Dostoevsky and Poe: Conceptions of the Fantastic

We could even generalize with some accuracy and say that if the caprice in Poe's story exists as an external plot-related literary device, then the characters are sane. Such cases often the revelation of rational behavior on the part protagonist and/or a natural, external cause for seemingly impossible events (Dupin, Legrand, the narrator of "Thou Art The Man," etc.). On the other hand, if the caprice exists internally, that is, within the minds or souls of Poe's characters, their doom is generally guaranteed (see "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "Berenice," etc.)

Poe's narrator's role in this ironic downfall, as well as the "capricious" practice (as Burnett would say) of keeping the reader in the dark in order to create a sense of the fantastic, in which a supernatural occurrence is later revealed to have a material cause, are both evident in "Thou Art the Man." Indeed Burnett's capriciousness is evident from the first lines of the story: "I WILL now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will expound to you- as I alone can- the secret of the enginery that affected the Rattleborough miracle- the one, the true, the admitted, the undisputed, the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to infidelity among the Rattleburghers and converted to the orthodoxy of the grandames all the carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before" ("Thou Art the Man").

The narrator sets himself the task of demystifying a supernatural event and one that has left a great deal of superstition in its wake. In the beginning of the narrative, the personage of Charles Goodfellow, whose very name is treated with great irony, is portrayed as the epitome of a good fellow, but in such saccharine terms, that any reader familiar with Poe's works, is immediately put on guard. The irony reaches its Poesque conclusion when Goodfellow's favorite vice--his gluttony for wine--becomes the means of his downfall. The narrator hides the corpse of Mr. Goodfellow's "best friend," whom he murdered for money, and contrived by means of pushing a whalebone down the corps's throat so that the body will sit up violently upon the opening of the cask containing the wine in full view of the assembled party. The narrator, who happens to be a skilled ventriloquist, then creates the impression that the corpse accuses Mr. Goodfellow of murder by saying, "Thou art the man." Mr. Goodfellow summarily gives a full confession (as so many of Poe's murderers end up doing) and dies on the spot out of shock and guilt. Thus Poe's mirror justice, which we have had cause to observe in relation to "William Wilson" The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and which permeates his other works including "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" in which the two narrators are left to be executed for having committed homicides, implicitly in the case of the former, and explicitly in the case of the latter story.

Of course, given the nature of this inquiry, we must ask ourselves what, if any, relation "Thou Art the Man" may have to Dostoevsky's work, apart from its being a striking example of Poe's "material" and "capricious" fantastic, which Dostoevsky wrote about in his introduction to Poe, and in which there is a rational and material explanation for a seemingly supernatural occurrence, whose effect is created by leaving the readers in the dark about its operation until the end of the story.

Dostoevsky's introduction to "A Gentle Creature" defines the short story as fantastic for reasons that correspond to his claims about Poe's fantastic style. We recall that Dostoevsky wrote in his "Introduction to Three Stories by Edgar Poe," Его произведения нельзя прямо причислить к фантастическим; если он и фантастичен, то, так сказать, внешним образом." «Время», 1861, том I, № 1, с. 230. In "A Gentle Creature," which bears the subtitle "A Fantastic Tale," Dostoevsky posits a material condition that enables him, as a writer, to portray the innermost thoughts and emotions of his main character. The material condition is the imagined presence on the scene of a stenograph to record all of the narrator's thoughts, as he conducts a dialogue with himself:

"Я озаглавил его "фантастическим", тогда как считаю его сам в высшей степени реальным. Но фантастическое тут есть действительно, и именно в самой форме рассказа, что и нахожу нужным пояснить предварительно.

Дело в том, что это не рассказ и не записки. Представьте себе мужа, у которого лежит на столе жена, самоубийца, несколько часов перед тем выбросившаяся из окошка. Он в смятении и еще не успел собрать своих мыслей. Он ходит по своим комнатам и старается осмыслить случившееся, "собрать свои мысли в точку". Притом это закоренелый ипохондрик, из тех, что говорят сами с собою. Вот он и говорит сам с собой, рассказывает дело, уясняет себе его. Несмотря на кажущуюся последовательность речи, он несколько раз противуречит себе, и в логике и в чувствах. Он и оправдывает себя, и обвиняет ее, и пускается в посторонние разъяснения: тут и грубость мысли и сердца, тут и глубокое чувство. Мало-помалу он действительно уясняет себе дело и собирает "мысли в точку". Ряд вызванных им воспоминаний неотразимо приводит его наконец к правде; правда неотразимо возвышает его ум и сердце. К концу даже тон рассказа изменяется сравнительно с беспорядочным началом его. Истина открывается несчастному довольно ясно и определительно, по крайней мере для него самого.

Вот тема. Конечно, процесс рассказа продолжается несколько часов, с урывками и перемежками и в форме сбивчивой: то он говорит сам себе, то обращается как бы к невидимому слушателю, к какому-то судье. Да так всегда и бывает в действительности. Если б мог подслушать его и всё записать за ним стенограф, то вышло бы несколько шершавее, необделаннее, чем представлено у меня, но, сколько мне кажется, психологический порядок, может быть, и остался бы тот же самый. Вот это предположение о записавшем всё стенографе (после которого я обделал бы записанное) и есть то, что я называю в этом рассказе фантастическим. Но отчасти подобное уже не раз допускалось в искусстве: Виктор Гюго, например, в своем шедевре "Последний день приговоренного к смертной казни" употребил почти такой же прием и хоть и не вывел стенографа, но допустил еще большую неправдоподобность, предположив, что приговоренный к казни может(и имеет время) вести записки не только в последний день свой, но даже в последний час и буквально в последнюю минуту. Но не допусти он этой фантазии, не существовало бы и самого произведения - самого реальнейшего и самого правдивейшего произведения из всех им написанных." Ф.М. Достоевский  Собр. соч. в 15 тт. Т. 13, С. 340.

