Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- List of abbreviations
- General editor's note on transliteration and references
- General introduction
- PART I The creative environment
- Introduction
- 1 Forms of creativity in embryo
- 2 The heritage
- 3 The heritage: literature
- 4 The heritage: history and philosophy
- 5 Illness
- 6 Money
- PART II The process of creation
- Part III Time and space in the world of the novels
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
1 - Forms of creativity in embryo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- List of abbreviations
- General editor's note on transliteration and references
- General introduction
- PART I The creative environment
- Introduction
- 1 Forms of creativity in embryo
- 2 The heritage
- 3 The heritage: literature
- 4 The heritage: history and philosophy
- 5 Illness
- 6 Money
- PART II The process of creation
- Part III Time and space in the world of the novels
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
Summary
Everything implied by the words will, desire, concentration, nervous intensity, explosion, is felt and sensed in his works. I do not think I am deluding myself or anyone else by affirming that I see in them the principal characteristics of the phenomenon which we call genius.
Charles Baudelaire about Richard WagnerThe indomitable force of Dostoyevsky's literary vocation is always set against a background of agony. ‘Exhausting chronic illnesses, a succession of bereavements, fear of bailiffs, material need made worse by a mad passion for gambling, but caused in the first place by his own generosity, incessant humiliations, the need for sordid calculation – and constant confidence in his own genius and the future’ – this is Pierre Pascal's description of the terrible conditions in which Dostoyevsky struggled to write Crime and Punishment. The conditions in which he wrote, especially when he was fighting with the worst fate could send him, are certainly important, but the nature of his first creative impulses, although just as significant, has been studied very little. Dostoyevsky himself was always questioning the psychology of creation as he wrote his novels; in trying to discover his first creative intentions, the embryonic forms and structures in the making which appeared when he first became aware of his vocation as a novelist, comparing them if need be with the great creative statements of his later years, we are following a path he took before us.
In May 1837 Fyodor Mikhaylovich and his brother Mikhail were travelling to Petersburg with their father, to study at the Kostomarov school in preparation for the Academy of Engineering.
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- Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation , pp. 9 - 17Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989