Masaryk and Dostoevsky

Abstract

Masaryk’s preoccupation with Dostoevsky extended over a period of more than thirty years. It appears that he had at least a secondhand knowledge of the author’s work as early as the late 1870s and certainly a firsthand knowledge in the 1890s. In 1881, he recommended the translation into Czech of some of Dostoevsky’s works, and by the mid-1880s he had read practically all published works of the author. By that time Masaryk possessed an excellent knowledge of the Russian language, and was establishing himself as a dominant authority on Russia in the West. He travelled to Russia several times, and by the turn of the century he knew personally numerous leading Russian authors, among them Tolstoy. The first article on Dostoevsky was written by Masaryk as early as 1892, on the occasion of the publication of a Czech translation of the author. It was a rather affectionate account of Dostoevsky’s work, introducing him as a sensitive diagnostician of the human soul, who preached love and understanding. The article was written with the obvious intention of generating interest in the author on the part of the Czech reading public, and dealt only marginally with more complex problems.