Книга: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Patricia Highsmith «Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment. Patricia Highsmith. Ripley's Game (комплект из 2 книг)»

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Infobox Writer
name = Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ( _ru. Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский, IPA-ru|ˈfʲodər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ dəstɐˈjɛfskʲɪj, sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski or Dostoevskii Audio|ru-Dostoevsky.ogg|listen) (OldStyleDate|November 11|1821|October 30 – OldStyleDate|February 9|1881|January 28) was a Russian novelist and writer of fiction whose works include "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov".

Dostoevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th century existentialism, his "Notes from Underground" (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written." [Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre Walter Kaufmann ISBN-10: 0452009308 page 12]

Biography

Family origins

Dostoevsky was Russian on his mother's side. His paternal ancestors were from a place called Dostoyeve, natives of the guberniya (province) of Minsk, not far from Pinsk. The last name of the paternal family is assumed to be 'Rdishev' prior to its assumption of the township eponym 'Dostoevsky', though the ethnic origins of his paternal ancestors remain in dispute. According to one theory, Dostoevsky's paternal ancestors were Polonized nobles (szlachta) and went to war bearing Polish Radwan Coat of Arms. Dostoevsky (Polish "Dostojewski") Radwan armorial bearings were drawn for the Dostoevsky Museum in Moscow. The family eventually passed into Ukraine. [citation
last=Dostoyevsky
first=Aimée
title=FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY: A STUDY
place=Honolulu, HAWAII
publisher= [http://www.universitypressofthepacific.com/ University Press of the Pacific]
year=2001
url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/61397936
isbn=0898751659
pages=1, 6-7]

Early life

Dostoevsky was the second of seven children born to Mikhail and Maria Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky's father Mikhail was a retired military surgeon and a violent alcoholic, who served as a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow. The hospital was situated in one of the worst areas in Moscow. Local landmarks included a cemetery for criminals, a lunatic asylum, and an orphanage for abandoned infants. This urban landscape made a lasting impression on the young Dostoevsky, whose interest in and compassion for the poor, oppressed, and tormented was apparent. Though his parents forbade it, Dostoevsky liked to wander out to the hospital garden, where the suffering patients sat to catch a glimpse of sun. The young Dostoevsky loved to spend time with these patients and hear their stories.

There are many stories of Dostoevsky's father's despotic treatment of his children. After returning home from work, he would take a nap while his children, ordered to keep absolutely silent, stood by their slumbering father in shifts and swatted at any flies that came near his head. However, it is the opinion of Joseph Frank, a biographer of Dostoevsky, that the father figure in "The Brothers Karamazov" is not based on Dostoevsky's own father. Letters and personal accounts demonstrate that they had a fairly loving relationship.

Shortly after his mother died of tuberculosis in 1837, Dostoevsky and his brother were sent to the Military Engineering Academy at Saint Petersburg. Fyodor's father died in 1839. Though it has never been proven, it is believed by some that he was murdered by his own serfs. [ [http://worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/Coradella_Collegiate_Bookshelf_Collection/Dostoevsky-notesfromtheunderground.pdf Notes from the Underground] Coradella Collegita Bookshelf edition, "About the Author".] According to one account, they became enraged during one of his drunken fits of violence, restrained him, and poured vodka into his mouth until he drowned. Another story holds that Mikhail died of natural causes, and a neighboring landowner invented the story of his murder so that he might buy the estate inexpensively. Some have argued that his father's personality had influenced the character of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the "wicked and sentimental buffoon", father of the main characters in his 1880 novel "The Brothers Karamazov", but such claims fail to withstand the scrutiny of many critics.

Dostoevsky had epilepsy and his first seizure occurred when he was 9 years old. [ [http://www.epilepsy.com/epilepsy/famous_writers.html epilepsy.com] Famous authors with epilepsy.] Epileptic seizures recurred sporadically throughout his life, and Dostoevsky's experiences are thought to have formed the basis for his description of Prince Myshkin's epilepsy in his novel "The Idiot" and that of Smerdyakov in "The Brothers Karamazov", among others.

At the Saint Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering, Dostoevsky was taught mathematics, a subject he despised. However, he also studied literature by Shakespeare, Pascal, Victor Hugo and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Though he focused on areas different from mathematics, he did well on the exams and received a commission in 1841. That year, he is known to have written two romantic plays, influenced by the German Romantic poet/playwright Friedrich Schiller: "Mary Stuart" and "Boris Godunov". The plays have not been preserved. Dostoevsky described himself as a "dreamer" when he was a young man, and at that time revered Schiller. However, in the years during which he yielded his great masterpieces, his opinions changed and he sometimes poked fun at Schiller.

