Reader and Writer: Poor Liza (1792) by Nikolay Karamzin and Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Abstract

The article analyses the image of homo legens in Poor Liza by Nikolay Karamzin and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novelist considers Karamzin’s short story as a part of the process of the knowledge of the human being in the 19th century. In contrast to positivist philosophical knowledge, which, according to Dostoevsky, simplifies the phenomenon of the person, the writer, with the help of Karamzin’s artistic discoveries in the short story Poor Liza, creates the image of the Underground Man as a person who both reads and writes. Typologically, the encounter of the dreamer with a girl in Notes from Underground repeats the situation in Poor Liza. Erast dreams of an idyll and “invents” his future life with Liza according to the laws of the genre, while the peasant woman, unlike the reading hero, understands that dreams cannot be realized. In Dostoevsky’s novella the situation is more complicated. Following literary models, the Underground Man creates two stories in an idyllic and anti-idyllic key, in order to manipulate the soul of another person and to affirm himself. At first, Liza does not believe the words of the visitor or the possibility of leaving the brothel. The Underground Man prefaces his stories with two biblical quotations: “the image and likeness of God” and “lay down your life for the sake of friends.” He introduces the sacred as a means of manipulation of the heroine’s feelings. Having identified these quotations, Liza sincerely believes in the possibility of leaving the brothel and offers her love to the dreamer, which the author sees as an opportunity for him to come out of “the underground.” The hero cannot accept this chance. By creating the image of homo legens in Notes from Underground Dostoevsky shows that a chaotic and blind adherence to literary genres, situations, and gestures together with the manipulation of both literary and sacred texts places man in a position of insoluble conflict with “living life.”

Keywords

• notes from underground
• fyodor dostoevsky
• poor liza
• nikolay karamzin
• idyll
• homo legens
• reader
• writer