The life of Dostoevski contrasts harshly with the luxurious ease and
steady level seen in the outward existence of his two great
contemporaries, Turgenev and Tolstoi. From beginning to end he lived
in the very heart of storms, in the midst of mortal coil. He was often
as poor as a rat; he suffered from a horrible disease; he was sick and
in prison, and no one visited him; he knew the bitterness of death.
Such a man's testimony as to the value of life is worth attention; he
was a faithful witness, and we know that his testimony is true.

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevski was born on the 30 October 1821, at
Moscow. His father was a poor surgeon, and his mother the daughter of
a mercantile man. He was acquainted with grief from the start, being
born in a hospital. There were five children, and they very soon
discovered the exact meaning of such words as hunger and cold. Poverty
in early years sometimes makes men rather close and miserly in middle
age, as it certainly did in the case of Ibsen, who seemed to think
that charity began and ended at home. Not so Dostoevski: he was often
victimised, he gave freely and impulsively, and was chronically in
debt. He had about as much business instinct as a prize-fighter or an
opera singer. As Merezhkovski puts it: "This victim of poverty dealt
with money as if he held it not an evil, but utter rubbish. Dostoevski
thinks he loves money, but money flees him. Tolstoi thinks he hates
money, but money loves him, and accumulates about him. The one,
dreaming all his life of wealth, lived, and but for his wife's
business qualities would have died, a beggar. The other, all his life
dreaming and preaching of poverty, not only has not given away, but
has greatly multiplied his very substantial possessions." In order to