“These Are Not Only Poems …”: some marginal notes in the letter of F. M. Dostoevsky to A. N. Maikov, dated on May 15 (27), 1869

In his letter from Florence dated on 15th (27) May, 1869, F. M. Dostoevsky explains to Apollon Maikov a whole series of his ideas about both poetics and ideology. Some parts of the letter are devoted to the poetry and poetic genres, the fundamental pivotal points in Russian history and the problems of its explanation, atheism and Christianity which became a new centre of the writer’s thoughts at that time. The article focuses on the concept of poetry that appears in the letter and, particularly, on the interpretation by Dostoevsky of the narrative and didactic character of the genre of “poem”. Another important aspect of the analysis related to the previous one, concerns the study of a new narrative technique elaborated by Dostoevsky and consisting in a “quasi-artistical” description of the poetical writings. Dostoevsky never became a poet, but he could create poetical works in the same manner as his character Ivan Karamazov did adapting the subject of the “poem” about the Great Inquisitor. The originality of this approach is explained by the way of an artistic elaboration of the ideas and concepts inherent to Dostoevsky. In his letter to Maikov, as well as in Ivan’s narration of the “poem” about the Great Inquisitor to Alyosha, there are seen the techniques of an extremely reduced, allusive manner of a creative process elaborated by Dostoevsky in his preparatory notebooks.