Information about the author:
Natalia A. Tarasova, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makarova Emb. 4, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8775-1434
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Abstract:
The work is devoted to the study of Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent in its textual, biographical, and intermediate aspects. The first paragraph contains the results of a textual study of the novel manuscripts. The work shows the connections of The Adolescent with the unfulfilled plan The Life of a Great Sinner, as well as with Pushkin and Lermontov motives that were important for Dostoevsky’s creative method during the work on the novel. The second paragraph through the analysis of the manuscripts identifies a prototype of one of the characters of The Adolescent, Darzan. The study reveals the biographical nature of this hero and shows how some facts of Dostoevsky’s biography influenced the development of this character and the artistic idea of the novel as a whole. The third paragraph examines the writer’s use of conventional signs that graphically reflect the content of the artistic idea, themes, and motifs in the handwritten text. The fourth paragraph is devoted to intertextual connections in the handwritten and printed texts of Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent using the example of the analysis of the allusion to Zhukovsky’s elegy A Country Churchyard and the specifics of its functioning in the context of the novel narrative. The fifth paragraph contains an analysis of a fragment of a draft autograph where Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop is mentioned. This part of the work investigates which translations of The Old Curiosity Shop could be known to Dostoevsky and how the themes and some scenes of Dickens’ novel were reflected in the draft and printed text of The Adolescent, where the motif of sunset acquires a special and independent meaning. The sixth paragraph analyzes the syncretic nature of the novel narrative, combining images and motifs that belong to different types of art. The analysis allows us to determine the features of the author’s perception of religious images in European painting and architecture and their significance in The Adolescent. In the seventh paragraph, the study of intermediate relations is carried out by looking at the interaction of musical and literary motives in the novel. An example of such interaction in the manuscripts of The Adolescent is Trishatov’s “musical fantasy”, which reflects the author’s interpretation of Charles Gounod’s opera Faust and Goethe’s tragedy, the traditions of Russian sacred music and church worship.