An Ordeal Called Apollinaria

“Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.” F.Dostoevsky

While being married to Maria Isaeva, Dostoevsky got involved into an affair with Apollinaria Suslova, a woman who was two dozen years younger than him. They met at a public reading of his book in St.Petersburg, where Dostoevsky resided then. She was a thin, graceful twenty-two-year-old beauty with blue eyes and a thick mass of gorgeous red hair: she was a perfect, fresh, blossoming flower, which he could not pass by. Soon, Dostoevsky was pleased to find out that he was the first one to pick it up…

She turned out to be an eccentric, whimsical girl, but with her the writer climbed to the heights of passion which he had not known before. He could hardly retain enough reason not to succumb to her calls to leave his dying wife. Being continuously torn by internal contradictions, Dostoevsky actually lived in two worlds of torturing himself and torturing the others.

Finally, they decided to take a trip abroad… secretly, of course. Apollinaria was the first to leave, but when Dostoevsky finally managed to join her, she made a confession: she had fallen in love with another man. He continued trying to conquer her back for quite a long time since then, not realizing that suffering had become quite a delight. After Maria’s death, he called Apollinaria to return to St.Petersburg. He tried to dull his pain in the arms of another charming girl, a twenty-year-old Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya of a noble family. Nothing worked! Apollinaria magnetized the writer, his heart remained with her.

He came to visit her after two years of separation, but he did not find the Apollinaria he had known before. She became cold, haughty, and whenever they gave moments of intimacy, she gave herself to him with undisguised contempt. It was then when he lost a whole fortune at roulette in Baden-Baden. This epizode of his life was reflected in the novel “Игрок” (The Gambler).

In the spring of 1866, Apollinaria left the capital for country life in her brother’s home, and Dostoevsky never happened to meet her again. She died in 1918 – the same year and at the same sea coast where died the second wife of the writer.

Please, read the third part in my next post.

«Falling in love does not mean being in love… One could fall in love with someone they hate.» F.Dostoevsky

Part 1.

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born on a gloomy November day of 1821, in a Moscow hospital for the poor, where his father worked as a doctor. The writer’s life was not happy from the very start: his mother died of tuberculosis, his father, a man of a very cruel nature, was killed by his own serf peasants. Good luck seemed to bypass their family.

Dostoevsky was quite young when he felt the urge to write. His first breakthrough in the world of literature was his novella Poor Folk («Бедные люди»), but after its publication, life did not become easier for the young man. He joined a group of revolutionary minded young people who were secretly preparing a coup in Russia. That rash act nearly led the writer to a fatal outcome.

On April 23, 1849, he was arrested among other young “revolutionaries”. After eight months of trial, Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for “the intent to overthrow the state order”. Later, the writer described the ten horrible minutes of expectation of death. In the very last moment the sentence was commuted to four years of hard labor in Siberia, following army service as a private.

It was during the service in Kazahstan when Dostoevsky found his first love. Maria Isaeva, a beautiful, passionate blonde, was married to an alcoholic and had a miserable life. Dostoevsky became a frequent guest in their home, and in no time he was burning with love for Maria. However, her husband was transfered to work in another town, they left, and soon Maria’s alcoholic husband died. But good fortune never turned its face to Dostoevsky: Maria was to marry another man now. On hearing the disastrous news, the writer had an epileptic attack. Then he wrote to Maria that he would die if she left him.

She did not leave him, and he did not die. In February of 1857, at the age of thirty six, Dostoevsky got married for the first time. The marriage wich started with a seizure, was destinied to be unhappy, though. Both spouses were very nervous and touchy, their life could not be called smooth. Still, they lived together till Maria’s death of tuberculosis in 1864. «She was the most sincere, big-hearted, and generous woman of all I had ever known», Dostoevsky confessed after her death. He had not been equally honest with her, though.

According to his contemporaries, Dostoevsky was a man of insatiable sexuality. No matter how hard he tried to hide it, this trait manifested itself all the time — one could trace it from the way he spoke, moved, behaved, and made eye contact. He was frequently ridiculed for this weakness. Ivan Turgenev even compared him to Marquis de Sade. Quite often, Dostoevsky had to satisfy his excruciating desires in local brothels. There were gossips that the prostitutes who had met Dostoevsky once, refused to see him again, because his fantasies and desires were too overwhelming to bear.

Dostoevsky needed a woman who would be absolutely submissive and would adore him despite his weirdness.

Please, read the second part in my next post.

Life of Nikolay Gogol has always remained a mystery. These are a few known facts about the great Ukrainian (Russian) classic.

Gogol was born to a rural Ukrainian family. He was the third baby of twelve. His mother – a woman of rare beauty – was 14 when she became a wife of a man two times older than her. Gossips tell that it was Gogol’s mother that influenced his views on religion and mysticism.

Gogol was never married, and there is absolutely no information about his relationships with women.

At school, his compositions were regarded average, he was never good at any subjects but Russian grammar and drawing.

Gogol had a passion for needlework and crafts. He did a lot of knitting, tailored dressed for his sisters, crafted belts and made his own neck ties.

Gogol also loved cooking. He often cooked Ukrainian galuchki and vareniki (dumplings). His favorite drink was his own invention: goat milk heated with a bit of rum, which he used to call «Gogol-mogol».

While working or thinking, Gogol loved to keep his fingers busy rolling little balls of white bread. He used to say that this helped him work more efficiently.

Gogol loved sweets. He always had some in his pockets. He was often seen nibbling pieced of hard sugar while working.

The writer had a very sensitive nervous system; he was badly afraid of thunderstorms; he prefered living a very isolated lifestyle, but whenever he went out, he always kept to the left edge of the road and quite often collided with other pedestrians.

The writer loved miniature books. He never liked of knew mathematics, but he subscribed the mathematics encyclopedia for uears simply because it was published in very small format (10,5×7,5 cm).

Gogol was a very shy person. If there appeared a stranger, Gogol immediately disappeared from the room.

He was always shy of his long nose. He probably asked his painters to “improve” his nose while drawing, because his nose looks different on all of his portraits.

The plot of his famous masterpiece The Government Inspector (also known as The Inspector General (original title: Russian:Ревизор,Revizor, literally: “Inspector”) was based on a real life story in a town of Novgorod area, which was told to Gogol by A. Pushkin. Pushkin also suggested Gogol the plot of Dead Souls.

Gogol was always painfully afraid of death, and most of all, of the death resulting from being buried alive. In his will, written 7 years prior to his death, Gogol asked to bury him only in the case if his body had unmistakable signs of decomposition. Later, this fact caused numerous mystical speculations: rumors said that Gogol had been buried alive, in the state of lethargy. We will never know what really happened to the writer in the last moments of life. It is believed that he sensed his death: shortly before death he prayed a lot, then burned the manuscript of the second volume od Dead Souls, and sobbed hysterically all night long in his bed.

The writer was an extremely sensitive person. He was very interested in a variety of religious ideas and mysticism. During religious fasts he literally starved himself. Yet aside from that, he loved Italian kitchen, especially spaghetti with cheese.

Gogol loved his dog Josy, a pug, presented to him by Pushkin. When the dog died (he frequently underfed it) Gogol fell into deadly melancholy and discouragement.

In the last years of his life the writer led an ascetic life. It is known that he died at the age of 42 from depression. Modern mental health experts have analyzed thousands of documents written by Gogol and came to a very definite conclusion that the writer had no mental disorder.