The reception of F. M. Dostoevsky's ideas in ‘The clown’ short story by T. Mann

The paper examines ‘Notes From the Underground’ story by F. M. Dostoevsky and ‘The Clown’ short story by T. Man from the point of view of literary interconnections. The purpose of the study is to identify parallels in the artistic worlds of the above-mentioned works in the aspect of psychologism through a comparative analysis of the images of the paradoxalist and the clown. It was found that the German writer, guided by the experience of the Russian classic, in his short story makes an attempt to study the consciousness of the hero who voluntarily broke ties with society. Turning to the technique of confession allows T. Mann not only to identify the main stages of the formation of his character’s worldview, to determine the reasons for his departure into social isolation, but also to trace the dynamics of the degradation of his personality. In both works, the key moments of the narrative testing the life philosophy of the heroes for strength are episodes of the clash of the paradoxalist and the clown with real life. Finding themselves in situations that presuppose the inevitability of communication with other people, the characters were able to realize the illusory nature of their own ideas about their chosen life position and come to an understanding of the fact of the inevitability of the collapse of their ideals. At the same time, in terms of their scale, the images of these characters are not equivalent: the clown’s thoughts are not endowed with the philosophical depth that turns out to be inherent in the arguments of the paradoxalist. Reconstructing the character of the clown T. Mann also takes into account the traditions of German romanticism.