The tradition of Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé in André Gide’s “Dostoevsky”

UDC 82.161.1(44)

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.5-22.122                           

Trykov Valery P.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor,

Professor of the World Literature Department

Moscow Pedagogical State University

e-mail: v.trykoff@yandex.ru

Usenok Dmitry D.,

PhD student of the World Literature Department

Moscow Pedagogical State University

e-mail: dmi.usenok@yandex.ru

In the article on the material of the book of the French writer André Gide (1869‒1951) “Dostoevsky” (1923), one of the essential issues of historical poetics is considered — “the role and boundaries of tradition in the process of personal creativity” (A.N. Veselovsky). The fact of Gide’s acquaintance with the book of E.-M. de Voguet “Russian Novel” (1886) is established, shown as the continuity of Gide in relation to Vogüé, and the controversy with him. The reasons for the discrepancy between Gide and Vogüé in the assessment of F.M. Dostoevsky are analyzed. It is concluded that, on the one hand, Gide, following Vogüé, praised the artistic discoveries of the Russian writer, saw in his personality and work a reflection of the “Russian soul”, and on the other hand, emphasized the question of the reasons for Dostoevsky’s “unreadness” in the West, the difficulties of his perception. Gide, unlike Vogüé, saw in the complexity of Dostoevsky’s novels not “entanglement” and the lack of artistic logic and a sense of proportion, but a manifestation of “sincerity”, understood by Gide as following his own feelings, and not ready-made formulas, as an incessant search for truth, the acquisition of which is possible only as a result of self-realization and self-deepening.The influence of modernist aesthetics, in particular M. Proust, on the construction of the image of Dostoevsky in the book of Gide is noted.

Keywords: tradition, Russian literature, reception, “Russian soul”, Dostoevsky.

References

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