“Hysterical shrieks of the cherubim” (concerning a textual incident in the history of the text of The brothers Karamazov)

The article deals with a textual incident that occurred in the history of the publication of the chapter “Hell. Ivan Fedorovich's nightmare” from the novel The Brothers Karamazov . When sending the manuscript of the chapter to “Russkiy Vestnik” (“Russian Bulletin”) for publication, in the cover letter to N. A. Lyubimov Dostoevsky expressed concern that the journal's editorial staff might find the words “hysterical shrieks of the cherubim,” pronounced by the devil, obscene. The writer insisted on the absolute artistic justification of such an expression coming from the lips of his infernal character, begging Lyubimov to leave this version in print. However, he foresaw censorship difficulties and offered a backup version to replace the line (“if you can't”): “joyous cries of the cherubim,” adding with regret that it will sound stylistically dissonant. As a result, the journal published the compromise version devised by N. A. Lyubimov, namely “joyful shrieks of the cherubim.” Although Dostoevsky's letter clearly expressed his attitude to the “backup” versions, in a separate edition, which was published immediately after the magazine, he reproduced the devil's remark exactly as it was printed in the “Russkiy Vestnik”. In the academic Complete Works of Dostoevsky , the printed version was “canonized” as an expression of the last author's will of the writer. The article challenges this textual decision and justifies the need to revert to the version contained in the typeset manuscript, as it is reconstructed from Dostoevsky's letter to Lyubimov: “hysterical shrieks of the cherubim”.