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BROWN UNIVERSITY SLAVIC REPRINT IV
O DOSTOEVSKOM STAT’I
P. M. BlTSILLI V. L. K omarovich lu . T ynianov S. I. G essen Introduction by D onald F anger /«
Providence, Rhode Island B rown U niversity P ress 1966
Copyright © 1966 by Brown University All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-23779
C O N T EN T S INTRODUCTION
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
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K VOPROSU O VNUTRENNEI FORM E ROMANA d o sto ev sk o g o iu n o s t ’ d o s t o e v s k o g o
“ m ir o v a ia
P. M. Bitsilli V. L. Komarovich
g a r m o n iia ”
1 73
d o sto ev sk o g o
V. L. Komarovich
117
DOSTOEVSKII I GOGOL’: K TEORRI PARODII
Iu. Tynianov
151
TRAGEDIA DOBRA V “ b RAT’IAKH KARAMAZOVYKH” d o sto ev sk o g o
S. I. Gessen
197
INTRODUCTION This volume represents a new departure for the Brown University Slavic Reprint Series, whose purpose remains to make generally available, again or for the first time, some of the best works of Russian criticism—works that too often are to be found only in a handful of large libraries. Until now, this rescue operation has been confined to critical monographs; but the gratifying spread of such reprinting projects, here and in Europe, seems by now to promise that the great majority of the most valuable books will gradually be restored to currency. This heartening development, however, has so far left one great field untouched. For if few libraries outside Russia can be expected to contain all of the best books on a given writer, how much truer this must be of uncollected critical articles. The library that has Russkaia Mysl’ may not have Byloe; the library that has Sovremennyia Zapiski may not have the Godishnik of Sofia University, or the short-lived A tenei. And yet the student of any single writer or prob lem is likely to find that he needs all of these or some similar spec trum of sources very difficult of access. It is to supply this need that the Slavic Reprint Series turns with this issue to the reprinting of shorter works—essays and articles—on a series of important writers and themes. The rationale for such a turn —service to students and scholars of Russian literature—explains why these collections may, on occasion, differ in composition from comparable anthologies in English. Our chief criteria are excellence and rarity; stringently applied, they tend to produce miscellanies in the strictest sense. Articles, however excellent, will be ineligible for inclusion if they are available in print elsewhere; topics, however important, will go unrepresented if only work of less than the highest quality is available to represent them—or if work of a higher quality on some other topic is available to take precedence. In the case at hand five studies illuminate five important aspects of Dostoevsky’s work. The longest of them and the most general is Bitsilli’s brilliant attempt to characterize what he calls the “inner form’’ of Dostoev sky’s novels, to define, via the indices of language and structure, the essential nature of the Dostoevskian novel. The approach, though more disciplined, is not unlike Leontiev’s to Tolstoy; and a similar sensitivity to fictional art combines with deep erudition to producein the discussions of Dostoevsky’s lexicon, characterization, dramaticism, grotesquerie—a view that adjusts and synthesizes a number of hitherto partial insights with striking originality.
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Introduction
Komarovich’s two pieces, by contrast, straddle biography and creative work by treating the vexed problem of Dostoevsky’s early enthusiasm for utopian socialism and its continuing reflection in his work, long after the experience of Siberia had led him to re nounce most of its basic assumptions. The first essa