“A friend of writers” Mikhail Yazykov and Fedor Dostoevsky: history of relationship in letters, attribution, commentary

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Yazykov was not a writer, but he deserved well of Russian literature. This man was a friend and an assistant of talented writers that differed in characters and outlook, such as Ivan Panaev, Vissarion Belinsky, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Alexander Herzen, Nikolay Ogarev, etc. Meanwhile, the scarce biographical data on his personality, available today, contain some mistakes (he is believed to have occupied an office of his brother Pavel Yazykov, director of the Imperial Glass Factory, etc.). The acquaintance of Fedor Dostoevsky with Mikhail Yazykov took place in the 1840s. The first mention of which appears in letters of the writer to his brother Mikhail in 1846. The recollection of one of their meetings on 1846–1847 Yazykov conveyed in his letter to the editors of the “Novoe Vremya” (1881. No. 1799), where he testified that the writer suffered from a mild form of epilepsy even before the period of hard labor in exile. Since the 1870s relations between Dostoevsky and Yazykov changed into friendship that lasted until the end of the writer’s life, as evidenced by their correspondence. So far, we have got acquainted with one letter of Dostoevsky to Yazykov and with seven letters of Yazykov to the writer. This article reveals new facts of the biography of Mikhail Yazykov, and what is more, represents the attribution of a letter to Dostoevsky dated back to October 14th, 1876, whose author was not identified before. This is the eighth letter of Mikhail Yazykov to the author of “A Writer’s Diary”. The appendix to the article contains the published correspondence between Dostoevsky and Yazykov and the letters of Nikolay Alfimov to Dostoevsky and of Anna Butkevich to Mikhail Yazykov, and the letter to the editors of the “Novoe Vremya” is reissued here.