195 years ago, on November 11, 1821, in the official apartment of the Marijana Hospital for the Poor, one of the eight children of the doctor of that hospital, Dr. Mihail Adrejevic, saw the light of day. In the Register of the baptized and deceased, in the temple of Saints Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg, this entry was entered: "In the home of the hospital for the poor and orphans, in the official quarters of doctor Mihail Andrejevic, his son Fyodor was born." Thus, "wretched and poor" were joined by "humiliated and insulted" - that was the name of the newborn - Dostoevsky.
He learned to read from the Bible
Instead of reading from a primer, he learned to read from the book "One Hundred and Four Holy Stories of the Old and New Testament", which would later be reflected in his novels. According to his father's wishes, he became a military engineer, but literature, which he began to deal with as soon as he entered the post of second-lieutenant engineer, prevailed. Soon, while serving in the Petersburg Engineering Command, he resigned from military service and devoted himself entirely to writing. He passed a long path full of temptations - from a fighter for social justice, which he paid for by being sentenced to the death penalty, which was replaced by exile to Siberia by imperial mercy, to a man with deep religious feelings, whose unique ideal became Christ.
The Sermon on the Mount
"Our Father in heaven, command your sun to rise on the bad and the good and pour rain on the just and the unjust".
The quote from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is cited here for a reason. First of all, because Dostoevsky himself very often quoted Christ, and secondly, because this was exactly the relationship "towards the great confessor of the Russian soul", unattainable, superhuman, of unfathomable proportions and cosmic heights.
The majesty of Dostoevsky's spirit is often intimidated by obscurity. And so one often gets the same image: a thin, nervous man, a bit mindless, gloomy-looking, in gray, worn-out clothes, drinking tea in an ascetic pose while coils of tobacco smoke roll around his face, a pensive look in which one can sense that it is always the same the question that is constantly repeated: "What will finally happen to the homeland and to us".
The historical truth from this description could only be matched to the extreme extent by the coils of tobacco smoke. Dostoevsky really smoked an awful lot, and loved tobacco more than anything: "Do me a divine favor, take this laundry and buy me a pack of tobacco on the way, if possible "satchi i mangubi", and if not, then "laferm". Both companies were registered as suppliers to the imperial court, branches of prestigious tobacco manufacturers from Vienna and Paris.
What an ascetic, sweet tooth!
Not only was he not an ascetic in the meal, but on the contrary - and what a sweet tooth, a gourmand. His friend Vsevolda Solojova testifies to this: "He was a great gourmet."
He showed this in different ways. His wife told how he loved Russian cuisine and sent her around the city to get the necessary ingredients to prepare Russian specialties.
First acquaintance with future wife
"I left Dostoevsky in a very sad mood. I didn't like him at all and he left a very painful impression on me", is how Anna Snitkina Dostoevsky remembered her first meeting with her future husband. Her personal experiences can be shared after a century by readers who got acquainted with the work of the great writer. Sad and hard. After all, that's how it always was and always will be.
The greatness of Dostoevsky's novels, especially the four most significant ones ("Crime and Punishment", "The Idiot", "Evil Souls", "The Brothers Karamazov") for an individual person and for society as a whole is constantly arriving and growing. And already in the XNUMXth century, it reached unimagined proportions.
And in the beginning, just like in the 19th century, when Dostoyevsky was considered such an insignificant writer, that, for example, Tolstoy or Turgenev were paid 400 rubles for printed tobacco, and he was paid four times less. In terms of influence on the minds and hearts of readers, literary heroes such as Rodion Raskolnikov or Njetočka Nezvanova were incomparably more insignificant than, for example, completely forgotten today, but at the time very popular literary heroes of a certain writer Pyotr Boborikin.
"Piščev dnevnik" - a blog of the time
But in 1873 there was a change and it was sudden. In the magazine "Građanin" Dostoevsky got a section that he would call "The Writer's Diary", thanks to which, in three years, this magazine for social issues would grow into, during that time, a publishing giant with a circulation of three to eight thousand copies per issue!
The author, editor and absolute owner of the magazine was Dostoevsky himself. He wrote about his editorial concept of the "Writer's Diary": "What to talk about? About anything that catches my attention or makes me think”.
His "Writer's Diary" in many ways resembles a modern blog on the Internet with a backlink of enormous proportions in terms of the number of letters received. Only Leo Tolstoy managed, in the XNUMXth century, to break this record of Dostoyevsky's in the number of letters received from readers. And all because Dostoevsky was able to "astonish and stimulate thinking" better than anyone else. In "The Writer's Diary" Dostoevsky was nuanced, with a very wide range of thematic interests. And always, incredibly contemporary and very, very current.
The shortest overview of the topics raised in the "Writer's Diary" and Dostoevsky's answers to them, which sound as if they were posted yesterday on his "internet blog": On tolerance: "It is not up to me or you to teach the people religious tolerance. In that, the people and you and the whole of Europe have something to learn". About the current sanctions and counter-sanctions: "When they see that we Russians are not afraid of deficits or bankruptcy, but continue as before, they will come and offer us money."
Sometimes on the pages of the "Writer's Diary" Dostoevsky published his strategic ideas of the century: "Build two railroads, start with them: one in Siberia and the other in Central Asia, and you will immediately feel the beneficial consequences."
It's amazing, but everything happened as the genius writer advised - the Imperial Trans-Siberian Highway and the Soviet Turksib were built and BAM!
Succeeded in "socializing" reading Russia
Dostoevsky succeeded in enthralling and "nationalizing" all of Russia's readers. His "difficult and sad" novels again attract readers who once again discover in them a devastating height and depth. There were also blasphemers of Dostoevsky's name. Dostoyevsky's eternal rival, the prophet from Yasna Polyana, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, often changed his opinion about his antipode, so once he will be included in the list of "blasphemers of the name of Dostoyevsky", which reads: "I read 'The Brothers Karamazov' ... Very bad ...”. But that was not all from the author of "War and Peace". Just a few days later, Tolstoy will write: "What Christ, what Sermon on the Mount? There is a lot of excess there. It's hard to read. It was written worse than Dostoyevsky".
A valuable recognition, and the company is not bad either. And the main thing was said - for all mankind and for all time.
Bonus video:
