There is no salvation for the reader who, upon first encountering Dostoevsky, is not filled with the highest admiration for this man who, in desperate circumstances, grasped and managed to express much of what lies deepest within the human soul, with unparalleled intensity and originality. Nothing can be expected of anyone who, faced with this unique and obvious artistic achievement, does not turn away forever from the sterility of that kind of criticism which regards form as the true hallmark of high literature. Anyone who is more impressed by this or that narrative technique, by this or that rhetorical device, by this or that structural organization of the text, than by the exceedingly rare insight of true genius, deserves nothing but compassion.