the street underneath his window, following them with his gaze, analyzing each of their gestures. Dostoievsky was a keen observer, someone well versed in the large spectrum of human emotion. We see it in the way he animates his characters, like a masterful puppeteer he tied up the strings on his character's souls and he plays them skillfully. The way he animates them in his stories is something akin to playing the piano or operating a very complex machine. When I read him I wonder, are these people real? People he met and knew intimately? Was he carrying a notebook everywhere he went and carefully documented the character traits of everyone he met?
-- “But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
"On April 23, 1849, he and the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested. Dostoyevsky spent eight months in prison until, on December 22, the prisoners were led without warning to the Semyonovsky Square. There a sentence of death by firing squad was pronounced, last rites were offered, and three prisoners were led out to be shot first. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered and a messenger arrived with the information that the tsar had deigned to spare their lives. The mock-execution ceremony was in fact part of the punishment. One of the prisoners went permanently insane on the spot; another went on to write Crime and Punishment."
“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-
If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?” -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But I realized over time that I was only romanticizing those things because I was imagining have such quaint artifacts but located within my modern world with its modern comforts. Life in Petersburg back then for most was filled with hunger like dogs and unbareable cold.
But beyond that I love the way you reveal Fyodor through the quotes in this post. He was a man who truly thought the most important value of life was the deep connection you can have with one other person. Often times he had to put characters in such destitute situations for this connection to be illustrated to its fullest extent.