Dostoevsky St Petersburg Quotes

... in St. Petersburg, the most abstract and intentional city on the entire globe. (Cities and be intentional or unintentional.

One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astrachan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it—the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Switzerland or North Italy—was by no means adapted to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.

Crimea may have been a senseless war, but it rearranged Europe’s balance of power. Nicholas died in 1855, reputedly of shame over Crimea, to be succeeded by Alexander II (1855–81), a comparative liberal who conceded the final abolition of serfdom. This coincided with an outburst of Russian creativity, as if defeat had induced Russia to join Europe’s cultural community. Tolstoy fought at Crimea and brought the vastness of Russia into the drawing rooms of Europe. Dostoevsky brought its moral complexities. Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Mussorgski and Borodin and, soon after, the dramatist Chekhov were among Europe’s most inventive and popular artists. Alexander’s Moscow did not become a second Rome, but St Petersburg (Russia’s capital from 1712 to 1918) became a second Paris.

but also by an article he published in the St Petersburg Gazette in June 1847. In this piece Dostoevsky ironically draws attention to the dreamer as a characteristic Petersburg type, entirely in tune with a city that seemed to the author to encourage withdrawal and alienation and which the hero of Notes from the Underground was later to describe as ‘the most abstract and premeditated city on earth’: Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, what a dreamer is?

but also by an article he published in the St Petersburg Gazette in June 1847. In this piece Dostoevsky ironically draws attention to the dreamer as a characteristic Petersburg type, entirely in tune with a city that seemed to the author to encourage withdrawal and alienation and which the hero of Notes from the Underground was later to describe as ‘the most abstract and premeditated city on earth’: Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, what a dreamer is? It is a Petersburg nightmare, it is sin incarnate, it is a tragedy … They [the dreamers] usually live in complete solitude, in some inaccessible quarters, as though they were hiding from people and the world, and, generally, there is something melodramatic about them at first sight. They are gloomy and taciturn with their own people, they are absorbed in themselves and are very fond of anything that does not require any effort, anything light and contemplative, everything that has a tender effect on their feelings or excites their sensations.