№ 2, 2023 year

The article is devoted to the problems of studying Dostoevsky’s calligraphy. The first paragraph discusses the historical and theoretical aspects of handwriting studies, as well as its main definitions that are important for the analysis of Dostoevsky’s handwriting. When studying the author’s calligraphic sketches, the reasons and conditions for their appearance are important, including the sources that Dostoevsky could use when forming his idea of calligraphic writing and mastering the art of calligraphy. In accordance with this task, an episode of the novel “Idiot” in which Prince Myshkin talks about calligraphy is analyzed in the second paragraph of the article. The information about the historical varieties of calligraphic handwriting is provided, and, according to the novel descriptions, samples of Old Russian writing and letters of Modern times from book sources, including Western European and Russian manuals on cursive and penmanship of the 18th — 19th centuries, are exhibited. The third paragraph analyzes the material of the writer’s workbooks, which contain numerous examples of his own calligraphic exercises, often distinguished by the individualized nature of the writings. The article raises the question of identifying the calligraphic handwriting in Dostoevsky’s notes. The analysis shows that the notes identified as calligraphy have significant differences in their graphic characteristics. Noncalligraphic entries may mistakenly qualify as calligraphy. Thus, when examining handwritten material, it is necessary to develop more precise criteria for the scientific description of Dostoevsky’s calligraphy and similar typefaces, to determine the gradation of their types, which depends on the graphic characteristics of notes and the degree of their similarity to the calligraphic samples.Dostoevsky, handwritten heritage, textual studies, handwriting, inscriptions, cursive, calligraphy, The Idiot

The article is devoted to a particular issue of artistic topography of the most St. Petersburg work of Russian literature — “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky. Using address books, atlases, and other reference literature of the 19th century, it traces the routes of the novel’s main hero Rodion Raskolnikov in relation to the urban realities of the Northern capital in the mid-1860s. The author of the article focuses on Raskolnikov’s meetings with Zametov in the Crystal Palace tavern and with Svidrigailov in an unnamed tavern on —sky Prospekt “thirty or forty steps from Sennaya” Square, as well as real St. Petersburg taverns — “Palais de Cristal” and “Sukharevka”, which served as prototypes for the places where the above-named episodes of the novel are played out. The article revises the traditional view, which already has a century-old tradition, according to which the meetings of the protagonist with Zametov and Svidrigailov took place in the same tavern on Obukhovsky (now Moskovsky) Prospekt. The Svidrigailovsky tavern is identified in the article with the real Sukharevka, vividly depicted in the novel by Vs. Krestovsky “Petersburg Slums” (1864–1867), and the “Crystal Palace” in the novel — with a tavern at the “Palais de Cristal” hotel on the corner of Sadovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt (a long-established fact, which, however, was subjected to skepticism in the traditional approach). For the first time, there was a solid factual basis for the existence on Obukhovsky Prospekt of the “Palais de Cristal” café, which was homonymous with the hotel on Sadovaya and opened in 1874, eight years after the writing of Dostoevsky’s novel, and which obscured the real picture of the artistic topography of “Crime and Punishment”.F. M. Dostoevsky, Vs. Krestovsky, St. Petersburg, Crime and Punishment, artistic topography, tavern, tavern, Palais de Cristal, Crystal Palace, Vyazemskaya Lavra, Sukharevka

The article presents the integrated results of the corpus analysis and interpretation of the terminological dictionary from 700 articles published in the “Problems of Historical Poetics” journal from 1990 to 2021 Based on this data and taking into account the rich lexicographic tradition that reflects the author’s original or thematic terminology — from Antony Khrapovitsky’s “Dictionary to the works of Dostoevsky” (1921) to recent thesaurus-type dictionaries, a thesaurus of the gospel text by F. M. Dostoevsky is compiled. It is a conceptual apparatus that representatively reflects the current state of the study of the writer’s gospel text using terms and concepts that belong to the spheres of general historical poetics and ethnopoetics, theology and philosophy. Dictionary entries devoted to such key concepts of Russian literary criticism of the 21st century as “historical poetics,” “ethnopoetics,” “gospel text,” etc. are given as illustrative examples. The article concludes that this dictionary has promising applied value for solving educational and scientific problems.Dostoevsky, gospel text, corpus analysis, interpretation, terminology, thesaurus dictionary, dictionary entries

