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Ding, Dong, Dostoyevsky's Dead

October 25, 2006 at 4:23 PM | 0 Comments

Museums devoted to just one famous person can clutch at straws a bit for material. A photo there of the house of the neighbor of the celebrity's father at age 6 hangs next to the framed wrapper of the first piece of chewing gum they ate, and so on.

In Russia, a museum devoted to classic writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky doesn't really manage to break this mould, but is worth visiting just the same. The Dostoyevsky Memorial Museum and Flat in St Petersburg features, as is reasonable, original manuscripts from many of his novels, newspaper clippings and pictures explaining his narrow escape from death by firing squad and displays of some of the rooms of his flat as they were when he lived there from 1878 to 1881.

But to fill the flat other sentimental objects are needed which round out the character of the man, as the museum curators would say. You'll find short notes from his children ("Papa, please give us sweets"), an old hat protected by a big glass bubble, unused papers and most tragically, the very pencil stub he was writing with the day he died.

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· Dostoyevsky Museum, St Petersburg [Suite101]