As we see, "A Gentle Creature" is another example, albeit a specific one, of Dostoevsky's fascination with achieving a higher realism through recourse to the fantastic. Moreover, the overall structure is that of a confession, wherein the narrator--whose most intimate thoughts and feelings are revealed by the "fantastic" stenograph device--arrives at the immutable conclusion that he effectively is responsible for his wife's suicide. We in no way wish to suggest that Poe's tale "Thou Art the Man" served as inspiration for "A Gentle Creature." We merely wish to explore a certain similarity in narrative style, and more particularly the "fantastic" nature of the narration and the search for a material condition--if only a hypothetical one in Dostoevsky's case--that permits a more thorough elaboration of internal states of being, such as occurred, for example, when the murderer is scared to death (and dies of a guilty conscience as typically occurs in Poe's tales) by the appearance of the talking skeleton of his victim in "Thou Art the Man."

Moreover, while Dostoevsky mentions that Victor Hugo used a similar narrative device in his Le dernier jour d'un condamnй in order to portray the thoughts and emotions of a man right up until the last moment before his execution, it is worth noting that Poe used did something rather similar in his "The Black Cat" and "The Imp of the Perverse," at least in so far as he placed the moment of narration shortly before the execution of the narrator. However, Poe's tales were apparently written from prison the night before the respective executions, and not recorded in a fantastic fashion by a narrator who is addressing himself to an invisible judge, as often happens in reality, as Dostoevsky claims. This proves to a crucial difference, because the Poe's narrations are somewhat more mediated by their literary form, that is, they come across as less spontaneous and thus more susceptible, perhaps, to rhetoric from the narrator, as James W. Gargano demonstrates in his article "The Black Cat: Perverseness Reconsidered."

For Bakhtin, who considered "A Gentle Creature" to be Menippean, Dostoevsky's introduction to the tale, in which he discusses his fantastic device is "of extraordinary importance for understanding Dostoevsky's creative method: the "truth" at which the hero must and indeed ultimately does arrive through clarifying the events to himself, can essentially be for Dostoevsky only the truth of the hero's own consciousness. It cannot be neutral toward his self-consciousness. In the mouth of another person, a word or a definition identical in content would take on another meaning and tone, and would no longer be the truth. Only in the form of a confessional self-utterance, Dostoevsky maintained, could the final word about a person be given, a word truly adequate to him." Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 55.

Thus, according to Bakhtin, what is at stake with the fantastic stenograph is that it is a device that enables the creation of "a radically new authorial position with regard to the represented person." Ibid., 57. Bakhtin quotes the husband as saying, "I am a past master at speaking silently, I have spent a lifetime speaking in silence and I have lived through whole dramas by myself and in silence." Ibid., 154. As Bakhtin puts it, "The image of the hero is revealed precisely through this dialogic relationship to his own self. And he remains almost until the very end by himself, in utter loneliness and hopeless despair. He does not acknowledge any higher judgement on himself. He generalizes from his own loneliness, universalizes it as the ultimate loneliness of the entire human race." Ibid., 154.

Nonetheless, we would do well to remember that the husband of "A Gentle Creature" is addressing his confession to "to an invisible listener, some sort of judge," which suggests an authoritative other, whose moral authority presumably encourages the husband's soul searching as well as his confessions. Thus even this apparent revelation of the truth of the husband's own consciousness takes place within the form of a dialogue, even if only an imagined one (from the perspective of the husband). This is indeed, as Bakhtin describes it, a dialogic relationship with the narrator's own self. However, we conclude that Bakhtin's statement that the narrator "does not acknowledge any higher judgement on himself" is problematic, and it is indeed undermined by Dostoevsky's own suggestion that the narrator is talking to himself as if he was addressing his words to an invisible judge. The idea that this imaginary figure is a judge can hardly be accidental.

Indeed, by recovering the figure of Dostoevsky's hypothetical judge from Bakhtin's analysis of the import of the fantastic stenographer in "A Gentle Creature" --from which the judge is conspicuously absent--we begin to suspect that the narrator's discourse is something akin to a confession to a voice of authority, be it judicial or simply moral.

This in fact brings us closer to Poe's tales of confession, in which the forces of the law are personified by policemen and, by extension, other representatives of justice, including presumably judges. In Poe's tales of confession the fantastic element is located not in an external fantastic stenograph recording the narrator's most intimate thoughts and revealing his narrator's own "truth" but inside the diseased psyches of the narrators themselves, to whom any sort of "truth" is a priori all but impossible to discern. (We recall that the Imp of the Perverse is indivisible and incomprehensible.)

In conclusion, Poe and Dostoevsky's conceptions of the fantastic are remarkably similar in their thematic content--including frightful visions, mental and physical illness, the suggestion of demonic visitations and influences, etc. All of Poe's writings, including his fantastic stories, are marked by economy of means and words. He is capable of creating powerful effects of horror and portraying the most extreme of psychological states in a few pages, and even in a few sentences.

The moral content that Poe and Dostoevsky's use of the fantastic encompasses--that is, crime and punishment, and the moral implications of man's actions in a Godless world--re also remarkably similar. In stating this, we dissent, as already noted, from the opinion of J.D. Grossman that Poe's study of perversity lacked a positive moral vision. We will discuss this moral dimension in detail in our chapter "Alienation, the Perverse, and Utopia."

