Do you want another reason why i love Virginia Woolf?
here she is writing about Russian Novels & Dostoevsky in particular
“It is all the same to him whether you are noble or simple, a tramp or
a great lady. Whoever you are, you are the vessel of this perplexed
liquid, this cloudy, yeasty, precious stuff, the soul. The soul is not
restrained by barriers. It overflows, it floods, it mingles with the
souls of others. The simple story of a bank clerk who could not pay
for a bottle of wine spreads, before we know what is happening, into
the lives of his father-in-law and the five mistresses whom his father
in law treated abominably, and the postman’s life, and the
charwoman’s, and the Princesses’ who lodged in the same block of
flats; for nothing is outside Dostoevsky’s province; and when he is
tired, he does not stop, he goes on. He cannot restrain himself. Out
it tumbles upon us, hot, scalding, mixed, marvellous, terrible,
oppressive – the human soul.”