The medical topic in Dostoevsky's life and work is diverse, multifaceted and autobiographical. Family, everyday life, observations, analysis of symptoms of diseases formed the personal and creative experience of the future author. Dostoevsky, having an analytical mindset, was deeply interested in medical issues, which manifested itself in his work, where he described the illnesses of his heroes with factual accuracy. The writer's illness was a factor of criticism and literary creativity. In critical literature, it is mainly discussed in the biographical aspect: the influence of epilepsy affects the writer's work, the pathography of the author and the heroes of his works is studied, their mental illnesses are analyzed. What was Dostoevsky's epilepsy like? did she help or hinder his creativity? was it evidence of his genius or degeneracy? — critics who are interested in the psychiatric diseases of genius are trying to answer these questions. In this article, the systematization of well-known and little-known evidence of Dostoevsky's diseases is carried out, the writer's attitude to medicine is presented, the features of the diagnosis of his diseases are considered, the artistic embodiment of the diseases of his heroes is analyzed, research prospects are outlined.Dostoevsky, Dostoevskys, medicine, disease, epilepsy, consumption, pathography, Novoe Vremya, Suvorin, Rizenkampf, Yanovsky, memoirs

Alexander Mikhailovich Lamovsky (Lomovsky), a well-known mathematics teacher in Moscow and the founder of the Russian Hunting Club, has been interacting with the Dostoevsky family for many years. He was a friend of F. M. Dostoevsky at L. I. Chermak’s boarding school. In the 1830s and 1840s Lamovsky also taught mathematics to all the Dostoevsky brothers; he continued to communicate with Fyodor Mikhailovich, having become one of the leading teachers at the Konstantinovsky Land-Surveying Institute. The article presents the data from A. M. Lamovsky’s formulary list dated April 27, 1850, as well as information about him and his family from little-known essays, obituaries and archival documents. These materials made it possible to describe the pedagogical and official activities of A. M. Lamovsky, to determine the attitude towards him not only of people close to him, but also of pupils and teachers of the Land-Surveying Institute. Thanks to his high professionalism, he became the right-hand man of both A. L. Apukhtin (the director of the Konstantinovsky Land-Surveying Institute) and M. N. Muravyev, a trustee of this Institution. Noting Lamovsky’s professional and public achievements, the authors of the article pointed out that Lamovsky became one of the few friends of Dostoevsky at the Chermak boarding school with whom the writer met later on in life: they may have seen each other in the 1860s and 1870s during Dostoevsky’s stay in Moscow. The writer noted the surname “Lamovsky” in his notebook of 1862–1864, intending to use his friend’s hunting story “about quails” in the story “The Double,” but did not do it due to a lack of time for a cardinal revision of the work. This untold story has remained a mystery in Dostoevsky’s biography and creative history.Dostoevsky, A. P. Ivanov, A. L. Apukhtin, M. N. Muravyov, A. M. Lamovsky, Konstantinovsky Land-Surveying Institute, Moscow Dostoevsky, formulary list, boarding house of L. I. Chermak, Moscow Orphanage, Moscow Educational Home, teacher, inspector

