Dostoevsky's Democracy
Introduction
Can something that has no image appear as an image? [Mozhet li
mereshchit'sia v obraze to, chto ne imeet obraza?]
-F. M. Dostoevskii, The Idiot
The Image of the Beast
Just as he was preparing to write the penultimate book of his last novel,
The Brothers Karamazov, and suffering from poor health, F. M. Dostoevsky
received an invitation to address the Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature at their June 1880 celebration of the poet Alexander Pushkin.
The significance of this three-day event was by no means confined to what
it purported to be: an occasion to bring together the nation's most
prominent writers, artists, actors, journalists, editors, and
intellectuals to pay tribute to a celebrated poet of an earlier
generation. Instead, as with all such events in nineteenth-century Russia
where there was no question of freedom of expression, the literary fête
would also provide a platform for public discussion of urgent social and
political matters in the guise of literary commentary and interpretation.
This occasion, however, wa ... read full excerpt from Dostoevsky's Democracy ebook
