'White Nights' and Other Stories - Softcover

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1508643512 ISBN 13: 9781508643517

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Synopsis

In the stories in this volume Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality and also his own ambiguous attitude to utopianism, themes central to many of his great novels. In ‘White Nights’ the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound lone-liness and estrangement from 'living life'. Despite his sentimental friendship with Nastenka, his final withdrawal into the world of the imagination anticipates the retreat into the 'underground' of many of Dostoevsky's later intellectual heroes. ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ shows how such withdrawal from reality can end in spiritual desolation and moral indifference and how, in Dostoevsky's view, the tragedy of the alienated individual can be resolved only by the rediscov-ery of a sense of compassion and responsibility towards fellow human beings. ‘Notes from the Underground’ is one of the most profound works of nineteenth-century literature. A probing, speculative book, often regarded as a forerunner of the Existentialist movement, it examines the important political and philosophical questions that were current in Russia and Europe at the time.

About this title

About the Author:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81) created powerful depictions of the human condition that led to significant developments in 20th-century thought, including psychoanalysis and existentialism. His influence resonates in the works of latter-day authors such as Proust, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Kafka.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1508643512
• ISBN 13: 9781508643517
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 156
• Editor: Jonson Will