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Russkii vestnik 1868

The highlight of Russkii vestnik for 1868 was the publication of Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, but other notable features are articles by N. A. Liubimov on advances in Physics, Hermann Laroche on Glinka, A. D. Gradovsky on Russian historical literature, and Gustave de Molinari (a regular contributor on European affairs) on the 1867 World Exhibition in Paris. One of these days I’ll get round to reading Lebedev’s article in volume 78 on Fyodor Petrovich Gaaz, the doctor and prison reformer who is mentioned by both Dostoevsky in Notes from the house of the Dead and Shalamov in Kolyma Tales. Other literary works include poems by A. N. Maikov, Turgenev’s Lieutenant Ergunov’s Story, and the translation of Charles Dickens’s story George Silverman’s Explanation. The supplement, most prominently, features the translation of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone.

vol 73, 1-2 (1868)

January 1868

V. Ia. Buniakovskii, Neskol’ko zamechanii o zakonakh dvizheniia narodonaseleniia v Rossii
E. M. Feoktistov, Russkaia politika na vostoke pred Krymskoiu voinoi
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Roman. Chast’ pervaia
A. D. Gradovskii, Gosudarstvo i provintsiia. I-IV
Ia. P. Polonskii, Vakkhanka i satir. Stikhotvorenie
I. S. Turgenev, Istoriia Leitenanta Ergunova
G. A. Larosh, Glinka i ego znachenie v istorii muzyki. Stat’ai vtoraia.
P. K. Shchebal’skii, Russkaia literatura. Viona i mir L. N. Tolstogo. T. 1, 2, 3
Alek, Cherty sovremennoi politiki

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Roman. Perevod s angliiskogo. Okonchanie pervoi chasti
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. Roman. Perevod s angliiskogo.

February 1868

V. I. Dal’, Kartiny russkogo byta
A. D. Gradovskii, Gosudarstvo i provintsiia. IV-V
P. I. Mel’nikov, Schislenie raskol’nikov
I. A. Mann, Govoruny. Komediia v 4 aktov
A. N. Maikov, Streletskoe skazanie o tsarevne Sofie Alekseevne. Stikhotvorenie
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Okonchanie pervoi chasti
Ia. P. Polonskii, Zimniaia nevesta. Stikhotvorenie
K. Mogol, Krestianskie bezporiadki v odnom iz sel Kremenetsskogo u’ezda (1862-1863)
V. N. Verderevskii, Utrom — kak stolpilis’ svintsovyia tuchi. Stikhotvorenie
P. Shch., Bibliograficheskie zametki

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Chast’ 2, I-III
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. VIII-X

vol 74, 3-4 (1868)

March 1868

I. D. Beliaev, Skazanie o nachale Moskvy
A. D. Gradovskii, Gosudarstvo i provintsiia. Okonchanie
Ia. P. Polonskii, Iz poemy ‘Brat’ia’. V-VI. Stikhotvorenie
N. V. Kukol’nik, Gatchinskaia mashkarada. Epizod iz novogo istoricheskogo romana: Kurliandskie pretendenty
M. A. Zinov’ev, Osada Ura-Tiube i Dzhizaga. Vospominaniia ob osennei ekspeditsii 1866 goda v Turkestanskoi oblasti. I-V
N. V. Berg, Moi skitaniia po belu svetu
M. Solov’ev, Sudeb’naia reforma v Privilslianskom krae
Ch. Dikkens, Ob’iasnenie Dzhorzha Silvermana. Rasskaz. Perevod s angliiskogo.
Alek, Razlichnye fazy vostochnogo vosprosa 1866-1868. I

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Chast’ 2, IV-VII
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. XI-XV

April 1868

M. A. Zinov’ev, Osada Ura-Tiube i Dzhizaga. VI-IX
A. S. Trachevskii, Pol’skoe bezkorolev’e po prekrashchenii dinastii Iagellonov
A. N. Kulomzin, Mestnye administrativno-khoziastvennye uchrezhdeniia i mestnye nalogi v Anglii
P. M., Iz proshlogo
S. N., Ot Konstantinopolia do Aleksandriia. Dnevnik vedennyi na parokhode
A. N. Maikov, Iz Apokalipsisa
E. Kryzhanovskii, Volneniia uniiatov na podlias’e. I-II
Kn. D. D-ii, Osobennoe schast’e. Zapiski turista
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 2, I-II
P. Shch., Istoricheskaia literatura

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Okonchanie vtoroi chasti
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’.

vol 75, 5-6 (1868)

May 1868

P. I. Mel’nikov, Tainye sekty, I-IV
M. A. Zinov’ev, Osada Ura-Tiube i Dzhizaga. X-XIII
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 2, III-V
E. Kryzhanovskii, Volneniia uniiatov na podlias’e. Okonchanie
E. M. Feoktistov, Russikaia diplomatiia v bor’be Gretsii za nezavisimost’
A. N. Maikov, Kniaziu Drutskomu-Lubetskomu. Stikhotvorenie
Alek, Razlichnye fazy vostochnogo vosprosa 1866-1868. II-IV

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Chast’ 3, I-IV
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. Okonchanie pervogo perioda. Period vtoroi, rasskaz pervyi, I-IV

June 1868

P. K. Shchebal’skii, Politicheskaia sistema Petra III. I-II
M. A. Zinov’ev, Osada Ura-Tiube i Dzhizaga. Okonchanie
Iz zapisok Nikolaia Ivanovicha Grecha
N. A. Ramazanov, Mikhail Ivanovich Skotti
A. N. Veselovskii, Nizov’ia Dunaia
Andrei Pecherskii, Za Vol’goi. Rasskaz. I-VI
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 2, VI-VIII
N. A. Liubimov, Uspekhi fiziki. I. Uchenie o sokhranenii energii v prirode
Alek, Razlichnye fazy vostochnogo vosprosa 1866-1868. V-V
Otzyvy i zametki. Universistetskaia istoriia

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Chast’ 3, VII-XV
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. Period vtoroi. Okonchanie pervogo rasskaza. Rasskaz vtoroi, I

vol 76 (7-8), 1868

July 1868

V. P. Bezobrazov, Gosudarstvennye dokhody
K. N. Leont’ev, Khrizo. Rasskaz iz kritskoi zhizni
N. A. Popov, Vengerskie stepi. Otryvok iz petevykh vospominanii
N. I. Subbotin, Russkaia staroobriadskaia literatura za granitsei. I-II
P. V. Annenkov, Poslednee slovo russkoi istoricheskoi dramy
I. L’vov, Zavoevanie Turkestana
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Okonchanie vtoroi chasti
Andrei Pecherskii, Za Vol’goi. VII-XVII
N. Renenkampf, Zametki na stat’iu ‘Osada Ura-Tiube i Dzhizaga’

