The polemics as a dialogue : Dostoevsky in a controversy with Tolstoy

Автор: Zakharov Vladimir Nikolaevich

Журнал: Проблемы исторической поэтики @poetica-pro

Статья в выпуске: т.11, 2013 года.

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Dostoevsky was a writer, who was actively introducing literary criticism into his novels, adapting critical comments to the natures of the characters. The same principle of the novelization of criticism was used in his Diary of a Writer. Dostoevsky was going beyond expressing his opinions about other people's works, and was developing "fictitious persons" of critics, composing their dialogues, carrying on polemics with real and fantastic opponents. The novelization of literary criticism is natural in the poetics of the Diary of a Writer. In the Diary of a Writer for July-August 1877 Dostoevsky argues with Tolstoy about the eighth and the last part of the novel Anna Karenina, which the editors of The Russian Messenger refused to print and which was soon issued as a separate edition. Dostoevsky highly appreciated the literary value of the novel, the genius of its author, but did not accepthis political assessments of the Russo-Turkish war. His polemics with Tolstoy is original: he levels criticism not at the author, but at the hero. Dostoevsky takes in the Christian pathos of Tolstoy, the didactic sense of the epigraph, but blames Levin for that the character has isolated himself and turned away from Christ as well as that he is withholding compassion and help to suffering Christians in the name of abstract principles. Dostoevsky asks Tolstoy a rhetorical question, which gives a new meaning to their polemics: what does the writer teach the readers? what does literature teach? The answer implies responsibility, which the author of the Diary calls the author of Anna Karenina to. In the final dispute an unexpected effect arises: the polemics appears as a dialogue of two geniuses, in which the disagreement drives the need in the consent of the opponents before the trut h of the people.

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Dostoevsky, leo tolstoy, the russo-turkish war of 1877—1878, polemics, dialogue, literary criticism, christian ideal, the diary of a writer, anna karenina

Короткий адрес: https://sciup.org/14748864

IDR: 14748864

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