The Poetics of the Image of the“Russian Civilization” in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Adolescent (About the Sources)

Abstract

The article analyses some works by Nikolay Strakhov that served as a source of poetics for Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent. It explores how historical-literary and historical-philosophical facts became material for the writer’s poetic laboratory. Namely, the paper describes Strakhov’s articles from the magazines “Vremya,” “Zarya,” and “Grazhdanin,” together with letters to Dostoevsky that are important for the poetics of The Adolescent. Particular attention is paid to the article “A Fatal Question” (1863), in which Strakhov formulated his understanding of “the foundation of Russian civilization” and tried to answer the question “What are we, Russians?”. This question was extremely important for Dostoevsky, who in The Adolescent answered it in an artistic form. The study analyzes the artistic means of embodying the theme of the Russian world in the poetics of the work. In particular, the use of epithet “Russian” and toponym “Russia” is investigated. Dostoevsky’s artistic innovation in the use of allegory in the poetics of the novel is discussed separately. The methodology for studying the evolution of different forms of art is based on the approach developed by Dmitry Chyzhevsky. In his “History of the spirit” Chyzhevsky considered artistic techniques and means as the embodiment of the spiritual life of a people in a certain historical era.

Keywords

• dostoevsky
• strakhov
• chyzhevsky
• poetics
• the adolescent
• russian civilization
• epithet “russian
• ” toponym “russia
• ” allegory
• “history of the spirit.”