Supplement

Moia nevestka. Okonchanie
Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. Period vtoroi. Okonchanie pervogo rasskaza. Rasskaz vtoroi, rasskaz tretii, I-IV

August 1868

V. P. Bezobrazov, Ural’skoe gornoe khoziastvo i vopros o prodazhe kazennykh zavodov
N. I. Subbotin, Russkaia staroobriadskaia literatura za granitsei. Okonchanie
N. A. Liubimov, Uspekhi fiziki. II. Ocherk trudov Faradeia v oblasti elecktrichestva
P. K. Shchebal’skii, Politicheskaia sistema Petra III. III
A. Rudzkii, Ocherki russkogo lesovodstvo. I-II
Ol’ga N., Ne odnogo polia iagody. Povest’
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 3, I-III
A. D. Gradovskii, Russkaia istorichestkaia literatura
R. N., Russkaia pechat’ za granitsei

Supplement

Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. Period vtoroi. Rasskaz tretii, V-X

vol 77, 9-10 (1868)

(also available at archive.org)

September 1868

A. N. Kulomzin, Mestnye administrativno-khoziastvennye uchrezhdeniia i mestnye nalogi v Anglii
G. A. Larosh, Glinka i ego znachenie v istorii muzyki.Stat’ia tret’ia i posledniaia, I-II
Nikolai Boev, Proezzhie
Beloruss, Sud’by russkogo iazyka v kostelakh severo-zapadnogo kraia
Gustav de Molinari, Vsemirnaia vystavka 1867 goda
V. V. Komarov, Pol’skaia propaganda v shkolakh zapadnogo kraia
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 3, IV-VI
F. I. Buslaev, Zadachi sovremennoi esteticheskoi kritiki
D., S’ezd britanskikh estestvoispitatelei
Bibliograficheskie zametki

Supplement

Vil’ki Kollins, Lunnyi kamen’. Okonchanie

October 1868

G. A. Larosh, Glinka i ego znachenie v istorii muzyki. Okonchanie
S. N., Pis’ma o Gretsii. I-III
Gustav de Molinari, Mezhdunarodnie kongressy
P. K. Shchebal’skii, Politicheskaia sistema Petra III. IV
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Okonchanie tret’ei chasti
E. M. Feoktistov, Epizod iz istorii russkoi politiki na vostoke
Beloruss, Sud’by russkogo iazyka v kostelakh severo-zapadnogo kraia. Okonchanie
Ia. P. Polonskii, Na zheleznoi doroge. Stikhotvorenie
V. I. Gubin, Iz severnoi Ameriki
Andrei Pecherskii, Za Vol’goi. XVIII-XXII
W., Krestianskoe delo v severo-zapadnom krae. I-II

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Perevod c angliiskogo. Chast’ 1, I-V

vol 78 (11-12), 1868

November 1868

D. G. Anuchin, Uchastie Suvorova v usmirenii Pugachevshchiny i poimka Pugacheva
N. P. Semonov, Vyzov i priem deputatov pervogo priglasheniia po krestianskomu delu v Sankt-Peterburge v 1859 godu
Makler v Dingl’vude. Rasskaz. Perevod s angliiskogo
S. N., Pis’ma o Gretsii. IV
A. P. Brianchaninov, Bezyskhodnaia dolia. Povest’ v trinadtsati pis’makh
Gustav de Molinari, Meksikanskaia ekspeditsiia. I-IV
Ia. P. Polonskii, Iz poemy ‘Brat’ia’. VII
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 4, I-V
P. S. Lebedev, Fedor Petrovich Gaaz
Bibliograficheskie zametki

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Chast’ 1, VI-VIII

December 1868

S. N., Pis’ma o Gretsii. Okonchanie
U podoshvy kerkonoshskikh gor. Rasskaz Bozheny Nemtsovoi. Perevod s cheshskogo
Gustav de Molinari, Meksikanskaia ekspeditsiia. Okonchanie
Kn. D. D-ii, Ot Livorno do Kal’iari. Zapiski turista
S. I. Barshev, K vosprosu o vmeniaemosti
I. L-skii, Novosel’e v Pol’she. Rasskaz
A. K., Slavianskie obshchestva v Vene
W., Krestianskoe delo v severo-zapadnom krae. Okonchanie
Andrei Pecherskii, Za Vol’goi. XXIII-XXVI
Bibliograficheskie zametki
L. G. Grove, Zametka na stat’iu ‘Iz zapisok N. I. Grecha’
F. M. Dostoevskii, Idiot. Chast’ 4, V-VII

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Okonchanie pervoi chasti

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by on July 25, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Russian journals, Russian Literature
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted by Sarah Young on July 25, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/25/russkii-vestnik-1868/

Russkii vestnik 1869

Russkii vestnik was published from 1856 to 1906. Founded by Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, who edited it until his death in 1887, it became one of the most influential literary-philosophical journals of the second half of the nineteenth century, publishing nearly all the great novels of that period: Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. It also included a wide variety of articles and serials on historical, political, economic, philosophical, religious and scientific topics, and translations of European literature, often, but not exclusively, in supplements to the main journal.
The journal for 1869 does not boast any instalments of Dostoevsky’s or Tolstoy’s novels, but there are fictional works by Turgenev, Leskov, Krestovsky and Leont’ev, as well as poetry by Fet. Travel notes describe journeys around both the Russian empire and Europe, while a variety of articles covers different aspects of Russian history and society, from analyses of the Schism in the Orthodox church and the political system of Peter III to discussions of peasant disturbances following the emancipation. Current events in Europe also receive attention. The supplements for 1869 feature translations of William Howard Russell’s The Adventures of Doctor Brady, Anthony Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton and Jules Verne’s Around the Moon.

vol 79, 1-2 (1869)

(also available at archive.org)

January, 1869

T., Vospominaniia o Kavkaze i Gruzii. I-II
I. S. Turgenev, Neschastnaia
S. A. Raikovskii, Pol’skaia molodezh’ zapadnogo kraia v miatezhe 1861-1863 godov. I-IV
V. E., Iz Rima v Neapol’
V. V. Komarov, Voenno-okruzhnaia sistema. I-II
[remainder of contents page torn]

