scholarly journals The Last Newspaper Fyodor Dostoevsky Read (Based on the Collections of Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature)

Author(s):  
Pavel E. Fokin

Throughout Dostoevsky's life, reading newspapers was one of the most important sources of his inspiration. Reading newspapers, Dostoevsky drew on real factual material that reflected both the characteristic phenomens of the postreform Russian reality and the most incredible “adventures” of lost human souls and hearts. Daily acquaintance with the latest news from Russian and world life was an essential necessity for Dostoevsky. Even while abroad, he regularly visited libraries to read the most recent Russian newspapers. Journalism was inherent in his type of thinking and personality. He began his literary career as a newspaper feuilletonist; in 1873–1874, he edited the Grazhdanin (The Citizen) weekly; in1876–1877, his monojournal A Writer's Diary was focused on Russian and European periodicals. In 1881, having completed his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky decided to resume the publication of A Writer's Diary. He prepared only one issue which came out on the day of his funeral. The manuscript collection of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature contains Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection that includes a memorial copy of the last newspaper read by Dostoevsky on the eve of his fatal illness, the Novoe Vremya (The New Time) newspaper, No. 1764 dated January 25 (February 6) 1881. This item is a valuable biographical material and allows one to put additional touches on the picture of Dostoevsky's intellectual life of his last days. The article provides an overview of the newspaper’s contents contextualized within Dostoevsky's spiritual, political, and aesthetic interests and particularly within the articles included in the first issue of The Diary of a Writer for 1881 and the preparatory materials for it.

Author(s):  
Pavel E. Fokin

Throughout Dostoevsky's life, reading newspapers was one of the most important sources of his inspiration. Reading newspapers, Dostoevsky drew on real factual material that reflected both the characteristic phenomens of the postreform Russian reality and the most incredible “adventures” of lost human souls and hearts. Daily acquaintance with the latest news from Russian and world life was an essential necessity for Dostoevsky. Even while abroad, he regularly visited libraries to read the most recent Russian newspapers. Journalism was inherent in his type of thinking and personality. He began his literary career as a newspaper feuilletonist; in 1873–1874, he edited the Grazhdanin (The Citizen) weekly; in1876–1877, his monojournal A Writer's Diary was focused on Russian and European periodicals. In 1881, having completed his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky decided to resume the publication of A Writer's Diary. He prepared only one issue which came out on the day of his funeral. The manuscript collection of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature contains Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection that includes a memorial copy of the last newspaper read by Dostoevsky on the eve of his fatal illness, the Novoe Vremya (The New Time) newspaper, No. 1764 dated January 25 (February 6) 1881. This item is a valuable biographical material and allows one to put additional touches on the picture of Dostoevsky's intellectual life of his last days. The article provides an overview of the newspaper’s contents contextualized within Dostoevsky's spiritual, political, and aesthetic interests and particularly within the articles included in the first issue of The Diary of a Writer for 1881 and the preparatory materials for it.


Author(s):  
Pavel E. Fokin ◽  
Ilya O. Boretsky

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.


Author(s):  
Pavel E. Fokin ◽  
Ilya O. Boretsky

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.


Author(s):  
Anna V. Petrova

The article analyses the reaction of the press to the publication of A Writer’s Diary in 1873. It aims to answer the question of why leading daily newspapers such as Golos, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, Birzhevye Vedomosti, Novoye Vremya, did not accept and negatively evaluated Dostoevsky’s work as columnist and editor of the Grazhdanin. Dostoevsky returned to the newspaper business with a new genre, and from the very beginning of A Writer's Diary he declares his unlimited freedom of choice about the topics and format of his conversations with the reader. This fact immediately distinguished him from other columnists, who usually followed the standards of the feuilleton (a genre normally dedicated to the latest news), and strictly obeyed their editorial policies, constantly taking into account the publisher’s “wishes”. Columnists from leading newspapers in 1873–1874 could not find similarities between their work and Dostoevsky’s, between his method of describing reality and theirs, and so they neither could nor wanted to see the author’s novelty and originality that went beyond the established newspaper practice, to be surprised by the courage and innovation of his Writer’s Diary. Instead, most of the journalists (Lev Panyutin, Arkady Kovner, Mikhail Wilde and others) chose to be “critical” and – using irony, satirical attacks, sarcastic comments mockingly sought to undermine Dostoevsky’s authority as a columnist and discredit the values that he put above all in A Writer's Diary in 1873 (a “heartfelt” knowledge of Christ, the purification through suffering, the preservation of a relationship with the people). The article attempts to trace the development of this controversy and the factors that influenced its contents.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Pavel Fokin

