According to Bakhtin, this classical genre reveals here (in its traditional form of “conversations in the realm of the dead“) “its greatest potential, realizes its maximum“: “carnivalesque underworld,” a “rather motley crew of corpses,” their vulgarity and their scandals, the “awareness of a complete absence of responsibility, open graveyard eroticism, laughter in die coffins” and so on (138-41). Mikhail Bakhtin, in his influential aesthetic reading of this story, presented it as a sort of authorial manifesto: the “menippea almost in the strict ancient sense of the term.” Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. Google Scholar This list is by no means complete.Ħ. Petersburg, 1908) Google Scholar Chizhevskii, D., “ Neizvestnyi Gogol',” Novyi zhurnal 27 ( 1951): 126-58 Google Scholar Berry, Thomas E., Spiritualism in Tsarist Society and Literature ( Baltimore, 1985) Google Scholar Vaiskopf, Mikhail, Siuzhet Gogol'ia ( Moscow, 1993) Google Scholar Carlson, Maria, “ No Religion Higher Than Truth“: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922 ( Princeton, 1993) Google Scholar Leighton, Lauren G., The Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature: Decembrism and Freemasonry ( University Park, 1994) Google Scholar Bogomolov, Nikolai, Russkaia literatura nachala XX veka i okkul'tizm: Issledovaniia i materialy ( Moscow, 2000) Google Scholar Obatnin, Gennadii, Ivanov-mistik: Okkul'tnye motivy v poezii iproze Viacheslava Ivanova ( Moscow, 2000) Google Scholar and Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, ed., The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture ( Ithaca, 1997). Pisatel’ ( Moscow, 1913) Google Scholar Gershenzon, Mikhail, P. Vinitsky also proposes that the comic narrator of “Bobok” can be seen as a literary mask of Dostoevskii himself, who employs philosophical irony as a means of conveying a metaphysical message in the age of positivism and disbelief.ġ. I will never walk through a graveyard the same way.In addition to examining the ideological and artistic origins of Fedor Dostoevskii's portrayal of the underworld in his short “cemetery story” “Bobok” (1873), Ilya Vinitsky probes the theosophical context of Dostoevskii's “fantastic realism.” Vinitsky considers this story a programmatic “theosophical menippea” that artistically “voices” and “tests” Emanuel Swedenborgs doctrine of posthumous self-exposure of the wicked souls who are no longer restrained by “fear of the law, of the loss of reputation, of honor, and of life” and laugh shamelessly “at honesty and justice.” Vinitsky argues that Dostoevskii was interested in Swedenborg's spiritual psychologism as an epistemological method and contends that Swedenborg's interpretation of devils as former humans, with their “earthly” consciousness, inner sufferings, and memories, perfectly corresponded to Dostoevskii's symbolic anthropology. I don’t want to go into too much detail and give it away, but, wowee, I loved the concept. Have you ever had the experience of fiction changing the way you see real life? Well, Bobok did it for me. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?” So much emotion that it felt like an epic tale, an opera, not a short story.Ī bitter sweet love story that will stay with me. Many poignantly beautiful, poetic passages. Then Nastenka’s long lost lodger returns. And although he promised not to fall in love with her, he cannot help but do exactly that… He helps her write letters to her love, whilst at the same time he thinks of little else but her. The pair find some solace in each other, meeting each night at the same place. Now, one year later, she awaits his promised return. Nastenka lived a sheltered life dominated by her grandmother, until a new lodger arrived, showed her attention and kindness (he gave her books!!!), took her heart, then left. Our narrator is a lonely dreamer, desperate for connection “…the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire…” When the rest of the Petersburg is sleeping or already set off to their summer dachas, a chance encounter between the wandering, solitary narrator and a crying young woman, Nastenka, sparks an intense four nights in which the characters reveal themselves to each other in dramatic monologues. White Nights, originally published in 1848, is a coming together of two lonely souls tinged with sadness. I’m new to short stories (and still pretty new to classics too if I’m honest), but I thoroughly enjoyed both. This pocket sized, one hundred odd page Penguin black classic included two Russian short stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: White Nights and Bobok. Guest post by do you read when you don’t have time to read?
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