DOSTOJEWSKI O MALARSTWIE ROSYJSKIM
DOSTOYEVSKY ON RUSSIAN PAINTING

Summary/Abstract: Dostoyevsky’s literary, epistolographic and journalistic output shows that painting was of great importance in his creative development. If one aims at revealing and supplying documentary evidence for the unquestionable multifold relations between Dostoyevsky’s works and this type of art it seems advisable to present the personal opinions of the author of ‘The Idiot’ on painting and his tastes in this field. Especially useful was the article ‘On the Occasion of an Exhibition’ included in ‘The writer's Diary’ of 1873, devoted entirely to modem Russian painting. It is understable that genre-painting developing particularly rapidly at that time, found itself at the focus of the writer’s attention. While highly appreciating this kind of painting Dostoyevsky makes serious objections to it. It seems to him to be too superficial, hardly original and individual in penetrating reality. According to the writer, art should discover the essence of reality and multiplicity of complicated ideas, thoughts and problems inherent in it. Dostoyevsky is alarmed by the seeming subordination of painting to some sociopolitical ‘tendency’ (i.e., the aesthetic program of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolubov'); he tries to convince us that modern art should abandon the solely critical attitude to Russian reality and seek and consolidate ideal phenomena and values. Thus, Dostoyevsky is an advocate of painting that expresses deep ideas and truths about life and manpainting devoid of any distinct socio-political tendency, unlimited by the bounds of the typical and the generic.

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