Beginnings of a literary career

Dostoevsky was made a lieutenant in 1842, and left the Engineering Academy the following year. He completed a translation into Russian of Balzac's novel "Eugénie Grandet" in 1843, but it brought him little or no attention. Dostoevsky started to write his own fiction in late 1844 after leaving the army. In 1845, his first work, the epistolary short novel, "Poor Folk", published in the periodical "The Contemporary" (Sovremennik), was met with great acclaim. As legend has it, the editor of the magazine, poet Nikolai Nekrasov, walked into the office of liberal critic Vissarion Belinsky and announced, "a new Gogol has arisen!" Belinsky, his followers and many others agreed and after the novel was fully published in book form at the beginning of the next year, Dostoevsky became a literary celebrity at the age of 24.

In 1846, Belinsky and many others reacted negatively to his novella, "", a psychological study of a bureaucrat whose alter ego overtakes his life. Dostoevsky's fame began to cool. Much of his work after "Poor Folk" met with mixed reviews and it seemed that Belinsky's prediction that Dostoevsky would be one of the greatest writers of Russia was mistaken.

Exile in Siberia

Dostoevsky was arrested and imprisoned on April 23 1849 for being a part of the liberal intellectual group, the Petrashevsky Circle. Tsar Nicholas I after seeing the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe was harsh on any sort of underground organization which he felt could put autocracy into jeopardy. On November 16 that year Dostoevsky, along with the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle, was sentenced to death. After a mock execution, in which he and other members of the group stood outside in freezing weather waiting to be shot by a firing squad, Dostoevsky's sentence was commuted to four years of exile with hard labor at a katorga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia. Dostoevsky described later to his brother the sufferings he went through as the years in which he was "shut up in a coffin." Describing the dilapidated barracks which, as he put in his own words, "should have been torn down years ago", he wrote:

He was released from prison in 1854, and was required to serve in the Siberian Regiment. Dostoevsky spent the following five years as a private (and later lieutenant) in the Regiment's Seventh Line Battalion, stationed at the fortress of Semipalatinsk, now in Kazakhstan. While there, he began a relationship with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of an acquaintance in Siberia. They married in February 1857, after her husband's death.

Post-prison maturation as writer

Dostoevsky's experiences in prison and the army resulted in major changes in his political and religious convictions. Firstly, his ordeal somehow caused him to become disillusioned with 'Western' ideas; he repudiated the contemporary Western European philosophical movements, and instead paid greater tribute in his writing to traditional, rural-based, rustic Russian 'values'. But even more significantly, he had what his biographer Joseph Frank describes as a conversion experience in prison, which greatly strengthened his Christian, and specifically Orthodox, faith (Dostoevsky would later depict his conversion experience in the short story, "The Peasant Marey" (1876)).

Dostoevsky now displayed a much more critical stance on contemporary European philosophy and turned with intellectual rigour against the Nihilist and Socialist movements; and much of his post-prison work -- particularly the novel, "The Possessed" and the essays, "The Diary of a Writer" -- contains both criticism of socialist and nihilist ideas, as well as thinly-veiled parodies of contemporary Western-influenced Russian intellectuals (Timofey Granovsky), revolutionaries (Sergey Nechayev), and even fellow novelists (Ivan Turgenev). [Dostoevsky the Thinker James P. Scanlan. Dostoevsky the Thinker. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiii, 251 pp. ] [ [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jim_forest/pevear.htm Dostoevsky's View of Evil] Reprinted from "In Communion", April 1998.] In social circles, Dostoevsky allied himself with well-known conservatives, such as the statesman Konstantin Pobedonostsev. His post-prison essays praised the tenets of the Pochvennichestvo movement, a late-19th century Russian nativist ideology closely aligned with Slavophilism.

Dostoevsky's post-prison fiction abandoned the European-style domestic melodramas and quaint character studies of his youthful work in favor of dark, more complex story-lines and situations, played-out by brooding, tortured characters -- often styled partly on Dostoevsky himself -- who agonized over existential themes of spiritual torment, religious awakening, and the psychological confusion caused by the conflict between traditional Russian culture and the influx of modern, Western philosophy. This, nonetheless, does not take from the debt which Dostoevsky owed to the earlier (Western influenced within Russia Gogol) writers whose work grew from out of the irrational and anti-authoritarian spiritualist ideas contained within the Romantic movement which had immediately preceded Dostoevsky in Europe. However, Dostoevsky's major novels focused on the idea that utopias and positivist ideas being utilitarian were unrealistic and unobtainable. [cite book | last = Sirotkina | first = Irina | title = Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880 | year = 1996 | publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press | location = | page = 55 | isbn = 0801867827]

Later literary career

In December 1859, Dostoevsky returned to Saint Petersburg, where he ran a series of unsuccessful literary journals, "Vremya" (Time) and "Epokha" (Epoch), with his older brother Mikhail. The latter had to be shut down as a consequence of its coverage of the Polish Uprising of 1863. That year Dostoevsky traveled to Europe and frequented the gambling casinos. There he met Apollinaria Suslova, the model for Dostoevsky's "proud women," such as the two characters named Katerina Ivanovna, in "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov".

