Russian Historiosophy of the ХXth Century in the Context of the Tradition of the Moral and Psychological Novel by F. Dostoevsky

The article is devoted to the study of the specifics of the receptive influence of the moral and psychological novel by F. Dostoevskys on the development of the Russian historiosophical novel of the XXth century. The relevance of the problem is in the identification of an ideological dominant connected with the key problems associated with the moral attitudes of Dostoevsky's novelistics. The novelty of this study lies in considering, taking into account new ideological assessments of the role and status of a historical person, a historical novel about the narodovoltsy of the 50-60s of the ХХth century. The novels about the narodovoltsy of the 50-60s of ХХth century were chosen as an object of research to reflect the ideological concept of F. Dostoevsky in the receptive field of the searches of the XXth century writers and as a determinant of the moral coordinates of modern phenomena of reality. It is proved that the development of the moral and psychological historical novel in the 60-70s takes place under the strongest influence of the tradition of F. Dostoevsky. The receptive correlation of the genre coordinate system, subjective organization, historiosophical ideologism of the XXth century with the traditions of the moral and psychological historiosophy of Dostoevskys contextual field, on the one hand, forms a new Tynyanov-Forsh tradition, and on the other, develops the traditions of the writer's polyphonic ideological novel on a new level and determines the expansion of the moral polyphonism of the historical novel in its value and psychoanalytic orientation, when the principle of internal ethics begins to dominate the ideological and political fields.

Visualization of Images from F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Novel “Crime and Punishment” in Works of the Book Graphic Artist I.T. Bogdesko

In 1970–1971, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, People’s Artist of the USSR Ilya Trofimovich Bogdesko (1923—2010) created a linocut series for the socio-psychological novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoyevsky. The illustrations were made specifically for the Leipzig Book Fair in 1971. The artist’s idea had been limited to the competition task: he created only three illustrations in the linocut technique, and their artistic solution was based on the conditional-decorative principle of composition organization. The main characters are depicted almost two-dimensionally, “purified” of everyday details, environment, entourage. Using a minimum of visual means, I.T. Bogdesko achieved a sensation of stunning drama in the illustrations. For this work, the artist was awarded a gold medal in Leipzig. At the end of 1971, “Kartya Moldovanyaske” published the book “Crime shi pedyapse” (“Crime and Punishment”) in the Moldovan language. In the design of that book, his illustrations were used — “Raskolnikov” (on the dust cover) and “The Old Pawnbroker” (on the title page). A different vision of Sonya’s image appeared on the dust cover. The preserved sketches, a number of which are presented in this article, allow recognizing the artist’s work hidden from prying eyes. In 1995, Bogdesko applied to Dostoevsky again. He created the writer’s portrait against the background of the characteristic St. Petersburg landscape. In those years, the artist was working on “Don Quixote”, inspired by Dostoevsky’s expressing about the novel by Cervantes: “There is nothing in the whole world deeper and stronger than this composition”. Bogdesko upheld this assertion with 36 illustrations (by chisel engraving) for the famous novel: a titanic work that lasted more than two decades. The artist executed the portrait of the Russian writer in the same unique technique of classical engraving as the illustrations for “Don Quixote”. Changes in graphic techniques dramatically alter the plasticity of images of the characters of “Crime and Punishment”: a quarter of a century later, the tragically flat vision of linocuts turned into a sharp, nervous, frequent movement of the chisel. Bogdesko created three illustrations for Dostoevsky’s novel in the technique of chisel engraving.

VALUE OF ACTIVE COMPASSION IN THE HEROIC EPIC: RUSSIAN EPIC CONCEPT

The article uses the comparative historical method to analyze epic folklore from around the world with regard to the functioning of the concept of active compassion. Proceeding from extensive factual material, the author demonstrates that different national and civilizational traditions imply various interpretations of this concept. While The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad, and medieval Western European epic songs don’t treat mercy as an axiologically important principle, the folk epics created by the Orthodox peoples maintain its value in accordance with the Christian ideal of sacrificial love. This interpretation is clearly presented in the Byzantine epic poem Digenes Akritas, in Serbian heroic songs, and, especially, in Russian bylinas, where one of the main heroes, Ilya Muromets, is very often motivated precisely by compassion. The author’s observations suggest that the concept of mercy, organically inherent in Russian folk epics, influenced the subsequent literary tradition as well, being reflected, for instance, in the poetics of the Russian psychological novel.

Robinson Crusoe and the Inception of Speech

Dwelling on the strange redundancies and formal excesses of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, this chapter traces in the novel’s paradoxically exorbitant consolidation of interiority the inception of the psychological novel. In the novel’s allegory, Crusoe is removed (by two shipwrecks) to his solitary island, where the social can be reconstituted and produced as a drama of one. The chapter explores several instances of the expropriating, anticipatory, self-grounding structure of character formation in the novel: the dream anticipating the appearance of Friday, whose language lessons are anticipated, in turn, by the speech of the parrot. Briefly considering J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, the chapter then turns to Jean-Claude Milner’s essay “Être-Seul,” which traces a paradoxical relation between the speaking subject and the social world of speech, one that rhymes with Defoe’s allegory of inception. The solitude of the speaking being, Milner suggests, is the ground of his speaking. Marooned by the very faculty of speech that would ostensibly allow us to address another or others, this solitude, however, portends a paradoxical form of community. We have it, paradoxically, in common, that we are each of us alone; Milner’s account of the solitude of speech thus illuminates the layered account of inception in Defoe.

