Dostoevskii in Siberia: Remembering the Past

In “Muzhik Marei,” which appeared in the February issue of Dnevnik pisatelia for 1876, Fedor Dostoevskii “remembers” an experience from his time in Siberia. During Easter week the drunken carousing of his fellow convicts (which, he writes, “tormented me nearly to the point of illness” “do bolezni isterzalo menia”) had driven him out of the barracks into the yard. There he met the Polish prisoner, Miretskii, who said, “Je hais ces brigands” (22:46). These words drive Dostoevskii right back to the place from which, as he says, only fifteen minutes before, he had fled “kak bezumnyi.”