Dostoevsky

This past spring I took a course entirely for fun on Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of my favorite authors, if not my most favorite. The course almost made me wish I had decided to minor in comparative literature instead of economics, even if economics might be more useful. It's funnier when you think that my major is actually computer science (and my other minor is math). When I was in high school, I went through a glut of classic literature reading during my junior and senior year. I stormed through all of Jane Austen, Brontë sisters, and a smattering of Dickens, Hemingway, Gabriel García Márquez, Tolstoy, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nabokov, Victor Hugo, etc., and generally, it was: the longer the book, the more I enjoyed it.

I loved every book I read immensely, especially The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, which really spoke to me. However, I feel now that I went through all the books I did a little too quickly, and I was maybe too young to really grasp the novels deeper. That's why this course I took turned out to be such a treat. Not only did I get the chance to re-read one of my favorite books for class, but I could pore over every word and chapter to analyze, read famous criticisms, study his other short stories, read in-depth studies of the author and his mental state and convictions, and use all these to come to a better understanding of the symbolism and meaning Dostoevsky was aiming for.

Dostoevsky, I believe, is not an author for everyone. He writes about characters on the brink of insanity, twisted by fate and their own peculiarities, instabilities, and neuroses. After all, my final term paper was on the subject of suicide in his stories! However, I also believe there is a part of everyone that can relate at times to his characters and their desperation. Certainly, a lot of what he writes is extremely depressing, but in his later works especially, I find so many beautiful passages of love, spirituality, and hope. The Brothers Karamazov is one of the finest examples of both depression and enlightenment, if one can get through its length, and has many stories of human tenderness and suffering. One can only wonder what his two sequels would have been like if he had lived to write them.

With this in mind, I hope to go through other classics sometime this summer and gain new light on cherished stories by reading them over again with a slightly older mind.