And now, a line by line analysis of his life.
Born to parents Mikhail and Maria, Fyodor was the second of seven children.
No problems yet. Even nice. Not a middle child, right up near the top.
Fyodor's mother died of an illness in 1837.
Whoops. All right, these things happen.
It was not long before his father, a retired military surgeon who served as a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow, also died in 1839.
Within three sentences, we have two dead parents.
While not known for certain, it is believed that Mikhail Dostoevsky was murdered by his own serfs, who reportedly became enraged during one of Mikhail's drunken fits of violence, restrained him, and poured vodka into his mouth until he drowned.
Oof. If you've got to go some way, I don't think having so much vodka forced down your throat so quickly is the way you want to go.
Another story was that Mikhail died of natural causes, and a neighboring landowner cooked up this story of a peasant rebellion so he could buy the estate cheaply.
Not bad, I guess. No suffering, but you get screwed over by the guy next door when you sell your property.
Regardless of what may have actually happened, Sigmund Freud focused on this tale in his famous article, Dostoevsky and Parricide (1928).
Not terrible I guess, though I don't know if I'd want Freud analyzing me in famous essays.
Dostoyevsky was arrested and imprisoned in 1849 for engaging in revolutionary
activity against Tsar Nikolai I.
Pretty self-explanatory.
On November 16 that year he was sentenced to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group, the Petrashevsky Circle.
Yup.
After a mock execution in which he faced a staged firing squad, Dostoevsky's sentence was commuted to a number of years of exile performing hard labor at a katorga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia.
Is there anything worse than being killed? I don't. I suppose that depends on your views on life, death, the soul, consciousness, etc. But this is pretty bad. Note the mountains of misery contained in that one puny little sentence. That was like ten minutes in this guy's life. "Pow! Ah, just kidding, we're not going to kill you. Have fun with the hard labor in Siberia!"
The incidence of epileptic seizures, to which he was predisposed, increased during this period.
For fuck's sake, someone just hit this guy with a comet already.
He was released from prison in 1854, and was required to serve in the Siberian Regiment.
Half full or half empty? This guy must be a pessimist by this point in his life, so I'm guessing half empty.
Dostoevsky spent the following five years as a corporal (and latterly lieutenant) in the Regiment's Seventh Line Battalion stationed at the fortress of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.
Moving up in the world. Not bad. Give this guy a point.
This was a turning point in the author's life.
Doesn't really say anything, but it sounds good.
Dostoevsky abandoned his earlier radical sentiments and became deeply conservative and extremely religious.
Depends on your perspective I guess.
He later formed a peculiar friendship with another archconservative, Konstantin Pobedonostsev.
Friendships are good I guess, even when they're "peculiar" and with "archconservatives."
He began an affair with, and later married, Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the widow of an acquaintance in Siberia.
Well it looks like things are finally turning around for old Fyodor!
In 1860, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he ran a series of unsuccessful literary journals with his older brother Mikhail.
Well trying is the important thing, I guess.
Dostoevsky was devastated by his wife's death in 1864, followed shortly thereafter by his brother's death.
Devastated, huh?
He was financially crippled by business debts and the need to provide for his brother's widow and children.
Cripped, eh?
Dostoevsky sank into a deep depression, frequenting gambling parlors and accumulating massive losses at the tables.
It's one thing to be depressed and a successful gambler...
To escape creditors in Petersburg, Dostoevsky traveled to Western Europe.
Escapes are rarely good.
There, he attempted to rekindle a love affair with Apollinaria (Polina) Suslova, a young university student with whom he had had an affair several years prior, but she refused his marriage proposal.
Nor are rejections.
Dostoevsky was heartbroken, but soon met Anna Snitkina, a nineteen-year-old stenographer whom he married in 1867.
There you go! Pick yourself right up off the ground and get yourself back on your feet. And only nineteen, you sly dog you! And from here, he finally seems to live a decent life.
From 1873 to 1881 he vindicated his earlier journalistic failures by publishing a monthly journal full of short stories, sketches, and articles on current events — the Writer's Diary. The journal was an enormous success.
In 1877 Dostoevsky gave the keynote eulogy at the funeral of his friend, the poet Nekrasov, to much controversy. In 1880, shortly before he died, he gave his famous Pushkin speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow.
In his later years, Fyodor Dostoevsky lived for a long time at the resort of Staraya Russa which was closer to St Petersburg and less expensive than German resorts. He died on January 28 (O.S.), 1881 and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St. Petersburg, Russia.
So there you go. Fyodor Dostoevsky: dead parents, epilepsy, mock executions and all.
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