Petrushka’s image in Mstislav Dobuzhinsky’s illustrations for Dostoevsky’s White nights

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky’s illustrations for Dostoevsky’s story White Nights impressed contemporaries, but did not receive a convincing interpretation in scholarly publications. The emotionality of these illustrations and the theatricalization of St. Petersburg were combined with the brevity of expressive means. We prove that the soul of Petersburg is depicted in these illustrations as a social mask. The personal destinies of Dostoevsky’s heroes remain in the ghostly darkness of the city, while the white night is perceived as a strangeness, as a performance. For Dobuzhinsky, the city as a setting is performative, not merely informative. The artist inherits the traditions of Russian Art Nouveau theater, in particular being inspired by Petrushka in Stravinsky’s ballet and Benois’s scenery. In Stravinsky’s version, Petrushka is presented as a native Petersburger, but capable of oblivion. He is a small man in the spirit of Gogol, but in his values he is closer to Dostoevsky’s heroes. In Dobuzhinsky’s illustrations, St. Petersburg is seen through the eyes of a dreamer, not Nastenka. The intellectual archaeology of Petrushka’s image as a donkey driver, a joking donkey king, Pierrot, shows the gradual penetration of Christian compassion into this image. Dobuzhinsky depicts in his series of illustrations how St. Petersburg removes its masks before the dreamer, and that the image of Leta, the river of oblivion, is necessary in the St. Petersburg text.