Well, we read in the Dostoyevsky background from Norton Anthology about how Dostoyevsky’s very first novel, Poor People, was a huge hit, and how his second, The Double, was a huge failure. However, I don’t think we specifically said the period of time between these two works (both written in 1846)—how long Dostoyevky was super popular before his fall from grace.
Uh…fifteen days.
Yeah, not that long. No wonder he didn’t really start writing again until his last year of exile.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/sep/24/author-reputation-dostoevsky
On a completely (well, mostly) unrelated note, I read another fascinating article drawing comparisons between Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons and…Donald Trump. Who would’ve thought, right?
When Dostoyevsky wrote Demons, Russia was going through a pretty hard time, as we discussed in class. Although Tsar Alexander II had emancipated the serfs, a lot of leftists (including former serfs, of course) were really unhappy because they thought the reforms hadn’t gone far enough. The situation was such that former serfs were still pretty much in the positions of slaves, without a lot of real freedom. Some people were so angry that they wanted to totally destroy society as it was at that point—even suggesting the destruction of the tsarist regime. One guy (on whom Dostoyevsky’s protagonist in the novel is based) went so far as to murder a student.
In the novel, a bunch of young liberals join this secret revolutionary society led by a guy called Verkhovensky, leading to chaos in the town. Verkhovensky, according to the article I read, “appeals to people’s basic desires. […D]ostoevsky is essentially saying that criminal acts are rooted in social transgression; uncivil behavior facilitates scapegoating, dehumanization and, eventually, violence.”
Hmm…that does sound kind of like Trump. I mean, he WAS the one talking about groping women, which is fairly uncivilized, to say the least. A lot of people also voted for him precisely because he wasn’t “establishment.” The article goes on to list several other similarities. You can find it at this link if anyone wants to give it a read: http://theconversation.com/how-dostoevsky-predicted-trumps-america-63799
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Nice parallels here. The quote about how "criminal acts are rooted in social transgression" was one that really made me think. Perhaps it's not even transgression that's always the problem, but just the lack of forward momentum. As we talked about in connection with Notes from Underground, even though sometimes the "crimes" are the same (like murder), in a civilized society it may be even worse to commit the crime because by now people should "know better." I think the same concept can be applied to social unrest and dissatisfaction; the more the bad conditions are brought to light, the more people feel like they should be heard, and the angrier they feel when they are ignored. I find that concept to be echoed in a lot of countries in the buildup to the Revolutions of 1848, especially in France. Eventually, the people (especially lower/working classes and reformers) got so fed up with not being listened to, they resorted to violence to make themselves heard. Not only did some protesters not want to compromise any longer, they wanted an almost total upheaval of societal order.
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