Dostoïevski, Baxtin et le fantastique

Revue des etudes slaves. 2021. Vol. XCII. No. 3-4. P. 525–534.

Serge Zenkine

In his analysis of Dostoevsky’s Double, Mixail Baxtin pays little attention to the fantastic, which is a major effect of this story. This article first shows the links between The Double and the romantic fantastic tale (distinctive themes, narrative ambiguity). We then review the Baxtinian analysis, which excludes the problem of fiction and is limited to the description of verbal composition. Finally, we isolate some fictional elements of The Double which, without lending themselves to this (meta)linguistic analysis, introduce ambiguity into the fictional world by going beyond the horizon of the hero and the reader: the naming repeated many times and becoming strange of “Mister Goliadkin”, a melodramatic letter that he believes to receive, the scenes of scandals in which he is involved. Based on the interweaving of two “voices” that form the hero’s speech, the fantastic goes further, moving from the author’s creative activity to the reader’s receiving experience.

Keywords: М.М. Бахтин, фантастика, Ф.М. Достоевский, M.M. Bakhtin, Fantastic, F.M. Dostoyevsky