Marija Dmitrijewna Dostoevskaya

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Marija Dmitrijewna Dostojewskaja ( Russian Мария Дмитриевна Достоевская , scientific transliteration Marija Dmitrievna Dostoevskaja ; born September 1, 1824 in Taganrog , Russian Empire ; † April 15, 1864 in Moscow ), born. Constant ( Констант ), widowed Isajewna ( Исаева ), was the first wife of the Russian writer Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostoyewski .

Life

Marija Dmitrijewna Constant was the granddaughter of a French man who had to flee his homeland during the French Revolution . Her first marriage was to the civil servant Alexander Ivanovich Issajew. In 1847 a son Pavel was born. Marija was well-read, educated, and talented, but suffered from tuberculosis ; Isayev was an alcoholic and the family lived in poverty. Dostoevsky later used some of Issayev's character traits for the character of Marmeladov in Guilt and Atonement .

Dostoyevsky met the family in Semipalatinsk in spring 1854 , where he did his military service after his release from the Omsk penal camp. He regularly visited the Issaevs in their home and taught their son. In May 1855 the Issajews left Semipalatinsk because Alexander found a job in Kuznetsk . Marija and Dostoevsky kept in touch through letters. In August 1855 she wrote to him that her husband had died and left her in debt. She initially rejected Dostoyevsky's marriage proposals and preferred another candidate, the schoolteacher Nikolai Wergunow. In November 1856 - Dostoevsky had meanwhile successfully tried to get promoted to officer - she changed her mind and accepted Dostoevsky's proposal. The wedding took place on February 6, 1857 in Kuznetsk. The former rival, Wergunov, was present at the event; According to some researchers, this tense situation provided Dostoyevsky with inspiration for the scene of Prince Myshkin's marriage in the novel The Idiot .

The couple then wanted to settle in Semipalatinsk. On the 2,800 km journey, they stayed in Barnaul in mid-February , where Dostoevsky suffered a severe attack and was diagnosed with epilepsy for the first time by a local doctor . He had had lighter seizures for several years. In Semipalatinsk, the couple ran a modest household. As Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Mikhail at the end of 1858, the marriage was not a happy one and Dostoevsky had more and more epileptic seizures. After he was discharged from military service on March 18, 1859 due to poor health, the couple moved to Tver in July . Dostoyevsky was not allowed to live in Moscow or Saint Petersburg and suffered greatly from being excluded from the centers of literary and intellectual life. The tide turned when influential friends stood up for him and a petition was sent to Tsar Alexander . In mid-December 1859, Dostoevsky and his wife were finally able to settle in Saint Petersburg.

Marija's health deteriorated in the city, however, and in the spring of 1863 she moved, without her husband, to Vladimir , 900 km away . Because her health deteriorated, Dostoyevsky finally moved with her to Moscow in November 1863, where his sister Vera's husband, the doctor Alexander Ivanov, was able to treat the patient. But the following spring she succumbed to her ailment.

As is documented in letters, Dostoevsky loved Marija very much and modeled several of his fictional characters from the personality traits and situations he experienced with her, including in particular Marmeladov's wife Katerina Ivanovna in debt and atonement .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Lantz: The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia , pp. 103-106
  2. ^ Joseph Frank: Dostoevsky . A Writer in His Time. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-12819-1 , pp. 230 f., 234 . ; Peter Leithart: Fyodor Dostoevsky . Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee 2011, ISBN 978-1-59555-034-7 , pp. 60 ff . ( limited online version in Google Book Search)
  3. ↑ a b Kenneth A. Lantz: The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia . Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 2004, ISBN 0-313-30384-3 , pp. xxi .
personal data
SURNAME Dostoyevskaya, Marija Dmitrijewna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Достоевская, Мария Дмитриевна (Russian); Constant, Marija Dmitrievna; Issajewna, Marija Dmitrijewna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Taganrog , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1864
Place of death Moscow