RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism (Dec 2016)
ON SPECIFITY OF THE LOVESTORYLINE IN DOSTOYEVSKY’S NOVELS
Abstract
The article looks at novels from Dostoevsky’s Pentateuch, focusing on peculiarities of love storyline and its role in the structure of the plot, which is considered as an established poetic system. The love storyline can never be the only basis of a plot construction, but it adds to the ideological line and the harmonization (matching) of the two lines was always a problem to Dostoevsky. The love storyline is always dramatic, even catastrophic, but since the characters’ feelings are not reciprocal over most of the story time, the development of any psychological confrontation is ruled out. The love story is discrete: it’s not a continuous line, but a series of culmination episodes, in which only a decisive tête-à-tête scene between protagonists is given in detail. Basing on social motives - an opposition of a glamorous-scandalous marriages - the love story line never assumes social forms: it results neither in marriage nor in cohabitation of the two characters. Characters either part or - in case of a harmonious, happy unit - its depiction always remains beyond the formal final of the plot.