We end this chapter on the specifics of the fantastic in our two authors' oeuvres with an apt quote from Todorov: "Poe is thus, in every sense, a writer of limits--which is at once his principal merit and, if one may say so, his own limit. A creator of new forms, an explorer of unknown spaces, yes; but his production is necessarily marginal. Fortunately, in every age there are readers who prefer the margins to the center." Todorov, Tzvetan. Genres in Discourse, translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 102. According to the Russian Formalists, Dostoevsky would have been more influenced by a more marginal writer such as Poe than a pillar of the fantastic genre such as Hoffmann.

Moreover, the limits of Poe, in terms of the demarcations of his artistic style as identified by Dostoevsky--namely, materialism (as opposed to idealism) and capriciousness (as opposed to Poe's being a fantastic writer, as Dostoevsky understood the word), when compared to Dostoevsky's own work, seem to consistently demonstrate moments of correspondence. For example, Poe's materialism is one of the keys to understanding his engagement with contemporary society, which belies the claim commonly made by Poe critics, that Poe's work bears little relevance to the real world, but that instead Poe is only preoccupied with gothic horror and distant worlds. This observation brings Poe closer to Dostoevsky's conception of fantastic realism, in which social questions are scrutinized by depicting the subjective states of various classes of citizens, with particular attention to abnormal psychological states as being indicative, in part, of social inequalities. Of course, this may or may not have been Dostoevsky's point in noting Poe's materialism, but regardless, Dostoevsky highlighted a critical feature of Poe's art that has eluded numerous subsequent critics. We will address this point in more detail in a following chapter entitled "Alienation, the Perverse, and Utopia." psychological parody alienation utopia

Moreover, Burnett has made a convincing argument that Dostoevsky's identification of Poe's capriciousness finds resonances in Dostoevsky's own work, most notably in the character of The Underground Man, whose indebtedness to Poe's Imp of the Perverse has been asserted by several critics cited in this study. Dostoevsky seems to have possibly borrowed more of Poe's internal, psychological capriciousness than his external, formal capriciousness that exists at the level of plot. A possible exception to this, which at least touches upon parallel territory, is the total lack of revelation--authorial or otherwise--about Raskolnikov's motivations for murder, which is also featured in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat."

More generally, recalling Todorov's assertion that exploration of all nature of extremes is the generative principle of Poe's work, we find considerable similarity with Dostoevsky's idiom. In Dostoevsky the extremities of consciousness, of human potential, of love and hate, life and death, of faith, and many other philosophical and metaphysical questions are explored to profound extents. As the theologian Nikolai Berdyaev stated, "Many a time this has been pointed out, that Dostoevsky foresaw the ideas of Nietzsche. They were both heralds of a new revelation about man, both were first of all great anthropologists, and the anthropology of both--was apocalyptic, approaching nigh the extremes, the limits and the end-points." Berdyaev, Nicolai. “Otkrovenie  O  Cheloveke  V  Tvorchestve  Dostoevskogo,” 57.

2.2 Dostoevsky, Poe, and Fantastic Realism

Having considered some of the specifics of the fantastic in Dostoevsky and Poe in the previous chapter, we now will focus in on the question of how Poe may have influenced Dostoevsky's development of "fantastic realism," as he referred to his artistic style. The majority of this chapter will be dedicated to a review of the existent literature on this topic, after which we will focus on some of the more promising directions identified by critics cited herein. Some of the below material will necessarily repeat observations and points already made by other critics cited in this study above. However, within the framework of our investigation of Poe's possible influence on Dostoevsky, and thematic and stylistic similarities more generally, we deem that repetition is, in fact, a positive indication, as it confirms specific points of correspondence between our two authors and reaffirms probable moments of influence.

But first and foremost, what was Dostoevsky's conception of fantastic realism? Dosotevsky wrote in a note that, "With full realism, to find the man [or a human] in a man [Pri polnom realizme nayti v cheloveke cheloveka]. This is primarily a Russian trait, and in this sense I am of course of the people [noroden] (for my direction flows out of the depth of the Christian spirit of the people)--though I am unknown to the Russian people at present, I shall be known to those of the future. They call me a psychologist: not true: I am only a realist in a higher sense, i.e., I depict all the depths of the human soul." Cтрахов, Биография, “Из записной книжки Ф.М. Достоевского. С. 373. Quoted from Fangar, Donald. Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965, 215.

Fangar notes that Dostoevsky was criticized in his time for writing in too subjective of a fashion, and for being "unnatural" and impossible," but that it was the Russian novelist's time that he was trying to portray. Dostoevsky wrote in response to criticism that his particular brand of realism was too exaggerated, that, "Al art consists in a certain portion of exaggeration providedone does not exceed certain bounds." Quoted from Fangar, 217. Poe's generative artistic principle, on the other hand, as Todorov claims, was to push past all bounds. This is certainly true of his use of exaggeration. At a grammatical level, Todorov noted Poe's penchant for superlatives as well as hyperbole and antithesis--qualities that have not aged well and do not conform to modern aesthetic tastes. This same tendency is responsible for Poe's exploration, if not invention of, various genres from the detective story to science fiction. It also leads to his frequent use of caricature, as exemplified by his grotesques, and not only by these. The fact that Poe did not, by reason of his most basic artistic impulses, stay within the bounds regarding exaggeration that Dostoevsky prescribed, caused him to reject realism entirely in favor of formalism and intricately constructed narratives in which the internal logic of the work was of much more importance than its verisimilitude of the real world.

