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 A.M.GORKY INSTITUTE OF WORLD LITERATURE
OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

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ISSN 2619-0311 (Print)
ISSN 2712-8512 (Online)

Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin Speech” as the Archetext of English Pushkin Studies of the 20th Century

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  • Author: Svetlana B. Koroleva
  • Information about the author:

    DSc in Philology, Director of the International Research Laboratory “Basic and Applied Aspects of Cultural Identification,” Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Minina St., 31 A, 603155 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

    https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7587-9027

    E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Funding Sources:

    The research was carried out at the LUNN with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 24-28-00706 “Pushkin in the Western European Canon of Russian Literature: Dynamics and Options for Understanding (1920–1960s)” (https://rscf.ru/project/24-28-00706/).
  • For citation:

    Koroleva, S.B. “Dostoevsky’s ‘Pushkin Speech’ as the Archetext of English Pushkin Studies of the 20th Century.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 1 (29), 2025, pp. 197–219. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-1-197-219
  • Received: 01 Dec. 2024
  • Approved after reviewing: 26 Dec. 2024
  • Published: 25 Mar. 2025
  • Issue: 2025 no. 1 (29)
  • Department: DOSTOEVSKY IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES
  • Pages: 197-219
  • DOI: Visit Website
  • EDN:

    https://elibrary.ru/UNIZKY
  • UDK: 821.161.1.0+821.111.0
  • BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)+83.3(4Вел)
  • Publication Type: Research Article
  • Keywords: F. Dostoevsky, “Pushkin Speech,” English Pushkin studies, reception of Dostoevsky in England, archetexte, imagological context, J.M. Murry, M. Baring, Y. Lavrin, J. Bayley.
  • Abstract: The article highlights the problem of the influence of Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin Speech” on the development of English Pushkin studies in the period from the 1910s to the 1960s. It is argued that this speech became an archetext for English works on Pushkin, that is, a text to which the common vector of interpreting Pushkin’s work largely originated. It is demonstrated that the significance of the “Pushkin Speech” for the English intellectuals’ ideas about Pushkin’s works was determined by the formation in England in the 1920s and 1930s of the “cult of Dostoevsky” in the context of positive attention to everything Russian as simultaneously exotic, primitively spiritual, alien – and as well as close to English culture, mystical and Christian, forgotten over the centuries. It is determined that in English works on Pushkin written during this period, Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin Speech” is invariably used as an authoritative and key characteristic of the poet’s work. It is argued that the combination of the characteristics “national” and “omni-human,” borrowed from Dostoevsky, against the background of ideas about the religiosity of the Russian national consciousness and sympathetic humanity as the highest truth of the Russian person, acted as a special sign of Russianness. It is concluded that the imagological context associated with the perception of Russia and the Russian people was closely intertwined in the English consciousness of that time with aesthetic and political contexts, which gave rise, among other things, to various ways of understanding Pushkin’s work through the prism of the “Pushkin Speech.” The interpretative field of perceiving Pushkin’s work in the vector of this text among English Pushkin scholars included the association of the realism of Pushkin’s poetry with “common sense” of the Russian people (M. Baring); the concept of Pushkin’s works as a living connection between Russian and European cultures, and Dostoevsky’s idea about “universal unity” – as thoughts about the aspiration of Russian culture to European (Ya. Lavrin); and also, recognition of the highest degree of spiritual maturity in Russian literature, beginning with Pushkin (R. Hare).

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