In the first lag of the tour we have a city tour of Omsk for three hours.
Then we visit Dostoevsky sites of Omsk.
On the night of January 6, 1849, Dostoevsky was sent from Petersburg to Siberia in a prison convoy. He had to spend four years in Omsk Prison: 'I spent the entire four years in prison without going out, behind walls, and went out only for work.
In Omsk the writer worked in a brick factory, baking and grinding alabaster; he labored in an engineering workshop and also shoveled snow from the city streets. Since it was forbidden to write in prison, Dostoevsky's main creative work in Omsk was planning his future novels. All around him was a limitless supply of material for such plans. His first work, which he had been absorbing throughout all his four-year experience in prison, was a novel openly dedicated to the theme of the Russian prison- 'Notes from the House of the Dead'. No city in which the writer lived was investigated and described in such detail as Omsk.
Life in prison for him was often unbearably difficult. When he returned to normal life, he didn't like to recall those years. In 1876, in Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky admitted, 'To this day that time comes back to me in my sleep sometimes and I know of no dream more tormenting'.
| |