WHILE on his European travels Dostoevsky, at the age of 46, found himself in the neighbourhood of Baden-Baden, the home of the infamous Kurhaus casino. Ill health and hounding creditors had driven him and his wife Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, 25 years his junior, from Russia. Their financial situation was poor and Dostoevsky had already asked his publisher for an advance of 3500 roubles, which had been granted.

It should be noted that by this point in his life, Dostoevsky had already survived a mock execution, served four years hard labour in Siberia followed by another four in the military, and written, among a number of other works, The Double, Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment.

So if a man of Dostoevsky’s genius, of his intellect and reason and experience, and of his deeply rooted belief in God and attachment to Russian culture—if such a man couldn’t (and I say couldn’t because such men no longer exist) resist the temptation of The Wheel, if he was compelled to go and beg his wife to pawn her personal belongings so that he could just make one more wager, then what hope is there for us modern-day existentialists stripped of genius, faith, culture and tradition, who are serving a life sentence of monotonous drudgery? What hope do we have if we, like Dostoevsky, know nothing of moderation, of a shade of grey, but know instead only the blackest of blacks and whitest of whites? 

How much greater could have Dostoevsky’s literary output been if he weren’t almost penniless throughout his entire life? How much more could he have accomplished if he had had, for example, the means of his literary and ideological enemy Turgenev? Would his readers have been spared the hackneyed ending of Crime and Punishment, which was written in great haste due to financial demands?

But then, would there have even been a Raskolnikov, a Golyadkin, an Underground Man, an Alecksey if Dostoevsky hadn’t been destitute and hadn’t experienced so much hardship in his life?

An excerpt* from Dostoevsky’s letter to Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov, written in Geneva and dated August 16, 1867:

Now I am going to confess to you my baseness and my shame…

My dear Apollon Nikolayevitch, I feel that I may regard you as my judge. You have heart and feeling, as I have always, and of late freshly, been convinced; and therefore I have ever prized your judgment highly. I don’t suffer in confessing my sins to you. What I write you to-day is meant for you alone. Deliver me not to the judgment of the mob.

When I was travelling in the neighbourhood of Baden-Baden, I decided to turn aside and visit the place. I was tortured by a seductive thought: 10 louis-d’or to risk, and perhaps 2,000 francs to win; such a sum would suffice me for four months, even with the expenses that I have in Petersburg. The vile part of it is that in earlier years I had occasionally won. But the worst is that I have an evil and exaggeratedly passionate nature. In all things I go to the uttermost extreme; my life long I have never been acquainted with moderation.

The devil played his games with me at the beginning; in three days I won, unusually easily, 4,000 francs. Now I’ll show you how I worked matters out: on the one hand, this easy gain–from 100 francs I had in three days made 4,000 —-; on the other, my debts, my summonses, my heartfelt anxiety and the impossibility of getting back to Russia; in the third place, and this is the principal point, the play itself. If you only knew how it draws one on! No–I swear to you it was not the love of winning alone, though I actually needed the money for the money’s sake. Anna Grigorovna implored me to be contented with the 4,000 francs, and depart at once. But that easy and probable possibility of bettering my situation at one blow! And the many examples! Apart from my own gains, I saw every day how the other gamblers won from 20,000 to 30,000 francs (one never sees anyone lose). Why should those others do better than I? I need the money more than they do. I risked again, and lost. I lost not only what I had won, but also my own money down to the last farthing; I got feverishly excited, and lost all the time. Then I began to pawn my garments. Anna Grigorovna pawned her last, her very last, possession. (That angel! How she consoled me, how she suffered in that cursed Baden, in our two tiny rooms above the blacksmith’s forge, the only place we could afford!) At last I had had enough; everything was gone. (How base are these Germans! They are all usurers, rascals, and cheats! When our landlady saw that we could not leave, having no money, she raised our prices!) At last we had to save ourselves somehow and flee from Baden. I wrote again to Katkov and begged him for 500 roubles (I wrote nothing of the circumstances, but as the letter came from Baden, he probably guessed the state of affairs). And he sent me the money! He did really! So now I have had altogether from the Roussky Viestnik 4,000 roubles in advance.

Now to end my Baden adventures: we agonized in that hell for seven weeks. Directly after my arrival there, I met Gontscharov at the railwaystation. At first Ivan Alexandrovitch was cautious before me. That State-Councillor–or State-Councillor that ought-to-be–was also occupied in gambling. But when he realized that it could not be kept a secret, and as I myself was playing with gross publicity, he soon ceased to pretend to me. He played with feverish excitement (though only for small stakes). He played during the whole fortnight that he spent in Baden, and lost, I think, quite a good deal. But God give this good fellow health; when I had lost everything (he had, however, seen me with large sums in my hands), he gave me, at my request, 60 francs. Certainly he lectured me terribly at the same time, because I had lost all, and not only half, like him!

*Source: Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends. Contributors: Fyodor Dostoevsky – author, Ethel Colburn Mayne – transltr. Publisher: Horizon Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1961. Page Numbers: 118-120