Altering Nature (Speculations over Elizaveta Konshina’s Draft Papers)

Abstract

The present article deals with the works of Elizaveta Konshina who studied Anton Chekhov’s notes and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s manuscripts in 1920–1930. First and foremost, these are the bibliographical documents of 1910–1920 that build up a clear picture of Konshina’s researches in literature studies and her lifelong interest in textual criticism, in decoding draft papers, publishing letters and speculating over the structure of complete collections of works of Russian writers. These notecards show quite distinctly her interest in the issues of rhythm and structure of a prosaic text. Secondly, step by step Konshina’s draft notes reconstruct Dostoyevsky’s manuscripts of “Demons” and “The Brothers Karamazov”. Dostoyevsky’s manuscripts have long been studied and have been published many times but Konshina’s draft notes have never been looked into in this respect. Her papers are classic examples of textual decoding in terms of accuracy and completeness and help to reconstruct distinctive features of Dostoyevsky’s writing style even in his rough drafts as far as his poetics is concerned. The article focuses on the very process of developing working topics by Konshina who used to hold them long in her keeping and wouldn’t hurry to publish her books and articles.