But Poe's tendency toward caricature has many consequences. He was an expert parodist, although the fact that he often parodied literary styles that have since been largely forgotten has reduced modern readers' appreciation of his efforts. It also deprived even the most emotional and shocking moments in his works of their emotive power, at least for modern readers. As Todorov writes, "Poe consumes so many excessive feelings in his sentences that he leaves none for the reader; the word "terror" leaves us cold (whereas we would be terrorized by an evocation that does not name it but simply suggests it). When he exclaims, for example, "oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime-of Agony and of Death!" the narrator deploys so much emotion that his partner, the reader, does not know what to do with his own. But it would undoubtedly be a mistake to stop at this observation of Poe's "bad taste"--as it would to see in his work the immediate (and precious) expression of morbid fantasies. Poe's superlatives stem from the same generative principle as his fascination with death." Todrov, Genres, 96.

Whether or not Poe's fantastic stories are intentionally imbued with hints of caricature is a question that still needs to be investigated further. Fangar discusses how Dostoevsky transformed the fantastic from Gogol's grotesque absurd to a medium suitable for the expression of pathos, tragedy, and serious social issues. Fangar also discusses how Dostoevsky's works have stood the test of time and that his depictions of the modern condition are still among the most piercing and profound of all time.

Maria Widnдs, in her 1968 article "Dostoevsky and Edgar Allan Poe" makes some important contributions to the study of Poe and Dostoevsky. After opening her article with the observation that a 1901 translation of Poe's works into Russian included Dostoevsky among a list of authors who were influenced by Poe, she writes: "Несомненно во всяком случае, что Эдгар Аллан По является родственным по духу Достоевскому писателемНесомненно также, что Достоевский знал и высоко ценил творчество Э. А. По." Widnдs, Maria, 21. Виднес, М. Достоевский и Эдгар Аллан По // Scando-Slavica. Copenhagen, 1968. T. 14 Widnдs begins her analysis by conducting the usual analysis of Dostoevsky's "Introduction to Three Stories by Edgar Poe," highlighting, the Russian author's observation about the tendency in his time of comparing Poe with the great Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann. However, Dostoevsky not only claims that Hoffmann is the greater poet, but he also differentiates Hoffmann's style--in whose works a world of spirits exists, separate but permeating the world of humans, and which are populated by supernatural beings and forces--from Poe's "materialistic" style, which remains tied to reality and is not so much "fantastic" as "capricious." Widnдs notes that Poe's psychological accuracy and power of details and imagination particularly impressed Dostoevsky. Furthermore, Dostoevsky emphasized the importance of details from the beginning of his career, and indeed, in his letters to D. V. Grigorovich, he often suggested that Grigorovich add more details to those stories of his that he showed Dostoevsky. "Понятно, что Достоевский с восторгом констатирует то же отношение к художественной разработки детали у Э. А. По." Ibid., 23.

Importantly, Widnдs, as Burnett and Frank would do later, discusses Poe's relationship to Dostoevsky's style of fantastic realism. "В методе "материализованной фантастики" для Достоевского по-видимому воплощался новый стиль повествования, которому было суждено восторжествовать с одной стороны над романтизмом, с другой стороны над "фотографическим" реализмом того времени." Ibid.. Indeed, Widnдs states that if Dostoevsky preferred Hoffmann because his works contain otherworldly ideals, then he gave the advantage to Poe when it comes to the power of details. For instance, she notes that Dostoevsky admired in his introduction to Poe's stories published in Vremya "The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall" (1836) and "The Balloon Hoax" (1844) because Poe's use of details creates such a powerfully realistic effect, which, indeed, caused readers of the New York Sun to initially believe that the fictitious transatlantic crossing by balloon had actually occurred, as Dostoevsky mentions.

While Widnдs notes that it is not possible to claim that Poe directly influenced the early works of Dostoevsky, she also writes, "С Э. А. По раннего Достоевского роднит самая концепция действительности." Ibid., 24. For example, in Poe's "Berenice" and Dostoevsky's "Слабое сердце" (Бедные люди, 1844), similar ideas about the dream world replacing reality are expressed. "Совершенно так же как Э. А. По и Достоевский причисляет себя уже в юные годы к мечтателям, к тем для которых их собственное видение мира реальнее материальной действительности. Материальные явления имеют для обоих писателей значение исключительно только как "знаки" трансцендентной сущности, знаки, по которым им обоим суждено отгадать загадку того сна, в который мы все по словам Шопенгауэра погружены, сна, который долго видится всем нам вместе." Ibid., 25.

This observation about the transcendental nature of material objects in Poe may shed light on Dostoevsky's comment that Poe was a materialist. However, Dostoevsky seems to suggest more of a tension between the fantastic and material in Poe's work than Widnдs does. Dostoevsky writes, "В Поэ если и есть фантастичность, то какая-то материальная, если б только можно было так выразиться." «Время», 1861, том I, № 1, с.231 There is indeed something singular, however, about physical objects in Poe, regardless of their either transcendental nature or their function as providing material explanations for supposedly supernatural occurrences. Dennis R. Perry, in his article "Imps of the Perverse: Discovering the Poe/Hitchcock Connection," which he begins with a quote from Franзois Truffaut--"Hitchcock belongs . . . among such artists of anxiety as Kafka, Dostoevsky" --suggests that both Poe and Hitchcock exploit physical objects to both frame their plots and ratchet up narrative tension:

"The key in Notorious, the glass of milk in Suspicion , the knife in Sabotage are for Hitchcock what the eye in "The Tell-Tale Heart," the letter in "The Purloined Letter," and the teeth in "Berenice" are for Poe. Plots thicken and revolve around these objects as they assume significance for characterization and force audiences into states of increased tension. Another technique for building suspense used by both artists is allowing the audience to know more than the protagonists. We know, for example, in "Ligeia" and "House of Usher" before the principals that Ligeia and Madeleine will rise from the dead." Perry, Dennis R. “Imps of the Perverse: Discovering the Poe/Hitchcock Connection,” 394.