Dostoevsky was devastated by his wife's death in 1864, which was followed shortly thereafter by his brother's death. He was financially crippled by business debts and the need to provide for his wife's son from her earlier marriage and his brother's widow and children. Dostoevsky sank into a deep depression, frequenting gambling parlors and accumulating massive losses at the tables.

Dostoevsky suffered from an acute gambling compulsion as well as from its consequences. By one account "Crime and Punishment", possibly his best known novel, was completed in a mad hurry because Dostoevsky was in urgent need of an advance from his publisher. He had been left practically penniless after a gambling spree. Dostoevsky wrote "The Gambler" simultaneously in order to satisfy an agreement with his publisher Stellovsky who, if he did not receive a new work, would have claimed the copyrights to all of Dostoevsky's writings.Motivated by the dual wish to escape his creditors at home and to visit the casinos abroad, Dostoevsky traveled to Western Europe. There, he attempted to rekindle a love affair with Suslova, but she refused his marriage proposal. Dostoevsky was heartbroken, but soon met Anna Grigorevna Snitkina, a twenty-year-old stenographer. Shortly before marrying her in 1867, he dictated "The Gambler" to her. This period resulted in the writing of what are generally considered to be his greatest books. From 1873 to 1881 he published the "Writer's Diary", a monthly journal full of short stories, sketches, and articles on current events. The journal was an enormous success.

Dostoevsky is also known to have influenced and been influenced by the philosopher Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov. Solovyov is noted as the inspiration for the character Alyosha Karamazov. [Zouboff, Peter, Solovyov on Godmanhood: Solovyov’s Lectures on Godmanhood Harmon Printing House: Poughkeepsie, New York, 1944; see Czeslaw Milosz’s introduction to Solovyov’s War, Progress and the End of History. Lindisfarne Press: Hudson, New York 1990.]

In 1877, Dostoevsky gave the keynote eulogy at the funeral of his friend, the poet Nekrasov, to much controversy. On June 8, 1880, shortly before he died, he gave his famous Pushkin speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. [ [http://az.lib.ru/d/dostoewskij_f_m/text_0340.shtml az.lib.ru] ]

In his later years, Fyodor Dostoevsky lived for a long time at the resort of Staraya Russa in northwestern Russia, which was closer to Saint Petersburg and less expensive than German resorts. He died on February 9 (January 28 O.S.), 1881 of a lung hemorrhage associated with emphysema and an epileptic seizure. He was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg. Forty thousand mourners attended his funeral. [Dostoevsky, Fyodor; Introduction to The Idiot, Wordsworth Ed. Ltd, 1996.] His tombstone reads "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." from John 12:24, which is also the epigraph of his final novel, "The Brothers Karamazov".

Works and influence

Dostoevsky's influence has been acclaimed by a wide variety of writers, including Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Charles Bukowski, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Yukio Mishima, Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel García Márquez, Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, Allen Ginsberg, Orhan Pamuk, and Joseph Heller.Fact|date=May 2007 American novelist Ernest Hemingway cited Dostoevsky as a major influence on his work in his autobiographical novella "A Moveable Feast".

In a book of interviews with Arthur Power ("Conversations with James Joyce"), James Joyce praised Dostoevsky's influence:

In her essay "The Russian Point of View", Virginia Woolf stated that,

Dostoevsky displayed a nuanced understanding of human psychology in his major works. He created an opus of vitality and almost hypnotic power, characterized by feverishly dramatized scenes where his characters are, frequently in scandalous and explosive atmosphere, passionately engaged in Socratic dialogues "à la Russe"; the quest for God, the problem of Evil and suffering of the innocents haunt the majority of his novels.

His characters fall into a few distinct categories: humble and self-effacing Christians (Prince Myshkin, Sonya Marmeladova, Alyosha Karamazov, Starets Zosima), self-destructive nihilists (Svidrigailov, Smerdyakov, Stavrogin, the underground man), cynical debauchees (Fyodor Karamazov), and rebellious intellectuals (Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov, Ippolit); also, his characters are driven by ideas rather than by ordinary biological or social imperatives. In comparison with Tolstoy, whose characters are realistic, the characters of Dostoevsky are usually more symbolic of the ideas they represent, thus Dostoevsky is often cited as one of the forerunners of Literary Symbolism in specific Russian Symbolism (see Alexander Blok).

Dostoevsky's novels are compressed in time (many cover only a few days) and this enables the author to get rid of one of the dominant traits of realist prose, the corrosion of human life in the process of the time flux — his characters primarily embody spiritual values, and these are, by definition, timeless. Other obsessive themes include suicide, wounded pride, collapsed family values, spiritual regeneration through suffering (the most important motif), rejection of the West and affirmation of Russian Orthodoxy and Tsarism. Literary scholars such as Bakhtin have characterized his work as 'polyphonic': unlike other novelists, Dostoevsky does not appear to aim for a 'single vision', and beyond simply describing situations from various angles, Dostoevsky engendered fully dramatic novels of ideas where conflicting views and characters are left to develop unevenly into unbearable crescendo.

