Duality of F.M. Dostoevsky: Russia and Europe in the “Diary of a Writer”

Abstract

The author examines the phenomenon of duality in the “Diary of a Writer” in the historical context and in the actual Russian journalism of the 70s. XIX century. The double idea of Dostoevsky as the basis of the metaphysical depths connects the literary and philosophical analysis of his prose. The author shows that the phenomenon of duality has an existential basis in the writer’s bi­ography: his experience of being sentenced to death, then replaced by Siberian penal servitude; after his release, he traveled to Europe and returned to St. Pe­tersburg. The “inner soil” of duality, personally experienced and requiring the writer to comprehend, took shape by the mid-70s. as an idea of Russia’s closest leadership among European countries. Criticizing bourgeois Europe, Dosto­evsky was sure that Russia will always need European culture. The phenome­non of duality is shown in Dostoevsky’s construction of a double composition of his “Diary”, as well as in the “conversational” basis of the text, built on the letters of readers and used by the writer in an internal dialogue with both the reader and himself, also in the language markers “we” and “they”. The problem of Russian-European “double” ties runs through the entire journalism of Dosto­evsky, defining his historiosophical concept, attitude to faith, understanding of the moral choice of man.