Dostoevsky's time semiotics: some observations and reflections

The purpose of the article is to give some general arguments for the proposed semantics of the past-present-future time system in Dostoevsky’s works. In this context, time is seen at two levels, which, though reflected in each other, do not repeat each other. The author’s true ontology of time is derived from the way it is constructed in the story, in that special sequence of events. And above and beyond that, there is the layer of the author’s interpretation, which includes reflections on time of the characters and the storytellers, as well as (and especially in non-fictional texts - journalistic, epistolary) similar meta-denotational behaviour of the author. In the interplay of these two levels, one can find a paradoxical analogy between the past, the present and the future, which would appear to the interpreter as equally non-transparent and thus unpredictable. But this characteristic is displayed in different ways. The present is the realm of combinations where combinations of life are unexpectedly superseded by mentally produced combinations - overlaying the former willfully and mystifying them. Thus, the confusion of the present is multiplied and enhanced. Access to the future is provided by various premonitions and prophecies, but predictions and their realisations are always separated by the unavoidable gulf of probability and meaning. This problematic character of the future is especially apparent is the author’s fiction, specifically in structurally designated places, i.e. endings, where the coming of the future is usually aned one way or another. Dostoevsky’s past is also devoid of security. Under the influence of narrative dispersion, which leads to questioning - in retrospect - what we have observed as seemingly true, the past becomes hazy, loses its completeness and identity, becoming at least as mysterious as the present and the future.