Dostoevsky and the other giant of late 19th century Russian literature, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, never met in person, even though each praised, criticized and influenced each other (Dostoevsky remarked of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" that it was a "flawless work of art"; Henri Troyat reports that Tolstoy once remarked of "Crime and Punishment" that, "Once you read the first few chapters you know pretty much how the novel will end up").Fact|date=August 2007 There was, however, a meeting arranged, but there was a confusion about where the meeting place was and they never rescheduled. Tolstoy reportedly burst into tears when he learnt of Dostoevsky's death. A copy of "The Brothers Karamazov" was found on the nightstand next to Tolstoy's deathbed at the Astapovo railway station. Since their time, the two are considered by the critics and public as two of the greatest novelists produced by their homeland.

Dostoevsky has also been noted as having expressed anti-Semitic sentiments. In the recent biography by Joseph Frank, "The Mantle of the Prophet," Frank spent much time on "A Writer's Diary" - a regular column which Dostoevsky wrote in the periodical "The Citizen" from 1873 to the year before his death in 1881. Frank notes that the Diary is "filled with politics, literary criticism, and pan-Slav diatribes about the virtues of the Russian Empire, [and] represents a major challenge to the Dostoevsky fan, not least on account of its frequent expressions of anti-Semitism." ["Dostoevsky's leap of faith This volume concludes a magnificent biography which is also a cultural history." Orlando Figes. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (LONDON). Pg. 13. September 29, 2002.] Frank, in his foreword that he wrote for the book "Dostoevsky and the Jews", attempts to place Dostoevsky as a product of his time. Frank notes that Dostoevsky "did" make anti-semitic remarks, but that Dostoevsky's writing and stance by and large was one where Dostoevsky held a great deal of guilt for his comments and positions that were anti-semitic. [Dostoevsky and the Jews (University of Texas Press Slavic series) (Hardcover) 2 Joseph Frank, "Foreword" pg. xiv. by David I. Goldstein ISBN-10: 0292715285] Steven Cassedy, for example, alleges in his book, "Dostoevsky's Religion", that much of the points made that depict Dostoevsky’s views as an anti-Semite, do so by denying that Dostoevsky expressed support for the equal rights of and for the Russian Jewish population, a position that was not widely supported in Russia at the time.cite book |title= Dostoevsky's Religion |last= Cassedy |first= Steven |authorlink= |coauthors= |year= 2005 |publisher= Stanford University Press |location= |isbn= 0804751374 |pages= 67-80 ] Cassedy also notes that this criticism of Dostoevsky also appears to deny his sincerity in the statements that Dostoevsky made, that he was for equal rights for the Russian Jewish populace, and the Serfs of his own country (since neither group at that point in history had equal rights). Cassedy further notes that the criticism maintains that Dostoevsky was insincere when he stated that he did not hate Jewish people and was not an Anti-Semite. According to Cassedy, this position was maintained without taking into consideration Dostoevsky's expressed desire to peacefully reconcile Jews and Christians into a single universal brotherhood of all mankind.

Dostoevsky and Existentialism

With the publication of "Crime and Punishment" in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky became one of Russia's most prominent authors in the nineteenth century. Dostoevsky has also been called one of the founding fathers of the philosophical movement known as existentialism. In particular, his "Notes from Underground", first published in 1864, has been depicted as a founding work of existentialism. For Dostoevsky, war is the rebellion of the people against the idea that reason guides everything. And thus, reason is the ultimate principle of guidance for neither history nor mankind. Having been exiled to the city of Omsk (Siberia) in 1849, many of Dostoevsky's works entail notions of suffering and .

Nietzsche referred to Dostoevsky as "the only psychologist from whom I have something to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier even than the discovery of Stendhal." He said that "Notes from the Underground" "cried truth from the blood." According to Mihajlo Mihajlov's "The great catalyzer: Nietzsche and Russian neo-Idealism", Nietzsche constantly refers to Dostoevsky in his notes and drafts throughout the winter of 1886-1887. Nietzsche also wrote abstracts of several of Dostoevsky's works.

Freud wrote an article entitled Dostoevsky and Parricide that asserts that the greatest works in world literature are all about parricide (though he is critical of Dostoevsky's work overall, the inclusion of "The Brothers Karamazov" in a set of the three greatest works of literature is remarkable).

