Reading Notes Week 10: Dostoyevsky, Part A


Realism Across the World:
- Literary movements were spreading faster with the expansion of empires and new methods of transportation and communication such as the telegraph and the steamship. Writers from different cultures could mix ideas and fuse traditions.
- Symbolism was a poetic movement started in Paris by Charles Baudelaire.
- Realism "began" in Britain and France, but also in various places around the globe like Japan.
- Realism was influenced more by the reality people saw: poverty, dirty streets, industrialism, disease, etc.
- Realism rejected idealism and fantastical notions.
- Writers such as Honore de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote stories that showed the different classes and the realities they had to face.

Dostoyevsky:
 - Born in Moscow 1821 in a family of six children.
- His mother died in 1837 and his father became violent and unstable. He was murdered in 1839, likely by his own serfs.
- Was arrested and sentenced to death for hanging out with atheists and socialists but was pardoned at the last moment by the tsar and sent to do labor in Siberia.
- When he got out he struggled to find a good relationship due to his gambling addiction. Eventually he did find a young wife who managed his financials better than he could and they had four children.
- Died in 1881 as one of the most acclaimed Russian writers of all time, with 30,000 people in attendance at his funeral.

Notes from the Underground:
- Considered to be the first existentialist novel.
- The narrator is called "The Underground Man".
- He believes he is superior to others because he is smarter but also has moments where he seems to think he's inferior.
- Has a few friends, the closest is probably Simonov but he is paranoid that they aren't really friends and that Simonov secretly hates him.
- Other two friends are Ferfichkin and Zverkov but he doesn't seem to like them as much. Used to be enemies with Ferfichkin in school.
- Sleeps with a prostitute named Liza and tries to rescue her by talking to her about love a lot.

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