Dickens: Great Expectations.
1862
Travels in Europe. Affair with Polina Suslova.
Turgenev: Fathers and Children.Hugo: Les Misérables.Chernyshevsky arrested.
1863
Further travel abroad. Timeclosed. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.
Tolstoy: The Cossacks.Chernyshevsky: What is to be . Done?
1864
Launch of The Epoch.Death of wife and brother. Notes from Underground.
1865
The Epochcloses. Severe financial difficulties.
Dickens: Our Mutual Friend.
1865-9
Tolstoy: War and Peace.
1866
(Mme and Punishment. The Gambler.
1867
Marries Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. Flees abroad to escape creditors.
Turgenev: Smoke.
1868
The Idiot.Birth and death of daughter, Sonya. Visits Switzerland and Italy.
1869
Birth of daughter Liubov.
Flaubert: L'Education sentimentale.
DATE
AUTHOR'S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1870
The Eternal Husband.
Death of Dickens and Herzen.
1871
Returns to St Petersburg. ' Birth of son, Fyodor.
1871-
Demons (The Devils/The Possessed).
1872
Summer in Staraia Russa -becomes normal summer residence. Becomes editor of The Citizen.
Marx's Das Kapitalpublished
in Russia.
George Eliot: Middlemarch.
1873
Starts Diary of a Writer.
1874
Resigns from The Citizen.Seeks treatment for emphysema in Bad Ems.
1875
A Raw Youth.
1875-8
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina.
1876
1877
Turgenev: Virgin Soil.
1878
Birth and death of son, Alexey. Visits Optina monastery with Vladimir Solovyov.
1879
1879-80
The Brothers Karamazov.
Tolstoy's religious crisis, during which he writes A Confession.
1880
Speech at Pushkin celebrations in Moscow.
Death of Flaubert and George Eliot.
1881
Dies of lung haemorrhage. Buried at Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St Petersburg.
TRANSLATORS' NOTES
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Russian names are composed of first name, patronymic (from the father's first name), and family name. Formal address requires the use of first name and patronymic. Diminutives are commonly used among family and intimate friends; they have two forms, the familiar and the casual or disrespectful; thus Varvara Ivolgin is called Varya in her family, but Varka by her little brother. A shortened form of the patronymic (i.e., Ivanych for Ivanovich, or Pavlych for Pavlovich), used only in speech, also suggests a certain familiarity. In the following list, stressed syllables are marked. In Russian pronunciation, the stressed vowel is always long, and the unstressed vowels are very short.
Myshkin, Prince Lev Nikoláevich
Baráshkov, Nastásya Filippovna (Nâstya)
Rogôzhin, Parfyôn Semyônovich
Epanchin, General Iván Fyódorovich
_______, Elizavéta (Lizavéta) Prokófyevna
_______, Alexándra Ivánovna
_______, Adelaída Ivánovna
_______, Agláya Ivanovna
Ívolgin, General Ardalión Alexándrovich
_______, Nína Alexándrovna
_______, Gavríla Ardaliónovich (Gánya, Gánechka, Gánka)
_______, Varvára Ardaliónovna (Várya, Várka)
_______, Nikolái Ardaliónovich (Kólya)
Lébedev, Lukyân Timoféevich
_______,Véra Lukyânovna
Teréntyev, Ippolit (no patronymic)
Ptítsyn, Ivân Petrôvich (Vánka)
Radômsky, Evgény Pávlovich
Shch., Prince (no first name, patronymic, or last name)
Tótsky, Afanâsy Ivanovich
Ferdyshchenko (no first name or patronymic)
Keller, Lieutenant, ret. ("the fist gentleman"; no first name
or patronymic) Pavlishchev, Nikolái Andréevich
Dárya Alexéevna ("the sprightly lady"; no last name) Burdôvsky, Antip (no patronymic) Belokónsky, Princess ("old Belokonsky"; no first name or
patronymic)
A NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ST PETERSBURG
The city was founded in the early eighteenth century by a decree of the emperor Peter the Great. It is built on the delta of the river Neva, which divides into three main branches: the Big Neva, the Little Neva, the Nevka. On the left bank of the Neva is the city center, where the government buildings, the Winter Palace, the Senate, the Summer Palace and Summer Garden, the theaters, and the main thoroughfares such as Nevsky Prospect and Liteiny Prospect (Liteinaya Street in Dostoevsky's time) are located. Here, too, were the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky quarters, named for army regiments stationed there. On the right bank of the Neva before it divides is the area known as the Vyborg side; on the right bank between the Nevka and the Little Neva is the Petersburg side, where the Peter and Paul Fortress, the oldest structure of the city, stands; between the Little Neva and the Big Neva is Vassilievsky Island. Further north are smaller islands such as Kamenny Island and Elagin Island, which were then mainly garden suburbs. To the south, some fifteen or twenty miles from the city, are the suburbs of Tsarskoe Selo ("the Tsar's Village") and Pavlovsk, where much of the action of The Idiottakes place.
THE IDIOT
PART ONE
I
Towards the end of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o'clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full steam. It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows. Among the passengers there were some who were returning from abroad; but the third-class compartments were more crowded, and they were all petty business folk from not far away. Everyone was tired, as usual, everyone's eyes had grown heavy overnight, everyone was chilled, everyone's face was pale yellow, matching the color of the fog.