The novel “Demons” by Dostoevsky: draft autograph and printed text

The article is a continuation of the textual work on the study of the draft autograph of the novel “Demons” by F. M. Dostoevsky, which began in previous years. It analyzes the specified manuscript in two ways: 1) as an independent handwritten source, which has not yet been published in full and has not received a detailed textual commentary; 2) as a source of the text of the novel “Demons.” The study of the draft autograph is of great interest, as it allows comparing it with the printed sources of the text, analyze the features of the author’s work on the novel’s idea, establish both creative and non-creative (not the author’s) changes in the text, get new information about the creative history of the novel. The draft autograph of the novel “Demons” is one of the most difficult texts in the writer’s creative legacy in terms of handwriting. Separate fragments of this manuscript were published by A. S. Dolinin in 1924 and B. V. Tomashevsky in 1935, and its main part is presented in the form of variants of the novel’s printed text in the first academic Complete Collection of Dostoevsky’s Works. The appeal to the draft autograph made it possible to formulate the main textual problems that arise at this stage of Dostoevsky’s creative process. During the study of the manuscript, inaccuracies of its reading by the publishers were established, including errors affecting the meaning of the author’s text. In addition, the draft autograph is considered in the article as a source of printed text and in relation to the material of lifetime editions of “Demons,” which made it possible to identify the most problematic places in the textual analysis of the novel’s handwritten and printed sources.