Stian’s Reviews > Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 > Status Update

But Dostoevsky had always tried to maintain a balance between his opposition to revolutionary agitation and his recognition of the moral idealism that often inspired those who stirred up its flames. He saw his role in relation to the radical youth as that of a sympathetic critic rather than an immitigably hostile opponent.

It was in the spring of 1871, just before embarking on the return trip to Russia, that Dostoevsky took his final stab at gambling. This was the last time he ever approached a roulette table -- surely an event worthy of notice -- but so much attention has been lavished on the pathology of his gambling mania that no scrutiny at all has been given to its disappearance.

In late March, Dostoevsky speaks of five novels to Maikov, instead of three (the size of War and Peace, he remarks, again disclosing the competition with Tolstoy), and defines his "main question" as being "the same one that I have been tormented by consciously and unconsciously all my life — the existence of God."

Writing to a correspondent more than ten years after finishing The Idiot, Dostoevsky remarks that he is always particularly gratified to receive letters from people who consider this novel his finest creation. "All those who have spoken of it as my best work have something special in their mental formation," he writes, "that has always struck and pleased me."

As luck would have it, just a few days after arriving in Baden-Baden, Dostoevsky was strolling with Anna when he ran into Ivan Goncharov … whom he once described as a person with „the soul of a petty official, not an idea in his head, and the eyes of a steamed fish, whom God, as if for a joke, has endowed with a brilliant talent.“

As a sample, Sofya cites the following exchange: " 'All of contemporary youth is stupid and backward!' Dostoevsky once shouted. 'Shiny boots are more valuable for them than Pushkin!' To which Anna retorted coolly that 'Pushkin has in fact become out of date in our time,' knowing that nothing could drive Dostoevsky into more of a fury than lack of respect for Pushkin."