Dostoevsky's style: Whose is it like?

Nastasya Fillipovna makes her grand appearance in Part 3 of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" (she was unseen, though heard from, in Part 2) as she barges into a lawn concert, with her retinue of admirers, blurts out to Evgeny that she's surprised to see him there as his uncle has shot himself to death that morning after it was revealed that he'd stolen government funds - Evgeny now is ruined! Her boorish behavior leads to a string of insults, and she grabs a riding whip and slashes a soldier across the face; he leaps at her, Prince Myshkin intercepts him - and he demands to know Myshkin's name. Myshkin may not know, but any reader of Russian fiction does know what this means: duel! In the next chapter, Aglaya, who's been estranged from Myshkin, asks him aout his dueling experience, which is none. So we're building toward another highly emotional and dramatic scene, so typical of Dostoevsky. I've noted before that in reading Dostoevsky (I am now adopting the Pevear-Volokhonsky spelling of his name) you are constantly aware that you're reading him - his style and his elements of composition are as distinct as a watermark: highly dramatic action, emotions at their most extreme pitch, a constant clash between passionate and libertine characters and others, or at least one, reserved and saintly character. For all that, Dostoevsky's actual writing style is surprisingly unadorned and straightforward - few authorial interventions, scenes and characters presented mostly by dialogue and action rather than introspection. Most of all, and I'm sure others have noted this, Dostoevsky almost never uses simile or metaphor. Simile and metaphor are most often the building blocks of literature - from Shakespeare, through the great Romantic poets, and definitely most of the Modernist fiction of the 20th century. But they're absent in Dostoevksky. Is this true of any other great writer? Yes - and it's a writer about as different in temperament from Dostoevsky as any writer could ever be. Will answer in tomorrow's post.