Parole Rubate (Dec 2023)
Le citazioni di Dostoevskij negli studi danteschi del simbolismo russo: il caso di Dmitrij Merežkovskij
Abstract
In the Russian literary and philosophical milieu of the Early Twentieth Century, interest in the works of Dante and Dostoevsky acquires a new metaphysical dimension compared to their nineteenth-century reception. References to their works are used by Russian Symbolists as a functional interpretive code in order to solve the philosophical and aesthetic problems of modernism. In this regard, it may be particularly interesting to highlight possible associations between these two authors in the Symbolist thought. This article considers only one of the aspects of the Symbolist reception of Dante and Dostoevsky; namely, it focuses on Dostoevsky’s quotations used to interpret the Commedia in Dmitry Merežkovsky’s book dedicated to Dante (1938), which was published in Italy in 1938, after the poet’s emigration from Soviet Russia. It seems significant that Merežkovsky does not focus on the traditional comparison between Commedia and Memoirs from a House of the Dead, but turns to other works, images and/or concepts. The purpose of this article is to examine how Dostoevskian quotations become for Merežkovsky a functional tool for interpreting Dante’s Inferno, considering his conception of man’s spiritual freedom and the doctrine of apocatastasis.
