Crime And Punishment

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (Dostoevsky), born on 11 November [O.S. 30 October] 1821, was the second child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoyevsky and Maria Dostoyevskaya (née Nechayeva). He was raised in the family home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, in Moscow. Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends and by Russian and foreign authors through books. In 1837 when he was 15, his mother died and around the same time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. He wrote his first novel, ‘Poor Folk’ in the mid-1840s and gained entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles. In 1849 he was arrested for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle, a secret society of liberal utopians that also functioned as a literary discussion group. He and other members were condemned to death, but at the last moment, a note from Tsar Nicholas I was delivered to the scene of the firing squad, commuting the sentence to four years' hard labor in Siberia. In Siberia, his seizures, which started in 1839, increased in frequency and he was diagnosed with epilepsy. On his release, he was forced to serve as a soldier, before being discharged on grounds of ill health. In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Dostoyevsky influenced a multitude of writers and philosophers, from Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway to Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. On 25 January 1881, while searching for members of the terrorist organization, ‘Narodnaya Volya’ (The People's Will) who would soon assassinate Tsar Alexander II, the Tsar's secret police executed a search warrant in the apartment of one of Dostoyevsky's neighbour. On the following day, Dostoyevsky suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage, though his wife, Anna, denied that the search had caused it. After another hemorrhage, Anna called the doctors, who gave a poor prognosis. A third haemorrhage followed shortly afterwards. Among Dostoyevsky's last words was his quotation of Matthew 3:14–15: "But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptised of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness", and he finished with "Hear now—permit it. Do not restrain me!" When he died, his body was placed on a table, following Russian custom. He was interred in the Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Convent, near his favourite poets, Karamsin and Zhukovsky. It is unclear how many attended his funeral. According to one reporter, more than 100,000 mourners were present, while others describe attendance between 40,000 and 50,000. His tombstone is inscribed with lines from the New Testament.