is he constructing a casuistical theory to excuse his own failures?

In the spring of 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested, tried, and sentenced to Siberian prison and exile for his association with the subversive Petrashevsky circle.

a pre-Marxian, non-"scientific" form of socialism commonly designated as "utopian".

Dostoevsky set about the masterpiece one could call liminal

when life has the temerity to imitate literature

The familiar dialectic repeats itself: dreams of love and glory, followed by fits of self-hatred, shame, and spite

The fashionable words for this state, in the late twentieth century, are alienation and anomie

unless the translator arrogates to himself the entirely inadmissible right to interpolate

it will be caught up in a fatal morass, a stinking mess consisting of its own doubts and agitations

a brazen fop who bars your way with arms akimbo, spitting