Dmitri Karamazov Research Articles

The Idea of “Restoration of a Ruined Person” in Classic Russian Literature (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov)

Dostoevsky considered “restoration of a ruined person” to be “the key idea of all art of the nineteenth century.” This is exactly what makes up the inner plot of many of the writer’s works. Such a “restoration” is not so much actually happening as it is implicit in some of them. This is the case in “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov.” At the same time, in both works it is not only not articulated, but is barely outlined. Meanwhile, there are researchers who believe that Dmitry Karamazov is not sent to hard labor, but flees to America — this is how open the novel’s ending is. At the same time, Dostoevsky has, on the contrary, “ruined heroes,” i. e., the “underground paradoxalist,” Alexey Ivanovich from “The Gambler,” Svidrigailov, Stavrogin. Sometimes the “resurrection of a new man” occurs in the most unlikely Dostoevsky’s characters. One of such characters in “Demons” is Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. In such deeply interconnected works of Russian literary classics as Dostoevsky’s “Idiot” and Tolstoy’s “Resurrection”, attempts to save the “fallen woman” are in the center of attention. Tolstoy even included this theme, understood after Dostoevsky precisely as “the restoration of a ruined person,” in the title of his novel. In “Resurrection”, Tolstoy actually rewrote the storyline of Myshkin, Totsky and Nastasia Filippovna. At the same time, he remade the plot of the novel “Idiot” into a more realistic one. In Dostoevsky, one of the characters, Totsky, seduces and uses Nastasia Filippovna, while another, Prince Myshkin, tries to save her. In Tolstoy, Prince Nekhludoff pays for his own sin. The transformation in the “Resurrection” of the plot situations from the novel “Idiot” is aimed at their happy resolution; meanwhile it is not Nekhludoff's repentance for his actions, but Katyusha Maslova’s quiet self-sacrifice that leads to it. Unlike Myshkin and Nekhludoff, the hero of Chekhov’s novella “My Life” is by no means conceived as a “positively wonderful person,” much less Christ. However, in some incomprehensible way, unlike Myshkin and Nekhludoff, he achieves his goal. Apparently, such, according to Chekhov, is the power of not just a word, but a beneficent example. Misail tries to find a path consistent with his conscience, and thereby sets a beneficent example to his entire environment. Thus, in Chekhov’s mature works, there is a constant reliance on the aesthetics of the “transformation of man.” So, this theme turns out, mutatis mutandis, to be common to all Russian literary classics — from Pushkin to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

On Illustrating Dostoevsky’s Works

The article addresses several problematic aspects related to the illustration of F. M. Dostoevsky's literary works. Illustration in particular is one of the major ways to create an “artistic aura” surrounding a literary text. Owing to the visual interpretation of verbal imagery, a new associative layer and a possibility of reinterpretations of the text are able to emerge. The author argues that illustrating novels of one of the greatest Russian writers is a task of special complexity. First of all, this is due to the fact that Dostoevsky's literary portrait is based on different principles than his own. It is primarily linked to the fact that Dostoevsky's literary portrait is based on principles that differ from those of his contemporaries, such as Turgenev, Goncharov, and Tolstoy. External descriptiveness and detailed portrayal of the character retreat in the texts of Dostoevsky before the “energy of contradictions” inherent in the initial portrait of his heroes. As a result, the task of an artist illustrating novels by the Russian literary genius proves arduous: he must convey, first and foremost, the dynamics of personality formation of Raskolnikov, Myshkin, or Dmitri Karamazov, rather than stable recognizability and their physiological individuality. This perspective is applied in order to analyze the work of a variety of prominent illustrators in the light of Dostoevsky's ideas and anthropology. The author of the present study reveals the discrepancies between the writer's world and the embodiment of the characters' images in the illustration. Likewise, he identifies the ways in which, from his point of view, the most striking matches between verbal and visual images appear possible.

