“High art”: Fedor Dostoevsky and stenography

The importance of stenography, i. e. the art of writing at speech rate, is widely recognized in the history of evolution of the world science and culture, politics and economy. The given article systematizes the facts about the writers of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries who mastered the shorthand or used to resort to the help of professional stenographers in their creative activities. Taking into consideration this review the article makes a conclusion about the role and meaning of stenography in the creative process of F. M. Dostoevsky. He was the second writer in Russia (following V. V. Krestovsky) who applied shorthand writing in his literary work, but the only one in the world literature for whom stenography became something more than just shorthand. He considered it to be mysterious and “high art”. It modified and enriched the model of his creative process not for a while but for life, and it had an influence on the poetics of novels and of the story “A Gentle Creature”, it contributed changes in the writer’s private life and provoke the relatives’ interest (stepson P...