The Art of Dostoevsky

Nietzsche called him the only psychologist he had anything to learn from. Freud called his last novel the most magnificent ever written. Einstein said he gave him more than any scientist. Dostoevsky did not find his truths in books. He found them facing a firing squad in 1849, in four years of chains in Siberia, at the roulette tables of Germany, in front of Holbein's Dead Christ in Basel, and at the grave of his three-year-old son. This film follows seven of those truths through his life, his novels and the paintings he loved: Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. "Life is a gift, life is happiness; every minute could be an age of happiness." Dostoevsky to his brother Mikhail, 22 December 1849, the evening after his mock execution SOURCES Dostoevsky's letters (to Mikhail Dostoevsky, 22 December 1849 and 22 February 1854; to Anna Dostoevskaya, April 1871) · Anna Dostoevskaya, Reminiscences · Notes from the House of the Dead · Winter Notes on Summer Impressions · Notes from Underground · Crime and Punishment · The Idiot · The Brothers Karamazov (quotations from Constance Garnett's translations) · Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols · Freud, Dostoevsky and Parricide (1928) · Alexander Moszkowski, Einstein the Searcher (1921) · Kunstmuseum Basel, Holbein and Dostoevsky ART Edvard Munch — Friedrich Nietzsche (1906) Ferdinand Schmutzer — Sigmund Freud, photograph (1926) Ferdinand Schmutzer — Albert Einstein, etching (1921) Carl Spitzweg — The Bookworm (c. 1851) Édouard Manet — The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1868–69), Kunsthalle Mannheim Valery Jacobi — Halt of Convicts (1861) Edvard Munch — At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo (1892) Vasily Perov — Old Parents at Their Son's Grave (1874) Vasily Perov — Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872) Theodor Hildebrandt — The Neva at Saint Petersburg in Winter (1844), Rijksmuseum (CC0) Konstantin Trutovsky — Fyodor Dostoevsky, drawing (1847) Vasily Surikov — The Morning of the Str