Almost a bit of proto-sci-fi from Dostoevsky, as well as the morality tale to end all morality tales. I’m not sure I’ve ever liked the basic idea of a story more than this one – which probably says a lot about me.
As I believe short film to be an outrageously neglected art form, I’ll also flag up Aleksandr Petrov’s adaptation, which is visually stunning, as well as interesting in how it renders visual certain non-physical elements of the plot – though, all told, I miss too much of Dostoevsky’s intense, intricate thinking.
First published in Russian in Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary journal in 1877. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s English translation first appeared in their Dostoevsky collection The Eternal Husband and Other Stories in 1997. An older, probably serviceable but, by all accounts, less good translation, by Constance Garnett, is in the public domain and available at online-literature.com
A Personal Anthology 