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Abstract:

The article examines Dostoevsky’s creative method, showing how the meaning of its works assumes a strong connection with his biography. When this connection is not considered, our understanding of Dostoevsky’s texts may be incomplete or even mistaken. Commentaries usually list a variety of external stimuli (literary, artistic, Biblical, philosophic, et al.), thus leading the reader to think that Dostoevsky either took an utterly pluralistic stance or was engaged in constant selfobjection, as he always shows each worldview thoroughly and in detail. The personal experience of the author, who covered the life path of each of his characters, cement the entire work into a unified statement. However, Dostoevsky never transposes it directly into his novels and he never entrusts it directly to one character. His experience is always reinterpreted, and only understanding the author’s position towards it in the moment of writing the novel we can properly comprehend the authorial intentions and ideas. This rule can be applied both to real-life experiences, and the experiences he gained by reading and interpreting authors who were of crucial importance for him and whose works can be regarded as elements of his biography (for instance, Belinsky’s correspondence with Gogol or Schiller’s works). This feature of Dostoevsky’s creative method is particularly evident in his final work, The Brothers Karamazov.