The article presents the results of archival research devoted to the study of the Moscow branch of the family tree of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. The object of consideration was the generation of the grandchildren of the grandfather of the writer Fyodor Timofeevich Nechaev: the Dostoevskys (the children of Maria, his daughter from his first marriage), the Shers and the Stavrovskys (the children of the daughters of F. T. Nechaev from his second marriage — Olga and Ekaterina). Biographical data about the relatives and cousins of F. M. Dostoevsky were extracted from parish and consistory metric books stored in the Central State Archive of the City of Moscow. With a few exceptions (Mikhail, Andrey), metric records of the birth of the writer's siblings are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time; in some cases, archival documents allowed correcting inaccuracies that were present in the biographical literature about Dostoevsky. Of the thirteen Sher brothers and sisters, male and female cousins of the writer, the names of seven were not previously mentioned even in the fundamental “Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevskys” (2012). Of the seven Stavrovsky brothers and sisters, two were also named for the first time. Metric birth records are provided for all twenty of these relatives of Dostoevsky; for those who died in infancy, there are also death records. In four cases, the article published metric records of the wedding of the writer’s male and female cousins. In conclusion, the importance of biographical information about the Shers and the Stavrovskys is emphasized for the study of such an important event in the life of F. M. Dostoevsky in the 1870s, as was the litigation over the inheritance of A. F. Kumanina, the writer's mother's sister and half-sister of Olga Sher and Ekaterina Stavrovskaya (the so-called “the Kumanin heritage case”).family tree, F. T. Nechaev, Dostoevsky, Sher, Stavrovsky, Central State Archive of the City of Moscow, Church records, Kumanin heritage, M. V. Volotskoy, The Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevsky, The Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevskys

The summer months of 1832–1836, spent by F. M. Dostoevsky as a child in his parents’ Darovoe estate in the Kashirsky district of Tula province, left, by the writer's own admission, “the deepest and strongest impression for the rest of his life.” One of these impressions is the way of life, traditions, and character of the Russian people. The Russian Geographical Society (RGO) archive document “Information About the Ordinary Russian People of Tula Province in Kashirsky District”, compiled by the priest of the Holy Dukhovsky church of Monogarovo village P. V. Proferansov (1849), contains an ethnographic description of the peasants of the villages of Monogarovo, Darovoe, Cheremoshnya, Komovo, Nazar’yevo — parish of the Holy Dukhovsky temple. These documentary data provide an idea not only about the appearance, language, dwelling, rituals and traditions of the people, but also about the national character, as the future writer learned it in his youth. The introduction into scientific circulation of new materials on the history of the Dostoevskys’ Darovoe estate will allow us to more comprehensively present the circumstances of the formation of the character and worldview of the writer. Consideration of the archival materials of the Russian Geographical Society in the context of the “folk” idea of F. M. Dostoevsky, formulated by him in the “A Writer’s Diary”, testifies to the objectivity of his position in the “folk” question and the undoubted influence of early impressions of rural childhood on the ideological and artistic structure of works.F. M. Dostoevsky, early biography of the writer, Darovoe estate, Kashirsky district of Tula province, Russian Geographical Society, archive, ethnographic description, Russian people, Monogarovo village, P. V. Proferansov

The article considered three versions of N. N. Strakhov’s essay on the Pushkin Celebration of June 6–8, 1880 and Dostoevsky’s Speech delivered there. A comparative analysis of the texts published in 1880, 1883 and 1888 reveals the evolution of their author’s consciousness and fills in the existing gap in the history of his attitude to Dostoevsky, which has led to the infamous letter to Tolstoy dated November 28, 1883. According to Strakhov, the artistic flair manifested in Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin speech”, originates directly in God, whose mouthpiece the artist becomes aside from his own earthly personality, which does not only lack a connection with the meanings being transmitted, but may also directly contradict them. This is the ideological ground (combined with personal antipathy) on which the “aversion” to Dostoevsky ripens. As he revises his essay, Strakhov arrives increasingly closer to explaining the triumph of “Pushkin’s speech” solely as a victory of the “party,” and ultimately explains it by the insignificance of the event itself. The article draws a conclusion on the ambivalent nature of Strakhov’s thinking. One and the same phenomenon — in this case, Dostoevsky’s “conciliatory attitude” — is “exaggerated” by the critic alternately in a positive and in a negative sense. In regard to the significance of “Pushkin’s speech” in the history of Russian culture, Strakhov moves from unconditional approval to destructive doubt (from I. Aksakov to K. Leontiev).N. N. Strakhov, Pushkin’s speech, F. M. Dostoevsky, interpretation, memoirs, literary criticism, polemic, biography, personality