February 1869

T., Vospominaniia o Kavkaze i Gruzii. III
V. E., Poezdka v Neapol’
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Roman. Chast’ 1, I-IX
E. M. Feoktistov, Ocherki iz noveishnei istorii Ispanii
S. A. Raikovskii, Pol’skaia molodezh’ zapadnogo kraia v miatezhe 1861-1863 godov. V-VII
N. S. Leskov, Plodomasovskie karliki. Kartiny staroi russkoi zhizni
N. I. Subbotin, Iz sovremmenikh letopisei raskola
Ia. P. Polonskii, Iz poemy ‘Brat’ia’
V. V. Komarov, Voenno-okruzhnaia sistema. III
V. P. Meshcherskii, 19-e fevralia. Stikhotvorenie
N. G. Kurtts, Russkaia tserkovno-istoricheskaia literatura
Bibliograficheskie zametki

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Perevod c angliiskogo. Chast’ 2, V-IX

vol 80, 3-4 (1869)

March 1869

D. A. Anuchin, Graf Panin, usmiritel’ Pugachevshchiny
General Ullis Simpson Grant
T., Vospominaniia o Kavkaze i Gruzii. VI-VII
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Roman. Chast’ 1, X-XIX
D. I. Kropotov, Neskol’ko svedenii o Ryleeve
S. A. Raikovskii, Pol’skaia molodezh’ zapadnogo kraia v miatezhe 1861-1863 godov. VIII
[remainder of contents page torn]

April 1869

E. M. Feoktistov, Ocherki iz noveishnei istorii Ispanii. Okonchanie.
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Okonchanie pervoi chasti
V. V. Komarov, Voenno-okruzhnaia sistema. IV
D. A. Anuchin, Graf Panin, usmiritel’ Pugachevshchiny. III
T., Vospominaniia o Kavkaze i Gruzii. Okonchanie
F. I. Buslaev, Novie illiustratirovannie izdaniia
A. I. fon der Khoven, Tikhvinskaia sistema
R., Feofan Prokopovich
Bibliograficheskie zametki
P. K. Shchebalovskii, Nigilizm v istorii

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Chast’ 2, XIV-XV

vol 81, 5-6 (1869)

May 1869

N. S. Tikhonravov, Kievskii Mitropolit Evgenii Bolkhovitinov. I-II
Ia. P. Polonskii, Zhenit’ba Atueva
D. A. Anuchin, Graf Panin, usmiritel’ Pugachevshchiny. IV
N. I. Subbotin, Uchrezhdenie arkhiereiskoi kafedry u turetskikh raskol’nikov. I-IV
A. N. Kulomzin, Assignatsii v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny II
P. I. Mel’nikov, Belye golubi. XIII-XVIII
I. G., Vospominaniia samovara
N. I. Solov’ev, Mogikaniy realizma
Literaturnye zametki

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Chast’ 3, I-IV

June 1869

D. A. Anuchin, Graf Panin, usmiritel’ Pugachevshchiny. Okonchanie.
Beloruss, Sud’by russkogo iazyka na zmudi
P. Shchebal’skii, Politicheskaia sistema Petra III. V
Gustav de Molinari, Soiuz rabochikh v Anglii
V. I. Kel’siev, Pol’skie agenty v Tsaregrade
V. I. Rodislavskii, Fedor Grigorevich Volkov
S. V. Taneev, Dva vechera. Rasskaz
G. E. Shchurovskii, Artezianskii kolodez v Moskve
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Roman. Chast’ 2, I-IX
N. I. Subbotin, Uchrezhdenie arkhiereiskoi kafedry u turetskikh raskol’nikov. V-VIII
R., Odin iz nashikh literaturno-politicheskikh tipov
Bibliograficheskie zametki

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Chast’ 3, V-IX

vol 82, 7-8 (1869)

July 1869

V. N. Makushev, Samozvanets Stepan Malyi. I-II
G. A. Larosh, Mysli o muzykal’nom obranovanii v Rossii
Teatral’nie artisty. Roman Gizlantsoni. sokrashchennyi perevod s italianskogo. Chast’ 1. I. L. G.
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Okonchanie vtoroi chasti
M. S. Goldenveizer, Protsess leziurka i vopros o vozobnovlenii ugologvnykh del. I-III
A. B., Poslednie vybory v Vengarii
V. I. Veshniakov, Komitet 1833 goda ob usovershenstvovanii zemledeliia v Rossii
K. Mogol, Krestianskie bezporiadki v Lutskom uezde Volynskoi gubernii v 1862 godu
L. Neliudov, Novyi roman g. Goncharova

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Chast’ 4, X-XV

August 1869

P. Shchebal’skii, Politicheskaia sistema Petra III . Okonchanie
Teatral’nie artisty. Roman Gizlantsoni. Sokrashchennyi perevod s italianskogo. Okonchanie. I. L. G.
N. A. Liubimov, S’ezdy estestvoispitatelei v Shveitsarii, Germanii i Anglii
V. I. Roskovshenko, Poddelka kreditnykh biletov v Rossii
V. N. Makushev, Samozvanets Stepan Malyi. III
M. Khozarskii, Baloven schastiia. Povest’
M. S. Goldenveizer, Protsess leziurka i vopros o vozobnovlenii ugologvnykh del. IV-V
A., Dmitriev, Prebyvanie Speranskogo v Permi
F. I. Buslaev, Novye illiustratirovannie izdaniia. II
P. Shch., Zametka

Supplement

Villiam Govard-Rossel, Prikliuchenii Doktora Bredi. Okonchanie

vol 83, 9-10 (1869)

September 1869

V. N. Makushev, Samozvanets Stepan Malyi. Okonchanie
M. S. Goldenveizer, Protsess leziurka i vopros o vozobnovlenii ugologvnykh del. Okonchanie
E. M. Feoktistov, Sud’by papskoi vlasti pri Napoleona I
Puteshetvie tsesarskogo posol’stva iz Veni v Moskvu v 16 godu. Perevod s serbskogo
K. N. Leont’ev, Pembe. Rasskaz iz epiro-albanskoi zhizni
Ieromonakh Nikolai, Iaponiia s tochki zreniia khristianskoi missii
D. P. Gavrilov, Eltonskii solianoi promysel
V. I. Kel’siev, Pol’skie agenty v Tsaregrade. II
Gustav de Molinari, Ekonomicheskaia korrespondentsiia
P. K. Shchebal’skii, Po povodu posledikh zakonov o pravoslavnom dukhovenstve v Rossii