Novels

* "Poor Folk" (Бедные люди ) (1846)
* "" (Двойник. Петербургская поэма ) (1846)
* "Netochka Nezvanova" (Неточка Незванова) (1849)
* "The Village of Stepanchikovo" (Село Степанчиково и его обитатели ) (1859)
* "The Insulted and Humiliated" (Униженные и оскорбленные) (1861)
* "The House of the Dead" (Записки из мертвого дома) (1862)
* "Notes from Underground" (Записки из подполья) (1864)
* "Crime and Punishment" (Преступление и наказание) (1866)
* "The Gambler" (Игрок) (1867)
* "The Idiot" (Идиот) (1869)
* "The Eternal Husband" ("Вечный Муж") (1870)
* "The Possessed" (Бесы) (1872)
* "The Raw Youth" (Подросток) (1875)
* "The Brothers Karamazov" (Братья Карамазовы) (1880)

hort stories

* "Mr. Prokharchin" (1846)
* "Novel in Nine Letters" (1847)
* "Polzunkov" (1847)
* "The Landlady" (1847)
* "The Jealous Husband" (1848)
* "White Nights" ("Белые ночи") (1848)
* "A Christmas Tree and a Wedding" ("Елка и свадьба") (1848)
* "A Weak Heart" ("Слабое сердце") (1848)
* "An Honest Thief" ("Честный вор") (1848)
* "The Little Hero" (1849)
* "Levin" (1853)
* The Uncle's Dream (1859)
* "A Nasty Story" (1862)
* "The Crocodile" (1865)
* "Bobok" (1873)
* "The Peasant Marey" ("Мужик Марей") (1876)
* "The Heavanly Christmas Tree" (1876)
* "A Gentle Creature" ("Кроткая," sometimes translated as "The Meek Girl") (1876)
* "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" ("Сон смешного человека") (1877)

Non-fiction

* "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" (1863)
* "A Writer's Diary" (Дневник писателя) (1873-1881)

ee also

* Albert Camus
* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* Anti-Catholicism
* Determinism
* Entropy
* Existentialism
* Free will
* Hesychasm
* History of Eastern Christianity
* History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
* History of the Russian Orthodox Church
* Ivan Ilyin
* Jean-Paul Sartre
* Lev Shestov
* Mikhail Bakhtin
* Mikhail Epstein
* Negative theology
* Nihilism
* Nikolai Berdyaev
* Nikolai Lossky
* Nikolay Strakhov
* Philokalia
* Russian Philosophy
* Russian Orthodox Church
* Søren Kierkegaard
* Voluntarism
* Vasily Rozanov
* Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov

References

External links

* [http://www.FyodorDostoevsky.com FyodorDostoevsky.com] - The definitive Dostoevsky fan site: discussion forum, essays, e-texts, photos, biography, quotes, and links.
* [http://www.kevinrkosar.com/conference-journal-aut-1998.pdf Article on Notes from the Underground] "Love and the Underground Man," Conference Journal, Aut. 1998.
* [http://www.fedordostoievsky.com/ingles/ingles1.htm FedorDostoievsky.com] - Dostoevsky fan site
* [http://Dostoyevsky.thefreelibrary.com/ Fyodor Dostoevsky's brief biography and works]
*
* [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=Dostoyevsky%2c+ Selected Dostoevsky e-texts from Penn Librarys digital library project]
* [http://www.asiaing.com/the-gospel-in-dostoyevsky-selections-from-his-works.html The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works]
* [http://librivox.org/notes-from-the-underground-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky/ Free audiobook] of "Notes from Underground" from [http://librivox.org LibriVox]
* [http://ilibrary.ru/author/dostoevski/ Full texts of some Dostoevsky's works in the original Russian]
* [http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/dostoevs/ Another site with full texts of Dostoevsky's works in Russian]
* [http://www.fmdostoyevsky.com Fyodor Dostoyevsky] - Biography, ebooks, quotations, and other resources
* "Crime and Punishment," Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage Classics, 1992, New York.
* "Crime and Punishment," Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, introduction by Joseph Frank. Bantam Books, 1987, New York.
* [http://www.kiosek.com/dostoevsky/contents.html Dostoevsky Research Station]
* [http://people.emich.edu/wmoss/publications/ ALEXANDER II AND HIS TIMES: A Narrative History of Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky]
* "Dostoevsky," Joseph Frank. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1979-2003 (5 volumes).
*
* [http://www.the-ledge.com/flash/ledge.php?book=75&lan=UK Dostoyevsky 'Bookweb' on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.]
* [http://fyodordostoevskychronicle.blogspot.com Fyodor Dostoevsky Chronicle] by Erik Lindgren
* [http://www.helium.com/tm/437407/fyodor-mikhailovich-dostoyevsky-before Fyodor Dostoevsky Biography] by Iolo Savill
*worldcat id|id=lccn-n79-29930
* [http://www.mootnotes.com/literature/dostoevsky/index.html Dostoevsky works (HTML/PDF), media gallery & interactive timeline]

