Mask and masquerade in Feodor Dostoevsky's creative works

The article discusses the functioning of the word mask in Feodor Dostoevsky's creative works of different genres and of different periods of creativity, the assumption that this word has in Dostoevsky's texts the status of idioglossa is made, i.e. describes certain characteristics of author's style and worldview of the writer. The special multi-step procedure for idioglossa status of a word verification has been developed. The indicator of the special significance of a word is, in particular, its symbolic potential which despite of its relatively low frequency of use has the word mask. On the base of contextual analysis the associative field in the center of which are the words mask and masquerade was reconstructed, the parallels between Dostoevsky's different characters such as Golyadkin, Prince Valkovsky, Svidrigailov, Stavrogin and Lambert were made. The conclusion that the word mask in Dostoevsky's thesaurus has some properties of anticoncept opposite in its content and connotations to one of the central concepts of writer's worldview - living life.