Published: 2018-08-181

Fyodor M. Dostoevsky on the Problem of Death and Immortality

Michał Kruszelnicki
Humanities and Natural Sciences
Section: Articles
https://doi.org/10.31648/hip.422

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of death and immortality as problematized in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s oeuvre. The Russian writer is presented as a figure profoundly divided, overpowered by agonizing, life-long doubts as to the sense o f death and the form o f the afterlife, which he did not manage to overcome. In order to illuminate the problem, fragments of Dostoevsky’s greatest novels are analysed, such as: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, as well as short stories: The Dream o f a Ridiculous Man, and Bobok. The analysis leads to two main conclusions. First, D ostoevsky’s most spectacular protagonists attribute a different meaning to the idea of immortality and construe the phenomenon of death in various ways, but they seem to have one thing in common: death and afterlife do not represent for them, like for average people, a purely abstract, neutral, and distant problem, but become a dilemma besetting their whole being, body, and soul, the dilemma that one must either solve definitely or cease to exist. Second, what Dostoevsky was at pains toachieve by his outbursts o f faith and piety, when creating characters calmly reconciled to death, characters that impersonated his bright, Christian worldview, he deconstructed at the same time in his other protagonists’ discourses, which reflected his impassable doubts, fear, and morbid fantasies concerning death and posthumous existence.

Keywords:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, death, immortality, afterlife, resurrection

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Citation rules

Kruszelnicki, M. (2018). Fyodor M. Dostoevsky on the Problem of Death and Immortality. Humanities and Natural Sciences, (21), 263–284. https://doi.org/10.31648/hip.422

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