Persondata
NAME= Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich; Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский (Russian)
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Russian novelist
DATE OF BIRTH= birth date|1821|11|11|mf=y
PLACE OF BIRTH= Moscow
DATE OF DEATH= death date|1881|2|9|mf=y
PLACE OF DEATH= Saint Petersburg

Источник: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith
Publicity photo from 1966
Born	Mary Patricia Plangman January 19, 1921(1921-01-19) Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.
Died	February 4, 1995(1995-02-04) (aged 74) Locarno, Switzerland
Occupation	novelist
Nationality	American
Period	1950 onward
Genres	suspense, psychological thriller, crime fiction
Literary movement	modernist literature
Notable work(s)	Strangers on a Train, The Ripliad
Influences Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Signature
wwnorton.com/catalog/featured/highsmith/welcome.htm

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. In addition to her acclaimed series about murderer Tom Ripley, she wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humor. Although she wrote specifically in the genre of crime fiction, her books have been lauded by various writers and critics as being artistic and thoughtful enough to rival mainstream literature. Michael Dirda observed, "Europeans honored her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Comic books 3 Novels and adaptations 4 Major themes in her novels 5 Personal life 6 Death 7 Bibliography 7.1 Novels 7.2 Short-story collections 7.3 Collected works 7.4 Miscellaneous 8 Awards 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

Early life

Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas, the only child of artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889—1975) and his wife, the former Mary Coates (September 13, 1895 — March 12, 1991); the couple divorced ten days before their daughter's birth.^[2] She was born in her maternal grandmother's boarding house. In 1927, Highsmith, her mother and her adoptive stepfather, artist Stanley Highsmith (whom her mother had married in 1924), moved to New York City.^[2] When she was 12 years old, she was taken to Fort Worth and lived with her grandmother for a year. She called this the "saddest year" of her life and felt abandoned by her mother. She returned to New York to continue living with her mother and stepfather, primarily in Manhattan, but she also lived in Astoria, Queens. Pat Highsmith had an intense, complicated relationship with her mother and largely resented her stepfather. According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine, although a biography of Highsmith indicates Jay Plangman tried to persuade his wife to have an abortion, but she refused.^[3] Highsmith never resolved this love–hate relationship, which haunted her for the rest of her life, and which she fictionalized in her short story "The Terrapin", about a young boy who stabs his mother to death. Highsmith's mother predeceased her by only four years, dying at the age of 95.

Highsmith's grandmother taught her to read at an early age, and Highsmith made good use of her grandmother's extensive library. At the age of eight, she discovered Karl Menninger's The Human Mind and was fascinated by the case studies of patients afflicted with mental disorders such as pyromania and schizophrenia.

Comic books

In 1942, Highsmith graduated from Barnard College, where she had studied English composition, playwriting and the short story. Living in New York City and Mexico between 1942 and 1948, she wrote for comic book publishers. Answering an ad for "reporter/rewrite", she arrived at the office of comic book publisher Ned Pines and landed a job working in a bullpen with four artists and three other writers. Initially scripting two comic book stories a day for $55-a-week paychecks, she soon realized she could make more money by writing freelance for comics, a situation which enabled her to find time to work on her own short stories and also live for a period in Mexico. The comic book scriptwriter job was the only long-term job she ever held.^[2]

With Nedor/Standard/Pines (1942–43), she wrote Sgt. Bill King stories and contributed to Black Terror. For Real Fact, Real Heroes and True Comics, she wrote comic book profiles of Einstein, Galileo, Barney Ross, Edward Rickenbacker, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, David Livingstone and others. In 1943–45, she wrote for Fawcett Publications, scripting for such Fawcett Comics characters as the Golden Arrow, Spy Smasher, Captain Midnight, Crisco and Jasper. She wrote for Western Comics in 1945–47.

When she wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), one of the title character's first scam victims is comic book artist Frederick Reddington, a parting gesture directed at the earlier career she had abandoned: "Tom had a hunch about Reddington. He was a comic-book artist. He probably didn't know whether he was coming or going."^[4]

Novels and adaptations

Highsmith's first novel was Strangers on a Train, which emerged in 1950, and which contained the violence that became her trademark.^[5] At Truman Capote's suggestion, she rewrote the novel at the Yaddo writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York.^[6] The book proved modestly successful when it was published in 1950. However, Hitchcock's 1951 film adaptation of the novel propelled Highsmith's career and reputation. Soon she became known as a writer of ironic, disturbing psychological mysteries highlighted by stark, startling prose.

Highsmith's second novel, The Price of Salt, was published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. It garnered wide attention as a lesbian novel because of its rare happy ending.^[5] She did not publicly associate herself with this book until late in her life, probably because she had extensively mined her personal life for the book's content.^[2]

As her other novels were issued, moviemakers adapted them for screenplays: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Ripley's Game (1974) and Edith's Diary (1977) all became films.

She was a lifelong diarist, and developed her writing style as a child, writing entries in which she fantasized that her neighbors had psychological problems and murderous personalities behind their façades of normality, a theme she would explore extensively in her novels.