Роман Ф. М. Достоевского «Братья Карамазовы»: два дополнения к комментарию одного эпизода (Хохлакова и Дмитрий Карамазов)

This paper analyzes in detail the episode in the chapter “Gold Minesˮ of “The Brothers Karamazovˮ by F. M. Dostoevsky. The focus is on the markers of the polemically addressing the episode to Saltykov-Shchedrin and the specifics of his narrative technique. Firstly, the methods of researchers to the background of the polemic originating in the 1860s are reviewed, the necessity of expanding the context of the episode is motivated, and new extra narrative information is introduced completing the picture and deepening the episode's interpretation. Parody has been found to be the leading mode of polemic, with Mrs. Khokhlakova as its “agent,” the absurdity of her statements providing a channel for the transmission of the polemical reference “over and above” the text. A similar function is given to Turgenev, who is semantically close to Saltykov in his parody function in context of the heroine’s reasoning. Secondly, the narrative technique of the episode is analyzed within the framework of a micro-fragment in which Khokhlakova “blessesˮ Dmitry Karamazov for his trip to Siberia. The details are explicated, allowing the allusions to the novel “Crime and Punishment” to be seen, suggesting other pairs of characters: Raskolnikov and the money-lender, Raskolnikov and Sonya. The technique of combining and “splitting” the plot situations in multidirectional projections is considered (comic and dramatic), which implicitly introduces a multidimensional plot of the crime, universal in the work of the writer. The plot auto-parody is considered as a technique triggering the plot-doubling mechanism.

Secret Surveillance of F. M. Dostoevsky in Staraya Russa: in Search of Unknown Sources

The article develops the hypothesis set forth by Boris Egorov, a famous researcher of the work of Dostoevsky and Ap. Grigoriev, which claims that “some of the remarks and character traits of Mitya Karamazov are reminiscent of Grigoriev’s,” and also considers the assumption made by Vladimir Tunimanov about “closeness, partially turning into congeniality” of the “artistic natures of the two principal writers of the soil.” The presence in the work of Dostoevsky of other echoes or “shadows” of Grigoriev’s personality, both serious and caricature, is also discussed. Particular attention is paid to the nature of the problematization and even refutation of “pochvennichestvo” in Dostoevsky’s late works. Thus, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” “pochvennichestvo” is more likely to be refuted, both in the image of Dmitry Karamazov and in the whole structure of the novel. The socio-political illusions regarding if not the Russian people, then at least the Russian peasantry, have already been ultimately exposed, not by Dostoevsky, but by his closest “secret student” and at the same time, as is typical for such cases, by the debunker Chekhov (and subsequently by Bunin). Dostoevsky maintained a closeness to Grigoriev until the end of his life in his commitment to the ideal of “living life,” which resounds both in the fiery declarations of the “ridiculous man,” and in the wise precepts of the elder Zosima, as well as loyalty to the “people’s truth” discovered by Grigoriev in the works of Pushkin.

The communicative and pragmatic level of Dmitry Karamazov's linguistic personality

The article presents the results of the analysis of the pragmatic level of the linguistic personality of the hero of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky Dmitry Karamazov. The relevance of the research is due to the fact that it is carried out within the framework of the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistics. The object of the study is the speech parts of the hero of the novel in the aspect of communicative activity. The subject of the study is the communicative strategies and tactics in the speech behavior of Dmitry Karamazov. The aim of the study is to describe the pragmatic level of the linguistic personality of the hero of the novel "The Brothers Karamazov". In the work we use the traditional descriptive method, the method of continuous sampling, the method of contextual analysis, the method of communicative and pragmatic analysis. Scientific novelty is determined by the fact that the work describes for the first time the hero of F.M. Dostoevsky's novel Dmitry Karamazov as a special linguistic personality. The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of using the results of the research in the educational process in the courses "National specifics of Russian speech behavior" and "Sociolinguistics". The paper analyzes the dominant motives of Dmitry Karamazov's communicative activity, describes the hero's communicative strategies and linguistic ways of their implementation. As a result of the study, conclusions were drawn about the features of Dmitry Karamazov's speech behavior at different language levels, as well as about the possible causes of the hero's communicative failures.

The Tale of Two Seducers: Existential Entrapment in the Works of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky

Abstract The present study poses a simple question, namely, what are the specific forces that might at times hinder rather than advance individual moral development? To answer this inquiry, I will investigate the writings of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, examining the two aesthetic protagonists found in their works—Johannes the Seducer and Dmitri Karamazov. I will utilise the Kierkegaardian framework of the three existential stages to illustrate that it is an over-reliance on gratification, coupled with an instrumental approach towards beings that not only prevents these two aesthetes from behaving morally, but also from even recognising the ethical perspective as a viable existential position.

