13.01.2023
Dostoevsky was a “sensualist” who listened with great interest to the love affairs of his comrades (this was told by Riesenkampf, who lived in the same apartment with him.)
At the same time, he had a strange duality:
On the one hand, he was strangely shy and embarrassed when it came to talking about women. Basically, he dreamed of female love, but as soon as he met a woman in person, he behaved eccentrically, became ridiculous and attempts to communicate ended disastrously.
On the other hand, Dostoevsky appears before us – a carouser and a visitor to brothels. They say that prostitutes refused to spend time with him again, because of the perversion of the desires of Lieutenant Dostoevsky.
He himself wrote later in a letter to Mikhail, “I am so dissolute that I can no longer live normally, I am afraid of typhus or fever and my nerves are sick. Minushki, Clarushki, Marianna, etc. have become prettier to the point of impossible, but they cost terrible money. The other day Turgenev and Belinsky scolded me to the dust for a disorderly life”
Turgenev once even called Fyodor Mikhailovich a Russian De Sade.
Sofia Kovalevskaya, who was acquainted with Dostoevsky, wrote in her personal diary: “After a night of revelry and egged on by drunken friends, he raped a ten-year-old girl…”
Strakhov also mentioned in a letter to Tolstoy: “he boasted that … in a bath with a little girl brought to him by a governess.”
This case has not yet been confirmed, and causes controversy among biographers, but it is worth noting that in Dostoevsky’s work more than once, a man’s craving for teenagers is revealed.
The first hobby
Soon after the publication of the novel “Poor People”, the doors of literary salons opened for Dostoevsky. It was there that Fyodor Dostoevsky met Avdotya Panaeva, a 22-year-old married woman.
From a letter to Mikhail – “Yesterday I visited Panayev for the first time, and I think I fell in love with his wife. She is smart and pretty, and in addition amiable and straightforward to the utmost.”
But the girl rejected him, later she described him in “Memoirs” as a small, nervous man who was egged on by everyone.
Dostoevsky, unable to impress Avdotya with his appearance and courage, decided to impress with talent. But the written “Double” was weak, perhaps because it was written in a hurry, the writer was criticized, and stopped going to the literary salon.
Soon after that there were Petrashevichi, execution and exile.
Dostoevsky’s first wife
Maria Isaeva, became the first love of Fedor, who had just left hard labor and arrived in Semipalatinsk. Maria was the wife of Alexander Isaev, an incorrigible drunkard who could get drunk to delirium tremens. Dissatisfied with her marriage, Maria found an educated interlocutor in Dostoevsky, and gradually they became closer. Dostoevsky begins to spend a lot of time with the Isaevs.
To the writer’s credit, it is worth noting that he did not try to enter into intimacy with Maria while she was married.
And then there was separation. The Isaevs moved to Kuznetsk, to a new place of service. This was a big blow for the writer, he cried at parting, and was saved only by correspondence with her.
Maria’s husband died in August. Dostoevsky, having gathered his courage, proposed to her, but she was in no hurry to answer. The low rank of an exile, and small incomes made her think. Not the last place in the reasons for her doubts was played by the young teacher who taught her son, Pavel.
After Dostoevsky’s work as an officer (in 1856), Maria decides and agrees to marry him. It was hardly a matter of love for him, rather of the debts left by her husband and the need to support her son, the teacher was even poorer than Fyodor.
The wedding took place on February 6, 1857. On the very first wedding night, the writer had an epileptic seizure, which turned Maria away from him forever.
They lived together for seven years, but the marriage was not happy.
A painful affair
In 1860 Dostoevsky received permission to move to St. Petersburg. Soon after, he and his brother began publishing the magazine “Time”. It was thanks to this that the acquaintance with Apollinaria Suslova took place. The girl brought her story to the Magazine, Dostoevsky became very interested in the author, and they began to communicate. (According to another Version, Suslova was at the writer’s lecture, and approached him after it. After that, she wrote a letter in which she confessed her love for him).
Dostoevsky’s passion ignited, he plunged into a relationship with a young girl with all the heat left from a dysfunctional marriage (the writer was 20 years older than Polina). They were completely different people, both in character and in views, and this could not but affect the relationship. He was her first man, and having given herself up to feelings, she demanded more time, demanded to divorce her wife (Maria was already sick with consumption, and was slowly dying).
The planned trip to Paris became tragic. Fedor could not go because of problems with the magazine, and Polina went alone. When the writer did arrive, the girl had already started an affair with a new lover – a Spanish student.
They traveled further as “Friends”. It was a strange friendship, however. The writer found many reasons to stay with her longer, she allowed herself to be caressed, teased, but did not enter into intimacy with him. Dostoevsky suffers, begins to visit the casino and, having completely lost, leaves for Russia.
After the death of his wife, Fedor writes to Polina, invites her to come and marry him. But she doesn’t want to see him anymore.
He tries to find salvation in meeting a pure and innocent girl, And even proposes to Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, but nothing comes of it.