Major themes in her novels

Highsmith included homosexual undertones in many of her novels and addressed the theme directly in The Price of Salt and the posthumously published Small g: a Summer Idyll. The former novel is known for its happy ending, the first of its kind in lesbian fiction. Published in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, it sold almost a million copies. The inspiration for the book's main character, Carol, was a woman Highsmith saw in Bloomingdale's department store, where she worked at the time. Highsmith acquired her address from the credit card details, and on two occasions after the book was written (in June 1950 and January 1951) spied on the woman without the latter's knowledge.

The protagonists in many of Highsmith's novels are either morally compromised by circumstance or actively flouting the law. Many of her antiheroes, often emotionally unstable young men, commit murder in fits of passion, or simply to extricate themselves from a bad situation. They are just as likely to escape justice as to receive it. The works of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky played a significant part in her own novels.

Her recurring character Tom Ripley—an amoral, sexually ambiguous con artist and occasional murderer—was featured in a total of five novels, popularly known as the Ripliad, written between 1955 and 1991. He was introduced in The Talented Mr. Ripley.^[7] After a 9 January 1956 TV adaptation on Studio One, it was filmed by René Clément as Plein Soleil (1960, aka Purple Noon and Blazing Sun) with Alain Delon, whom Highsmith praised as the ideal Ripley. The novel was adapted under its original title in the 1999 film directed by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett.

A later Ripley novel, Ripley's Game, was filmed by Wim Wenders as The American Friend (1977). Under its original title, it was filmed again in 2002, directed by Liliana Cavani with John Malkovich in the title role. Ripley Under Ground (2005), starring Barry Pepper as Ripley, was shown at the 2005 AFI Film Festival but has not had a general release.

In 2009, BBC Radio 4 adapted all five Ripley books with Ian Hart as Ripley.

Personal life

According to her biography, Beautiful Shadow, Highsmith's personal life was a troubled one; she was an alcoholic who never had a relationship that lasted for more than a few years, and she was seen by some of her contemporaries and acquaintances as misanthropic and cruel. She famously preferred the company of animals to that of people and once said, "My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people."

"She was a mean, hard, cruel, unlovable, unloving person", said acquaintance Otto Penzler. "I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly."^[8]

Other friends and acquaintances were less caustic in their criticism, however; Gary Fisketjon, who published her later novels through Knopf, said that "she was rough, very difficult... but she was also plainspoken, dryly funny, and great fun to be around."^[8]

Highsmith had relationships with women and men, but never married or had children. In 1943, she had an affair with the artist Allela Cornell (who committed suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid^[9]) and in 1949, she became close to novelist Marc Brandel. Between 1959 and 1961 she had a relationship with Marijane Meaker, who wrote under the pseudonyms of Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich, but later wrote young adult fiction with the name M.E. Kerr. Meaker wrote of their affair in her memoir, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s.

In the late 1980s, after 27 years of separation, Highsmith began sharing correspondence with Meaker again, and one day she showed up on her doorstep, slightly drunk and ranting bitterly. Meaker once recalled in an interview the horror she felt upon noticing the changes in Highsmith's personality by that point.^[10]

"Highsmith was never comfortable with blacks, and she was outspokenly anti-semitic—so much so that when she was living in Switzerland in the 1980s, she invented nearly 40 aliases, identities she used in writing to various government bodies and newspapers, deploring the state of Israel and the 'influence' of the Jews".^[11] Nevertheless, some of her best friends were Jewish, such as author Arthur Koestler, and admired Jewish writers such as Franz Kafka and Saul Bellow. She was accused of misogyny because of her satirical collection of short stories Little Tales of Misogyny.

Highsmith loved woodworking tools and made several pieces of furniture. She kept pet snails; she worked without stopping. In later life she became stooped, with an osteoporotic hump.^[2] Though her writing—22 novels and eight books of short stories—was highly acclaimed, especially outside of the United States, Highsmith preferred for her personal life to remain private. She had friendships and correspondences with several writers, and was also greatly inspired by art and the animal kingdom.

Highsmith believed in American democratic ideals and in the promise of US history, but she was also highly critical of the reality of the country's 20th century culture and foreign policy. Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes, her 1987 anthology of short stories, was notoriously anti-American, and she often cast her homeland in a deeply unflattering light. Beginning in 1963, she resided exclusively in Europe. In 1978, she was head of the jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.^[12]

Death

Highsmith died of aplastic anemia and cancer in Locarno, Switzerland, aged 74. She retained her United States citizenship, despite the tax penalties, of which she complained bitterly, from living for many years in France and Switzerland. She was cremated at the cemetery in Bellinzona, and a memorial service conducted at the Catholic church in Tegna, Switzerland.^[3]

In gratitude to the place which helped inspire her writing career, she left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, to the Yaddo colony.^[5] Her last novel, Small g: a Summer Idyll, was published posthumously a month later.

