“It’s All One Big Fantasy”: The Critique of Modernity in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Idiot

The opposition between Europe and Russia runs through Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, culminating in Mme Epanchina’s declaration that both Europe and the Russians who travel to Europe are “one big fantasy” [Dostoevsky, 2002, p. 615]. In the novel, Dostoevsky uses the exile trope as a literary tool for expressing his Russian idea. Although the spiritual underpinnings of Dostoevsky’s nationalism have been well studied, the secular side of this concept bears further exploration. Peter Wagner argues that nationalism constitutes a response to the nostalgia that is developed in exile following one’s breaking away from tradition. Nineteenth-century nationalism specifically “was an attempt to recreate a sense of origins in the face of the disembedding effects of early modernity and capitalism” [Wagner, 2001, p. 103]. By applying Wagner’s theoretical framework to Dostoevsky’s narrative, the author demonstrates that in its secular essence, Dostoevsky’s nationalism is not a merely localized manifestation of a uniquely Russian sentiment, but a symptom of a larger phenomenon that was taking place in late nineteenth-century Europe. Because Mme Epanchina gets to say the final word in Dostoevsky’s novel, her role and the subtleties of her message will be the primary focus of the present analysis.

Charles Gounod’s Faust and Dostoevsky Artistic Principles

The article considers the “Faustian” scene in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent as the musical embodiment of Dostoevsky’s central poetic device: statements with maximum formal similarity and maximum semantic divergence. This device is contextualized within Mikhail Bakhtin’s polyphonic novel concept and within the context of the history of polyphony as a musical phenomenon starting with its origins in the Western European music. We follow Larisa Gogotishvili’s suggestion that Mikhail Bakhtin’s polyphony is not the polyphony of the 18th-19th century (Johann Sebastian Bach, for instance) but the 20th-century polyphony (Arnold Schoenberg) and propose that Bakhtin’s and Dostoevsky’s concepts of polyphony have different origins (relativist in Bakhtin and epistemological in Dostoevsky) and consequently serve different purposes: Bakhtin affirms a multiplicity of voices as a matter of principle, while Dostoevsky strives to ultimately overcome this multiplicity by covering as many concepts of reality as possible. The breadth of Dostoevsky’s conceptual range is intended to overcome humans’ epistemological limitations and avoid dangerous cognitive traps that lie in statements that are formally close, but semantically different.

The Reflection of the Olfactory Traditions of the Second Half of the 19th Century in the Work of Fyodor Dostoevsky

The rapid development of natural sciences at the beginning of the 19th century led to the creation of new sanitary and hygienic standards. The attention of the public opinion was now turned to keeping the body and clothing perfectly clean as a way of preventing diseases. New sanitary and hygienic regulations now prescribed not to mask unpleasant bodily odors with aromatic means, but to keep the body and clothing clean, which was regarded as a guarantee of bodily health. The popularization of new scientific discoveries through articles in public newspapers and magazines prepared the public consciousness for a new perception of the smells of everyday life, and the fiction, responding to the discussed social phenomena, fixed new cultural standards in the minds of readers. In this paper, we consider some of the new olfactory criteria used for evaluating characters or behavior patterns in works of fiction written in the second half of the 19th century, as well as their patterns and peculiarities in Dostoevsky’s oeuvre.

Voltaire’s Comedy The Prodigal Son in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Adolescent

Through the example of Voltaire’s comedy The Prodigal Son, the article shows how Dostoevsky actualizes the worldview and life strategies behind the imagery of other authors, when using their texts in his novel The Adolescent. Nonetheless, Dostoevsky, not only reproposes several different perspectives, but also engages in a dialogue with them and transforms them according to his aim as. Dostoevsky thoroughly weaves the slightly mentioned comedy by the French philosopher into the fabric of the text, and the writer works with it in several mutually dependent directions at once. The quote (taken from the preface, not from the play) stresses the matters that are raised in the preface and the preface itself as a significant element of the composition. The French sentence borrowed by Versilov relates his image with Voltaire’s, as it was perceived by Dostoevsky. In the novel Dostoevsky reflects on the motif of the prodigal son as it is presented in the Bible and also in its transformed version by Voltaire.

