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A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression  …” A novel, at least a Dostoevsky novel, is a “work of poetry”— that is, a simultaneous composition on multiple planes— and the critics can therefore be forgiven their perplexity about where to take hold of it, since the first perplexity of criticism is that it must speak monosemantically of the polysemous. But besides that, these were novels of a new kind, their multiple planes so divergent and even contradictory as to all but baffle definition. So much so that one line of criticism, rightly noting the dramatic technique and high seriousness of Dostoevsky’s writing, has called his late works “novel-tragedies,” while another, withe qual rightness, finds their roots in Ménippean satire and a carnival sense of the world. Dostoevsky’s uniqueness as an artist lies in his invention of a form capable of combining such opposites, of sounding such depths (carnival laughter has as much depth as tragedy), while never ceasing to portray the contemporary world, the everyday in all the detail of its everydayness. What’s more, Dostoevsky’s novels refuse to stay put in their own period, where the novels of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov have settled; they leap out of their historical situation and confront us as if they had not yet spoken their final word.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor (2012-08-08). Crime and Punishment (Vintage Classics) . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.