Abstract
In The Rise of the Russian Novel Richard Freeborn writes: ‘That Dostoyevsky’s was an analytical genius is evident from the very first of his works. Poor Folk analyses, through the device of discovering him through his own letters, the emotional immaturity of the wretched civil service clerk, Makar Devushkin.’1 It might also be added that, equally, this same device discovers a ‘her’: Varvara Dobroselova, so that from the outset Dostoevskii’s analytical genius is based on a concept fundamental to all his writing — duality.
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Notes
R. Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in the Russian Novel from ‘Eugene Onegin’ to ‘War and Peace’ (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 158.
See F. M. Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad, 1972–), Vol. I (1972), p. 465. Subsequent references to this edition in the text will give volume and page number.
N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Leningrad, 1937–52), Vol. III (1938), p. 144. Subsequent references to this edition in the text will give volume and page number.
A. I. Smirnitskii, Russko-angli’skii slovar’ (Moscow, 1975), p. 711.
K. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Works, translated with an introduction by Michael A. Minihan (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 31.
A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Leningrad, 1937–49), Vol. VIII (1) (1946), p. 97.
See R. Peace, The Enigma of Gogol (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 143.
This and subsequent translations are from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk and Other Stories, translated with an introduction and notes by D. McDuff (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1988).
See V. Terras, The Young Dostoevsky (The Hague, Mouton, 1968), p. 246,
and V. V. Vinogradov, Izbrannye trudy: Poetika russkoi literatury (Moscow, 1976), pp. 174–5.
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© 1990 School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London
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Peace, R. (1990). ‘The Analytical Genius’: Bednye liudi and the Russian Prose Tradition. In: McMillin, A. (eds) From Pushkin to Palisandriia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21065-7_4
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