Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Legacy

Legacy

Together with Leo Tolstoy, and despite some criticism about his puppet-like characters and the off-topic verbiages, Dostoyevsky is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential novelists of the Golden Age of Russian literature. His debut novel, Poor Folk, pushed him into the literary mainstream. Critics saw him as a rising star of Russian literature. He was known for his gifted narrative: according to Konstantin Staniukovich in his essay "The Pushkin Anniversary and Dostoevsky's Speech" from Business, "the language of Dostoevsky's really looks like a sermon. He speaks with the tone of a prophet. He makes a sermon like a pastor; it is very deep, sincere, and we understand that he wants to impress the emotions of his listeners." Through Dostoyevsky's sophisticated treatment of intellectual and political discussions he was described as a spiritual guide, a teacher and even a prophet.

Dostoyevsky's works also attracted readers outside Russia. The German translator Wilhelm Wolfsohn published one of the first translations, parts of Poor Folk, in an 1846–1847 magazine, and a French translation followed. The first English translations were provided by Marie von Thilo in 1881, and the first acclaimed translations into English were produced between 1912 and 1920 by Constance Garnett.

Many non-Russians have been introduced to Dostoyevsky's works. Friedrich Nietzsche called Dostoyevsky "the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life ... " Thomas Mann recommended reading his novels in their entirety. Hermann Hesse enjoyed Dostoyevsky's work and also cautioned against that to read him is like a "glimpse into the havoc". The Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun wrote that "no one has analysed the complicated human structure as Dostoyevsky. His psychologic sense is overwhelming and visionary. We have no yardstick by which to assess his greatness". André Gide said that Dostoyevsky "should be put beside Ibsen and Nietzsche; he is equal in size to these three, and maybe the most important".

In a letter to Gide, Edmund Gosse said that Dostoyevsky is "the cocaine and morphia of modern literature". Ernest Hemingway acknowledged Dostoyevsky as one of his influences. In his posthumously published collection of sketches A Moveable Feast, Hemingway stated that in Dostoevsky "there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true that they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know."

According to Arthur Power's Conversations with James Joyce, Joyce praised Dostoyevsky's prose: "(...) he is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence."

In her essay The Russian Point of View, Virginia Woolf said, "The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading". Franz Kafka named Dostoyevsky as his "blood-relative", and was heavily influenced by his works, especially The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, both of which had a profound effect on The Trial. Sigmund Freud called his last work "the most significant novel ever written". Modern cultural movements such as the surrealists, the existentialists and the Beats regard Dostoyevsky as an influence. Dostoyevsky is cited as the forerunner of Russian symbolism, existentialism, expressionism and psychoanalysis.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Dostoyevsky's books were often censored or banned. His philosophy, especially in The Demons, was deemed capitalistic and anti-Communist, leading Maxim Gorky to nickname the author "our evil genius". Reading Dostoyevsky was forbidden, and those who did not observe this rule were imprisoned. During the Second World War, however, his works were used as propaganda by both the Soviets and the Nazis. After the war, the prohibition law in the Soviet Union was overturned. Even though the 125th anniversary of his birth was celebrated throughout Russia in 1947, his works were banned again until Nikita Khrushchev's accession to power ten years later, following de-Stalinization and a softening of repressive laws.

In the second half of the twentieth century, his works topped the best-seller lists worldwide. Philosophers, psychologists, theologians, politicians, literary critics, physicians, lawyers and students acknowledged his works, and many of his novels and short stories were filmed and dramatised in the Soviet Union and other countries. Dostoyevsy's fictional characters and his work overall were popularised in graffiti, presidential speeches, vaudevilles, films and plays.

In 1956 an olive-green postage stamp dedicated to Dostoyevsky was released in the Soviet Union with a print run of 1,000 copies. A Dostoevsky Museum was opened on 12 November 1971 in the apartment where he wrote his first and last novels. A minor planet discovered in 1981 by Lyudmila Karachkina was named 3453 Dostoevsky. Viewers of the TV show Name of Russia voted him the ninth greatest Russian of all time, behind chemist Dmitry Mendeleev and ahead of the Russian ruler Ivan IV. A Moscow Metro station on the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya Line was scheduled to open to the public on 15 May 2010, the 75th anniversary of the Moscow Metro. Illustrations on the décor made by artist Ivan Nikolaev were criticised because of their depiction of suicides, but did not hinder the opening of Dostoyevskaya on 19 June.

Four of Dostoyevsky's books (Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov) are on the list of 100 best books of all time.