Università degli Studi di Trieste - Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori
Abstract
This article attempts to reveal what – as yet unpublished – biblical
elements are activated in A gentle Creature by Dostoevsky and what part
the obraz has in the same. The chief motive for writing the article is the
observation that biblical elements and the obraz play a central role in
Dostoevsky’s novels.
The first part of the article gives a brief description of the internal (time,
narrative and motivational) structure of this work. My aim makes it
inevitable to go through this because the three time-levels, the narrator
and the text as a whole, the “idea”, and the pair of motives of “not
speaking/seeing” as starting points of a whole network are what the
biblical elements form part of. The second part of the article examines
these elements. It is claimed that the biblical allusions of the short story
refer to Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, and an analysis is made
of how each of these elements form part of and work in the short story.
The last part of the article investigates the part the obraz plays in the
short story taking the different meanings (religious, etymological etc.) of
the word obraz as a starting point. It is claimed that the function of the
obraz is to hold together the aforementioned systems including the biblical context, and to transform the text into a metatext talking about itself.
