A Study on extreme states of mind with subject to typical death acts in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s selected works
Pages : 439-441, DOI: https://doi.org/10.14741/ijmcr/v.6.3.8Download PDF
Unlike many other Russian writers of the first part of the 19th century, Dostoyevsky was not born into the landed gentry. He often stressed the difference between his own background and that of Leo Tolstoy or Ivan Turgenev and the effect of that difference on his work. First, Dostoyevsky was always in need of money and had to hurry his works into publication. Although he complained that writing against a deadline prevented him from achieving his full literary powers, it is equally possible that his frenzied style of composition lent his novels an energy that has remained part of their appeal. Second, Dostoyevsky often noted that, unlike writers from the nobility who described the family life of their own class, shaped by “beautiful forms” and stable traditions, he explored the lives of “accidental families” and of “the insulted and the humiliated.”
Keywords: Landed gentry, frenzied style, beautiful norms, accidental families, humiliated