Supplement

Antoni Trollop, Bulgamptonskii vikarii. Perevod s angliiskogo. Chast’ 1, I-VIII [not included]

October 1869

V. P. Bezobrazov, Nashi okhraniteli i nashi progressisty
S. A. Raikovskii, Pol’skaia molodezh’ zapadnogo kraia v miatezhe 1861-1863 godov. IX-XIII
L. Neliubov, Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov
N. I. Subbotin, Iz sovremmenikh letopisei raskola. IV
V., Gumbol’dtov prazdnik
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Chast’ 3, I-XVI
P. Shch., Komissiia ulozheniia. Sbornik russkogo istoricheskogo obshestva. T. 4
G. A. Larosh, Russkaia muzykal’naia literatura. Tserkovnoe p’enie s Rossii

Supplement

Antoni Trollop, Bulgamptonskii vikarii. Chast’ 1, IX-XIV

vol 84, 11-12 (1869)

November 1869

A. D. Gradovskii, Istoricheskii ocherk uchrezhdeniia general-gubernatorstv v Rossii. I-VII
G. de Molinari, Mezhdunarodnye kongressy
M. I. Semevskii, K biografii Pushkina
A. N. Kulomzin, Gosudarstvennye dokhody i raskhody v tsarstvovanii Ekateriny II (1762-1769)
V. I. Kel’siev, Pol’skie agenty v Tsaregrade. III-IV
S. V. Taneev, Gribnoi dozhd’ i liven’. Rasskaz
Ieromonakh Nikolai, Seguny i Mikado. Istoricheskii ocherk po iaponskim istochnikam
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Chast’ 3, XVII-XXXI
A. A. Fet, Pamiati Vasiliia Petrovicha Botkina. 16 Oktiabria. Stikhotvorenie.
R., Istoricheskaia literatura

Supplement

Antoni Trollop, Bulgamptonskii vikarii. Chast’ pervaia, XVII-XXII
Zhul’ Vern, Vokrug luny. Rasskaz. Perevod s frantsuzskogo. I-V

December 1869

Kh. M. Voldemar, Ocherk istorii Kurliandii
A. D. Gradovskii, Istoricheskii ocherk uchrezhdeniia general-gubernatorstv v Rossii. Okonchanie
Ieromonakh Nikolai, Seguny i Mikado. Istoricheskii ocherk po iaponskim istochnikam. Okonchanie
E. M. Feoktistov. Rossiia i Serbiia pred posledneiu vostochnoiu voinoi
V. V. Krestovskii, Panurgovo stado. Chast’ 3, okonchanie
A. M. Matushinskii, Miunkhenskaia mezhdunarodnaia khudozhestvennaia vystavka. I-VIII

Supplement

Antoni Trollop, Bulgamptonskii vikarii. Chast’ 1, XXIII-XXIX
Zhul’ Vern, Vokrug luny. Okonchanie

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by on July 18, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Russian journals, Russian Literature
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted by Sarah Young on July 18, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/18/russkii-vestnik-1869/

Russian journals on Google books

There are some amazing resources on Google books, which can really transform the way scholars work and particularly the time spent on locating materials. As a postgrad in the late 1990s, when I wanted to find out about the serial publication of The Idiot, I ended up having to consult the journal in a library in St Petersburg, because the relevant year was missing from the British Library’s collection. Obviously, I didn’t go to Petersburg solely for that, but nevertheless I used a disproportionate amount of time accessing a fairly basic resource. When I wanted to do the same for Crime and Punishment recently, I was overjoyed to find the journal Russkii vestnik (Russian Messenger) on Google books, and this time it took me a couple of hours.

Finding Dostoevsky’s works in a journal is easy, as you know what you’re looking for and which years are involved. Often, though, tracking down an article in an old journal is more time-consuming, particularly when you only have partial information — I eventually found Chernyshevsky’s article on the Crystal Palace from Otechestvennye zapiski (Fatherland Notes — also on Google books) for my post on the Crystal Palace in Russian Literature, but it took a while. And if you wish to browse the contents more generally, it’s even more of a problem. There are no lists of contents available apart from those in individual issues, which are sometimes difficult to locate; the order in which the volumes appear is jumbled enough to cause confusion; and some volumes are incorrectly numbered.

Accessibility is only part of the question; information about precisely what is out there is equally important. For that reason, I’ve decided to start compiling lists of contents for the nineteenth-century Russian literary journals that are available in full text on-line, with links to the relevant issues. I’ll begin with Russkii vestnik, because it was the most important literary journal of the day, featuring the major works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev, among others. The years 1856-1869 have been digitized in full, albeit with the odd volume missing. The blemishes you would expect from nineteenth-century originals notwithstanding, the scans themselves are of good, usable quality (I haven’t looked at every page, but have done a good deal of scrolling, and haven’t seen a single gloved hand, and have only spotted one or two slightly wobbly pages), so a vote of thanks is due to the New York Public Library, whence they came. Russkii vestnik mainly seems to be available on Google books, with relatively few, and rather random, issues, uploaded to archive.org (at least, so far as I have been able to establish), but even the rather unwieldy 800-page on-line versions and untitled pdfs available through Google are very useful.

I’ll be working backwards from 1869, publishing each year as a separate post, before creating a static page to collate everything and compiling an index. I’ve decided to transcribe in transliteration, updating to present-day spellings for ease of reading, because it’s still quicker for me than typing in Cyrillic, and the plain text versions of the contents pages on Google books are a bit of a disaster (aside from the slightly fuzzy typefaces, OCR can’t handle pre-revolutionary orthography). Although I’ve tried to be careful, there are bound to be errors, so if you spot any, please send corrections. I’ve already found a couple of mistakes in the contents pages themselves (anomalies in chapter numbering, etc), and have corrected those. For some issues, the supplement (mostly featuring translations of English novels) is not available; here I have included the information in the contents list for the sake of completeness, but noted its absence from the scan.

Once I’ve finished Russskii vestnik, I’ll move on to Otechestvennye zapiski and Sovremennik (The Contemporary). The project is obviously going to take some time, but I hope other scholars and readers will find it a useful resource.