Hitchcock, is, of course, outside the scope of this present study, whatever his possible relation to Dostoevsky and Poe, but the plot functionality of objects in Poe's work is relevant, as it may help to explain Dostoevsky's highlighting of the "external" and "material" nature of Poe's conception of the fantastic. Furthermore, in the above-mentioned cases of eyes in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and teeth in "Berenice," the objects certainly have fantastic a quality as the febrile and delirious narrators concentrate their respective obsessions on them. But Perry also raises another important point for our investigation: Poe's use of dramatic irony. We interpret this to be similar to what Leon Burnett defines as Poe's "capricious" nature, as Dostoevsky put it.

According to Burnett, Poe creates fantastic effects by hiding the rational and material causes of apparently fantastic events in his stories until the end of the story. As we can see, narrative tension and tension between reality and the supernatural both play along the dividing line between revelation and deception, with the author either deceiving the reader until the end of the story or else revealing to him privileged information that the characters of the tale are not (yet) privy to. In the former case we see an example of "capricious," "material" fantastic, and in the latter one of Poe's techniques for highlighting the "ironic downfalls" --a highly apt term used by Richard A. Fusco in Poe and the Perfectibility of Man Fusco, Richard. “Poe and the Perfectibility of Man,” Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism, June 1986, Vol. XIX, No. 1.--of characters and their plans and designs. That the latter case is often related to the fantastic should be obvious from the two examples that Perry supplies as examples of Poe's use of dramatic irony: the readers being aware before the protagonists that Ligeia and Madeleine will rise from the dead.

Speaking of female characters rising from the dead--or not, as the case may be--Widnдs mentions "A Gentle Creature" (1876) as bearing thematic resemblance to "Berenice," "Morella," and "Ligeia" in that it the tragic heroine overshadows, to the extreme, the spiritual development of the antagonist. Without drawing any overstretched conclusions about influence in this case, it is nevertheless interesting to note that Poe writes in "The Philosophy of Composition"--which Bograd argues Dostoevsky read and whose expounded principles he borrowed--that the death of a beautiful woman, told from the perspective of the bereaved lover, is the most poetic artistic theme. Indeed this is the subject of "A Gentle Creature" and is a recurring theme in Dostoevsky's work as a whole, with Nastasya Filippovna and Lizaveta Nikolaevna being conspicuous examples.

Moreover, in "A Gentle Creature" there is one passage in particular that seems to approach Poe's idiom of horrified fascination with death: "Какая она тоненькая в гробу, как заострился носик! Ресницы лежат стрелками. И ведь как упала--ничего не размозжила, не сломала! Только одна эта "горстка крови". Десертная ложка то есть. Внутреннее сотрясение. Странная мысль: если бы можно было не хоронить? Потому что если ее унесут, то о нет, унести почти невозможно! О, я ведь знаю, что ее должны унести, я не безумный и не брежу вовсе, напротив, никогда еще так ум не сиял,--но как же так опять никого в доме, опять две комнаты, и опять я один с закладами. Бред, бред, вот где бред! Измучил я ее -- вот что!" Ф.М. Достоевский Собр. соч. в 15 тт. Т. 13. С 374.

The narration in "A Gentle Creature," which is told by the pathological husband in a sort of conversation with the reader, bears resemblance, according to Widnдs, to Poe's tales told in first-person narrative. But Widnдs also sees deeper parallels in the narrative style of our two authors: "Восприняты также и приемы повторов и отступлений замедляющих ход рассказа побочными замечаниями, но эти же приемы употреблялись Достоевским и раньше, в разных повестях. И даже, впоследствии, при переработках Двойника Достоевский согласно своим черновикам, старался уменьшить количество повторяемых в той же фразе одних и тех же слов. Стиль монолога (возникающего из мимого диалога между-автором и читателем или невидимым 3-м лицом) снабжен повторами, вставными фразами, перебивающими рассказ, повторами прилагательных и глаголов. Так Достоевский, с оглядкой на читателя, излагает историю героя в Кроткой, постоянно перебивая самого себя напр.: "А впрочем, я не то хотел сказать. Ах, слушайте. Вот теперь уже началось." "Нрасладостно это, очень сладостно." Также и Э. А. По пишет в Сердце-обличитель: "Да, я был, как и теперь, очень нервозен. Но зачем вы хотите назвать меня сумасшедшимТак я сумасшедший. Слушайте же и наблюдайте как здраво и спокойно я могу рассказывать всю историю." Так же как Достоевский, который пишет в рассказе Кроткая: "Я всю жизнь сам с собой приговорил молча, целые трагедии молча", и Э. А. По пользуется тем же приемом повтора: "Что касается до крика, то я сам кричал во сне." "Я заставил их искать, хорошенько искать." "Я услышал тихий, глухой, быстрый звук. Этот звук я знал отлично." "С каждым мигом звук делался все быстрее и быстрее. Сердце билось все громче и громче с каждым мигомНо сердце билось все громче и громче." Widnдs, Maria. “Dostoevsky and Edgar Allan Poe.” Scando-Slavica, 1968, 30-31.

