Fyodor Dostoyevsky: From Gambling Table to Fictional Paragon

 

The philosophical approach to existentialism emerged in Europe through the ideas reflected from the discourses of Jean Paul Sartre from France, Soren Kierkegaard from Denmark, Friedrich Nietzsche from Germany and Fyodor Dostoyevsky from Russia. Philosophy can be better comprehended when it is interpreted through the characters and events of fiction. For this reason, this article aims to evaluate a few fictional works by some outstanding authors whose literary creations abound with conspicuous impressions of existential philosophy. In terms of European fiction, existential philosophy is strongly found in novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and some more writers.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is one of the best books for a transparent understanding of fiction with strong existential underpinnings. Raskolnikov, a Russian young man grew up in Saint Petersburg with a cynical attitude towards the people and institutions around him. His contempt to society arose from the widespread social discrimination that prevailed across his hometown. Class inequity, poverty, hunger, exploitations plagued Saint Petersburg during 19th century and Raskolnikov also got victimized under these untoward circumstances. The dehumanizing effects of social injustice took away love and pity from Raskolnikov’s heart and gradually turned him into an oddball which highlights the existential perspectives of the story.

He viewed everything and everyone with disdain and suspicion. One day he had a quarrel with his landlady over house rent and killed her on the spur of the moment. He committed another murder shortly as a result of which he had to go into hiding to escape the vision of Russian police force. He moved away from one place to another constantly to keep out of the reach of policemen. However, an intense feeling of internal self-accusation nagged him all the time never allowing him to forget the crimes he had committed. He oscillated like a pendulum between two thoughts—whether he should keep on running away days after days or surrender to the cops. This dichotomy found in Raskolnikov rings with another existential undertone.

At the end of the novel we find Raskolnikov surrendering to the police. He received a penal sentence for eight years. Though the sentence of imprisonment first shocked Raskolnikov, later on he came to realize that he had been subconsciously waiting for an institutional punishment. So, the sentence by the court mitigated his woes to some extent.

We find a leaning towards existential philosophy in another two novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. For example, in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella The Gambler, Alexei Ivanich, the focal figure of the story, expresses his irresistible desire to transform gambling into a special way of life. He views life itself as a gambling table. He is a passionate gambler. He wants to elevate gambling to the stature of an art, to the height of poetry.

People don’t gamble in casinos just for money. They have to gamble for livelihoods, for love and for many other things even beyond the tables and walls of a casino. Alexei Ivanich traveled across Europe on purpose of gambling, but questing for the real meaning of life was another inherent motive behind his tours. In another existential book titled Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) portrayed a queer sort of a man who blatantly expresses his dissatisfaction with his own life in a cynical and neurotic way. He views his life as a penal sentence but he doesn’t want to die either. He is psychologically bifurcated. This dualistic vision of life is a striking reflection of existential philosophy in Notes from Underground.

For several reasons, Fyodor Dostoyevsky spent much of the 1860s in western Europe. He wanted to see the society that he both admired for its culture and deplored for its materialism, he was hoping to resume an affair with the minor author Appolinariya Suslova, he was escaping his creditors in Russia, and he was disastrously attracted to gambling. An unscrupulous publisher offered Fyodor Dostoyevsky a desperately needed advance on the condition that he would deliver a novel by a certain date. The publisher was counting on the forfeit provisions, which would allow him nine years to publish all of Dostoyevsky’s works for free. With less than a month remaining, Fyodor Dostoyevsky hired a stenographer and dictated his novel Igrok (1866; The Gambler)—based on his relations with Suslova and the psychology of compulsive gambling—which he finished just on time. A few months later (1867) he married the stenographer, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. She at last put his life and finances in order and created stable conditions for his work and new family. They had four children, of whom two survived to adulthood.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s name has become synonymous with psychological profundity. For generations, the depth and contradictoriness of his heroes have made systematic psychological theories look shallow by comparison. Many theorists including Sigmund Freud have tried to claim Fyodor Dostoyevsky as a predecessor.


Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is a
contributor to different English
newspapers and magazines.