“Prince of peace” and carnival by Dostoevsky and Bakhtin

The article compares the carnival views of M.M. Bakhtin and “discovery of person” by F.M. Dostoevsky. The opposition between the subject and the object of our consciousness, between the conscious “I” and the object of his attention - “I”, directly acting (thinking, feeling) in the external world (“I feel pain in my finger”) leads to a dialogue of two “I”, the emergence and evolution of the “personal two-voiced word”. This evolution of “I” is considered as the history of carnival-like “transition holidays” (I. Popova) in European culture. Pagan seasonal festivals (when the conscious self was evaluated as something half-animal), Carnivals of the Middle Ages (when the voice of the conscious self was associated with the voice of conscience) and the carnival culture of the New Age (when consciousness became the highest part of independent autonomous person). It is shown that the “transition holidays” was intended to streamline the “dialogical attitude towards oneself’ (Bakhtin) in historical forms: pagan ecstasy, start of Lenten, the struggle of “leaders” and “worldviews” in laughter culture since the Renaissance. Such consideration helps to understand Prince Myshkin’s controversy either as Christ or as a parody of the Antichrist. The hero of “Idiot” reconciles people with each other and with themselves like in the Medieval carnival. But he does not become a “carnival king” as in the sense of the New Age, which is expected by persons and readers of the novel. This is differences of Myshkin in comparison with the previous positively beautiful heroes of both world literature (Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick) and Dostoevsky himself (Colonel Rostanev). To show the uniqueness of Bakhtin in the personalistic-dialogical European discourse, his views is taken in context of ideal person considerations, associated with the Silver Age and rethinking of it in the first Soviet decades.