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by on July 16, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Digital Humanities, Russian journals, Russian Literature
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Posted by Sarah Young on July 16, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/16/russian-journals-on-google-books/

Re-reading Crime and Punishment: characters

Re-reading Crime and Punishment hasn’t entirely resolved the perennial problem of Sonia, which I’ve mentioned previously, but I do finally seem to have found a way of accepting her as a character, which makes the novel’s denouement less contentious. Or maybe it’s just that I was focusing on the fine details rather than the big picture, so she didn’t occupy my thoughts in the way she has before.

The problem Sonia presents is that the major facets of her character do not marry with her profession. I could live with a child prostitute — which she is, effectively — who retains her innocence, or mature prostitute who has religious faith, but the religious child prostitute is too much, and this moral over-load effectively dis-embodies her — it is impossible to consider as a rounded, believable character. She has to be viewed more as a mental construct; what matters is not whether she could step out of the page and live in the real world, but the combination of character traits, emotions and beliefs that come together in her portrayal, such as the opposition of shame and innocence. Whether you take her primarily as the author’s mental construct or his hero’s is a matter of opinion — they both need her to perform particular functions, for Dostoevsky in the novel, and for Raskolnikov in his life — but what she represents for them can be the only starting point for interpretation.

This is why Nabokov is absolutely wrong (as he is in his literary criticism about pretty much everything to do with Dostoevsky, despite — or because of — his debt to Dostoevsky in his fiction) in dismissing Sonia as a stereotype. Nabokov approaches her from the perspective of the realist tradition, but she has nothing to do with that mode of representation, and nothing in common with the golden-hearted prostitutes to whom he compares her. We are not, I think, intended to take her work literally (Nabokov’s reading of Dostoevsky is strangely literal), but rather to imagine what such a life would involve and how it would affect somebody with that belief-system.

Comparing Sonia to Svidrigailov, who is Raskolnikov’s other ‘double’, but is successfully embodied, is instructive; if Svidrigailov’s embodiment is essential because of his sensual nature, Sonia’s is superfluous because she only has a spiritual side, and the qualities she represents have no (or do not require a) physical or sensual presence.

Svidrigailov’s role as a mental construct was brought out powerfully for me in this reading in the parallels between his character and Porfiry, which I don’t think have ever registered to the same degree as this time. Their first appearances in the novel are very close together, with Svidrigailov arriving out of Raskolnikov’s dream at the end of part 3, chapter 6, the chapter following Raskolnikov’s first interview with Porfiry, and subsequently they follow each other closely, chapter for chapter; Porfiry’s last appearance is in part 6, chapter 2, before the sequence that leads up to Svidrigailov’s suicide.

There are striking similarities in their modes of behaviour, especially in their commentaries on their encounters with Raskolnikov. As I mentioned in my last post, both describe the layout of the rooms they are in and the people in them, and there is a clear connection between the scenes with Porfiry and Raskolnikov, with the artisan listening in, Svidrigailov listening in on Raskolnikov’s confession to Sonia, and the later scenes with Svidrigailov which evoke a hidden listener. The fact that these are all key moments in the peripeteias of the plot suggests that this dynamic is highly significant.

Both also have a tendency to re-write the scripts during their interviews. Porfiry ascribes to Raskolnikov words he has not uttered and reactions he has not exhibited; for example, in part 4, chapter 5, Porfiry claims that Raskolnikov has just ‘so correctly and cleverly observed’ that questions often confuse the questioner most of all, but this is contradicted by the narrator in parentheses: ‘Raskolnikov had observed nothing of the kind’. Later Porfiry says that Raskolnikov is laughing when the narrator suggests ‘nothing could have been further from Raskolnikov’s mind than laughter’. Svidrigailov, meanwhile, claims to have said things himself that he has not: in part 4, chapter 1, he states, ‘didn’t I say we had something in common?’, which Raskolnikov then denies: ‘You never said that’. Both characters are therefore able to create an atmosphere in which their perceptions challenge Raskolnikov’s and the record of events — in Raskolnikov’s mind above all — is undermined. The reader too is subject to uncertainty, primarily because of these two characters rather than, as would be more normal, owing to an unreliable narrator. This form of commentary too adds a metanarrational element, as I suggested last time, which gives the characters a similar but unusual function.

The parallels between Svidrigailov and Porfiry are curious given that the latter is ostensibly in Sonia’s camp — he too wants Raskolnikov to acknowledge his wrong-doing and repent. The fact that Porfiry uses Svidrigailov’s methods for Sonia’s aims, and that the two men are presented in such similar ways, complicates the relationship between these characters and Raskolnikov, and suggests that Porfiry represents far more than the intellectual complement to Sonia’s spirituality and Svidrigailov’s sensuality. And the fact that it is these two characters who introduce a form of metanarration embeds the battle for Raskolnikov’s mind within the narrative, challenging the general assumption that Crime and Punishment has the most conventional form of all Dostoevsky’s major works.

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by on July 9, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on July 9, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/09/re-reading-crime-and-punishment-characters/

Re-reading Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky’s spaces

The process of re-reading a novel is simultaneously frustrating and interesting. It’s frustrating because there are too many books out there, and too little time to read them, so returning to ones you’ve already read is always accompanied by a depressing awareness that you’re getting further away from others you’d like to read — I can imagine books falling off the bottom of my mental list. But it is very interesting, particularly if you’ve had quite a gap between readings, because you never know quite what to expect, and you’re always struck by different things, even if, as is inevitable, you start with preconceived ideas.

It’s some years since I last read Crime and Punishment properly (i.e. reading carefully and making copious notes, rather than just doing a quick read-through for teaching purposes), so my perceptions and interests have had plenty of time to change, giving me lots to think about. Also, for the first time I was working solely with an electronic text (albeit with reference to the Academy of Sciences complete works to check for and correct errors in the version I downloaded). I think that as well as making the process of note-taking (using colour-coded highlighting and marginal comments) very efficient, it also made me more alert to certain text features, such as repetition. I’m not sure whether that’s because the Cyrillic is clearer on screen than in the print editions I generally use, or if there’s another explanation. Perhaps I’m just imagining it, and I’d have noticed exactly the same things if I’d been using my old working copy, but somehow I think not, if only because I might have been distracted by my old underlinings and scribblings, some of which date back to my undergraduate days and could best be described as ‘basic’. One advantage of using electronic text is that you’ve always got access to a ‘clean’ version.

