A Great Writer
One author was a long way ahead at the top of Dostoevsky’s reading list.
1880
Alexander II, Emperor of Russia 1855-1881 Queen Victoria 1837-1901
One author was a long way ahead at the top of Dostoevsky’s reading list.
1880
Alexander II, Emperor of Russia 1855-1881 Queen Victoria 1837-1901
In one letter, Nikolai Osmidov asked novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky whether he should believe in God; in another, he asked him what he should give his daughter to read. Dostoevsky found none of Osmidov’s questions easy to answer, but he was sure about one thing: the girl absolutely must read the novels of Sir Walter Scott.
Staraya Russa,*
August 18, 1880.
At twelve, I read right through Walter Scott* during the summer holidays; certainly such reading did extraordinarily stimulate my imagination and sensibility, but it led them into good, not evil, paths; I got from it many fine and noble impressions, which gave my soul much power of resistance against others which were seductive, violent, and corrupting. So I advise you to give your daughter now the works of Walter Scott, and all the more, because he is for the moment neglected by us Russians, and your daughter, when she is older, will have neither opportunity nor desire to make acquaintance with that great writer; therefore hasten now, while she is still in her parents’ house, to introduce him to her. Besides, Walter Scott has a high educational value. She should also read all Dickens’s works without exception.*
From ‘Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends’ (?1914), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), edited and translated by Alexander Eliasberg (1878-1924) and Ethel Colburn Mayne (?-1941).
* Staraya Russa is a small spa town near Veliky Novgorod in northwest Russia, probably dating back to the ninth century and first recorded in 1167. Dostoevsky kept a dacha (summer home) here from 1872 to 1880. A sizeable portion of The Brothers Karamazov, published in the November after this letter was written, was written at the dacha, and the story is set in a village that closely resembles Staraya Russa.
* Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a Scottish poet, critic and author, who won envy and admiration among his fellow writers (including Jane Austen) for producing large numbers of extremely popular novels and volumes of poetry, anonymously at first, but after 1827 under his own name. Today, his best-known stories are probably Ivanhoe (1819), Rob Roy (1817) and Waverley (1814). See posts tagged Sir Walter Scott.
* Later in the same letter, Dostoevsky wrote: “She should read Leo Tolstoy all through; also Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe; these writers are to be had in good Russian translations.” An oft-quoted passage detailing a meeting between Dostoevsky and Dickens, in which Dickens discoursed freely to the Russian on his own characters, has been shown to be a fraud. As we can see, Dostoevsky was nevertheless a genuine admirer.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Dostoevsky recommend Osmidov’s daughter read Scott’s novels?
Because they stimulated imagination without unwholesome elements.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Dostoevsky liked English literature. He praised Shakespeare, Dickens and Scott. His highest praise was for Scott.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IAmong. IIAuthor. IIIFavourite.