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Posted by Amanda Kendle Sep 21, 2006 |
I love to read, and I love to travel, so any way I can combine the two is a chance I jump at. On my first trip to St Petersburg, I had just become a crazed Dostoyevsky fan, and was thrilled to be able to visit the Dostoyevsky Memorial Museum, located in the very flat where he used to live - and where he died. The story of his death is an interesting one to me, and my diary at the time of my museum visit noted it like this:
The day he died, Fyodor Dostoyevsky lay in bed in the morning, waiting for his wife Anna to wake. When she did, he calmly told her, "I've been awake for three hours, and I'm quite sure that I will die today." He asked her to read to him from his Bible - the very same Bible which was the only book he'd been allowed to have with him when in exile in Siberia.
That evening, he was working hard as usual in his study. He tended to write for ten to twelve hours at a time, with few breaks, and often late into the night. His doctor had been warning him that his health was suffering, that he should slow his work rate and get more sleep. While writing that day, he dropped his pen, and it rolled under a cabinet. To retrieve it, he tried to lift the cabinet. The strain caused his pulmonary artery to burst, and he soon died.
This is the official story of his death at the Dostoyevsky Memorial Museum in St Petersburg, although academics' explanations of his death vary widely. But I liked this version, especially as I heard it while I stood in the very flat where he died. I stared into his study and could picture him hard at work, and see the piece of furniture his pen had rolled under.