The Gambler
1866
Based on Dostoyevsky's own devastating addiction to roulette, The Gambler is a feverish psychological portrait of a man utterly destroying himself. Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor in a Russian general's household, returns to the casino town of Roulettenberg with nothing but the sickening thrill of the spin. Every throw of the ball is ecstasy or ruin. Between bets, he chases Polina Alexandrovna, the general's niece, a woman who mocks his devotion one moment and demands it the next. She is cruel, magnetic, and unreachable. He is hooked on her exactly as he is hooked on the wheel: both promise everything, deliver nothing, and never let him look away. The novel crackles with the desperate energy of a man who knows he is sinking and cannot stop watching the numbers turn. Dostoyevsky wrote it in twenty-six days to escape his own gambling debts, and every sentence carries that manic, compulsive intensity. This is addiction rendered as prose, obsession as atmosphere. It remains essential for anyone who wants to understand how compulsion feels from the inside.
Editions
X-Ray
“People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: "I love you," and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then...well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I was like one demented: all I wanted was to be near her, in the halo of her glory, in her radiance, always, for ever, all my life. I knew nothing more!””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Do you know that one day I'll kill you? I won't do it because I'm no longer in love with you, or because I'm jealous, but”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Know that I've forgotten precisely nothing; but I've driven it all out of my head for a time, even the memories--until I've radically improved my circumstances. Then... then you'll see, I'll rise from the dead!””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“if she had ordered me to throw myself down then, I would have done it! If she had said it only as a joke, said it with contempt, spitting on me--even then I would have jumped!””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“إنني لا أرى في أي مكان شيئاً سواك ، و كل ما عداك فهو عندي سواء . لماذ أحبك ؟ و كيف أحبك ؟ لا أدري . قد لا تكونين من الجمال على شيء البتة . هل تتصورين أنني لا أعرف أأنت جميلة أم لا ، حتى من ناحية جمال الوجه ؟ أما قلبك فسيئ ولا شك ، و أما فكرك فمن الجائز جداً أن يكون مجرداً من كل رفعة و نبل .””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Russians alone are able to combine so many opposites in themselves at one and the same time.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“But gamblers know how a man can sit for almost twenty-four hours at cards, without looking to right, or to left.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
