In order to disaggregate the elephantine notions of "the West" and the "ideology" of Dostoevsky's Diary, I intend here to examine three specific articles from the Diary, each one published in a different month of early 1876, construing them in tandem with the writings of one of their targets, the noted chemist D. It is this body of texts, A Writer's Diary, or rather a certain subset, which I propose to examine here.
#Bobok fyodor dostoyevsky anlysis full
In 1881 the Diary resumed full production, but Dostoevsky only survived a few weeks, leaving the posthumous January issue. He published one issue in 1880 (the August issue), recapitulating and commenting on his famous Pushkin Centennial speech in Moscow.
It continued every month (with doubled issues in the summer months), becoming the most popular broadsheet in Russia, until December 1877, when Dostoevsky suspended publication to compose The Brothers Karamazov. As a former political prisoner (exiled in 1849), he was hindered by the tentacles of the tsarist censorship network in the waning hours of 1875 (from which he was extricated by a vouching testimonial by his friend, conservative journalist Apollon Grigor'ev), yet the first issue of the Diary proper did come out in January 1876 - to a rather cool initial critical reception. In 1875, Dostoevsky revived the original idea for publishing a self-sufficient monthly Diary, in which he would retain complete control as publisher, editor, and author in one. Dostoevsky remained at Grazhdanin for only a year, resigning in September to work on his fourth major novel, The Raw Youth. Although Dostoevsky had the idea for his Diary while hiding from Russian creditors in Dresden in the late 1860s, he was only able to realize the financially and artistically risky project in 1873, when it appeared as an erratic weekly column in the newspaper Citizen ( Grazhdanin) which Dostoevsky edited.
The idea for the Diary was to publish a monthly periodical which included fiction, journalism, autobiography, literary criticism, political commentary, and philosophy, with both author and contemporary readers uncertain as to what the future might bring. Some of this neglect can be ascribed to its unusual publication history. Yet while it encapsulates so much of Dostoevsky's time and thought, it has often been overlooked. Taking into account only length, the Diary competes with Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov combined, and it was created over a longer period of time than any of his other works. At the risk of (to use a Dostoevskian turn of phrase) flogging a dying horse to within inches of its life in front of a cheering mob, I propose here to break down the general question of Dostoevsky's relation to the "West" as a category, and specifically to the natural sciences as a form of Western knowledge, in order to give some concreteness to the platitudes on Dostoevsky and the West.Īlthough elements of Dostoevsky's so-called "critique of the West" can be found in many of his works, a central document for crystallizing his argument for Russian particularism (always defined in opposition to Western Europe) is his voluminous Writer's Diary ( Dnevnik Pisatelia), written and published from 1873 to 1881. Like most generalized statements about Dostoevsky, this one is far too sweeping to pass unqualified it is certainly true that the role of the West in Russia was a cherished bugbear for Dostoevsky, but it is equally true that at times it was also a source of inspiration. Given the contested territory which is Dostoevsky studies, one topic which has been consistently proclaimed as crucial to understanding the man and his legacy is his "anti-Western" philosophy. More, perhaps, than any other novelist, Dostoevsky has stood in for the central ambiguities of modernity, and he is a touchstone for Russian thought on almost every position (much as Peter the Great and Stalin are in their own rights). Very few topics in modern thought remain upon which Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) has not been brought to bear as a tremendous hero or nefarious villain. I didn't ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you believe that they exist. On purpose he veils his poetic creations in half-darkness so that, like the ancient Furies, he may steal by night upon the culprit. "Loose and Baggy Spirits: Reading Dostoevsky and Mendeleev." Michael Gordin (History of Science, Harvard)įor Dostoevsky, the watcher and spy upon the occult depths of our souls, needs no daylight. Not for citation or circulation beyond the purposes of this conference. Please note: This is a preliminary draft prepared for the conference "Rethinking Science and Civilization: The Ideologies, Disciplines, and Rhetorics of World History," Stanford University, May 21-23, 1999.
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