My years with Dostoevsky

She was his beloved, his muse, and his "eternal friend." She had a significant influence on his literary works, and he drew inspiration from her for most of his heroines. Although she refused to marry him, her impact on his life was greater than that of his wives. She is Apollinaria Soslova, the rebellious student who dreamed of becoming a writer. "He loved her until now, loved her very much, and wished he had never loved her." He is the great Fyodor Dostoevsky, the giant of Russian literature and expert of human psychology, whom Freud and Nietzsche acknowledged for their deep understanding of her secrets. Despite the age difference between them, they lived a strong, mysterious, and turbulent love story, confusing scholars with its secrets. This diary reveals fragments of it and bears witness to the lives of Russian intellectuals in exile in the second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of these diaries is that they make Dostoevsky himself a Dostoevskian character, standing before us with all his duality and contradictions: with his nobility and his baseness, his genius and his flaws, his rich literature and his lack of money to the point that "it is impossible for him to fall into a worse abyss than this." He lived a life full of activity, following the advice he gave to his friend at the end of this book: "Do not isolate yourself from people, open yourself to nature, and open yourself even a little to the outside world and all things. External life, real life, greatly develops our human character, and provides us with tools that help us in life."