1 | Page Dostoyevsky: Torments and Theme Introduction To my mind, as a lover of anything written by Dostoyevsky, the contemporary librarian, literary critic and philosopher Nikolaj Nikolaevich Strakhov (1828–1896) captured the appeal of this great novelist and writer best when he said that "All his attention was directed upon people, and he grasped at only their nature and character", because he was "interested by people, people exclusively, with their state of soul, with the manner of their lives, their feelings and thoughts." 1 This affection for people, coupled with his desire to represent in words and in moving stories their attempt to come to terms with and make sense of the vicissitudes of life, lies at the heart of Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre. In other words, his literary preoccupation was no mere superficial depiction of what contemporary life was for him, but rather was an in-depth exploration of the human person’s highest aspirations and hopes as well as his deepest and most disturbing pains and fears. This is essentially, then, what makes Dostoyevsky one of the first Christian existential writers. While some old themes may have been repeated in Dostoyevsky’s stories and novels, the reading public heard a totally new voice with a new angle on life; a vibrant human person thinking out loud into written language. As Walter Kaufman perspicaciously and judiciously notes of Dostoyevsky’s use of words or style in Notes from Underground, a verdict that could be applied to his literary output in general: The pitch is new, the strained protest, the self- preoccupation.... What we perceive is an unheard of song-of-songs on individuality: not classical, not Biblical, and not at all romantic. No, individuality is not re- 1 Quoted Konstantin Mochulsky (translated by Michael A. Minihan) (1973) Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, New Jersey: Princeton University Press p. 229.