Researchers are still raising questions related to the time and place of shooting of certain portraits in the scarce photographic iconography of F. M. Dostoevsky. First of all, this pertains to a set of early photographs, whose dating ranges between 1857 and 1863, according to various sources. The article offers new arguments in favor of attributing several portraits of F. M. Dostoevsky to 1859. This refers to photographs that captured an image of F. M. Dostoevsky that is unusual for most of his admirers, namely, without a beard. Two of them were taken in Semipalatinsk by the photographer S. A. Leibin, while in one of them F. M. Dostoevsky was captured together with the Kazakh educator Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, whom he befriended during the years of his exile. Another photo has not been precisely attributed. A comprehensive analysis of the details depicted on them, the facts of the biography of Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and the letters of F. M. Dostoevsky allows to date the Semipalatisk photographs with greater accuracy. The article proposes that another one of the portraits taken in Tver was carried out simultaneously with the shooting of the portrait of M. M. Dostoevsky. A comprehensive examination of various details and circumstances also leads to the same conclusions. To date, only a few copies of photographs with Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and a photograph allegedly taken in Tver are known. The original solitary portrait made in Semipalatinsk has been lost. The conducted research allows to assert that other copies of these photographs may exist. The proposed conclusions are made on the basis of a study of the originals of photographs in the collection of The V. I. Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature.


2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-242
Author(s):  
Sean Illing

AbstractThis article examines the influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky on Albert Camus's political philosophy of revolt. The aim is to clarify Camus's reactions to the problems of absurdity, nihilism, and transcendence through an analysis of his literary and philosophical engagement with Dostoevsky. I make three related claims. First, I claim that Camus's philosophy of revolt is informed in crucial ways by Dostoevsky's accounts of religious transcendence and political nihilism. Second, that Camus's conceptualization of the tension between nihilism and transcendence corresponds to and is personified by the dialogue between Ivan Karamazov and Father Zossima in Dostoevsky'sThe Brothers Karamazov. Finally, that Camus uses his novelThe Plagueto bridge the moral and metaphysical divide between these two characters. In particular, I argue that Camus offers a distinct vision of revolt inThe Plague, which clarifies both the practical implications of revolt and his philosophical rejoinder to Dostoevsky.


Author(s):  
Nikolay N. Podosokorsky

The review is devoted to the second part of the second book Russian Literature and the Arab World (On the History of Arabic-Russian Literary Relations) (2020) by Elmira Abdulkerimovna Ali-Zade (1940-2019), Orientalist, Ph.D. in Philology, and Senior Researcher of the Institute of Oriental Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences. It examines the perception of Dostoevsky’s life and works in the Arab countries in the early 20th – early 21st centuries and analyzes the peculiarities of translations of the works by the Russian writer into Arabic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-413
Author(s):  
Alexey Nicolaeyvich Varlamov

The article examines in detail the history of the relationship between A.P. Suslova and V.V. Rozanov in connection with the notion existing in the historical and literary science that Rozanovs marriage to Suslova was based on his deep interest in the work of F.M. Dostoevsky and his desire in such an unusual way to penetrate deeper into the secrets of the life and work of the author of The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. However, an appeal to various documentary evidence shows that Rozanovs marriage motives came from the warehouse of his nature and constituted a complex of rather complex reasons, among which the human, and not literary, research principle still dominates. The desire for a benevolently objective study of the life history of A.P. Suslova makes it possible to clarify at the modern scientific level the important facts of the biography of F.M. Dostoevsky and V.V. Rozanov, to free them from the stratifications of legends and myths.


Author(s):  
George S. Prokhorov ◽  

Julio Jurenito – a 1924 Modernist novel by Ilya Ehrenburg, written hot on the heels of the 1917 Revolution and is distinguished by both a wide intertextual spectrum and an acute satirical orientation in relation to all ideological trends and factions. The article focuses on references of the novel by Ilya Ehrenburg to the legacy of Dostoevsky – primarily – The Brothers Karamazov. Ilya Ehrenburg resets Dostoevsky’s features – his protagonists and some elements of plot – into the reality of European history of the First World War, Russian Revolution and Civil War. But also, Ehrenburg goes beyond Dostoevsky’s semantic continuum, replacing the author’s sense of History as a process striving for its endpoint with a History in which an end is fundamentally impossible, and there is always at least the potential to put the flow of event on pause and rewrite their mistakes. As well, the idea important for Dostoevsky that of the moral damage of the modern atheist-minded person is transformed into a demonstration of the people’s inclination to create idols and devoutly worship the latter. Ilya Ehrenburg’s novel is grounded on an interpretation of Dostoevsky, perfected through the prism of the traditions of the Jewish Enlightenment.


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