-:- Dostoyevsky Reading List by Katharena -:-

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Main Page | Thought Provoking Quotes by Dostoyevsky | Discuss existentialism and Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Dostoyevsky Life and Times | Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- Philosophical Testament of Existentialism | Dostoyevsky's Beliefs and Concerns | Fyodor Dostoyevsky : Books and Reviews | Katharena's Essential Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Cheat Sheet!

A number of works of indifferent quality--A Friend of the Family (1859), The Uncle's Dream (1859), Memoirs from the House of the Dead (1860-61), and The Insulted and Injured (1861)--preceded Notes From Underground (1864), a powerful work that is considered the philosophical testament of existentialism as well as the prologue to Dostoyevsky's great tragic novels. The Underground Man is a cynical denizen of St. Petersburg, alienated from his surroundings and his fellow man, who nevertheless poses a powerful challenge to the impersonal forces of rationalism, progress, and social engineering. He is an intransigent champion of free will.

In 1866, Dostoyevsky published Crime and Punishment, a novel of redemption through suffering that in many respects dramatizes the philosophic principles put forth in Notes from the Underground. Raskolnikov's motive for committing the murder that is the focus of his story is as hard to get at as is Hamlet's motive for delaying the avenging of his father. The novel represents a "testing" of the limits of individual freedom and is a gripping metaphysical detective story.

In 1867, Dostoyevsky traveled to Germany and Switzerland with his new bride, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina. He remained abroad until 1871 and there completed The Idiot (1868), the warmly ironic story of Prince Mishkin, a saintly epileptic, a man who is ineffectual because of his positive goodness. His next novel, The Devils : The Possessed (1871-72), reflects Dostoyevsky's negative reaction to the political changes that had occurred in Russia between the 1840s and 1860s, more specifically to the radicalism that had supplanted the liberalism of the 1840s. He had no sympathy for the radicals' contempt for established authority, religion, the family, and most humanistic values. In the first part of the 1870s, Dostoyevsky attempted to reconcile himself with the liberal elements in Russia; The Adolescent, or A Raw Youth (1875) is the fruit of this attempt. In 1876 he began publication of The Journal of a Writer, a monthly miscellany with comments on politics, international news, literary events, some fiction, and matters of general interest. This journalistic endeavor became the worksheet for his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. In 1877 he discontinued publication of The Journal of a Writer in order to work exclusively on The Brothers Karamazov, which he completed in 1880.