One of the things that surprised me this time was how much detail there is in Crime and Punishment of the material world. Dostoevsky’s reputation is primarily as a spiritual writer, who is more interested in the inner lives of his characters than the external world, particularly its physical dimensions. I would never wish to deny the significance of the spiritual aspects of his writing, but I think it’s more complicated than that characterization suggests. I’ll write more in my next post about how the relationships and encounters between the characters create a different dynamic, but for now I just want to make a couple of observations about the material aspects of the novel.

The Petersburg setting is obviously crucial (for me too — but more on that in a future post), but less attention is usually paid to the interiors that feature in the novel, except for the prominence of stairways, in which the grime and stink of the outside world intrudes on living spaces, and doorways, which act as thresholds and, far from shutting out the outside world, serve to make private spaces public. What surprised me, however, was the description of the various lodgings we visit in the novel. Raskolnikov’s coffin-like room, and its effect on his psyche, is famous, but not just here, but also the Marmeladovs’, Alena Ivanovna’s (before and during the murder, as well as afterwards, when Raskolnikov revisits the flat when it’s being redecorated), Pulkheria Ivanovna’s and Dunia’s, Sonia’s, and Svidrigailov’s rooms are all presented in minute detail, including not only the type and position of the furniture, but where the characters are placed.

A couple of uncanny effects are associated with this. The first is the distortion of space, particularly apparent in Raskolnikov’s room. It’s supposedly six paces long, with a large sofa that takes up almost the entire length of the room and half the width, but also contains three chairs, a table, and a bedside table (part 1, chapter 3). And if it’s not difficult enough to imagine how all that fits in, there are several scenes where five or six people are present. I start to have surreal visions of the walls bulging out or Zosimov being stuck on the ceiling, and then discover that Nastasia the maid is in the room as well (she almost always is, and her presence is frequently not announced until the scene is well advanced). This obviously relates to the connection between mental and physical space, and Raskolnikov’s perception of his surroundings and the people who crowd his world. But when a similar effect is apparent in relation to other rooms and flats, regardless of whether Raskolnikov is present, that explanation doesn’t entirely work.

The second feature is the tendency of some of the characters (particularly Svidrigailov and Porfiry) to provide a verbal commentary on the spaces they occupy, in terms of both telling people where to sit, and describing the rooms themselves. One might suggest this is merely a device to vary the narrative, so that it doesn’t always come from the narrator, but again it begs the question of why these spaces are so important. More importantly, in a novel where eavesdropping plays such an important role, this verbalization of the actions and spatial arrangements in a setting evoke parallels with scenes where we know someone is listening in, such as Porfiry’s interview with Raskolnikov (part 4, chapter 6), to suggest that there are also secret eavesdroppers elsewhere — see, for example, Svidrigailov’s meeting with Dunia in part 6, chapter 5 for this effect. Can the hidden listener only be the reader? In that case, he or she is thereby implicated in the novel’s dynamics, even morally (Svidrigailov’s eavesdropping is highly dubious), and the novel gains a metanarrational element that has not previously been identified. Or is another presence implied?

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by on July 6, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on July 6, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/06/rereading-crime-and-punishment-dostoevskys-spaces/

Porfiry: a poor pastiche

In response to the disappointment I expressed in my review of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44, a reader alerted me (please note: not ‘recommended’) to the existence of a series of crime novels by R. N. Morris set in 19th century St Petersburg, and featuring Porfiry Petrovich. The detective from Crime and Punishment is a great character, and he’s the inspiration behind other fictional detectives, such as Columbo and Inspector Rush in Nigel Williams’ The Wimbledon Poisoner, so it makes sense for somebody to take up his further adventures. I was, however, rather reluctant to read them, probably because of my bad experience with Child 44, but eventually I took the plunge, got hold of a copy of A Gentle Axe (Faber and Faber, 2007), took it to Naples with me, brought it back unopened (too much proper Dostoevsky to think about), and finally got down to it last week. I have also been re-reading Crime and Punishment itself, so I’ve had chance to compare the new version to the original.

As a historical crime novel, I think A Gentle Axe is perfectly fine. There are a few errors, but I’ll overlook those. It’s readable, and the plot works quite well. By the denouement the body count is getting so high that there can’t be much doubt who the murderer is, but if you know your Dostoevsky, you’ll have identified him in any case the first time he appears as the most obvious suspect — it’s quite clear which character he’s based on, and it is a pretty unimaginative choice.

And this is the overall problem: it uses the Dostoevskian links in a way that it just too thin and too obvious. The text is peppered with names of Dostoevsky’s characters, but they’re generally just names. One of the initial murder victims is called Goryanchikov, but he bears no resemblance to the narrator of Notes from the House of the Dead, so for anyone who hasn’t read Dostoevsky it’s meaningless, but for anyone who has, it’s a real distraction. Equally, Prince Bykov has nothing in common with his charmless namesake from Poor Folk. You start to wonder what on earth these references are for, and the answer appears to be: nothing. Occasionally, a more complex set of references surfaces; Virginsky is a combination of Raskolnikov and the underground man, which is interesting, but his name, taken from one of the revolutionaries in Demons, doesn’t relate to anything.

Attempts to incorporate Dostoevskian themes into the plot also misfire. The proposition, attributed to Ivan Karamazov, that ‘if there is no immortality of the soul, then everything is permitted’, becomes a plot device which is central to the denouement, but it’s used in such a trivial way that it resembles a playground game more than a route into the psychology of a murderer. Clearly, it could have been the latter as well, if the character had been well drawn enough to make that plausible, but the use of the Dostoevskian prototype appears to be a substitute for, rather than a facet of, characterization, so there’s no depth to allow such ideas to develop.

And then there’s Porfiry himself, who really is a pale imitation. I only finished the book this morning, and all I remember about Porfiry is that he has pale eyelashes and smokes too much. I doubt I’d have remembered the eyelashes either, if they weren’t already part of his characterization in Crime and Punishment. But there’s none of the richness of the original in A Gentle Axe, none of the comic buffoonery of Dostoevsky’s Porfiry, which is so apparently incongruous amidst the tension of Crime and Punishment, but plays an essential role in bringing Raskolnikov to confession.

Most perplexing of all, there’s practically nothing left of Porfiry’s main trait as a detective — his uncanny ability to know everything, even before the murderer is fully aware of it. There is a bit of this, but in relation to the wrong suspect, so it functions mainly as a red herring, and again the Dostoevskian reference takes the place of proper plot development. But it destroys Porfiry as a character. He isn’t infallible at all, and he doesn’t have any impact on the murderer’s inner life — he doesn’t even have much contact with him, because he doesn’t identify him until quite a late stage. So again, what’s left of the original, apart from the name?