Bibliography

Novels

• Strangers on a Train (1950)
• The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan) (1952), also published as Carol
• The Blunderer (1954)
• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
• Deep Water (1957)
• A Game for the Living (1958)
• This Sweet Sickness (1960)
• The Cry of the Owl (1962)
• The Two Faces of January (1964)
• The Glass Cell (1964)
• A Suspension of Mercy (1965), also published as The Story-Teller
• Those Who Walk Away (1967)
• The Tremor of Forgery (1969)
• Ripley Under Ground (1970)
• A Dog's Ransom (1972)
• Ripley's Game (1974)
• Edith's Diary (1977)
• The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
• People Who Knock on the Door (1983)
• Found in the Street (1987)
• Ripley Under Water (1991)
• Small g: a Summer Idyll (1995)

Short-story collections

• Eleven (1970; also known as The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories)
• Little Tales of Misogyny (1974)
• The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (1975)
• Slowly, Slowly in the Wind (1979)
• The Black House (1981)
• Mermaids on the Golf Course (1985)
• Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987)
• Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories (2002; posthumously published)

Collected works

• Patricia Highsmith: Selected Novels and Short Stories (W.W. Norton, 2010)

Miscellaneous

• Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966)
• Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda (1958; children's book of verse and drawings, co-written with Doris Sanders)

Awards

• 1946 : O. Henry Award for best publication of first story, for "The Heroine" in Harper's Bazaar
• 1951 : Edgar Award nominee for best first novel, for Strangers on a Train
• 1956 : Edgar Award nominee for best novel, for The Talented Mr. Ripley
• 1957 : Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, for The Talented Mr. Ripley
• 1963 : Edgar Award nominee for best short story, for "The Terrapin"
• 1964 : Dagger Award – Category Best Foreign Novel, for The Two Faces of January from the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain
• 1975 : Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir for L'Amateur d'escargot
• 1990 : Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture

See also

• 1950 in literature

References

1. ^ "This Woman Is Dangerous" The New York Review of Books. July 2, 2009. Accessed November 15, 2009.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Joan Schenkar, "The Misfit and Her Muses", Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2009, p. A19
3. ^ ^{a b} The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith, by Joan Schenkar, 2009; ISBN# 978-0-312-30375-4
4. ^ Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1992.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Patricia Cohen, "The Haunts of Miss Highsmith", New York Times, December 10, 2009.
6. ^ Yaddo Writers: June 1926 – December 2007.
7. ^ Coward-McCann, 1955
8. ^ ^{a b} Mystery Girl | The Talented Mr. Ripley | Biz | News | Entertainment Weekly
9. ^ Wilson, A. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. Bloomsbury, London. 2004
10. ^ De Bertodano, Helena (June 16, 2003). "A passion that turned to poison". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3596749/A-passion-that-turned-to-poison.html. 
11. ^ Winterson, Jeanette (December 20, 2009). "Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Sight". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/books/review/Winterson-t.html?ref=review. 
12. ^ "Berlinale 1978: Juries". berlinale.de. http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1978/04_jury_1978/04_Jury_1978.html. Retrieved 2010-08-04. 

External links

• Works by or about Patricia Highsmith in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Patricia Highsmith Papers at the Swiss Literary Archives
• BBC Four audio interviews with Highsmith
• This Woman Is Dangerous Michael Dirda on Highsmith and her work from The New York Review of Books
• Patricia Highsmith at the Internet Movie Database
• The Haunts of Miss Highsmith – New York Times – Books
• Hiding in Plain Sight – New York Times Sunday Review of "THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH -The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith" By Joan Schenkar.
• 1987 RealAudio interview with Patricia Highsmith by Don Swaim (MP3 also available)

v · d · eThe novels of Patricia Highsmith Strangers on a Train (1950)  • The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan) (1952)  • The Blunderer (1954)  • The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)  • Deep Water (1957)  • A Game for the Living (1958)  • This Sweet Sickness (1960)  • The Cry of the Owl (1962)  • The Two Faces of January (1964) The Glass Cell (1964)  • A Suspension of Mercy (1965)  • Those Who Walk Away (1967)  • The Tremor of Forgery (1969)  • Ripley Under Ground (1970)  • A Dog's Ransom (1972)  • Ripley's Game (1974)  • Edith's Diary (1977)  • The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)  • People Who Knock on the Door (1983)  • Found in the Street (1987)  • Ripley Under Water (1991)  • Small g: a Summer Idyll (1995)

Persondata
Name	Highsmith, Patricia
Alternative names	Plangman, Mary Patricia (birth name)
Short description	Novelist, short story writer
Date of birth	January 19, 1921
Place of birth	Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.
Date of death	February 4, 1995
Place of death	Locarno, Switzerland

Источник: Patricia Highsmith