A
few
words
about
Dostoevsky
himself
may
help
the
English
reader
to
understand
his
work. Dostoevsky
was
the
son
of
a doctor.
His
parents
were
very
hard-working
and
deeply
religious
people,
but
so
poor
that
they
lived
with
their
five
children
in
only
two
rooms.
The
father
and
mother spent
their
evenings
in
reading
aloud
to
their
children, generally
from
books
of
a
serious
character.
Though
always
sickly
and
delicate
Dostoevsky came
out
third
in
the
final
examination
of
the
Petersburg
school
of
Engineering.
There
he
had
already
begun
his
first
work, "Poor Folk."
This
story
was
published
by
the
poet
Nekrassov
in
his
review
and
was
received
with
acclamations.
The
shy,
unknown
youth
found
himself
instantly
something
of
a celebrity. A
brilliant
and
successful career
seemed
to
open
before
him,
but
those
hopes
were
soon
dashed.
In
1849
he
was
arrested.
Though
neither
by
temperament
nor
conviction
a revolutionist, Dostoevsky
was
one
of
a
little
group
of
young
men
who
met
together
to
read Fourier
and
Proudhon.
He
was
accused
of
"taking
part
in
conversations
against
the
censorship,
of
reading
a
letter
from
Byelinsky
to
Gogol,
and
of
knowing
of
the
intention
to
set
up
a printing press."
Under
Nicholas
I. (that "stern
and
just
man,"
as
Maurice
Baring
calls
him)
this
was
enough,
and
he
was
condemned
to
death.
After
eight
months'
imprisonment
he
was
with
twenty-one
others
taken
out
to
the
Semyonovsky
Square
to
be
shot.
Writing
to
his
brother
Mihail, Dostoevsky says: "They snapped
words
over
our
heads,
and
they
made
us
put
on
the
white
shirts
worn
by
persons
condemned
to
death. Thereupon
we
were
bound
in
threes
to
stakes,
to
suffer
execution. Being
the
third
in
the
row, I
concluded
I had
only
a
few
minutes
of
life
before
me. I
thought
of
you
and
your
dear
ones
and
I
contrived
to
kiss
Plestcheiev
and
Dourov,
who
were
next
to
me,
and
to
bid
them
farewell. Suddenly
the
troops beat a tattoo,
we
were
unbound, brought
back
upon
the
scaffold,
and
informed
that
his
Majesty
had
spared
us
our
lives."
The
sentence
was
commuted
to
hard
labour.
One
of
the
prisoners, Grigoryev, went
mad
as
soon
as
he
was
untied,
and
never
regained
his
sanity.
The
intense
suffering
of
this
experience left a
lasting
stamp
on
Dostoevsky's mind.
Though
his
religious
temper led
him
in
the
end
to
accept
every
suffering
with
resignation
and
to
regard
it
as
a
blessing
in
his
own
case,
he
constantly
recurs
to
the
subject
in
his
writings.
He
describes
the
awful
agony
of
the
condemned
man
and
insists
on
the
cruelty
of
inflicting
such
torture.
Then
followed
four
years
of
penal
servitude, spent
in
the
company
of
common
criminals
in
Siberia,
where
he
began
the
"Dead House,"
and
some
years
of
service
in
a
disciplinary
battalion.
He
had shown
signs
of
some
obscure
nervous
disease
before
his
arrest
and
this
now
developed
into
violent
attacks
of
epilepsy,
from
which
he
suffered
for
the
rest
of
his
life.
The
fits
occurred
three
or
four
times a
year
and
were
more
frequent
in
periods
of
great
strain.
In
1859
he
was
allowed
to
return
to
Russia.
He
started a journal—"Vremya,"
which
was
forbidden
by
the
Censorship
through
a misunderstanding.
In
1864
he
lost
his
first
wife
and
his
brother
Mihail.
He
was
in
terrible
poverty,
yet
he
took
upon
himself
the
payment
of
his
brother's debts.
He
started
another
journal—"The Epoch,"
which
within
a
few
months
was
also
prohibited.
He
was
weighed
down
by
debt,
his
brother's
family
was
dependent
on
him,
he
was
forced
to
write
at
heart-breaking speed,
and
is
said
never
to
have
corrected
his
work.
The
later
years
of
his
life
were
much
softened
by
the
tenderness
and
devotion
of
his
second
wife.
In
June
1880
he
made
his
famous
speech
at
the
unveiling
of
the
monument
to
Pushkin
in
Moscow
and
he
was
received
with
extraordinary
demonstrations
of
love
and
honour. A
few
months
later Dostoevsky died.
He
was
followed
to
the
grave
by
a
vast
multitude
of
mourners,
who
"gave
the
hapless
man
the
funeral
of
a king."
He
is
still
probably
the
most
widely read
writer
in
Russia.
In
the
words
of
a
Russian
critic,
who
seeks
to
explain
the
feeling
inspired
by
Dostoevsky: "He
was
one
of
ourselves, a
man
of
our
blood
and
our
bone,
but
one
who
has
suffered
and
has
seen
so
much
more
deeply
than
we
have
his
insight impresses
us
as
wisdom...
that
wisdom
of
the
heart
which
we
seek
that
we
may
learn
from
it
how
to
live.
All
his
other
gifts
came
to
him
from
nature,
this
he
won
for
himself
and
through
it
he
became great."