William Michaelian: Brain Fever

When I talked to our eldest son on the phone yesterday evening, he told me he had missed work that day because he had a fever. Naturally, I asked him if his fever was accompanied by delirium. He was pleased to report that his thoughts had indeed been running away from him, and that he had found the sensation very agreeable. He said it made him feel like a character in a Dostoevsky novel.

This is exactly what a father needs to hear from his son every now and then. After all, anyone can be ill. But to be ill in the manner of a nervous nineteenth century soul who paces, gesticulates, and wrestles with his conscience is the hallmark of genius.

Brain fever is everywhere in Dostoevsky's writing. Every character of magnitude eventually succumbs to a fortnight of raving, inspired, perhaps, by the author's wild sprees at the roulette table.

. . . I flew to the roulette table as if my whole salvation, my whole way out, was focused in it, and yet, as I’ve already said, before the prince came, I hadn’t even thought of it. And I was going to play, not for myself, but for the prince, on the prince’s money; I can’t conceive what drew me on, but it drew me irresistibly. Oh, never had these people, these faces, these croupiers, these gambling cries, this whole squalid hall at Zershchikov’s, never had it all seemed so loathsome to me, so dismal, so coarse and sad, as this time! I remember only too well the grief and sadness that seized my heart at times during all those hours at the table. But what made me not leave? What made me endure, as if I had taken a fate, a sacrifice, a heroic deed upon myself? I’ll say one thing: I can scarcely say of myself that I was in my right mind then. . . .

— from The Adolescent (also A Raw Youth)
trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Alfred A. Knopf (2003)

Dostoevsky's writing also causes brain fever. Really: it is quite the marvelous drug. For another small dose, I recommend his short story, "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man." Once, many years ago, I read the entire piece out loud to my wife while she was making supper. It took me about forty-five minutes, and I was so worked up by the end that I broke down in tears and had chills for the next several hours. We're still married, by the way.