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In an interview given shortly before his death, Witold Gombrowicz mentions Fedor Dostoevskij among his literary influences. Several critics have observed similarities in the works of the two authors. Ewa Thompson links Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke to The Brothers Karamazov, and the short story "Kraykowski's Dancer" to Notes from the Underground (1979). Bronisław Swiderski posits connections between Ferdydurke and Crime and Punishment (1991). However, beneath the surface plot lines of Gombrowicz's works lies his lifelong obsession with Form, or rather Formlessness.

There is a striking resonance between Ferdydurke, which Gombrowicz describes in A Kind of Testament as a novel that speaks directly of "the ferocious battle between man and his own Form [...] against everything which he appears to the outer world" (1969), and Dostoevskij's Notes from the Underground, which also depicts a human struggle against systems and definitions.