“Brothers Karamazov” and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (on the Issue of Auto-Intertextuality of the Late Dostoevsky)

Abstract

Until now, it has not been noticed that Dostoevsky’s “fantastic story” “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (1877), in latent form, contains almost all the central themes of the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1878-1880). With his indifference to the fate of other people, the hero of “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” resembles Ivan Karamazov. Moreover, unlike “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, Dostoevsky’s latest novel traces in detail how the intellectual hero inadvertently infects with the idea that “everything is allowed”, the representative of the “simple consciousness” – Smerdyakov, and what catastrophic consequences this leads to. This, as it were, foreshadows the thought of Elder Zosima about the meaning of “the experience of active love”. Finally, the kinship of the “ridiculous man” with Alyosha Karamazov, which is also perceived by many in the novel as “an eccentric” and even a “holy fool”, is striking. Thus, in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” one might recognize a kind of artistic and ideological kernel of the “Brothers Karamazov”. By helping to clarify the meaning of the final work of Dostoevsky, his “fantastic story”, through this comparison, becomes clearer for us in itself. In this respect, the story can serve as a starting point for a scholarly interpretation of the novel.