…is finished but Brandon’s Book Club is just starting! I’m pleased as punch to have made it through Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground and I’m thinking of taking on another novel of his. Brilliant writing but I’m a slow reader so it takes me a while. Anyways, if you want to know some cool facts about Fyodor Dostoyevsky (alt. spelling Dostoevsky), here goes:
- His father was a physician at a Moscow charity hospital and his mother died when he was 16.
- He was one of 7 children.
- His father had an estate and was murdered by his serfs, allegedly due to the father’s brutality and debauchery. (Dad enjoyed the company of a harem of peasant girls.)
- Dostoyevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk, met with critical acclaim.
- He joined a socialist group only to be arrested by the police, imprisoned, and sentenced to death. On December 21, 1849, he was to be publicly executed with others. He watched as 3 men ahead of him were bound to posts, ready to be shot. The Tsar’s messenger galloped in on a horse to announce that their lives were spared. Two of the prisoners went permanently insane. Dostoyevsky suffered from severe epileptic fits for the rest of his life.
- He was sentenced to 8 years in a Siberian prison, served 4, and then enlisted in the army.
- He suffered from a nervous breakdown, was granted a full pardon in 1859, and moved to St. Petersburg to write.
- His main philosophy was that suffering and degradation were rewarded with salvation.
- He married twice and his second wife lived off the royalties from his work. She survived him for 40 years after his death in 1881 at the age of 59.
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