Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Leaves of Letters – Walt Whitman
- 2 The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 3 Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
- 4 The Drunken Inkwell – Arthur Rimbaud
- 5 In Search of Lost Allusion – Marcel Proust
- 6 Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
2 - The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Leaves of Letters – Walt Whitman
- 2 The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 3 Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
- 4 The Drunken Inkwell – Arthur Rimbaud
- 5 In Search of Lost Allusion – Marcel Proust
- 6 Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
In the beginning I had dreams of rivaling Dostoievski. I hoped to give to the world huge, labyrinthian soul struggles which would devastate the world. But before very far along I realized that we had evolved to a point far beyond that of Dostoievski – beyond in the sense of degeneration. With us the soul problem has disappeared, or rather presents itself in some strangely distorted chemical guise. We are dealing with crystalline elements of the dispersed and shattered soul.
– Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart (1960)It should not come as a surprise even to the casual reader of Henry Miller that he idolised the nineteenth-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and was tremendously influenced by him in his own work. More than any other presence of influence in the work of Miller, Dostoevsky serves as a foil for the paradox of simultaneous living and creative expression in writing. Miller not only both admired Dostoevsky's writing, and subsequently revered the man who wrote it, but Miller also takes this very dual nature of idolising to the core of the creation of his own literature. In his direct musings over Dostoevsky, Miller constantly attempts to extricate the person from the persona and to combine them again in a convoluted image of philosopher-poet-compatriot. Yet Miller declares that his knowledge of Dostoevsky may not have necessarily come to him from reading his books.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Henry Miller and How he Got That Way , pp. 42 - 70Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011