Fyodor Dostoevsky
Description
In the stories in this volume Dostoevsky explores both the figure of the dreamer divorced from reality and also his own ambiguous attitude to utopiani
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sm, 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.
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