Whatever we may make of these repeated phrases and side comments addressed to the reader as evidence either of Dostoevsky's appropriation of Poe's narrative style--or more likely a mere correspondence in style, given the fact that Dostoevsky's early works possess these features as well--it does seem to be the case the both authors' "perverse" narrators tend to address the reader. This is presumably intended to build a sort of intimacy between the narrator and reader, which brings the latter into uncomfortable proximity with the inner state of the deranged narrator/main character by means of dialogue between the two. Indeed this seems to be the purpose that Dostoevsky expresses in his preface to "A Gentle Creature" in which he discusses his narrative device of the fantastic stenograph, which we have already discussed.

In any case, Widnдs writes that there is no doubt about the fact that reading Poe encouraged Dostoevsky to write more about crime, as he did increasingly in the 1860s, having, of course printed Poe in 1861. Both Poe and Dostoevsky were editors of literary journals and they found inspiration for their tales of crime in the journals and newspapers of their days.

Widnдs concludes her article with an observation that is particularly interesting as we believe that it touches upon a commonality between Poe and Dostoevsky that has been largely neglected--humor: "Кроме того, Достоевского роднит с Э. А. По также своеобразный юмор, который можно назвать патологическим и который сказался у Достоевского в рассказе Бобок, в котором похороненные на кладбище люди просыпаются, чтобы под землей продолжать свою пошлую никчемную жизнь, играя в карты, сплетничая, болтая друг с другом. Таким же образом Э. А. По представил обед в доме умалишенных, сидящих за столом на свободе и беседующих друг с другом о злободневных случаях в мире помешанных пока не появляются на сцену смотрители. Тогда только обнаруживается, что рассказчик имел дело с сумасшедшими, а не обыкновенными пошлыми обыденными людьми смотрителями, сплетничающими о своих пациентах." Ibid., 32. Widnдs is here referring to "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether," a tale that we will analyze in more detail below.

Widnдs concludes by stating that Dostoevsky and Poe are closely related by the themes that appear repeatedly in their works, their respective treatments of these themes, and their narrative styles. She speculates once more that it is possible that Dostoevsky was familiar with Poe's works earlier than most critics have concluded. "Достоевский в своем творчестве с 1845-46 г. идет нога в ногу с Э. А. По в преодолении, как романтизм, так и фотографического реализма, впоследствии развивая далее и углубляя психологический метод в уже намеченном Э. А. По с 1840-х годов направлении." Ibid., 32.

Leon Burnett, in his 24-page article, "Dostoevsky, Poe and the Discovery of Fantastic Realism," makes another case for Poe's affinity with, and influence on, Dostoevsky. Burnett, Leon. “Dostoevsky, Poe and the Discovery of Fantastic Realism.” F.M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881): A Centenary Collection, edited by Leon Burnett. From among the works most akin to Poe in Dostoevsky's oeuvre, Burnett singles out Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, and--interestingly enough, as it represents a new direction in relation to previous critics--The Idiot. We have already cited Burnett's article in relation to Kent's analysis of the Poe and Dostoevsky question, and specifically Burnett's criticisms of this analysis, criticisms with which we largely concur.

In addition to the foil provided by Kent, Burnett uses two additional works as the "groundwork" for his own investigation: Louis Harap's article "Poe and Dostoevsky: A Case of Affinity" (1976) and J. D. Grossman's book Edgar Allan Poe in Russia (1973). We have already examined J. D. Grossman's important contribution to the Poe-Dostoevsky question, and will examine Harap's article in a subsequent chapter of this study. As the title of Burnett's own article suggests, he focusses primarily on Poe as a possible influence for Dostoevsky's discovery of fantastic realism. In order to contextualize Burnett's analysis, it is worth bringing to the foreground information provided in his footnotes: S. Linner, in Dostoevskij on Realism, located the origin of "Dostoevskij's great plea for the right of `the fantastic' to be included in realistic literature" back to a passage in Vremya printed in 1861. Ibid., 82. Presumably he is referring to The Insulted and Insured, published Tome I and Tome II of Vremya in 1861, in which Joseph Frank originates the development of Dostoevsky's style of fantastic realism. Furthermore, Linner writes that Dostoevsky's introduction to Poe was "one of the occasions, regrettably rare, where Dostoevskij touched upon the technical aspects of realism." Ibid., 83. Be this as it may, the coincidence of timing of Dostoevsky's publication of Poe's three tales in Tome I and Poe's only novel in Tome II, can be interpreted as suggesting either that Poe's work influenced the development of Dostoevsky's fantastic realism, or that having discovered this new style, Dostoevsky felt drawn to a similar aesthetic in Poe.

E.I. Kyjko opens his article, "К творческой истории "Братьев Карамазовых" with a chapter entitled "Реализм фантастического в главе "Черт. Кошмар Ивана Федоровича" и Эдгар По." Кийко Е. И. К творческой истории «Братьев Карамазовых» // Достоевский. Материалы и исследования. Л., 1985. T. 6. In the opening sentence he observes that researches have repeatedly noted that Dostoevsky's interest in Poe can be explained by the fact that some of the specific features of Poe's creative style were close in nature to Dostoevsky's own. But Kyjko goes on to argue for more than simply cases of similarity between the two authors.

