FORMATION OF THE IMAGE OF THE CAUCASUS IN FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY’S CREATIVE PERSONALITY

Abstract

The article explores the Caucasian theme in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fi ction and non-fi ction writings. The paper is based on a set of biographical, historical-cultural and historical-literary sources of the writer’s knowledge of the Caucasus. The article shows Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works were marginally affected by the information on the Caucasus and on the Caucasian wars the writer has at his disposal. The writer referred to characters’ military service in the Caucasus several times in his fi ction works, however, such detail never had infl uence on their development. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, the Caucasus is a stable topos of romantic literature but it often has pejorative overtones. The present study shows a paradoxical discrepancy between the volume of the writer’s knowledge about the Caucasus and the prominence of the Caucasian theme in his works. To further understand this discrepancy, it is important to consider the theme of the Caucasus in the context of the writer’s geopolitical views. Fyodor Dostoevsky appears to have little interest in the ethnocultural features of what he saw as a peripheral region of the Russian Empire. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s world-view, the Caucasus had no symbolic capital and therefore was only represented using one simplifi ed feature.