Dostoevsky’s Lost Play “Boris Godunov” (Sources, Concept)

Abstract

According to contemporaries, the play “Boris Godunov” was written by Dostoevsky before he began work on the novel “Poor People.” The manuscript of the play is lost. Some assumptions about its composition have been made in the scientific literature, but this article for the first time undertakes a systematic analysis, if possible, of all the alleged sources of the idea, as well as some of its reflections in the writer’s later works. The article examines the situation in Russian historiography and fiction related the coverage of the reign of Boris Godunov and the personality of the tsar himself prior to Dostoevsky’s undertaking of this topic. The key sources for him were the 9 volumes of Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” and Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” which formed the consciousness of the future writer since the times of family readings in his parents’ house. Subsequently, Dostoevsky faced an acute dispute in literature around Karamzin and Pushkin, who declared Godunov guilty of the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry. Their position was supported in the 1830s by the authors of historical dramas V. T. Narezhny, A. S. Khomyakov, and M. E. Lobanov. The historians M. P. Pogodin, N. S. Artsybashev, and A. A. Kraevsky defended Godunov; their point of view was reflected in the dramas of the same Pogodin and G. F. Rosen. F. V. Bulgarin took an ambivalent position in both journalism and prose. Dostoevsky was undoubtedly familiar with Schiller’s printed sketches for the tragedy “Demetrius,” where the figure of Boris Godunov as psychologically complex and ambiguous. The critics of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov N. I. Nadezhdin, N. A. Polevoy, and V. G. Belinsky played a certain role in shaping Dostoevsky’s idea. In “interacting” with them, Dostoevsky obviously developed a new twist in the dramatic plot, which resolved the historians’ dead-end disputes. In his play, which absorbed the dramatic experience of Shakespeare, Racine, Schiller, as well as the historical legends around Alexander I and Napoleon, a version was proposed about Godunov’s indirect guilt in Dmitry’s death and about the hero’s unwavering moral responsibility even for indirect complicity in a crime. This motif was developed in Dostoevsky’s subsequent works, such as “Netochka Nezvanova” (Efimov), “Demons” (Stavrogin), “Brothers Karamazov” (Ivan). It can be stated with a high degree of confidence that the origin of the concept of expanding guilt and responsibility for it occurred in the very first works of the writer — the tragedies “Mary Stuart” and “Boris Godunov.” The author of the article suggests the formation of Dostoevsky’s aesthetics in the context of the development of Russian historical drama.