Kyjko cites two parts of Dostoevsky's "Introduction to Three Tales by Edgar Poe": first, he focusses on Dostoevsky's observation that Poe allows for the external possibility of a unreal event and then proceeds to describe it in a realistic manner; second, Kyjko cites Dostoevsky's comment on Poe's power of imagination and unique talent for details. Kyjko then proceeds to argue the following: "Однако Достоевский не только сочувственно констатировал своеобразие художественных приемов изображения фантастического у Эдгара По, но и сам в аналогичных случаях шел тем же путем. Одним из характерных примеров, подтверждающих справедливость этого утверждения, является девятая глава одиннадцатой книги романа "Братья Карамазовы" "Черт. Кошмар Ивана Федоровича." Ibid., 257.

Kyjko describes Poe's popularity in Russia during the 1970s, when Dostoevsky was writing The Brothers Karamazov, noting that critics belonging to the democratic camp particularly noted Poe's anti-bourgeois, ant-philistine, and anti-mercantile sentiments. Furthermore, Poe's fascination with all things occult--Spiritism, mesmerism, hypnotism, et cetera--and his ability to "explain" them "scientifically" in his works, tapped into popular preoccupations of the 1870's in the Russian Empire.

The Russian researcher notes an important fact: that Dostoevsky wrote in the margins of a draft of his "Dream of a Ridiculous Man: A Fantastic Tale" the words "У Эдгара Поэ" ("Edgar Poe's"), and this in the precise place in which the strangeness and peculiarity of dreams are discussed. Kyjko continues: "Достоевский в данном случае, очевидно, мысленно сопоставлял ощущения погруженного в "Сон смешного человека" с теми, которые испытывают герои По в "Месмерическом откровении" ["Mesmeric Revelation"и в "Повести Скалистых гор" [A Tale of the Ragged Mountains]: "бодрствуя во сне" (выражение Э. По), они постигают истину и иррациональные стороны бытия (Bograd 258)."

Kyjko then goes on to argue that Dostoevsky, when conceiving the chapter of Brothers Karamazov, "quite naturally" turned to "analogous episodes in tales of Poe" in order to explain fantastic events in a realistic manner--through science and medicine--which was also in step with the spirit of the 1870's. But before he supports his argument, he quotes a letter of Dostoevsky's at length in which he explained his ideas about fantastic literature. Dostoevsky, upon critiquing the fantastic tales of U. F. Abaza, writes the following:

".. . Ваш потомок ужасного и греховного рода изображен невозможно. Надо- было дать ему страдание лишь нравственное А Вы, напротив, выдумываете нечто грубо-физическое, какую-то льдину вместо сердца. Доктора, лечившие его столько лет, не заметили,, что у него нет сердца. Да и как может жить человек без физического органа? Пусть это фантастическая сказка; но ведь фантастическое в искусстве имеет предел и правила. Фантастическое' должно до того соприкасаться с реальностью, что Вы должны почти поверить ему. Пушкин, давший нам почти все формы искусства, написал "Пиковую даму" -- верх искусства фантастического. И Вы верите, что Германн действительно имел видение,, и именно сообразное с его мировоззрением, а между тем, в конце' повести, то есть прочтя ее, Вы не знаете, как решить: вышло ли это видение из природы Германца, или действительно он один из тех, которые соприкоснулись с другим миром, злых и враждебных человечеству духов." Ibid., 259.

As Kyjko notes, this theory of the fantastic is essentially a repetition of the same ideas expressed in Dostoevsky's introduction to Poe's three short stories. Indeed, Dostoevsky comments that the "capricious" Poe accomplishes just this creation of verisimilitude under the most fantastic of conditions, although in the above excerpt he uses Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" as the example par excellence of the fantastic genre. Kyjko proceeds to note that Dostoevsky's thoughts on the fantastic genre are similar to those of Poe himself expressed in his "The Philosophy of Composition," which was available for Dostoevsky to read. Furthermore, Kyjko suggests the possibility that Dostoevsky took "The Philosophy of Composition" into account when he made his critical remarks about the fantastic tales of U.F. Abaza.

Moreover, Kvjko suggests that in a letter Dostoevsky wrote on the following night after the aforementioned letter Dostoevsky wrote an outline of his chapter "Черт. Кошмар Ивана Федоровича" in which he describes a method of creating the character of Satan that bears striking similarities to Poe's method of treating the fantastic as outlined in his "The Philosophy of Composition." These include the fact that Dostoevsky focused on depicting Satan in a "realistic" manner and that he possessed "все подробности", in the words of Dostoevsky, just like, Kvjko adds, the fantastic imagery in Poe's tales.

The Russian researchers claims that in addition to Dostoevsky's creating the character of Satan along the same principles as Poe outlined in his treatise on literature, the chapter in which Satan appears also contains a direct link to Poe's tale "The Angel of the Odd." In this tale, published in the journal "Будильник" 1878--two years before Dostoevsky wrote his chapter featuring Satan's visit to Ivan Karamazov--a fantastic creature appears. "Существо это наделено прозаическими бытовыми чертами и ведет беседу с героем рассказа в издевательской манере, с невероятным иностранным акцентом, развязно осыпает его "сарказмами", но при этом требует к себе уважительного отноше ния, так как считает себя "джентльменом". 1 3 Черт у Достоевского также -- "известного сорта русский джентльмен", и наружность у него подчеркнуто сниженная, обыденная. К Ивану черт относится иронически и говорит с ним покровительственным тоном, например: "Друг мой, я все-таки хочу быть джентльменом и чтобы меня так и принимали". И в другом месте: (в ответ на реплику Ивана " -- Молчи, я тебе пинков надаю!") " -- Отчасти буду рад, ибо тогда моя цель достигнута: коли пинки, значит, веришь в мой реализм, потому что призраку не дают пинков." Ibid., 261.

