47 Fun Facts About Fyodor Dostoevsky

In which city was Dostoevsky born in 1821?

Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on 11 November 1821, on the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where his father worked as a doctor.

Crime and Punishment was first published in twelve monthly instalments in what year?

Crime and Punishment was published in 1866 in twelve monthly instalments; that same year Dostoevsky dashed off The Gambler in 26 days to meet a publisher's deadline.

Whom does Raskolnikov kill in Crime and Punishment?

Raskolnikov murders Alyona Ivanovna, an elderly pawnbroker, and then kills her half-sister Lizaveta when she walks in on the crime.

What weapon does Raskolnikov use in Crime and Punishment?

Raskolnikov kills the pawnbroker with an axe taken from the porter's lodge, carried in a loop he has sewn inside his coat.

Which detective investigates the murders in Crime and Punishment?

Porfiry Petrovich, the examining magistrate, has no hard evidence but plays cat and mouse with Raskolnikov, finally telling him outright that he knows he is the killer.

In Crime and Punishment, who is Sonya, the young woman who guides Raskolnikov toward confession?

Sonya is Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, daughter of the drunken ex-clerk Marmeladov; she has turned to prostitution to feed her family and later follows Raskolnikov to Siberia.

The Brothers Karamazov was serialised from 1879 to 1880 in which journal?

The Brothers Karamazov ran in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880, the last novel Dostoevsky completed; he was planning a sequel when he died.

The plot of The Brothers Karamazov revolves around what crime?

The plot turns on patricide: the dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered, and his eldest son Dmitri is tried and convicted of the crime.

Which Karamazov brother tells the prose poem "The Grand Inquisitor"?

Ivan recites his prose poem to Alyosha in a tavern: in sixteenth-century Seville a cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, arrests a returned Christ for burdening mankind with free will.

Who is the rumoured illegitimate Karamazov son who serves as his father's servant?

Smerdyakov's surname means roughly 'son of the reeking one', after his mother, the mute holy fool Stinking Lizaveta; Fyodor Pavlovich is widely assumed to be his father.

Which elder monk is Alyosha Karamazov's spiritual guide?

Father Zosima, the monastery elder, is Alyosha's mentor; he was modelled partly on the elder Ambrose of Optina Monastery, whom Dostoevsky visited in 1878 after his small son's death.

Dostoevsky named Alyosha Karamazov after whom?

The boy died of epilepsy, inherited from his father, in May 1878 while the novel was being written.

Who called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written"?

Sigmund Freud wrote in his 1928 essay 'Dostoevsky and Parricide' that The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written, placing Dostoevsky not far behind Shakespeare.

Who is the guileless prince at the centre of The Idiot?

Prince Lev Myshkin, returning to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium, was Dostoevsky's attempt to depict 'a positively good and beautiful man', as he wrote to his niece in 1868.

Which painting erodes Rogozhin's faith in The Idiot?

A copy of Holbein's Dead Christ in the Tomb hangs in Rogozhin's house; Myshkin says it could make a man lose his faith, and Rogozhin admits it is doing exactly that to him.

Which novel did Dostoevsky consider his favourite among his own works?

He admitted much of it was written hurriedly but said he stood behind the idea.

Notes from Underground was first published in 1864 in which journal?

Notes from Underground appeared in 1864 in Epoch (Epokha), the journal Dostoevsky founded with his brother Mikhail after their magazine Time (Vremya) was shut down in 1863.

Notes from Underground is often cited as one of the first works of which movement?

Notes from Underground is widely called a founding text of existentialism; its narrator, a retired civil servant, rails against the rationalist idea that life reduces to 'two times two makes four'.

Which Chernyshevsky novel does the Underground Man attack?

The Underground Man mocks the rational egoism and utopian optimism of Chernyshevsky's 1863 novel What Is to Be Done?, making the novella an assault on determinism.

Dostoevsky's first novel, published in 1846, is titled what?

Poor Folk, an epistolary novel published in January 1846, made Dostoevsky famous overnight; the critic Vissarion Belinsky hailed it as Russia's first 'social novel'.

Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for belonging to which discussion group?

Dostoevsky was arrested in April 1849 as a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, young intellectuals who met to discuss banned writings; he had read Belinsky's Letter to Gogol aloud to them.

What happened at Dostoevsky's scheduled execution by firing squad in December 1849?

The execution was stayed at the last moment: Tsar Nicholas I had staged the mock shooting in advance, and an aide read the reprieve while the first three condemned stood tied to the posts; the sentence became Siberian hard labour.

Dostoevsky served four years of hard labour at a prison camp in which Siberian city?

Dostoevsky served his sentence from 1850 to 1854 in the prison fortress at Omsk; the only book he was allowed was a New Testament given to him by Decembrist wives at Tobolsk.

Which novel drew on Dostoevsky's years in the Siberian prison camp?

The House of the Dead (1860-62) is a lightly fictionalised memoir of Dostoevsky's four years in the Omsk prison; Tolstoy called it one of the finest books in modern literature.

Which chronic medical condition did Dostoevsky suffer from throughout his life?

Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy for most of his adult life, with seizures worsening during his Siberian years; he gave the condition to Prince Myshkin in The Idiot.

Dostoevsky's ruinous addiction was to which casino game?

Dostoevsky's addiction was to roulette, which he played compulsively at German spa casinos such as Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden through the 1860s before giving up gambling in 1871.

Dostoevsky dictated The Gambler in 26 days to which stenographer, later his wife?

Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, a 20-year-old stenographer, took down The Gambler in October 1866 and married Dostoevsky the next February; missing the deadline would have given publisher Stellovsky his works for nine years.

Which composer turned The Gambler into a 1929 opera?

Sergei Prokofiev composed The Gambler in 1915-17, revised it in 1927, and saw it premiere in Brussels in 1929. The novel is set in a German casino town called Roulettenburg.

Demons was inspired by the real murder of Ivan Ivanov by the followers of which agitator?

Sergey Nechayev's secret cell murdered the student Ivan Ivanov in November 1869; Dostoevsky turned the crime into the murder of a defector by a revolutionary cell in Demons.

Constance Garnett's 1916 translation popularised Demons under which English title?

Constance Garnett's 1916 version was titled The Possessed; later translators preferred Demons or The Devils, since the Russian Besy names the possessing spirits rather than the people possessed.

Who is the master conspirator who plunges the town into chaos in Demons?

Pyotr Verkhovensky, a nihilist organiser modelled on Nechayev, manipulates the town's radicals into murder and arson; his father Stepan, a Western-leaning 1840s liberal, is cast as the unwitting progenitor of the chaos.

Who called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn"?

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols (1888) that Dostoevsky was 'the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn', having discovered Notes from Underground in French translation the year before.

Dostoevsky's schoolmates at the engineering academy nicknamed him what?

Classmates at the Military Engineering Institute dubbed him 'Monk Photius' for his reclusiveness and religious bent; he had no interest in military engineering and resigned his commission in 1844.

Dostoevsky's first wife Maria Isaeva married him in 1857 in which Siberian town?

She initially refused, saying his finances ruled marriage out; they mostly lived apart.

Dostoevsky's honeymoon abroad, planned for three months, ended up lasting how long?

The trip lasted over four years, from April 1867 to July 1871: they fled creditors, buried their infant daughter Sonya in Geneva, and finally returned to Saint Petersburg.

Dostoevsky delivered a famous 1880 speech at the unveiling of a memorial to which poet?

Dostoevsky's Pushkin Speech, delivered in Moscow on 8 June 1880 at the unveiling of Opekushin's statue of Pushkin, drew thunderous applause; even his rival Turgenev embraced him afterwards.

Which parable did the dying Dostoevsky ask to have read to his children?

On his deathbed Dostoevsky had Anna read the parable of the Prodigal Son to their children; biographer Joseph Frank read the choice as his final statement on transgression, repentance and forgiveness.

Dostoevsky is buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery at which Saint Petersburg monastery?

Dostoevsky was buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, near Karamzin and Zhukovsky; tens of thousands followed the funeral procession through Saint Petersburg.

Which Russian tsar asked Dostoevsky to help educate his sons?

Alexander II received Dostoevsky in 1878 to accept A Writer's Diary and asked him to help with the education of his younger sons, the Grand Dukes Sergei and Paul.

In what year did Dostoevsky die?

Dostoevsky died in Saint Petersburg on 9 February 1881 (28 January Old Style) of a pulmonary haemorrhage, days after a police search of a neighbouring flat reportedly agitated him.

Which literary theorist built his idea of the "polyphonic novel" on Dostoevsky?

Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929) introduced the 'polyphonic novel': many independent voices coexist with no final authorial word.

Which Dostoevsky novel is narrated by the illegitimate youth Arkady Dolgoruky?

The Adolescent (1875), also translated as A Raw Youth, is narrated by nineteen-year-old Arkady Dolgoruky, illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov; it was serialised in Notes of the Fatherland.

Dostoevsky's brother Mikhail funded their magazine Vremya with money from what business?

Mikhail Dostoevsky ran a small cigarette factory in Saint Petersburg, and its proceeds bankrolled the brothers' magazine Vremya (Time), which serialised The House of the Dead from 1861.

Into roughly how many languages have Dostoevsky's books been translated?

Dostoevsky's works have appeared in over 170 languages; his output runs to thirteen novels, three novellas and seventeen short stories.

Which London landmark did Dostoevsky view as a monument to soulless modern materialism?

Visiting London in 1862, Dostoevsky saw the Crystal Palace as a temple of soulless materialism, an image he skewered in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions and again in Notes from Underground.

Dostoevsky's second wife Anna was a pioneer in Russia of which hobby?

Anna Dostoevskaya began collecting stamps in 1867 to prove to her husband that a woman could pursue a goal steadily, and is counted among Russia's first philatelists; she also wrote two memoirs of him.

How did Dostoevsky propose to his stenographer, according to her memoirs?

Dostoevsky proposed in November 1866 by outlining an imaginary novel: he asked Anna whether a young girl could love an old, sick painter, then told her to imagine he was the painter and she the girl.