LITERATURE - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

a good trick with his name is to say toy in the middle dostoyevsky he was born in 1821 and grew up on the outskirts of moscow his family were comfortably off his father was a successful doctor though he happened to work at a charitable hospital that provided medical services for the very poor the family had a house in the hospital complex so the young dostoevsky was from the very beginning powerfully exposed to experiences from which other children of his background were usually carefully sheltered like almost everyone in cyrus russia his parents were devout orthodox christians and dostoyevsky's own religious faith got deeper and stronger throughout his life at the age of 12 he was sent away to school first in moscow and later in the capital st petersburg he got a good education there was a child of the tiny professional middle class he felt out of place among his more aristocratic classmates while he was away at school his father died possibly murdered by his own serfs after graduating dostoyevsky worked as an engineer for a while he started gambling and losing money something that was to plague him all his life in his late twenties he became friends with a group of radical writers and intellectuals he wasn't deeply involved but when the government decided to crack down on dissent dostoyevsky was rounded up to and sentenced to be shot by a firing squad however at the last moment just when the soldiers were ready to fire a message of reprieve arrived dostoyevsky was sent instead to siberia for four years of forced labor in horrific conditions it was only after his return from siberia that dostoyevsky established himself as a writer starting in middle-aged he produced a series of major books notes from the underground crime and punishment the idiot demons and the brothers karamazov they are dark violent and tragic and usually very long and complicated he wrote them to preach five important lessons to the world incidentally the discussion of dostoyevsky's ideas does involve revealing the plots of some of his novels it's not something that would have worried him because his books are written to be read more than once but if it bothers you this is the place to break off dostoyevsky's first big book notes from the underground is an extended rant against life and the world delivered by a retired civil servant this civil servant is deeply unreasonable inconsistent and furious with everyone including himself he's always getting into arouse he goes to a reunion of some former colleagues and tells them all how much he has always hated them he wants to puncture everyone's illusions and make them as unhappy as he is he seems like a grotesque character to build a book around but he's doing something important he's insisting with a peculiar kind of intensity on a very strange fact about the human condition we want happiness but we have a special talent for making ourselves miserable man is sometimes extraordinarily passionately in love with suffering that is a fact he asserts in the novel dostoyevsky is taking aim at philosophies of progress and improvement which were highly popular in his age as they continue to be in ours he is attacking our habit of telling ourselves that if only this or that thing were different we could leave suffering behind if we got that great job change the government could afford that great house invented a machine to fly fast around the world could get together with or divorce from a particular person then all would go well this dostoyevsky argues is a delusion suffering will always pursue us schemes for improving the world always contain a flaw they won't eliminate suffering they will only change the things that cause us pain life can only ever be a process of changing the focus of pain never of removing pain itself there will always be something to agonize us stop people starving says dostoyevsky with calculated wickedness and you'll soon find there's a new range of agonies people will start to suffer from boredom greed or intense melancholy that they haven't been invited to the right party in this spirit notes from the underground launches an attack on all ideologies of technical or social progress which aspire to the elimination of suffering they won't succeed because as soon as they solve one problem they'll direct our nature to become unhappy in new ways dostoyevsky is fascinated by the secret way in which we actually don't want what we theoretically seem to seek he discusses the pleasure a lot of people get from feelings of superiority and for whom consequently an egalitarian society would be a nightmare or the disavowed but real thrill we get from hearing about violent crimes on the news in which case we'd actually feel thwarted in a truly peaceful world notes from the underground is a dark awkwardly insightful counterpoint to well-intentioned modern liberalism it doesn't really show that social improvement is meaningless but it does remind us that we'll always carry our very complex and difficult selves with us and that progress will never be as clear and clean as we might like to imagine in crime and punishment we meet an impoverished intellectual rodion raskolnikov though he's currently a nobody he's fascinated by power and ruthlessness he thinks of himself as a version of napoleon leaders of men such as napoleon were all without exception criminals we hear they broke the ancient laws of their people to make new ones that suited them better and they never feared bloodshed raskolnikov is also desperate for money and so aristocratic superiority in mind he decides to murder an old woman who's a small-time pawn broker and moneylender and to steal her cash he's tormented by the mad injustice of the fact that this horrible mean old character has drawers full of rubles while he who is clever energetic and profound is starving he doesn't spend much time thinking about options like taking a job as a waiter so raskolnikov breaks into her apartment and bludgeons her to death and surprised in the act by the woman's pregnant half-sister kills her too but it turns out he's nothing like the cold-blooded rational hero of his own imagination he is tormented by guilt and horror at what he has done eventually he turns himself over to the police in order to face the proper punishment for his crime we're probably never going to do what raskolnikov did but we often share a troubling tendency with him we think we know ourselves better than we actually do raskolnikov thinks he's ruthless actually he's rather tenderhearted he thinks he won't feel guilt but he's