Nikolay Speshnev chapter of "Demons" when, in the midst of confessing to a terrible crime, he formulates the guiding idea of his life: "that I neither know nor feel good and evil and that I have not only lost any sense of it, but that there is neither good nor evil (which pleased me), and that it is just a prejudice." It is speculated that Dostoevsky also refers to Speshnev on one occasion in "The Idiot". The central character, Prince Myshkin, recounts a long conversation with "a certain S—", an erudite and well-bred man, on the subject of atheism. Nikolay Speshnev Nikolay
The Double (Dostoevsky novel) see many replicas of himself, has a psychotic break, and is dragged off to an asylum by Doctor Rutenspitz. "The Double" is the most Gogolesque of Dostoevsky's works; its subtitle "A Petersburg Poem" echoes that of Gogol's "Dead Souls". Vladimir Nabokov called it a parody of "The Overcoat". Many others have emphasized the relationship between "The Double" and other of Gogol's Petersburg Tales. One contemporary critic, Konstantin Aksakov, remarked that "Dostoevsky alters and wholly repeats Gogol’s phrases." Most scholars, however, recognize The Double as Dostoevsky’s response to or innovation on Gogol’s work. For example, A.L. Bem called "The Double" "a