The Years in Europe

The years in Europe were not easy for the Dostoevskys. Dostoevsky was productive - he was beginning The Idiot and collecting impressions for later novels. But he would face great challenges in his financial and emotional lives.

The most persistent challenge would prove to be Dostoevsky's addiction to gambling. Dostoevsky was obsessed with games, particularly roulette. In gambling, he found the terrific thrill of staking his fortunes, but he also felt great shame in not being able to stop himself. For Dostoevsky, gambling was high spiritual drama. In it he found expression of the soul's despair and its twin hope for redemption. But gambling was also a source of marital tension. While Anna insisted that she never scolded her husband for his losses, certainly they were a great strain on them both. Dostoevsky, for his part, did not hide his strain; his losses at the table left him haggard and crazy with despair. Dostoevsky lost such large sums that he regularly had to pawn his wife's jewelry - generally with no hope of retrieving it. One of his binges was so total and devastating that he was forced to pawn even his wife's wedding ring. Fortunately, this binge was followed by a winning spree, and Dostoevsky was able to reclaim the ring and to return it to his bride with champagne and flowers.

Dostoevsky's gambling losses were perhaps chief among the reasons that he stayed in Europe for so long. He simply could not afford to make the expensive journey back home. He didn't like Europe - in fact, he felt an extreme loathing for the Germans and the Swiss. Though he avoided the Russian immigrants living abroad, finding them irritating and banal, he pined for Russia itself. He began to believe more vehemently in the superiority of the Russian soul over the European intellect. He quarreled with the great writer (and his former friend) Turgenev, because Turgenev had turned his back on Russia and considered himself a German. He also turned his back on his former friend and mentor Belinsky, who did not believe in the immortality of the soul and who argued that Christ had no role in the modern world. Dostoevsky yearned to return to Russia - he in fact felt that the future of his writing depended on it.

But then something happened to make his European life happier. In the summer of 1867, his wife Anna became pregnant. On March 5, 1868, when Dostoevsky was in his later forties, his daughter Sonya was born. Perhaps because parenthood had come so late in life, Dostoevsky was an especially attentive father. He was consumed by the tenderness he felt for his child. He found joy in every one of her gestures.

While still an infant, Sonya caught a cold. It grew quickly and unexpectedly worse. She died, at the age of three months, leaving her parents devastated. When she died, Dostoevsky experienced a loss worse than any he had felt so far. In this suffering, Dostoevsky could find neither hope nor redemption. His already dim view of Europe grew darker. He determined with greater urgency that they should return home.

But this return would not happen for another three years. Unable to raise money to return to Russia - mostly because Dostoevsky repeatedly gambled their savings away - the couple resumed their travels. They lived for a time in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. Despite his anguish, Dostoevsky was able to finish The Idiot.

In Germany on September 14, 1869, Anna gave birth to their second daughter, Lyubov. This child would survive and bring Dostoevsky much happiness. But when Anna became pregnant for a third time (with their son, Fyodor), the writer decided that it was, indeed, time to come home. The Dostoevsky's scraped together the money by turning to family and friends. Even though he had abused their generosity throughout his gambling binges, many believed in his talent, and he was able to secure the funds. He arrived in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1871, ready to begin his life as a truly Russian writer.

Read on: Continuing the Writing Life

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