Literature of the world : an introductory study . cation, including threeyears in St. Petersburg inthe government school ofengineers. All these thingswere assets; but he laboredunder terrible handicaps,and his was on the whole asad and tragic life. Fromhis youth to his old age heknew the cruel pressure ofpoverty, debt, and ill health, epilep-tic attacks, and mental suf-fering were his the French criticVogiJe saw him at the closeof his life he described him , as short, lean, neurotic, worn and bowed down with sixty years ofmisfortune. . Eyelids,lips,andevery muscle
Literature of the world : an introductory study . cation, including threeyears in St. Petersburg inthe government school ofengineers. All these thingswere assets; but he laboredunder terrible handicaps,and his was on the whole asad and tragic life. Fromhis youth to his old age heknew the cruel pressure ofpoverty, debt, and ill health, epilep-tic attacks, and mental suf-fering were his the French criticVogiJe saw him at the closeof his life he described him , as short, lean, neurotic, worn and bowed down with sixty years ofmisfortune. . Eyelids,lips,andevery muscle of his face twitchednervously the whole time. When he became excited on a certainpoint, one could have sworn that one had seen him before seated ona bench in a police court awaiting trial, or among vagabonds whopassed their time begging before the prison doors. At all othertimes he carried that look of sad and gentle meekness seen on theimages of old Slavonic saints. The accompanying portrait ofDostoevsky seems to bear out this FEODOR DOSTOEVSKY 3o8 LITERATURE OF THE WORLD When Dostoevsky was twenty-four he wrote Poor People, anovel in the form of letters. I wrote it, he said later, with pas-sion and almost with tears. Capable judges, like Nekrasov andthe critic Bylinsky, felt its power; their enthusiasm was that of allthe reading public of Russia on the appearance of the book. ButDostoevskys numerous writings in the years that immediately fol-lowed brought him no added fame. Then came a serious personalcatastrophe. In April, 1849, ^^ was arrested for participating insocialistic discussions, and after eight months in prison was triedand with twenty-one others condemned to death. He later de-scribed the terrific moment when he stood in front of the scaffoldawaiting his turn. The Tsar at the last minute commuted the sen-tence to four years at forced labor in prison; after that, to serveas a common soldier. In Siberia he was a member of a chaingang and was thrown wi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookpublisherbosto, bookyear1922
