Winter Notes on Summer Impressions

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Book Overview

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (Зимние заметки о летних впечатлениях) is an early book-length essay by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky which he composed while traveling in western Europe. Many commentators believe that in the themes it explores, the essay anticipates his later work Notes from the Underground.

In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see firsthand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting Russia. Over the course of his journey he visited a number of major cities, including Berlin, Paris, London, Florence, Milan, and Vienna. He recorded his impressions in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, which were first published in the February 1863 issue of Vremya (Time), the periodical of which he was the editor.

Among other themes, Dostoevsky reveals his Pan-Slavism, rejecting European culture as corrupt and exhorting Russians to resist the temptation to emulate or adopt European ways of life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810115182
• ISBN13: 9780810115187
• Release Date: July 1997
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Length: 78 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Autonomous principle entirely equal...

Winter Notes ... was used by Dostoevsky as a stamping ground of literary investigations to produce dramatized fiction on the margin of acceptability. Some of us expect the characters of all of his novels to be exceptional from Western European behaviour. And so: vive la difference! Contemporary discussion of the nature of whether he was just an excellent nineteenth century novelist or a prophetic visionary! Or, both? Dag Stomberg St. Andrews, Scotland

Gripping portrait.

Vivid impressions of the author during his travel all over Europe in the second half of the 19th century. His main targets are France (Paris) and England (London). He gives us a biting and cynical portrait of the French: parvenus and bourgeois who make a mockery of 'liberté, égalité, fraternité'. In England, he is confronted with child prostitution in London's Haymarket: a most terrible and moving scene of a child of only six, black and blue beaten, barefoot, who tries to lure him to have sex with her. On the contrary, the Anglican clerics preach a religion for the wealthy and don't even hide it. A most pregnant portrait of the fat and the meagre. A book to recommend.

Capitalism critcism

In this book Dostoevsky seems to take his time to criticize capitalism ( or so I find), takes as an example French society, criticizes the accumulation of money and the adulation of god money (Baal), the servilism that comes with it, analyzes the way marital relations are, that is in relation with capitalism (Bribri and Ma biche ).I found it pretty good, although it requires you to have knowledge of many things of the time it was written, (for instance can you remember who is Guizot?) and be used to the style of Dostoevsky.