In his essay, Dostoyevsky Our Great in Contemporary, Octavio Paz discusses some of the ways in which Dostoyevsky’s work has remained iconic even throughout the twentieth century, one century after his death. Written from the perspective of one of Mexico’s greatest poet and essayist, Paz words carry great weight. Particularly, his detailed appreciation for Dostoyevsky’s work enforces the idea that his work was truly timeless, rather than belonging to a specific time in history. And though he mentions there are other really great writers who have successfully engaged readers through different writing styles, Paz argues that Dostoyevsky is able to engage even a wide variety of unique writers by connecting to a common feeling of humanity in his …show more content…
He explains how this ability for exceptional writers of the next century are able to “see themselves” in his writing not because of the over detailed descriptions he provides in his writing, but because of their common intellectual ability to see two sides of real life. Paz explains how Dostoyevsky is able to create characters, like Stavrogin, who is the ultimate nihilist and is completely narcissistic. In fact, Paz demonstrate this by provide an excerpt where Stavrogin is writing to his lover, Dalva Pavlona. Stavrogin’s constant depiction of himself is overly narcissistic as he ironically accepts his lifelessness and says, “One can go on arguing about anything forever, but from me nothing has come but negation, with no magnanimity and no force. Even negation has not come from me” (23). And yet, as Paz points out, his final act of redemption is demonstrated in his suicide, where though he ironically and again narcissistically uses a silk rope smeared with soap, he also demonstrates the ultimate act of clarity of his pettiness. Characters like Stavrogin reference the idea of seeing the world as a half rather than a whole due to, what Paz refers to as the simple minded and the intellectual. It becomes clear that Dostoyevsky’s work is truly timeless because the difference exists today regardless of what historical contexts characters may be placed into. In fact, Paz explains how the “innocence of simple minded people is the refutation of Nihilism” by which he refers to intellectuals who are not contempt with the nature of their reality and are constantly moving and more specifically, are perhaps more revolutionary for their actual time. In fact, he refers to his work as “religious parables” and explains, “Dostoyevsky does not set one idea against another,