Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov. Just the titles alone by the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky speak to bottom line existential questions that have become veritably eternal. Albert Camus once said that although stories with original plots and complex characters are of course interesting to him, the only stories which truly engage him are ones which involve human fate in all its simplicity and grandeur. In other words, stories which only concern the sort of bottom-line issue which are important to us all, whether or not we recognize them as being such.
To this end, Dostoevsky defines for us more than ever the world in which we live even though all of his great works were written nearly two-hundred years ago. Notes From Underground concerns the life of an alienated social recluse, similar to someone today who might be obsessively swallowed up inside his computer, shunning human contact in favor of safe digital connections to others. Crime and Punishment is a tense murder-mystery thriller which examines just where the potential line is between good and evil, between moral and unethical behavior; while The Idiot attempts to present what a beautiful soul might look like in a morally conflicted world.
Demons is the story of modern-day nihilistic behavior played out in a world in which there is intense conflict between the generations, and between those with highly different value systems. And of course, in his great final novel The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky examines three iconic approaches to life in the world (that of the amoral nihilist who seeks meaning at the edge of life’s ethical boundaries; the sensualist who cannot control his basic impulses; and the religious ascetic searching for truth and right behavior), pitting each against the other in an existential cauldron existing midway between good and evil.
Needless to say, the ideas and topics represented in these books are more than highly relevant in our modern world. Over time, they have become veritable definitions of the world in which we live. Nihilism; isolation; the search for a beautiful soul amidst the world’s ugliness; the conflicts between generations; and the constant struggle between moral and immoral behavior. These are very much the actual existential quandaries we face today. And what is so great about Dostoevsky is that he gives us no easy answers in presenting both sides of every question. Having presented us so brilliantly with the difficult existential questions we all must face he then leaves it to us to provide ourselves with potential answers.
However, in order to read and fully understand the complex, difficult issues with which Dostoevsky is presenting to us takes a genuine ability to attend to the writing itself, and likewise a capacity to allow oneself to become fully absorbed emotively in both the inner lives of the characters and the particular dynamics of the story line. In other words, an ability to become fully absorbed within his great novels so that they might leave the deepest impression upon one. Yet, unfortunately, in our current digital age, both of these capacities are now on the wane due to how our obsessive use of digital devices and the Internet are now adversely affecting our capacity to fully concentrate on story lines or other such matters and likewise our capacity for emotive absorption.
Therefore, the works of Dostoevsky are more important to us than ever for two different reasons. One, because they allow us to define for ourselves so clearly the sort of extreme existential quandaries which many of us may be in today, and likewise because they compel readers to experience great works of literature like his with an ability to fully attend to complex ideas and storylines, and to allow ourselves to become fully absorbed in the details of our existence. The great Russian writer, whether or not we fully realize it, provides us with both of these valuable opportunities.