Reading F.M. Dostoevsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries. One Aspect of Modern Commentaries

Abstract

The writer addresses the reader in the cultural and historical language of his era. The communication is built largely on the property of human consciousness to transform words into visual images. This property, in turn, allows the writer to convey information to the reader through visual and emotional images. The basis of this imagery is: the object-everyday world familiar to the reader, elements of etiquette, the customs of everyday life, known or discussed events, literary publications and other realities of the cultural life of the era. They constitute carefully thought-out scenery of the events described and reflect the author's assessment of both plot and characters. Each new generation reads the same books with different eyes, replacing disappeared or forgotten cultural realities with elements of the modern world. This fact explains the appearance of all kinds of «modern readings» of 19th century classics. However, if the reader still wants to read Dostoevsky’s works through the eyes of his contemporaries, he hardly can do it without special comments. This article is devoted to the identification of the differences between the perception of Dostoevsky's texts by his contemporaries and modern readings. Examples of the use of the cultural language of the 19th century and some problems of modern comments are here presented, such as Lafitte and Sauternes in the gastronomic culture of the XIX century; history, reality and the role of the image of the old Moscow church in the novel The Adolescent; comments on the personalities mentioned in the calligraphic exercises in the novel The Idiot; the origin of the lexeme «Obdorsk» in the novel The Brothers Karamazov and the obvious indication for Dostoevsky’s contemporaries that the monk belongs to the Old Believers. Key words: F.M. Dostoevsky, culture, commentary.

Keywords

• f.m. dostoevsky
• culture
• commentary