Reval and St. Petersburg in Dostoevsky’s “Kartuzov”

The article focuses on one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s most elaborated unrealized projects — the story of Captain Kartuzov (1868–1869). The drafts are examined through the lens of Dostoevsky’s spatial poetics and the problem of constructing a fictional world. The action of the projected story was to unfold between Reval and St. Petersburg, which in Dostoevsky’s notebooks acquire the status of not merely geographical but symbolic and semantic poles of the narrative. Special attention is given to how the Reval layer of “Kartuzov” emerges from the character’s almost courtly poetic discourse, while the St. Petersburg fragments are defined through references to real topoi — the “London” Hotel and the “Red Tavern.” The study also interprets the mention of Riga in the calligraphic drafts as part of the writer’s spatial imagination. St. Petersburg, Reval, and Riga appear as “eccentric cities” located “on the edge” of cultural space. Additional attention is paid to how the urban imagery shapes Kartuzov’s character and contributes to the overall tone of the narrative. The analysis of the drafts shows that at the early stages of conceptualization Dostoevsky constructs the story’s spatial framework according to the principles of both “collision” and “comparison.” The article concludes by identifying several techniques used by Dostoevsky to introduce and shape the urban locus in his preparatory notes.