Madame A. G. Dostoevsky made the following note in the margin of the title-page of _Brothers Karamazov_ (seventh edition, p. 308), beside the quotation “A hundred and four sacred stories from the Old and New Testament.” “Fedor Mikhailovich learnt to read from this book.” The book is in the F. M. Dostoevsky Museum. (From unpublished materials.)
Relations of F. M. Dostoevsky remember that the stories from the _Arabian Nights_ were told to the brothers Dostoevsky by an old woman, Alexandra Nikolaevna, who used often to visit the family. She would tell one story after another, and the children would not leave her side. In F. M. Dostoevsky’s own words he was very fond of books of adventure. _The Inhabitants of the Moon_ is evidently the title of a book which was very popular in the thirties—“Of the Inhabitants of the Moon and other remarkable discoveries made by the astronomer Sir John Herschel during his stay at the Cape of Good Hope, translated from the German, Petersburg, 1836.” That infatuation for the theatre, particularly for _Hamlet_, which possessed the hero of _The Life_ finds confirmation also in Dostoevsky’s biography.[109]
See complete edition of F. M. Dostoevsky’s Works, vol. i., Petersburg, 1883, p. 11; N. N. von Voght, “To the Biography of Dostoevsky,” in _Istoricheskii Vèstnik_, 1901, xii. p. 1028. See also Dostoevsky’s letter of Aug. 9, 1838, to his brother Michael.
The frequency in _The Life_ of details based on facts taken by the author from his boyhood inevitably introduces a question as to the right of the student to look for a _personal_ key in the author himself to his hero’s character. Indeed, many of the hero’s spiritual experiences testify to their subjective character.
He loved to test himself; he trained his will-power; he accustomed himself to “self-torment.” This thirst for self-torment, this anxiety to spend himself in suffering, so as to be convinced of his ability to “endure,” was characteristic of Dostoevsky himself. A letter is brought to him from his brother. “I have invented a new kind of enjoyment for myself—a most strange one—to make myself suffer,” he tells his brother Michael, in a letter of January 1, 1840. “I take your letter, turn it over in my hand for several minutes, feel if it is full weight, and, having looked at it sufficiently and admired the closed envelope, I put it in my pocket.... You won’t believe what a voluptuous state of soul, feeling, and heart there is in that! And so I sometimes wait for a quarter of an hour....”