Dostoevsky's influence on the modern literary mind is unrivalled in its scope and vitality. Nowhere does his art appear in so quintessential a form as in Notes from UndergroundNotes from Underground, certainly one of the most revolutionary and original works in world literature; nowhere is his thought presented with such authority as in "The Grand Inquisitor," an episode of central importance taken from his last and greatest novel, The Brothers KaramazovThe Brothers Karamazov. In both these vital works Dostoevsky confronts the reader with the tragic grandeur of man, indeed, with a whole philosophy of tragedy: the tragedy of the individual and freedom, the tragedy of the historical process, the tragedy of universal evil.
Relevant works included by Chernyshevsky, Schedrin and Dostoevsky.
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, perhaps most recognized today for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.
Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."
His tombstone reads "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." from John 12:24, which is also the epigraph of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov.
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