Mr Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

The Socrates of Literature

Abstract

“Why should we read Dostoevsky today?” is a question many lecturers face from students in one form or another. Does his world of religious visionaries and cynical revolutionaries, of meek, kind-hearted prostitutes and hysterical femmes fatales, of brutal sensualists and sexual innocents offer any comfort? Does his aspiring Rothschilds and Napoleons, of melodrama, scandal and the grotesque, of hallucinations, devils and doubles, of dialogues with and indictments of the ‘progressive’ ideas ‘in the air’ in the midnineteenth century and the ever more forceful assertion of the Russian and in particular the Russian Orthodox ideal have a relevance today? This essay, put forth below, is nothing but bosses the lines, above.