The Resistance of Memory in Stavorgin’s “Confession”

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Author: Viktor M. Dimitriev
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Ph.D. in Philology, Senior Lecturer, National Research University Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, 123 Griboedov Canal emb., Saint Petersburg 190000, Russia, Research Assistant, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), 4 Makarov emb., Saint Petersburg 199034, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2801-3511

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For citation:

Dimitriev, V.M. “The Resistance of Memory in Stavrogin’s ‘Confession’.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 1 (13), 2021, pp. 82-106. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2021-1-82-105
Received: 19 Aug. 2020
Published: 25 Mar. 2021
Issue: 2021 no. 1(13)
Department: HERMENEUTICS. SLOW READING
Pages: 82-105
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2021-1-82-105
UDK: 821.161.1.0
BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)
Keywords: Dostoevsky, poetics, “At Tikhon’s”, confession, memory, vision
Abstract: The article investigates the resistance of memory as a typical narration technique in Dostoevsky’s works, especially in confessional texts. The attention is focused on a fragment of the unpublished chapter “At Tikhon’s” from an unrealized version of the novel The Possessed: Stavrogin bought a photograph of “one girl”, which he perceives as a photograph of Matryosha herself. The article attempts to explain how Stavrogin organizes memories in his “confession” and why the cases of memory aberrations become both the constructive elements of the genre of literary confession and an original “tool” for the protagonist’s self-knowledge. The illustrative memory aberration is considered here in connection with the problems of narration, the psychology of the protagonist, and the visual forms of representation.

Acknowledgements: The reported study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project no. 18-012-90002, “Problems of textual criticism and poetics of Dostoevsky’s novels: text as a source and an object of interpretation”

 

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