I saw a comment recently
that said that Colleen Hoover is Dostoyevsky for teenage girls.
And it affected me so deeply
that we’re going to run through every single trauma
that Dostoyevsky went through in his life
pretty much just to show you how he is not like Colleen Hoover.
Here is the man. Fyodor himself.
Struggle No. 1. Being born in 1820s Moscow,
Russia.
That’s struggle enough.
He grew up mostly on the grounds of a hospital for the poor
because his father was a doctor.
And as a kid living in Moscow in a hot.
On the grounds of a hospital for the poor,
you can imagine the struggle.
The trauma is already strong.
He has to see an awful lot of things a kid probably shouldn’t see,
because obviously he sees his father’s work.
And he encounters people who are traumatized
and have just been through horrific things,
and his dad has to help them.
Already a struggle. Then he goes to a boarding school.
That is always a struggle.
That is always a struggle, bro.
And then he has to go to a military academy.
He doesn’t really enjoy this.
He begins to write, and he it.
He does find some success,
but also some criticism. And then he gets in with the set of writers
and people who are reading these band works.
And that gets found out by the government and by the czar.
And eventually he and his friends are basically lined up.
And are going to be by firing squad.
But at the very last second,
a sort of pardon from the Tsar comes,
and he doesn’t have to be by firing squad.
Instead, he is just sent to Siberia.
He is sent to Omsk, which,
you know, honestly,
if you look up Omsk even today.
Would I wanna live in Omsk?
Probably not. It’s in the middle of Siberia,
and it is cold. It’s awful.
And then, of course,
in the summer, it’s also awful because it’s really hot
or really filled with mosquitoes.
And also because he’s considered an extremely dangerous prisoner
for some reason. Because of his ideas,
I guess.
He has his hands and feet shackled the entire four years he’s there.
And when he gets out, he has to do compulsory military service,
which is always such a fun time.
His first marriage. Yeah,
this is Dostoyevsky. After getting out of, uh,
getting out of jail.
His first marriage is not particularly happy.
And then you’ve got the fact that he has epilepsy.
Did I mention he’s often in terrible health?
Yeah, that’s another thing I actually have.
I have notes on Dostoyevsky here.
Yep. You know,
traumatic childhood, boarding school, epilepsy.
His health slowly declines.
And then he has a second marriage after his first one just goes.
I could. I think it.
Did his wife die? I can’t remember.
And then he has a daughter in this first marriage,
but then she dies. At 3 months old,
and he is just completely desolate.
After that. They have another daughter and more kids,
but then he has a son who dies.
His health declines. Yes,
he writes successful novels,
and things sometimes go well,
but there’s a lot of struggle here,
you know what I’m saying? He struggles with gambling problems,
and his health declines some more.
And, yeah,
that’s. That’s the.
That’s the Dostoevsky. That’s the Dostoevsky struggle.
And then he dies, I think,
pretty painfully. And as I always have to add when talking about him,
he died before he could write the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov,
which we were supposed to get.
We were robbed. We were robbed.
So, yep,
you know, Dostoyevsky,
so comparable to Colleen Hoover.
This is why we don’t have great dog people like Dostoyevsky anymore,
because, you know,
the struggle isn’t there. You know,
struggle breeds this art. And Colleen Hoover.
Well, you know,
if we go and buy. The struggle equals good art.
Colleen Colleen must have had a really,
really easy life.
Hmm. So that is.
That is it for today. Follow for more history and literature.
And me rambling on about the latest injustices
to Dostoevsky’s legacy.
Don’t y’all be going and comparing my boy Theodore to anybody.