Метафора свободы или аллегория самоубийства? «Америка» в художественном мире Достоевского

For the Russian socialists, “America” was the promised land — a kind of metaphor of absolute freedom, making possible full self-realization of every person. In Dostoevsky's The Demons, Russian socialists Shatov and Kirillov find their way to America, subsequently break with the ideas of socialism, but nevertheless perish — either as a result of his past (Shatov), or his atheism (Kirillov). It is not without reason that even for Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment America also means the futility of the exodus for a Russian person who is not free from shame and conscience, and Svidrigailov's expression “to go to America” even turned out to be an allegory of suicide. This symbolism is to a certain extent preserved in Russian literature after Dostoevsky. The article demonstrates this by examples of Chekhov's play The Seagull and Gazdanov's story “Black Swans”. Although plots and images of the Crime and Punishment, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov differ, the similar artistic dialectics is observed in Dostoevsky's last novel, which, according to some researchers, allegedly ends with Dmitry Karamazov's flight to America. Unlike Herzen and Chernyshevsky, “America” in Dostoevsky's works appears not so much as a metaphor of freedom, but rather as an allegory of suicide.

Epic Reversal of the Plot of Guilt from Prokharchin’s Dream to Dmitry Karamazov’s Dream

The article examines the plot of guilt in refraction to the event of a dream from the early story of Fedor Dostoevsky “Mister Prokharchin” to “Brothers Karamazov”. The author of the article proceeds from the idea of the specific features of the writer’s work, characterized by the dynamics of comprehending the main problems for him and the relative stability of their figurative, motivational, plot-plot expression. It is emphasized that the development of the plot was determined by the increased in the 1840–1870s. public interest in the problems of the correlation of the general as a national and individual, the moral transformation of a person, in the peculiarities of folk life and the Russian national character. The constituent parts of the historical and cultural context of Dmitry Karamazov’s dream picture are commented: they determine the thematic structure of this dream, testify to the decisive concretization of the universal human image of “God’s people” (“Mister Prokharchin”) as national. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that in “Brothers Karamazov”, the writer’s reflections on the historical fate and role of the Russian people formed the basis for the epic reversal of the “plot of guilt”: feeling individual guilt, Dmitry Karamazov opens up to a feeling of compassion as a nationwide one.

Первая постановка «Братьев Карамазовых» на русской сцене в зеркале прессы (На материале фондов Государственного музея истории российской литературы имени В.И. Даля)

The first Russian theatrical production of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov premiered on the eve of Dostoevsky’s 20th death anniversary on January 26 (February 7) 1901 at the Theater of the Literary and Artistic Society (Maly Theater) in St. Petersburg as a benefit for Nikolay Seversky. The novel was adapted for the stage by K. Dmitriev (Konstantin Nabokov). The role of Dmitry Karamazov was performed by the famous dramatic actor Pavel Orlenev, who had received recognition for playing the role of Raskolnikov. The play, the staging, the actors’ interpretation of their roles became the subject of detailed reviews of the St. Petersburg theater critics and provoked controversial assessments and again raised the question about the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s prose and the possibility of its presentation on stage. The production of The Brothers Karamazov at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg and the controversy about it became an important stage in the development of Russian realistic theater and a reflection of the ideas of Dostoevsky’s younger contemporaries about the distinctive features and contents of his art. The manuscript holdings of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature includes Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection containing a set of documentary materials (the playbill, newspaper advertisements, reviews, feuilletons), which makes it possible to form a complete picture of the play and Russian viewers’ reaction to it. The article provides a description of the performance, and voluminous excerpts from the most informative press reviews. The published materials have not previously attracted special attention of researchers.

Первая постановка «Братьев Карамазовых» на русской сцене в зеркале прессы (На материале фондов Государственного музея истории российской литературы имени В.И. Даля)

The first Russian theatrical production of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov premiered on the eve of Dostoevsky’s 20th death anniversary on January 26 (February 7) 1901 at the Theater of the Literary and Artistic Society (Maly Theater) in St. Petersburg as a benefit for Nikolay Seversky. The novel was adapted for the stage by K. Dmitriev (Konstantin Nabokov). The role of Dmitry Karamazov was performed by the famous dramatic actor Pavel Orlenev, who had received recognition for playing the role of Raskolnikov. The play, the staging, the actors’ interpretation of their roles became the subject of detailed reviews of the St. Petersburg theater critics and provoked controversial assessments and again raised the question about the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s prose and the possibility of its presentation on stage. The production of The Brothers Karamazov at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg and the controversy about it became an important stage in the development of Russian realistic theater and a reflection of the ideas of Dostoevsky’s younger contemporaries about the distinctive features and contents of his art. The manuscript holdings of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature includes Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection containing a set of documentary materials (the playbill, newspaper advertisements, reviews, feuilletons), which makes it possible to form a complete picture of the play and Russian viewers’ reaction to it. The article provides a description of the performance, and voluminous excerpts from the most informative press reviews. The published materials have not previously attracted special attention of researchers.