Needless to say, after this rather feeble start, I don’t think I’ll be hurrying to get my hands on the remaining books in the series.

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by on July 1, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on July 1, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/01/porfiry-a-poor-pastiche/

Dostoevsky: not so grim?

Ivan Nikolaev, The murder scene from Crime and Punishment

The recent stories about the murals at the new Dostoevsky metro station in Moscow, which have led to concerns that it could become a favourite spot for suicides, have made me think about why Dostoevsky is considered such a depressing writer. Is it because he depicts so much poverty and misery? I doubt it, because you see far more of that in Dickens, for instance, and in any case, the ‘insulted and injured’ cease to be the main focus of Dostoevsky’s work after Crime and Punishment (Russian text here).

You can’t deny that his major works feature a large number of violent deaths, some of them described in grisly detail, but I don’t think these are responsible for his reputation for gloom — if anything, quite the opposite. Dostoevsky’s books are made readable, despite scenes of deprivation and the philosophical discussions that are so central, by his racy plots that derive in large part from melodrama and gothic fiction. Nobody else has ever managed to fuse high- and low-brow literary genres so successfully.

But it’s not just the sensationalism that prevents the atmosphere from slipping into depression, because Dostoevsky is actually a very funny writer (though you may dispute my fitness to judge on matters of humour, after the appalling anecdote I inflicted on you in my post on Soviet jokes). You see this particular in his short stories, with the black humour of Bobok (Russian text here), the comedy of embarrassment of A Nasty Story (Russian text here), and the wit of The Crocodile (Russian text here).

But in the major novels as well, however serious the over-riding plot, there are always humorous elements. Frequently these come from the narrator, whose ironic attitude to some of the characters results in some brilliant comic moments. I’m currently re-reading Crime and Punishment (for the nth time) and have just reached the part where the comedy is really ramped up. First the scorn poured on Lebeziatnikov, the young radical (part 5 chapter 1) becomes doubly ironic because it’s presented through the eyes of Luzhin, who’s even worse. Then in the following chapter, the funeral meal for Marmeladov is a horrible exemplar of Dostoevskian impropriety — it’s painfully funny, and I feel really ashamed for laughing.

The high point of comic narration comes in Demons (Russian text here), where the chronicler’s tone just makes me giggle from beginning to end, despite some of the horrendous events in that novel — it’s almost as though the more shocking and grim his works are, the funnier they become.

Then there are the intrinsically comic characters — the other thing that makes Demons so funny is Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. He’s a masterpiece of vanity and self-delusion, and this, coupled with the narrator’s irony about his so-called liberal credentials, makes him a superbly frothy centre of the heart of darkness. The humour with which Stepan Trofimovich is presented creates an ambiguity in his role as father to the violence and mayhem wrought by Pyotr Verkhovensky and Stavrogin.

But this is what Dostoevsky’s all about — everything’s more complex than it seems, and the comic plays a significant part in undermining any possibility of a facile message. At the same time, he is able to make the tragic and grim aspects of his work (which are undoubtedly present) even more extreme by counter-balancing them with the comic elements. Dostoevsky’s image as the world’s gloomiest writer may derive from the fact that a lot of people read him at an age when they’re mainly interested in existential angst — so that’s precisely what they see. I don’t think I really realized how funny Demons was the first few times I read it. The artist who created the murals, Ivan Nikolaev, clearly sees Dostoevsky’s works as tragic (‘What did you want?’ he asked, ‘Scenes of dancing?’), but perhaps in the end it’s just more viable to represent the dramatic and tragic aspects of his plots than the black comedy that often surrounds them.

The tragic may be the best known side of Dostoevsky’s writing, but memorials like the murals — and to an even greater extent the decoration at the Dostoevsky metro station in St Petersburg, which I’ve seen described as ‘austere’, but which actually resembles a prison cell — end up perpetuating a rather limiting view of him. But you can’t consider Raskolnikov’s delirium, and his agonizing about why he committed the crime and whether he’s going to be arrested outside the context of the savagely funny scenes at the Marmeladovs’, or assume that Porfiry Petrovich’s humorous demeanour isn’t in some way relevant to his gradual wearing-down of Raskolnikov. Dostoevsky does seem to invite one-sided views, not only from ‘ordinary’ readers, but also from some critics, but he only really makes sense if you consider everything together, and how the different elements impact on each other.

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by on June 24, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on June 24, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/06/24/dostoevsky-not-so-grim/

Women, beauty and other things

The ambiguous treatment of some of Dostoevsky’s major themes was high on the menu in the first session on Thursday. Joe Andrew gave a very interesting paper on the ‘woman question’ in The Brothers Karamazov, discussing how marginalized the female characters are – in the central family grouping there are no mothers, daughters or sisters (although of course memories of the mothers remain important), and those that are prominent are portrayed less than positively. This is in sharp contrast to Dostoevsky’s other major works, in which mothers and sisters play a very significant role, and in Diary of a Writer as well, women are often at the forefront of discussion. I am one of the people who considers Dostoevsky to be very enlightened about women (far more so than Tolstoy), so this retreat in The Brothers Karamazov is strange.

Wil van den Bercken paper on beauty, focusing mainly on The Idiot, equally showed what an ambivalent concept that is, in its incarnations as female beauty, the ‘beauty and prayer’ of the moment before Myshkin’s epileptic fit (which is also then beauty that turns into chaos and ugliness), the poor knight’s ideal of pure beauty, and so on. These conceptions of beauty, as Wil showed, are more prevalent than the moral beauty of Christ, which we tend to assume is the beauty that will save the world, in the mysterious phrase attributed to Myshkin. The paper didn’t go deeply into the religious conception, but that too is obviously problematized in the novel, however you interpret the Holbein  painting of Christ in the Tomb. Either it shows the ugly reality of death without resurrection, Christ without divinity, or it’s a fake (the painting was originally an anatomical study, not a religious work; Rogozhin has only a copy, not the real thing) behind which nothing stands – there is no unambiguously positive image of Christ in the novel to replace it.

