On the Question of “Living Life” in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Adolescent

Abstract

The article examines the specifics of Dostoevsky’s comprehension of the phenomenon of “living life” and its correlation with the female images in the novel The Adolescent. The author assumes that the decision to name Katerina Nikolaevna Akhmakova “living life” belongs exclusively to the fantasy of Arkady, who is in love with her, carried away and blinded by the her brilliant beauty, and it does not coincide with the author’s position. Sometimes in Dostoevsky studies it is stated the vagueness of Dostoevsky’s ideas about “living life”, however, as it is proved by the numerous contexts of the use of the formula in journalism and the writer’s notebooks (including during the making of the novel The Adolescent), Dostoevsky had a very specific view of this phenomenon and associated it with the “great idea” of the immortality of the soul, and with the special maternal and messianic role of Orthodox Russia. In this regard, the article suggests that the author’s concept of “living life” is nearer to the image of the “mother” Sofia Andreevna Dolgorukaya. It is concluded that in the novel, with the help of opposition and at the same time juxtaposition of the “queen of the earth” and the “angel of heaven”, Dostoevskij creates an artistic image of the Russian woman in its dual unity: flesh, intellect (Akhmakova) and soul, heart (Sophia). The personalities of both heroines also embody Dostoevsky’s idea of “life” in its various forms: the earthly one, made of flesh, and the heavenly, made of spirit.

Keywords

• “living life”
• dostoevsky
• the adolescent
• female images
• beauty
• ideal
• great idea
• the idea of the immortality of the soul
• sacrifice
• motherhood