“Embroidery on Someone Else’s Canvas”: Dostoevsky as Co-Author of the “Answer to a Protest”

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Author: Alexander V. Otlivanchik

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Specialist, Web Laboratory, Petrozavodsk State University, 33 Lenin av., 185910 Petrozavodsk, Russia.

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Otlivanchik A.V. “‘Embroidery on Someone Else’s Canvas’: Dostoevsky as Co-Author of the ‘Answer to a Protest’.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 2 (14), 2021, pp. 151-171. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2021-2-151-171

Received: 11 Jan. 2021

Published: 25 Jun. 2021

Issue: 2021 no. 2(14)

Department: TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Pages: 151-171

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2021-2-151-171

UDK: 801.73

BBK: 84(2Рос=Рус)1

Keywords: “Grazhdanin” (“The Citizen”), V.P. Meshchersky, “Answer to a Protest”, editing, co-authorship, attribution, fee list, stylistic analysis.

Abstract: The article is dedicated to the question on the authorship of the “Answer to a Protest” which is adjacent to the cycle of essays by V.P. Meshchersky “Letters of a Freethinker” in the weekly journal “Grazhdanin” (“The Citizen”). The attributions of the “Answer to a Protest” undertaken by V.A. Viktorovich (Dostoevsky’s authorship hypothesis) and B.V. Fedorenko (Meshchersky’s authorship hypothesis) are compared and critically examined. The documentary sources for the attribution of the article are analyzed: the fee list of the journal “Grazhdanin”, Meshchersky’s letter to Dostoevsky dated August 19, 1873, Dostoevsky’s testimony in the published note to the “Answer to a Protest”, etc. In the text of the “Answer to a Protest” lexical units and syntactic constructions are typical for both Meshchersky’s and Dostoevsky’s publications, and equally inherent in the texts of both possible authors. The analysis of the content and style of the article (with the involvement of documentary sources) allows us to consider it as the result of a co-authorship between Dostoevsky and Meshchersky, arising from edits and additions made by the editor of the journal “Grazhdanin” on the original author’s manuscript.

Acknowledgments: The reported study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project no. 18-012-90029, “Problems of textology of Dostoevsky’s journalism (1873–1881)”.

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