My “Anti-Bakhtin”: (on the Issue of Interpretation of Dostoyevsky’s Story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”)

Abstract

The article demonstrates in detail the numerous inaccuracies allowed by Mikhail M. Bakhtin in his interpretation of Dostoevsky’s “fantastic story”. The stress on the role of the “menippea” and consequently on the ambivalence of “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” makes him overlook the main import of the story. The meaning of the story might be grasped only by taking into account Dostoevsky’s artistic use of a set of Christian ideas. Striving – though rather inaccurately – to account for auto-intertextuality of “The Dream” in relation to many other previous and subsequent works of Dostoevsky, Bakhtin fails to recognize the specifically Dostoevskian formulation of the theme. And, accordingly, he skips the motives of the ruinous universal “indifference” (Russ. “ravnodushiye”), the impossibility of preserving the “integrity” (Russ. “tselostnost’”) of consciousness in the modern world and all the consequent imperfections of man. Meanwhile, a detailed tracing of the inner affinity of Zosima, Alyosha and even Ivan with the “ridiculous man” makes it possible to point out some recurring motives and, accordingly, the key stages of formation of the late Dostoevsky’s concept of the renewal of the world and the techniques of its artistic embodiment. The work also shows how the shortcomings of the Bakhtinian approach to Dostoevsky occasionally surface in modern Dostoevsky studies impacting the interpretation of “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”.