overwhelmed by remorse part of our life's journey is to engage in the tricky task of disentangling ourselves from what we think we're like in order to discover our true nature raskolnikov is especially fascinating because of the direction this self-discovery takes his striking realization is that he's actually a much nicer person than he takes himself to be whereas so many novelists delight in showing the sickly reality beneath a glamorous or enticing facade dostoyevsky is embarked on a more curious but rewarding mission he wants to reveal that beneath the so-called monster there can very often be a far more interesting tenderhearted character lurking a nice but deluded intelligent but frightened and panicked person sticking for the moment with crime and punishment it's very significant the way dostoyevsky gets us to like his murderous hero raskolnikov is clearly an attractive person at the very start of the book we're told by the way raskolnikov is handsome above the average in height slim well-built with lovely dark eyes and dark brown hair dostoevsky throughout lessens the imaginative distance between us who live mainly law abiding and more or less manageable lives and them the ones who do terrible things and wreak havoc with their lives and those of others that person he is saying is more like you than you might initially want to think and therefore more accessible to sympathy the idea that you can be a good person do something very bad and still deserve some compassion sounds maybe slight and obvious until one has need of this kind of forgiveness in one's own life this is where dostoyevsky wants to enter our inner conversation with ourselves and tell us all about his character res kolnikov a serious thoughtful good-looking man who did worse than we have and still can be compassionately understood as we can and must all be this is dostoyevsky's christianity at work no one is outside the circle of god's love and understanding dostoyevsky's next great book the idiot takes off from his near-death experience before the firing squad in the novel he recounts what that was like three minutes before his expected death he is able to see life clearly for the first time he notices the gilded spire of a nearby church and how it glitters in the sun he'd never before realized how entrancing a glint of sunlight could be he is filled with an immense deep love of the world you might see a beggar and think how you would love to change places with them so as to be able to continue to breathe the air and feel the wind merely to exist seems at that moment of final revelation infinitely precious and then the revised order comes and it's not over at all what would it be like to go through one's whole life in such a state of gratitude and generosity you wouldn't share any of the normal attitudes you'd love everyone equally you'd be enchanted by the simplest things you'd never feel angry or frightened you would seem to other people to be a kind of idiot hence the title of dostoyevsky's book it's an extreme version of a very interesting step we're continually surrounded by things which could delight us if only we saw them in the right way if only we could learn to appreciate them dostoyevsky was desperate to communicate the value of existence before death would overtake him and us in dostoyevsky's final great work brothers karamazov which came out when he was nearly 60 one of the central characters tells a long story within a story it's called the grand inquisitor and imagines that the greatest event looked forward to by christian theology the second coming of christ has in fact already happened jesus did come back several hundred years ago he turned up in spain during the highest period of power in the catholic church the organization established in theory at least entirely in devotion to him christ is back to fulfill his teachings of forgiveness and universal love but something rather odd happens the most powerful religious leader the grand inquisitor has jesus arrested and imprisoned in the middle of the night the grand inquisitor visits christ in his cell and explains that he cannot allow him to do his work on earth because he is a threat to the stability of society christ he says is just too ambitious too pure too perfect humanity can't live up to the impossible goals he sets before us the fact is people haven't been able to live according to his teachings and jesus should admit he failed and that his ideas of redemption were essentially misguided the grand inquisitor is not really a monster in fact dostoyevsky portrays him as quite an admirable figure in the story he is a guide to a crucial idea that human beings cannot live in purity cannot ever be just truly good cannot live up to christ's message and that this is something we should reconcile ourselves to with grace rather than fury or self-hatred we have to accept a great deal of unreasonableness folly greed selfishness and short-sightedness as inner-radicable parts of the human condition and plan accordingly and it's not just a pessimistic thesis about politics or religion that we're being introduced to the primary relevance of this thesis is as a commentary on our own lives we won't sort them out we won't stop being a bit mad and wayward and we shouldn't torment ourselves with a dream that we could if only we tried hard enough become the perfect beings that idealistic philosophies like christianity like to sketch all too readily dostoyevsky died in 1881 he had a very hard life but he succeeded in conveying an idea which perhaps he understood more clearly than anyone in a world that's very keen on upbeat stories we will always run up against our limitations as deeply flawed and profoundly muddled creatures dostoyevsky's attitude bleak but compassionate tragic but kind is needed more than ever in our naive and sentimental age that so fervently clings to the idea which this great russian novelist loathed that science can save us all and that we may yet be made perfect through technology dostoyevsky guides us to a more humane darker truth that as the great sages have always known life is and ever will be suffering and yet that there is great redemption available in articulating this message in brilliant and moving complex and subtle works of art you

Channel: The School of Life

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Keywords: alain de botton, tsol, sol, the school of life, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, literature, author, philosophy, think, thought, lecture, learning, education

Id: MMmSdxZpseY

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2016