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“The Gambler is indubitably among the most psychologically profound and artistically successful of Dostoevsky's works,” writes Dostoevsky scholar Robert Jackson (1981, p. 15). It is also arguably the best case history of a compulsive gambler in or out of the professional literature. Clinicians have acknowledged its value, and often cite it in their writings. Yet it has received little in the way of critical study. When Freud (1928) examined Dostoevsky's own gambling he substituted the work of another writer, a curious irony since Stefan Zweig's story was clearly derived from The Gambler (Rosenthal, 1989).
Dostoevsky's biographers generally regard this story as one of his most transparently autobiographical, based not only on the author's addiction to gambling, but also on his love affair with the young beauty Polina Suslova. Passages from his letters sound identical to passages from the novel. In one sense only is it uncharacteristic, being one of the few times Dostoevsky gambled and won. Financial necessity forced him to consider writing The Gambler simultaneously with Crime and Punishment, but listen to the tone with which he describes his plan: “I intend to do an extraordinary and unheard of thing: to write in four months thirty printed sheets of two different novels, of which I shall write one in the mornings and the other in the evenings, and finish on time” (to A. V. Korvin-Krukovskaya, June 17, 1866. Moscow).1
This alone would be sufficient to make the two novels literary twins. Despite a number of obstacles, Dostoevsky finished The Gambler on the very last day, meeting his deadline by hours. The penalty, if he had not succeeded, would have been to forfeit all future rights