Russian Language Blog

Музей Достоевского в Москве [The Dostoevsky Museum in Moscow]

Posted on 20. Jun, 2008 by josefina in Culture, Literature

Maybe it doesn’t come as any surprise, because I haven’t tried to hide it, as well as not to flaunt it too much, but today is the day for me to come out of the closet and confess – yes, I’ve got it bad for Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский [Fyodor Michailovich Dostoevsky]. I guess everyone knows by now that my mayor at Ural State is Russian literature, but I figure I should probably make very clear that I have chosen to narrow down my scope to the author of such classic novels as «Преступление и наказание» [“Crime and Punishment”], «Братья Карамазовы» [“The Brothers Karamazov”] and «Идиот» [“The Idiot”]. To tell you the truth, I could write a post about Dostoevsky every single day. My former boss at the Dostoevsky Museum in Omsk (Siberia!), where I worked as a guide and translator for a year, Виктор Вайнерман [Viktor Wainerman], actually wrote a book a couple of years back with a very similar concept – «Достоевский на каждый день» [“Dostoevsky For Every Day”]. And after all, what would Russia be without that wonderful literature and those famous writers? In Russia writers are highly respected by society, and classic writers (i.e. already deceased ones) are treated with special care. This respect and special care has generated a passion among government officials for making museums of writers’ old apartments or other places where they spent some time, to exhibit their old belongings to the public there and create a space where scholars can study their works as well as gather other scholars together a couple of times a year for conferences. In Russia there are six Dostoevsky Museums – in Saint Petersburg (located in his last apartment), in Старая Русса [Staraya Russa] (where “Brothers Karamazov” was written), in Даровое [Darovoe] (the village outside of Moscow owned by Dostoevsky’s parents), in Новокузнецк [Novokuznetsk] (in Siberia, where he was first married), in Omsk (where he spent four years in prison) and in Moscow (in the apartment where he was born and grew up). There is also a Dostoevsky Museum in what is now Kazakhstan, in the town of Семипалатинск [Semipalatinsk], now known as Семей [Semej], where he spent a good five years, first as a soldier and later as an officer. It was also there he fell in love with his first wife. As you can imagine, every museum has a very limited amount of authentic objects, as there just isn’t that much to go around. Still each of them tries to stay true to the time and spirit of Mr. D, furnishing their museums with 19th century items and different editions of his works, some in Russian and some in other languages. The museum with the most authentic artifacts is in Moscow, naturally so because his widow moved to Moscow after his death and preferred to have his personal belongings, like his glasses and his pen, close at hand. And this was the museum I visited for the first time a week ago.

While Dostoevsky was growing up in the 1820-1830’s, the hospital where his father worked was located on the outskirts of Moscow. Today, it is almost in the center of the city and very easy to reach by the metro (station Novoslobodskaya). It is not far to walk from there, but just in case you’re tired you can take a bus or the tram to the museum. It is open Wednesday and Friday from 2pm to 8pm, on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. It is closed Monday, Tuesday and the last day of the month. One of the things that impressed me greatly with the museum was that it is completely translated; each and every little piece of text in Russian has a good translation close at hand in English. This is still rather rare in most Russian museums, especially smaller ones and even more so when you get out of the big cities. In Moscow there are very many literary museums (as you can tell from this list!) and if you’re not one of those who thought life began after reading “Crime and Punishment”, but rather after hearing Pushkin’s poetry, or seeing Mayakovsky’s propaganda posters, or obtaining Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita”, you shouldn’t waste your time at this museum. But in case you’re in the neighborhood and have an extra hour or two, you should pop by, as the entrance fee is no more than 40 rubles, but really it’s mostly for fanatics like myself. There’s too much to do in Moscow anyway!

Almost four years ago, it was my first day in Saint Petersburg and I was a nineteen year old Swedish girl who only knew two words of Russian («привет» [hi] and «пиво» [beer]). I directed my steps straight away toward the Dostoevsky Museum. Therefore it was only natural that the first thing I did in the capitol last Sunday was to take the metro to the building in which my favorite writer was born on November 11th 1821. Explaining my relationship with Dostoevsky is difficult. I wish it was simpler, but I’m afraid it isn’t and will probably never be. To me he is not simply the author of some great books, yet neither is he some kind of ‘literary God’ or ‘great psychologist’ or ‘orthodox prophet’ or ‘inventor of existentialism’, as other fanatics and/or scholars might prefer to view him. To me he is like a friend, a sort of close companion to talk to when things get hard, to turn to for advice, someone who never gets boring but is always new and fresh and inspiring. He is my challenge in the way he never stops asking questions and yet never wants an answer; he wants my quest for an answer. I was seventeen when I first read him. I fell in love with his language, with his style, and back then I had never thought that I would want to go to university and study Russian language and literature for such a long time as I have now, I didn’t ever plan on going to Russia even. Yet there it was. All of the sudden. I felt a thirst, a hunger for Russia and everything Russian. I wanted to become one with my master, I wanted to go where he had been, see what he had seen, feel what he had felt. I guess that somewhere deep down I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But never did I imagine that I would find all of those wonderful things whcih I have found…

The world of Dostoevsky scholars seems small and insignificant to those on the outside, but once you get inside of it you will meet a gigantic cosmos populated with different approaches and theories and problems and thick academic studies and even thicker intellectual and spiritual and historic books. And they’re all about one man – that same boy who spent the first sixteen years of his life sleeping in that little room which you meet straight upon arrival to the museum in Moscow. Dostoevsky scholars are called «достоевсковеды» in Russian, and the study of Dostoevsky’s work is known as «достоевсковедение». Every year hundreds of academic papers and scientific theories are written on him around the world, every year there are several conferences dedicated to him not only in Russia, but in other countries as well, and as of yet there seems to be no end to the interest in this man. When I was at the Moscow museum, I met with its director, Галина Борисовна Пономарева [Galina Borisovna Ponomareva], who has written a book which I have read – «Достоевский: я занимаюсь этой тайной» [“Dostoevsky: I am working on this secret”; not translated into English yet]. She is a very kind and bright woman, and she invited me to take part in their conference in the middle of November, which I am more than delighted to do. My Master’s thesis will be on his unfinished novel of 1848, «Неточка Незванова» [“Netochka Nezvanova”], but I also have made the first Swedish translation of his «Сибирская тетрадь» [The Siberian Notebook], and I’ll probably do a speech on both of these for them.

That’s all I have on Mr. D for you today. I hope not all of you were bored to tears with this ‘intellectual’ post! I’ll be back with more on Russian language in just a little while… I was thinking I should probably get back to them verbs, especially those involving motion, because those are the hardest… so hard I still can’t always get it right!

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