There were three great papers in the afternoon. Nel Grillaert advanced a persuasive account of the strategies Dostoevsky used to ‘say the unsayable’, focusing on hagiographic devices of word-weaving in Zosima’s discourses. This was not only very interesting in its own right, but also thought-provoking for me because the quality of unsayability is relevant to the representation not only of the transcendent, but also of the traumatic. I think one of the sources of Shalamov’s power and originality is his attempt to address the unspeakable in his experiences without recourse to the unsayable of the transcendent, and in general I think the relationship between these two areas of experience that are resistant to representation is very significant.

Katherine Tiernan O’Connor gave a brilliant, detailed interpretation of the relationship between Notes from the House of the Dead and Dostoevsky’s re-writing of his labour camp experiences in the story The Peasant Marey, which I think answered a lot of the very perplexing questions about the latter text. Some of her analysis also dovetailed nicely with the conception I’ve been building about Gorianchikov’s inability to know the prisoners for a forthcoming article on Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Kennan (I wrote a little about this in my post about concordances).

Finally, Amy Ronner’s paper using the concept of therapeutic jurisprudence to reconsider Raskolnikov’s motives and confessions was highly entertaining and made me think again about his confession to Sonia. In one of my posts on prostitution, I suggested that Raskolnikov chose her as his confessor because she would have been considered an unreliable witness. I stand by that statement, but I think I viewed that as a cynical move by Raskolnikov. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps it is an attempt to distance himself from the legal process because he recognizes that what he needs is not a judicial process but a therapeutic and redemptive one. I’d still suggest he’s very ambivalent about the whole process, and that none of the confessions he makes is straightforward, but I’ll leaved that for another time.

This will be my last update from Naples. There is one paper I’d quite like to hear today, but I’m all conferenced-out and am going to Herculaneum instead, then flying home tomorrow.

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by on June 18, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on June 18, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/06/18/women-beauty-and-other-things/

The underground man at the International Dostoevsky Symposium

Wednesday was all about Notes from Underground for me. Carol Apollonio’s paper was stunning, probably the highlight of the symposium, and it confirmed my view of her as one of the most original scholars working on Dostoevsky. She examined the use of pronouns in Notes from Underground (specifically ‘I’), but also giving a broader perspective that connected it to The Brothers Karamazov, and proposed an incredibly challenging and interesting way of reading Dostoevsky ‘grammatically’ which I think will send us all back to the texts with fresh eyes. Put briefly, this sort of reading accounts for the act that in Russian, «Я» means not only ‘I’ but also ‘the I’, ‘the ego’. When you start considering that, a whole new meaning emerges.

I also really enjoyed Evgenia Cherkasova’s paper on existential psychoanalysis. Looking at the question of mauvais fois in relation to the underground man’s confession showed just how complicated his mental process is, but it also demonstrated the centrality of self-consciousness in Dostoevsky’s works. The underground man is engaged in self-deception,  but reporting it honestly, and his consciousness is the source of his tragedy. But is he really being honest about what he’s doing, I wonder?

Honourable mention must also go to Anthony Johae. His conception of the ‘confession’ of Notes from Underground (as it was originally subtitled) as a form of on-going penal correction is really intriguing, but the question is, what is his crime? Is it his rejection of Liza, or, like so many of Dostoevsky’s other anti-heroes, does he have another crime on his conscience? If so, then he isn’t being remotely honest with us, or himself…

The afternoon’s roundtable on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy was excellent, with thought-provoking comparisons from Robert Belknap (different methods the authors use to demolish writers and ideas they disliked), Ellen Chances (parallels between Anna Karenina and Brothers Karamazov), Robin Feuer Miller (depiction of animals), and William Mills Todd III (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy as professional writers, and what that meant in nineteenth-century Russia). A lively discussion ensued.

The big news is that the next symposium (2013) will be in Moscow. I think St Petersburg would make more sense, but hopefully that will happen one day.

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by on June 17, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on June 17, 2010

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More news from Naples

Naples is hot and tiring, but there have been some really great papers and discussions today. Probably the best presentation was by Liza Knapp, on the idea of motherhood and intercession for their sinful sons in House of the Dead – a wonderful, thought-provoking conception which opens up that text in all sorts of interesting ways. As Robert Jackson said in the discussion, taking small details as she did, and linking them together, works so well because they are like drops of water in which the sun is reflected. It also complemented the other paper on the panel, by Paul Contino, which focused on ethics and incarnation in The Brothers Karamazov, and discussed the figure of Alyosha as a ‘realist’, the slightly strange designation of him by the narrator when he is first introduced.

Part of the discussion that followed was devoted to the question, which also arose after one of the morning panels, of how Orthodox Dostoevsky really is. I’m definitely one of the people who’s sceptical about interpreting Dostoevsky narrowly as an Orthodox writer, but you often feels you’re fighting a losing battle expressing that point of view, because it is pretty much ubiquitous in Russia and that seems to drown out other possibilities. So it was interesting and heartening to hear, over the two discussions, Dostoevsky described as an Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, and Atheist writer. Quite often scholars just ignore the question, and it is perfectly possible to analyse Dostoevsky without addressing the religious angle, but I can’t help wishing more people would commit to writing their view that it isn’t compulsory to see him as a prophet of Orthodoxy.

I also gave my own  paper this morning, on Dostoevsky and the Crystal Palace, in which I re-examine his references to the building in relation to the context in which they appear, and in comparison with its use in English literature. I received a lot of good feedback and various people said I’d breathed new life into a subject on which they thought there was nothing left to say, so I think I’m on the right track. The panel as a whole was spoiled somewhat by the first speaker, who shall remain nameless. He spoke for 40 minutes (it was supposed to be 20 minutes each), which was bad enough, and then left immediately without listening to the other two papers. I was not impressed. However, the final paper, by Sergei Kibal’nik, went really well with mine, as he was discussing utopian socialism – again, apparently a tired old topic, but he was looking at The Village of Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants, which is never considered to be one of Dostoevsky’s philosophical texts – I’ve always thought of it as ‘Dostoevsky lite’ — and he showed how relevant it is to that theme. I think I shall be re-reading it as soon as I get home. Anyway, because of the selfish, egotistical behaviour of the first speaker, there was no time for questions, which was really annoying because, as discussion later over lunch and coffee showed, there was a great deal to talk about.

Now that the hard work’s over, I have to say I’ll be mixing the rest of the symposium with a bit of sight seeing. But there are some interesting papers I want to hear tomorrow.

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by on June 15, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Sarah Young on June 15, 2010

https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/06/15/more-news-from-naples/

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