A Gesture of Despair in Dostoevsky’s Short Story A Gentle Creature and Its Theatrical Interpretations

Abstract

This article studies the poetics of gesture in Dostoevsky’s short story A Gentle Creature , which has never been a subject of a specific focus in studies dedicated to Dostoevsky. The purpose of the article is to analyse the characters’ gesture behaviour in the moments of despair and to show how modern theatres staging this short story reflect the importance of the non-verbal layer of human portrayal in the artistic world of A Gentle Creature . The author of the article concludes that the key kinetic motifs of the short story (moving towards one another and looking at one another) become particularly important in the critical episodes of the narration: walking around the body of a dead wife, the battle of wills in the episode with the revolver, the suicide of the Gentle Creature, etc. Gestures related to viewing reveal the desire to understand the other person. Understanding another person’s truth starts with a glance at the body of a dead woman. Gestures of looking aside and closing one’s eyes which ones sees in the episode with the revolver show refusal to understand another person’s sufferings. Analysis of gestures describing movements of the Pawnbroker and the Gentle Creature towards one another shows that the characters try to get closer in turn, but continuously move away from each other instead. The suicide of the Gentle Creature is a gesture that becomes a deed: the heroine chooses a movement that does not bring her closer to the Pawnbroker but takes her farther away from him. Referring to theatrical productions made by the Masterskaya St Petersburg Theatre and the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre, the author shows that the message hidden in the short story at the gesture level is perceived by modern culture in the context of the dialogue problem. The theatre reveals the contradiction between the actual isolation of a person from others and their need to be understood, loved, and accepted in Dostoevsky’s text.