One summer, many years ago, I decided to take an evening course in Russian literature at the local community college. The course centered specifically on the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky; and over some eight or nine weeks, I read (in English) and critiqued Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot.

Luckily, I had not made any other major plans for that summer.

Russia’s political history is brutal, which is in large part responsible for the depth and angst of her cultural output . . . throughout the ages, so many of the world’s immortals have been at their most creative during periods of abject misery, and none more so than the Russian writers, composers and painters. One would be hard put to find another people who have suffered longer, more deeply, or more consistently.

Dostoyevsky was uniquely insightful with regard to the innate depravity of the human race. He lived in cruel times, and offered no excuse for the baseness of so many of his contemporaries, as in this quotation from my favorite of his works:

“People talk sometimes about the ‘bestial’ cruelty of man, but that is a great injustice and insult to beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/8/26