Academic literature on the topic 'Fyodor Dostoevsky'

The article discusses various aspects of the relationship between Fyodor Dostoevsky with his sister Varvara Karepina, née Dostoevskaya, and their reflection in the writer's work. Varvara Karepina served as the prototype for the writer's various characters. The author of the article dwells in detail on the image of Varvara Karepina, collected from her memoirs; the author states that the history of Varvara Karepina’s marriage and the image of her husband were also vividly reflected in the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. The article provides some valuable comparisons of Varvara Karepina with Varvara Dobroselova and various other female images of Fyodor Dostoevsky's works, the conclusion is drawn that the use of the prototype’s all kinds of personality traits, sometimes opposite ones, when creating images of the heroes of the works, was a feature of the writer's creative method.

The study is the first to collect, describe and analyze the main body of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s comments related to Giuseppe Garibaldi. The image of the Italian political figure is reconstructed in the creative works of the Russian writer. The image is analyzed from historical and political perspectives of the nineteenth-century Russia (1860–1870) and the Italian Risorgimento. The relevance of the study is due to the modern perception of Dostoevsky as an original political thinker and the wide context of Russian-Italian relations. Giuseppe Garibaldi is one of the most distinguished political figures in the European history of the middle of the second half of the 19th century. He is a national hero of Italy, one of the leaders of the Risorgimento whose main political achievement was unification of the country and nation. Dostoevsky repeatedly referred to Garibaldi during two decades, from 1860 to 1876. Dostoevsky’s creative works related to the image of Garibaldi are as follows: Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, The Double, The Adolescent, A Writer’s Diary, as well as his letters of 1867 and 1868. The way Garibaldi’s image is reflected in Dostoevsky’s creative writing is worth noting: Garibaldi is mentioned only in final versions of two works of the beginning of the 1860s, i.e. Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions; in the works of the 1860s–1870s (The Double, The Adolescent, A Writer’s Diary), Garibaldi is mentioned only in preliminary drafts, not in the final canonical versions of the works. Garibaldi’s image is of particular importance in Dostoevsky’s creative writing; however, it is often “hidden” being not explicit, but implicit textual evidence. All the mentioned materials show that Dostoevsky was aware of the events and circumstances related to Garibaldi and the Italian Risorgimento as a whole. He received the information from European and Russian newspapers and journals, Garibaldi’s Notes, and, finally, an occasional face-to-face meeting with him in 1867. Garibaldi’s image is created in different ways: Dostoevsky simply mentions his name or creates a vivid artistic image (A.G. Dostoevskaya also contributed to shaping Garibaldi’s image). With all the attention that Dostoevsky paid to Garibaldi’s political activity, the image that he finally created in his works stands out for personal features and traits associated with the unique personality of the “Italian hero”. According to Dostoevsky, “genius” and “open-heartedness” are the essential features of Garibaldi’s personality.

Abstract This contribution aims to present those aspects of the literary and intellectual legacy of F. M. Dostoevsky (1821–1881) that motivated Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) in formulating his own literary and essayistic work. Dostoevsky’s impact on Jünger has so far been researched only fragmentarily and sporadically. This builds on previous research and complements it with new findings. Ernst Jünger inquired into Dostoevsky’s works throughout his life. He perceived Dostoevsky as a foreteller of crises and disasters. Many of Jünger’s motifs, literary images, characters, and symbols were either influenced by or borrowed from Dostoevsky and developed further. Of great importance to Jünger are such phenomena as power, evil or misery, and pain. Dostoevsky also shaped Jünger’s approach to nihilism.

The article presents the history of business and friendly relations between F. M. Dostoevsky and M. I. Semevsky, an employee of the “Vremya” journal and the editor of “Russkaya Starina”, the largest historical journal of the 19th century. Semevsky most likely met Dostoevsky in the early 1860s, when the former became a contributing author of the “Vremya” journal and wrote two large-scale historical essays for the publication: “Tsarina Praskovya” and “The Mons Family.” Dostoevsky was familiar with Semevsky’s works even prior to their personal meetings and intended to polemize with his concept of Peter's time, as evidenced by the surviving sketches of the writer's critical review. The idea of a polemic was rejected when Semevsky became the author of the “Vremya” journal. Its editors, the Dostoevsky brothers, appreciated his cooperation and, as confirmed in the fee book, paid him more than many other authors. The meetings of Dostoevsky and Semevsky were reflected in the epistolary legacy and in the notes of Semevsky, which he wrote in the autumn of 1866 after the trial of the revolutionary Nikolai Ishutin. In November 1876, Semevsky gave Dostoevsky the documents for “A Writer's Diary”, requesting him not to identify the source. The communication between Dostoevsky and Semevsky in the last year of the writer's life is mentioned in the memoirs of E. N. Opochinin. The article provides an overview of Dostoevsky's letters of 1854‒1879, published in “Russkaya Starina” in 1883‒1885, as well as of memoirs of various persons about Dostoevsky, published during the life of the editor and after his death. Archival documents revealing new facts of the biography of Dostoevsky, Semevsky and their contemporaries were used and introduced into scientific circulation in the study.