Moral Character and the Significance of Action: Judging Dmitri Karamazov

AbstractThe paper considers the problematic relation between a person and her action as it is expressed in the problem of blame and moral judgement. I argue that blaming someone for her action does affect our moral judgement of her, but does not imply condemnation of her moral character. I use the example of Dmitri Karamazov to show that a response to a particular situation, although shaped by the previous character of the person, does not follow from it and can in turn affect and change the person's character by changing the way in which she perceives what is valuable.

오해와 진실: 드미트리 카라마조프의 테마

오해와 진실: 드미트리 카라마조프의 테마

The Secret of Dmitri Karamazov's Money

The mystery of Dmitry Karamazov's missing 1,500 rubles in The Brothers Karamazov is explored as a possible subtext for the sequel that Dostoevsky never wrote.

The concept of joy in the context of F. Dostoevskij’s understanding of the essence of religious belief

In this article I show that Dostoevskij criticized traditional Christianity, and that for him the authentic teaching of Christianity concerned the unity of man and God, the existence in man of a divine “dimension,” the opening of which allows man to become an absolute being. In the context of this understanding of man and God the concept of “joy” is an important one. This concept includes, on the one hand, the fullness of earthly human life (this aspect of joy is expressed by Dmitri Karamazov) and, on the other hand, the transformation of man and of all earthly being into an absolute and divine state (this aspect of joy is expressed by Kirillov and the elder Zosima). Dostoevskij’s philosophical outlook appears to be a development of a well known philosophical tradition, mystical pantheism.

The Talent of Vladimir Spasovich Between Reality and Literary Fiction

It is well known that F.M. Dostoevsky was fascinated by Vladimir Spasovich. In fact the Russian writer devoted to him a large section of his Diary of a writer, and consider him as a prototype for creating Fetjukovich, the Dmitry Karamazov’s attorney.The present analysis aims to investigate the nature of the reflections about Spasovich by the comparison, only worked on drafts of the Diary, between the lawyer and the Tacitean Vibulenus.Secondly, this research will show the presence of another literary Spasovich’s alter ego in Brothers Karamazov: Ippolit Kirillovich, who embodies the Spasovich’s passion for criminal psychology and physiology.Finally, they will be explained the reasons for the creation of two doubles and the contrasting mechanisms of what we might call a moral lesson given by the evocative devices of storytelling.

