ABSTRACT
The 'genius' of Fyodor Dostoyevsky was characterised both as sickness and as mystical power in a book that represents an extreme example of the matter discussed here, namely Cesare Lombroso's The Man of Genius, a study that at the time of its appearance claimed scientific authority. Clinical discourse constituted the ground on which social and cultural figures such as the critic and the doctor on one side, and the artist and the patient on the other, eventually overlapped and occasionally, as in the case of Dostoevskii, almost coincided. The chapter of the Impressions devoted to Dostoevskii was actually conceived a few years earlier, when Brandes was asked to write a couple of articles about the increasingly famous Russian writer. Brandes's appreciation of Crime and Punishment 'helped significantly to make Dostoevskii famous in Germany and Northern Europe'. Dostoevskii's life and works represented the ideal example of the degenerate and morbid artist.
