FROM PETER THE GREAT TO NAPOLEON THE LESSER

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864), his first consequential post-Siberian imprisonment publication, explores the tragicomedy of humanity’s entrapment in the confines of soul-sapping modernity and serves as the foundation of the existential and metaphysical concepts he addresses in the Great Five: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, and Brothers Karamazov.

In commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the novel’s publication, Professor Anna Barker will present a talk entitled From Peter the Great to Napoleon the Lesser: Dostoevsky and the Great Men of History.

Are you ready to test the limits of free will? Are you curious about the intrinsic contradictions of the human condition? And are you eager to be rendered speechless, bewildered, infuriated, and spiritually resurrected by the depth of Dostoevsky’s humanity and wisdom? The following quote from Notes from Underground is a great place to start your Dostoevsky journey:

“Now I ask you: what can be expected of man as a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower him with all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness completely, over his head, so that only bubbles pop up on the surface of happiness, as on water; give him such economic satisfaction that he no longer has anything left to do at all except sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the noncessation of world history – and it is here, just here, that he, this man, out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer lampoonery, will do something nasty.”