The Concept of “Besporyadok” (“Disorder”) in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Adolescent

The article is dedicated to the reconstruction of the concept of “besporyadok” (“disorder”) in the novel The Adolescent, considering the distinction between the intentions of the actual author and the hero-creator. The complex structure of the author’s concept is reconstructed using Dostoevsky’s workbooks for February 1874 – November 1875, and the key element of it is stated to be the “internal disorder” that occurs when a person’s soul is poisoned with devilry. It is argued that this type of besporyadok (“disorder”), correlated by Dostoevsky with the phenomenon of bezobrazie (“ugliness”), serves as a source and catalyst for “family disorder”, “secular disorder”, and “general disorder”. The adolescent, illustrating all the listed facets of the author’s concept, naturally focuses on comprehending the “internal disorder”, which at the end of his “Notes” acquires the concept-name of “bezobrazie”. The gradual “deployment” of this concept by Arkady Dolgoruky sets the dynamics of the narrative, reflects the ongoing process of samovidelka (“self-creation”), based on the movement of the hero from the feeling of bezobrazie (“ugliness”) to the beginning of his consciousness. It is argued that Dostoevsky’s perception of besporyadok (“disorder”) and besovstvo (“devilry”) as related phenomena provoking general decomposition, an increase of the chaos in the macro and microcosm, and thirst for self-destruction, does not predetermine a constantly negative modality in their artistic embodiment. In the light of the “realism in the highest sense”, the manifestations of besporyadok (“disorder”) are often seen by Dostoevsky as an impulse for renewal, purification, and transformation. Arkady Dolgoruky, due to his age and spiritual weakness, is deprived of the opportunity to perceive bezobrazie (ugliness) in such an expanded focus, therefore in his conceptosphere this unit is not ambivalent in itself, but is a negative element opposed to blagoobrazie (goodness).

Memorial of Robert Bird

The paper contains memories of Robert Bird (1969–2020), distinguished scholar and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

Let us Call in Dostoevsky for an Expert Advice (Perspectives for the Darovoe Estate)

Third paper on the topic. The formation of the restoration project of the Darovoe Museum is reaching a turning point. Bringing the creative laboratory of the museum construction into public space allows the scientific community to influence the process of establishing a new museum of the writer and sets a precedent for transparency in the restoration process. The combination of museum design, natural landscape, and architectural research with the achievements of philologists and historians are forming a new kind of interdisciplinary cooperation between scientists and practitioners. In fact, the process is now facing a conflict, ultimately of axiological nature. The article includes proposals of famous scholars to the General Directorate of the Cultural Heritage for the Moscow Region and the Protocol of the meeting of the section of the Council for the Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; it presents the contradictions causing conflict. The concept of a natural museum of Dostoevsky’s childhood, defended by the academic community, is winning the right to implement with great effort.

“About a Symbol”: Genesis and Parallels. Article Two. Dostoevsky as a Symbolist

The article is devoted to the literary and philosophical origins of Sergei Durylin’s report “On a Symbol in Dostoevsky” (the report was read in 1926 at a meeting of the Commission for the Study of Dostoevsky at the Literary Section of GAKhN). The history of the report in the context of the Literary Section is considered. Аbstracts and debates on the report are published for the first time. The relationship of Durylin’s ideas with the complex of Dostoevsky’s interpretations, developed by both the Symbolists (G.I. Chulkov) and Russian religious philosophers (P.A. Florensky, A.F. Losev) is shown. Both the report “On a Symbol in Dostoevsky’s” and the subsequent report “Landscape in Dostoevsky’s” are devoted to an anthropological and Christological story, connected with the symbolism of the setting sun, the symbolism of “oblique rays”, and its embodiment in Dostoevsky’s novels. Both texts are a continuation and a development of the same theme. A landscape is an artist’s mapping of nature, the created world; interiors are the artist’s image of the anthropomorphic world, the human space. The ontological symbol receives its sociocultural projection: a landscape or an interior. The problem of the relationship between the mapping/image and the object of the image, the problem of the ontological status of reality and its embodiment in the artistic/mythopoetic language, reflected in the report, corresponded to the focus of GAKhN on the development of a new “language of things” and a new concept of the humanitarian knowledge. The article is timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of F.M. Dostoevsky, the 135th anniversary of S.N. Durylin, and the 100th anniversary of GAKhN.

Two Egoists (Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted and Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge)

The article is devoted to the reception of Charles Dickens by Dostoevsky, who was an ardent reader of Dickens. The author of the article shows that Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted clearly demonstrates the influence not only of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop but also of his next, less popular, novel Barnaby Rudge (1841) which was published in Russian translation in the “Otechestvennye Zapiski” in 1842. The article reveals some similarities of the plot and, more importantly, between the characters of the two novels: Count Volkovsky and Sir Chester, who personify the type of antiromantic egoists which will be developed with more depth in Dostoevsky’s later works.