Last time I’ve posted a first part of “Some interesting aspects on Dostoyevsky, Pasternak and how they are related to dissident”. Today I’m presenting the second part of it, so those of you who read the first part can joyfully continue with the second part. And those of you who haven’t read the first part, ar welcome to read both parts.
His (Dostoyevsky’s) intellectuality is clearly seen in his works, because he used to tangle all these philosophical, existential themes. Conflicts between individuality and society; human’s divine origin and idea were also presented in his books. He used to analyze humiliated, surviving some sort of crisis personalities. His characters often are obssessed by these ideas or desires. They are suffering, fighting as long as they see that their idea has brought them to some catastrophe.
By frequency we could actually pick out the most important themes of Dostoyevsky’s works. That would be the relationship between God and the world, hate of the world, whether hate can be combined with believing in God, can we believe in God in general? These serious, difficult existentionalist issues that Dostoyevsky brought up and used discussed. This might be the reason why lots of people claim that to read Dostoyevsky’s is extremely difficult and challenging in a way.
Here is probably the right place to shortly mention the most memorable works by Dostoyevsky:
- “Poor folk” (1845);
- “Crime and punishment” (1866);
- “Idiot” (1868-1869);
- “Demons” (1871-1872);
- “Brothers Karamazov” (1879-1880).
But let’s move on Dostoyevsky-dissident. On his dissidency work we should establish one thing: throughout the years his views and beliefs changed. First, he was a Christian socialist –utopist. Then, he was a religious conservative, after that, a monarchist. But some of his views and ideas did root in him very strongly. One of them was pochvennichestvo which is a thought of Russian society, as an antipode towards westernization and close to slavophilia. Dostoyevsky also felt a truly close relationship with Russian people.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was also an active member of political club, where he and his co-thinkers used to discuss the issues of freeing serfs, the issues of courts and censorship reforms, they used to read French socialist treatises. But in 1848 he becomes a member of this secret company. The main goal of this company was to make a revolution in Russia. However, he with his comrades were arrested for this attempt and sentenced to die. Sentenced for oppositional behaviour against ruling government. Now, isn’t he a political criminal, turned into such? Isn’t he a real dissident? Despite all that, to the luck of Dostoyevsky (if we can say so) he was regreted and he was only sent to katorga for four years. Katorga isn’t the nicest option to spend some time there; however, it’s probably better than death, because at least what you get is a CHANCE to survive and get out of there. Yet, it’s a very dark place to wait for salvation.
As a dissent work written by Dostoyevsky we could and should excerpt a novel “Devils”. This novel is the most politicized novels of all written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Devils here are used as a characteristic, metaphore used to describe a life in Russian empire – the issues of that time. In this novel Dostoyevsky discusses all the ideologies that arose back at that time, and all the consequences that came from those ideologies. So, basically Dostoyevsky discussed a serious problems of that time; problems that ruling powers would rather kept silent.
That’s all with Dostoyevsky; now it’s time to move on to another author, writer, poet – Boris Pasternal. Opposite to Dostoyevsky, Pasternak could truly be called a dissent, because he worked during the Soviet times, when this term and activity was widely spread as never before.
Boris Pasternak.
Pasternak who said that “Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary”, and that “what for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth” was born in 1890 also in Moscow, Russian empire. Pasternak was the oldest child in the family (3 more kids were born later). His parents very artistic personalities. Father – Leonid Pasternak was an artist (painter), and his mother – Rozalia Pasternak (nee Kaufmann) was a pianist.
Due to the artisticism of his parents, it’s not surprising that young Boris grew up the same kind of a person, being the most interested in music. The creative atmosphere of the Pasternak’s house was full of constant guesses: famous artists, musicians, wrriters and many others.
Considering the fact that Pasternak grew up not in a regular family (in a good sense of this expression) and who he became later, it looks strange that in 1900 Pasternak wasn’t accepted to school. However, a year later he was, and by the time he was ending school, he was thinking not only about final exams, but also about being accepted to music conservatoirie. Love for music didn’t go anywhere. Yet, somehow he got to the faculty of law which later was exchanged to the faculty of history-philosophy. But philosophy never became his path of life.
Pasternak’s personal life was also kind of dual as his way in getting education. He was married, but his wife was not a bright character of his life as Olga Ivinskaya, with whom he met while still being married. The life of Olga became very tragic due to her relationship with pasternak: she was arrested by the KGB agents, and later she was sentenced to be imprisoned in GULAG. Basically, her life was ruined just because she was involved with a person that wasn’t loved by the ruling powers.
(to be continued).
After le The Notes 