The socio-psychological novel on the modern Czech book market (based on Alena Mornštajnová's works)

The modern Czech literary market (after 1989) has undergone significant changes. Its development was influenced, in particular, by the commercialization of the cultural sphere. The article describes the current (since 1989) literary process in the Czech Republic, presents the most successful — primarily from a commercial point of view — works in order to trace the most striking trends in modern Czech literature. The article provides an overview of contemporary Czech literary awards, nominations, as well as participating works. Particularly emphasized is the phenomenon of the growing popularity of works reflecting the events of recent history (the second half of the 20th century). An example of these trends are Alena Mornštajnová’s works — The Blind Map (2013), The Little Hotel (2015), Hana (2017) and Years of Silence (2019). When characterizing the novels, special attention is paid to the role of historical plots and motives, as well as their influence on the modification of the genre of the socio-psychological novel in modern Czech literature. Moreover, the article dwells upon on Mornštajnová’s artistic processing of historical material. She uses it as a method to depict psychological transformations of the characters, thus creating an effect of reader’s involvement (through “recognizing” oneself and one’s life story in the life story of the character).

The Symptomatic Narrative in Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth

In this article I read Robbe-Grillet’s narrative in the novel In the Labyrinth as symptomatic in a Lacanian sense. The chronology in this labyrinthine novel functions according to the Lacanian scheme of "the return of the repressed from the future" (see Lacan's first seminar). Robbe-Grillet uses the labyrinth as mise-en-abîme, where competing narrators seem to lose the Ariadnic thread of apparently the same story only to recuperate it, not for resolution, but for further confusion. This technique conforms to Robbe-Grillet's philosophy of the novel and with his attempt to break the habits of the realist and psychological novel and deny the reader comfortable forms of identification. Foucault's reflections on the paradoxical dynamics at the center of the labyrinth are also useful in the reading of Robbe-Grillet’s novel. In baroque style, Robbe-Grillet revives photographs and paintings and, throughout the novel, entertains ambiguities about his protagonist and his story.

The Shifting Appreciation of "Hamlet" in Its Japanese Novelizations: Hideo Kobayashi’s "Ophelia’s Will" and Its Revisions

Hideo Kobayashi, who is today known as one of the most prominent literary critics of the Showa era in Japan, published Ophelia’s Will in 1931 when he was still an aspiring novelist. This novella was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, composed as a letter written by Ophelia to Hamlet before her enigmatic death in the original play. While the novel has previously been considered as a psychological novel that sought to illustrate the inner life of the Shakespearean heroine, this paper examines the process by which Kobayashi rediscovered Hamlet as a drama that foregrounds the impenetrability of the characters’ inwardness and highlighted in Ophelia’s Will his diversion from the psychological rendition of Ophelia. In so doing, the paper analyses the revisions Kobayashi continued to make to the novel even until the post-war era, especially when it was republished in 1933 and 1949. Though these revisions have rarely been discussed by the researchers, they demonstrate the essential changes made to the novel, mainly to its literary style, which corroborates Kobayashi’s shifting interest and his developing interpretation of Shakespeare’s works and Hamlet.

“Observe, Write!”

This chapter examines how Karl Philipp Moritz invoked the psychological productivity of novelistic storytelling in publishing the “psychological novel” Anton Reiser (1785–1790) as part of his project of empirical psychology or Erfahrungsseelenkunde. This use of fictional narrative for the representation of dispassionate observation, and the choice of engaging a literary genre for the production of psychological knowledge assigned irreducible cognitive qualities to literature. Anton Reiser is not only another case of Moritz's extensive psychological project but also a paradigmatic case for the importance of literary form in the observation and recording of psychic phenomena. The institutional framework of the novel is not just the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, but literary discourse as an epistemological rather than aesthetic enterprise. Ultimately, Anton Reiser is a literary exercise in establishing a perspective from which self-observation becomes possible.

Eugenia Żmijewska’s trilogy as an example of a psychological novel

The trilogy of Eugenia Żmijewska (Little Flame, Fate, Sweetheart), published in the years 1907–1911, is a part of the popular novel at the beginning of the twentieth century about women growing to maturity. According to Grażyna Borkowska, the writer also emphasizes the topics of psychosexual maturation. The visibility of this aspect of maturation determines the originality of Żmijewska and her sense of modernist conventions, although the writer does not use such terms as intimate, corporal, or sexual. It is these problems that I look at in my article. I am interested in a much broader context of psychological (e.g. emotional, social) development during adolescence and early adulthood. I want to pay attention not only to the normative aspect of the process, but also to difficulties and disorders. Perhaps Żmijewska was an average writer, but she had good knowledge of the psychology of maturing girls and young women, especially at a time when psychology was a fairly new discipline of science.