After reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment as a high school senior, I became enamored with the introspective, thoughtful (and often morose) writings of the pre-Soviet Russian masters. I received more exposure to these authors throughout my college experience, both in-class and in my own personal reading, but I never took a formal course analyzing their writings until I enrolled in RUSS 322 with Dr. Henry. Throughout the duration of the quarter, we delved into a variety of themes in 19th century Russian literature, focusing on both urban and rural spaces, the road as a symbol of the journey, and the complex interplay between life and death. Despite the often cynical viewpoints put forth by the writers whose works we read, I was struck by the tone of hopefulness that often emerged from seemingly futile situations. To date, I rarely find writings that so accurately encapsulate the beauty and pain of the human conditions as those surveyed by this class.

 

For my artifact in this course, I selected my final essay, a close-reading analysis of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. This was certainly one of the darker works that our class read, and is often cited as a major inspiration for Existentialist thinkers like Sartre and Nietzsche. And while Dostoevsky certainly mocks the meaningless of human existence, he subtly nods towards a source of greater meaning, an idea that I found to be both tragic and poignant.