Dostoevsky and Schiller: National Renewal Through Aesthetic Education

Dostoevsky and Schiller:National Renewal Through Aesthetic Education Susan McReynolds Dostoevsky's novels pivot upon scenes of spiritual transformation, moments of revelation that resolve dilemmas for which no logical solution can be found. Raskolnikov, for example, analyzes his crime from philosophical and sociological angles until he almost dies; he is saved by his dream of the plague and by the image of Sonia's face. When insight and progress come to Dostoevsky's fictional characters, they come as dream, memory, and rapture before images of beauty and suffering. The choice between spiritual and logical solutions confronting Dostoevsky's characters is also a choice between Russia and the West. The rationalism and corollary doctrine of egoism that drives characters like Svidrigailov, Stavrogin, and Ivan Karamazov to madness and death are clearly associated in Dostoevsky's novels with Western philosophy. The ability to surrender to the beneficial power of images is associated with characters like Dmitry Karamazov, who is able to accept the primacy of spiritual truth—the truth of his need for expiation—over the fact of his legal innocence of his father's murder. The breadth of spirit that renders Dmitry receptive to the truth revealed in his dream image of the suffering child is clearly identified in The Brothers Karamazov as a distinctively Russian national trait. The contrast between reason, death, and the West, on the one hand, and receptiveness to imagistic truth, salvation, and Russia, on the other, [End Page 353] drives the plots of Dostoevsky's novels. This familiar feature of Dostoevsky's art is first articulated in texts unfamiliar to most readers; the historical essays of the early 1860s that were among his first published works after his return from exile. In 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, an association dedicated to disseminating the tenets of Western socialism in Russia. For his participation in the Circle, Dostoevsky was initially condemned to death; the sentence was commuted to four years of hard labor in Siberian prison camp, to be followed by an indefinite period of military service in Siberian exile. When Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg and public life in 1860, he and his older brother Mikhail launched the journal Time. Mikhail served as editor. Dostoevsky would publish The Insulted and Injured and Notes from the House of the Dead in its pages, in addition to numerous essays dedicated to contemporary literature and events. The essays on Russia and Europe published in Time were a creative workshop in which some basic features of his later novels—most notably the contrast between Western positivism and Russian spirituality, conceived as the capacity to embrace imagistic revelations of the truth—were first developed. The pressure of Dostoevsky's developing artistic craft is clearly apparent in these non-fictional texts from the early 1860s, which narrate modern Russian and European history as a story structured by a dual plot of death and redemption. Before Dostoevsky wrote novels structured around the contrast between characters like Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov, he wrote essays structured around the contrast between Russia and Western nations like France and England. Before Crime and Punishment portrayed Raskolnikov's resurrection as the surrender to images offering glimpses of something that eludes rational analysis, Dostoevsky's essays in Time predicted national renewal for Russia through her embrace of the truths conveyed by the images of fine art. Some essays in Time compose a plot of national rebirth through the effects of artistic images for Russia, but others admonish readers with what Dostoevsky believed would be the terrible consequences of positivism for the West. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, published in Time in 1863, casts France and England as mortally ill victims of a materialist worldview that can only grasp the challenges of modernity as scientific and political problems. The spiritual solutions that will be revealed to Russia through images of beauty, Dostoevsky warns, will elude nations ensnared in rational approaches to their problems. [End Page 354] Throughout his post-exile life, Dostoevsky believed that political improvement results from changes in the moral condition of individuals, inner changes that are catalyzed by images, not reached through rational deliberation. In 1861, he writes of the Imperial edict...

Giving Voice to Isaac: The Sacrificial Victim in Kafka's Trial

One of the most enigmatic characters in modern literature is Joseph K., in Franz Kafka's The Trial. In this essay I undertake to penetrate the enigma of Joseph K. with the help of Ren� Girard's anthropological analysis of the victim mechanism in human culture. I argue that Kafka offers us in The Trial not a parable that is (and is meant to be) utterly mystifying, but a prophetic demystification of the reality of collective persecution within the context of modernity. The particular nature of Joseph K.'s response to his persecution is highlighted by comparison with another victim in modern literature who was well known to Kafka, Dostoevsky's Dmitri Karamazov. The contrast between Joseph K. and Dmitri K. entails a discussion of Kafka's Judaism, its nature and its role in shaping both his response to the Christian art of Dostoevsky, and his own artistic revelation of the modern sacrificial victim.

Crime and Myth: The Archetypal Pattern of Rebirth in Three Novels of Dostoevsky

The focal dimension of Dostoevsky's creative effort in his later period is his compelling esthetic and metaphysical concern with ultimate violence, particularly in its doctrinaire or ideological aspect. The act of murder is seen as a “crime of reason,” an outgrowth of modern man's autarkic intellect. It is this “crime of reason” in accordance with his metaphysical esthetics that Dostoevsky constitutes as the transgression but also a potential felix culpa leading through suffering and expiation to ultimate rebirth. Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov each present an individuated version of this archetypal scheme. Raskolnikov emerges at the end of Crime and Punishment on the threshold of “a new life.” In The Possessed, Stavrogin's potentially “positive” performance perverts itself into “a quest for damnation.” Dmitri Karamazov undergoes spiritual regeneration even though falling short of complete redemption. In thus restating the timeless relevance of the archetypal pattern of rebirth through sin and expiation, Dostoevsky brings a mythical perspective to his vision of the Russia of his time.

Dostoevsky's Doctrine of Criminal Responsibility

He who gave to the world the universal story of Crime and Punishment and the astounding psychological subtleties of Dmitri Karamazov's trial for parricide, wrote in his early youth this inspired text: Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you give your life to the task, do not say that you have wasted it; I devote myself to this mystery because I wish to be a man. Dostoevsky's life and works constitute one great, unceasing rebellion. Who could better bring us insight into the mind of the criminal--of the protester-than this unhappy being so hopelessly cleft within, a prey to the darker thoughts, a soul and body that had undergone the years of bondage in the House of the Dead? Nietzsche said: Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn. And in a letter by Georg Brandes to the author of Zarathustra we read: Look at Dostoevsky's face: half the face of a Russian peasant, half the physiognomy of a criminal.