Importantly, Kvjko also notes that in both cases the supernatural being disturbs society in a cathartic manner. This is also true of the eponymous devil in "Devil in the Belfry." "Черт у Достоевского говорит, что если бы он крикнул "осанна" и отказался от своих "пакостей", то "тотчас бы всё угасло на свете и не стало бы случаться никаких происшествий." The Angel of the Odd also tells the narrator that "he was the genius who presided over the contre temps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic" "для того, "чтоб освежить его (об щество.-- Е. К.) от мелочных житейских расчетов и отупения"" Also, in both The Brothers Karamazov and "The Angel of the Odd" the characters physically attack their supernatural visitor. We will have reason to return to this tale of Poe's in the chapter of this thesis entitled "Alienation, the Perverse, and Utopia." Kvjko concludes his chapter on Poe with the following comments:

"Таким образом, можно утверждать, что некоторые детали сюжета, общий стиль повествования и манера воспроизведения разговоров героев с фантастическими образами у По и у Достоевского во многом близки. Конечно, при этом нужно иметь в виду, что рассказ По -- шутка: An Extravaganza, по его собственному определению, т. е. нечто необычное, экстравагантное. Поэтому, создавая "гения фантазии", или, точнее, "ангела из ряда вон выходящего", Эдгар По не претендовал на ту глубину философского и психологического обобщения, которая присуща черту в романе Достоевского." (Kyjko 262). As in J. D. Grossman has already warned us, the scale of Poe and Dostoevsky's works are entirely different. Nonetheless, Dostoevsky likely borrowed several ideas from Poe. Moreover, we thoroughly agree with Kyjko's statements that Poe's tales are often jokes--often even his apparently serious ones--they are filled to the brim with parody, grotesqueries, and ridiculousness. As James Russell Lowell put it in his "A Fable For Critics" (1848), "There comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge." Lowell, James Russell. “A Fable for Critics.” 1848.

G. Bograd also points out that Dostoevsky claim that Poe's "power of imagination," which contains within itself an extraordinary "power for details" that distinguishes Poe from other writers. To this observation Bograd adds that Dostoevsky also placed great importance in detailed descriptions and he notes that Dostoevsky cited "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall" as a shining example of Poe's use of details and supposedly accidental events to create a sense of reality in his tales. The Russian novelist also cites "The Balloon Hoax" as a similar example, and mentions that it was written in such a realistic manner that the story was taken as reality and caused a great sensation until it was revealed to be fiction.

Bograd summarizes his analysis of Dostoevsky's introduction concisely in the following manner: "Примечательно, что Достоевского привлекают в творчестве Э По именно те черты, которые были характерны для него самого: прежде всего фантастический реализм, описание состояния души человека, поставленного в необычное положение, мастерство детализации при описании и создание видимости документальной точности (с указа нием на состояние погоды, количество шагов, ступеней, суток, часов, минут)." Боград Г. Оказал ли влияние Эдгар По на творчество Достоевский: Материалы и исследования. СПБ.,2010, T. 19. (Bograd 93).

Importantly, Bograd takes note of the fact that while Dostoevsky in his introduction to Poe's tales places Hoffmann's fantastic literature above Poe's because it contains an ideal and in it the supernatural and unearthly overlap with the realistic and mundane, the Russian writer "gravitated" toward Poe's "material" fantastic idiom in the 1860's. We recall that Joseph Frank notes a similar tension between the influences of Hoffman and Poe on Dostoevsky's creative style. Bograd goes on to cite Dostoevsky's letter to U. F. Abaza from June 15, 1880 (also discussed by E. I. Kyjko) in which he outlines his conception of the fantastic:

"Фантастическое должно до того соприкасаться с реальным, что Вы должны почти поверить ему. Пушкин, давший нам почти все формы искусства, написал "Пиковую даму" - верх искусства фантастического. И вы верите, что Германн действительно имел видение, и именно сообразное с его мировоззрением, а между тем, в конце повести, ( . . . ) Вы не знаете, как решить: вышло ли это видение ш природы Германна, или действительно он один из тех, которые соприкоснулись с другим миром, злых и враждебных человечеству духов." Ibid., 93.

Bograd sites another letter, one to A. Maykav from 11/23 December, 1868 in which, as Bograd notes, the Russian author discusses the relationship between the ideal and the real: "Совершенно другие понятия имею я о действительности и реализме, чем наши реалисты и критики Мой идеализм - реальнее ихнего ( ) Ихним реализмом - сотой доли реальных, действительно случившихся фактов не объяснишь А мы нашим идеализмом пророчили даже факты Случалось." Ibid., 94.

Bograd also observes that Dostoevsky mentions Poe in preparatory material for his short story "Dream of a Ridiculous Man: A Fantastic Story," which was published in his Diary of a Writer for April 1877: "До сих пор сон был ясен, дальше пошло клочками (как во сне) Одно с ужасающей ясностью через другое перескакивает, а главное, зная, например, что брат умер, я часто вижу его во сне и дивлюсь потом как же зто, я ведь знаю и во сне, что он умер, а не дивлюсь тому , что он мертвый и все-таки тут, подле меня живет У Эдгара Поз". Quoted from Bograd, 94. Dostoevsky's association of Poe with dreams is here clearly suggested here and we may infer that Poe was a source of inspiration for Dostoevsky's short story.