Didymous and Their Function in the Text of The Adolescent

Abstract

The article focuses on repeating details, situations, and characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent. To define such repetitions, the author of the present article uses the term dvoichatka (didymous), which is not a strictly academic definition, having been introduced in literary usage by Osip Mandelstam. This term encompasses all duplications that form the odd “density” of the text of The Adolescent. It is of note, that sometimes such repetitions align unequal elements, figures, and situations of very different scopes. Hence, these duplications create the rhythm of the novel, bonding the text as a whole and rendering it an uneven, shifting nature. The explicit “overcrowding” of the novel, the array of duplicating characters, and the density of the style, inherent to this particular text, all reflect Dostoyevsky’s intention to present a picture of “disorder” – the moral and social disarray that prevailed in post-reform Russia. However, precisely through the disorder of the main character, Arkady Dolgoruky, the reader is directed by the principal idea of the writer: Russia, seized by a rush into renewal, shall re-establish itself on a new and solid foundation. It shall attain prudence (the keyword of the novel) and the foremost role in this process will be played by adolescences, who are open to the future and from whom, according to Dostoyevsky, “generations are formed”.

Keywords

• didymous
• doubles
• repeating details
• the adolescent
• disorder
• prudence
• rhythm