Dostoevsky in pre-revolutionary encyclopedias: methodological problems of biographical image analysis

The article describes a number of methodological problems in the study of Dostoevsky’s biographical narrative and his receptive tradition as a whole: the subjectivity of traditional research approaches, the receptive conflict between the biographical myth and negative “doubles” of the writer, the contradictions of mass and individual perception. The author, in search of the most common elements of Dostoevsky’s biographical narrative, turns to pre- revolutionary encyclopaedic articles about the writer. It is presumed that the genre itself, in which the biographical narrative exists here, excludes subjective distortions of the image, represents Dostoevsky in the most generalized, “common” version. This image of Dostoevsky is emphasized literary-centered, at the same time grotesquely simplified and equipped with a parodying double. At the same time, the structure of these articles is inherently contradictory: it faces the author’s subjective assessment, which penetrates even into informational and encyclopedic editions, and the logic of the formation and development of Dostoevsky’s image in the space of the “cultural unconscious”. In other words, the mythological perception of the writer cannot be defeated by any bright critical reflection, nor by the official fixation and propaganda of the historical and literary canon. Finally, the mythological image of the writer, unconsciously created by the mass reader, is in some aspects more dependent on the logic of Dostoevsky’s life and literary text, and therefore sometimes more accurate.