‘A writer's diary' and the book of judges: on the poetics of history and origins of Dostoevsky's polyphony

Based on A Writer's Diary, we consider some elements of Dostoevsky's journalism, namely what can be called ‘extended reality', which is emblematic of the writer's works and which has always excited interest of many of the readers and professional critics. Despite the emerging vision of journalism as an analytical field where a journalist interprets facts rather than creates or deliberately changes them, Dostoevsky writes his articles in a “layer-like” manner, as their subjects refer both to the facts of social life and to fiction. Information from newspapers or his private letters, events from Dostoevsky's past, protagonists of other writers, and fictional sketches form a peculiar blend. For example, his wife's narrative about her meeting with an old woman in a street in Saint Petersburg, an event which did really take place, is transformed into a story about a centenarian who wanders around the capital looking for her great-grandchildren and dies in their house during dinner. What appears to be the closest typological parallel to Dostoevsky's journalism is the style of ‘Near-Eastern narration', e. g. the historical books of the Bible. The Book of Judges contains the same mixture of history and literature, direct speech of its protagonist and words already spoken by other figures of the Bible from the earlier episodes. Like a scribe of the past, Dostoevsky interacts with the world as if it was sacral. He is eager to trace glimpses of higher antitypes, higher plot, and even an intention of the higher Writer in mundane situations. The closeness to the Biblical ‘prototype' shapes the uniqueness of Dostoevsky's articles among other 19th century journalistic writings. It brings some polyphony into the texts, so that the articles are not so much a direct speech of Dostoevsky as ‘crossroads' created by the writer and mingling different persons, their voices and their outlooks on the world.