Слова, слова, слова: Книги в книгах Данте, Шекспира, Пушкина, Достоевского

Abstract

“Books within books” as a form of intertextuality is a characteristic phenomenon of all world literature. All the writers listed in the title of the present essay may serve as examples of intertextual dialogue between books, as their works were rooted in preceding sources and in turn became part of later literature. The article, however, is based on a report at a conference which proposed to consider how books appear in other books not only as allusions or sources, but as immediate elements of the text. In this essay two of the research directions, suggested by the organizers, are combined and explored: the books read by literary heroes created by writers who influenced Dostoevsky’s work and the role and the artistic image of books in the art of the Russian writer himself. Consequently, the choice of writers and their texts is not a random selection: Dante, Shakespeare, and Pushkin each in his own way had an impact on Dostoevsky; at the same time, in many of their works books appear as physical objects, being at once both “things” and impulse for the reader to think about. The article explores several of Dostoevsky’s compositions where books by Dante, Shakespeare, Pushkin, and even his own, appear either as part of an intertextual mosaic, or as material “artifacts.” The research shows the deep connections between the authors, both on a level of ideas and through the thematic of books. The end of the paper draws a parallel between the episodes of Dante’s Comedy and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment where two characters together are reading one book that in both cases becomes a guide to Love.