Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (, Problemy poètiki Dostoevskogo) is a book by the 20th century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. It was originally published in 1929 in Leningrad under the title Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art (, Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo) but was re-published with significant additions under the new title in 1963 in Moscow. The book was first translated into English in 1973 by R. William Rotsel but this version is now out of print.Caryl Emerson (1984). Acknowledgments to Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. p. viii Caryl Emerson's 1984 translation is the version now used for academic discussion in English.
Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics is considered to be a seminal work in Dostoevsky studies as well as an important contribution to literary theory.Wayne C. Booth (1984). Introduction to Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. pp. xiii–xxviiMorson and Emerson (1990). p. 284–85 Bakhtin introduces a number of key concepts, such as polyphony and carnivalisation, to elucidate what he saw as unique in Dostoevsky's literary art. He argues that Dostoevsky's works are essentially dialogical, unfolding on the basis of interaction between autonomous voices, as opposed to monological, where plot and character unfold within the confines of a single authorial universe.Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 9 In consequence, it is argued that attempts to expound Dostoevsky's novels from any sort of monological critical perspective will always fail to penetrate them.Bakhtin (1984). p. 7
Summary of the work There are 5 chapters, a brief preface ("From the Author") and a Conclusion. In the Preface, Bakhtin writes: "We consider Dostoevsky one of the greatest innovators in the realm of artistic form. He created a completely new type of artistic thinking, which we have provisionally called polyphonic. This type of artistic thinking found its expression in Dostoevsky's novels, but its significance extends far beyond the limits of the novel and touches upon several basic principles of European aesthetics. It could even be said that Dostoevsky created something like a new artistic model of the world, one in which many basic aspects of old artistic form were subjected to a radical restructuring. The present work aims at bringing out, through theoretical literary analysis, this fundamental innovation of Dostoevsky."Bakhtin (1984). p. 3
Chapter 1: Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Novel and Its Treatment in Critical Literature Bakhtin begins by identifying polyphony as the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky's work: "A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices..."Bakhtin (1984). p. 6 The discussion of polyphony and its incommensurability with the usual monological approach to writing and criticism is followed by an overview of the currently available scholarly literature on Dostoevsky, particularly that from Russia. Each critic or theorist is assessed according to the degree to which they approach an understanding of polyphony as the essential quality of Dostoevsky's writing.Morson and Emerson (1990). ch. 6. pp. 231–251
Chapter 2: The Hero, and the Position of the Author with Regard to the Hero, in Dostoevsky's Art According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky is not interested in characters as individuals or social types occupying a specific place in the author's universe, where who or what they are is fixed, defined, and limited by certain 'objective' qualities. The hero interests Dostoevsky as a "particular point of view on the world and on oneself."Bakhtin (1984). p. 47 Dostoevsky thus carries out a kind of "Copernican revolution" in fiction by making subjectivity and self-consciousness the basis for a character's exposition, so that even the functions usually reserved for the author or narrator (descriptions, characterisations, definitions, etc) are transferred into the field of vision of the character themselves: "the author no longer illuminates the hero's reality but the hero's self-consciousness."Bakhtin (1984). p. 49 Alongside the hero's consciousness, only other equally self-defining and self-validating consciousnesses can be juxtaposed. There can be no overriding authorial or narratorial voice: such a voice can only be another voice in the polyphonic texture. Bakhtin calls self-consciousness Dostoevsky's "artistic dominant".Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 238–39
Chapter 3: The Idea in Dostoevsky In Dostoevsky, the hero's discourse about himself is merged with his ideological discourse about the world. There is an "artistic fusion" of personal life and worldview that strengthens the integrity of self-signification in the face of the myriad forms of external definition.Bakhtin (1984). pp. 78–79 This fusion lends an unprecedented power to the idea in Dostoevsky. In a character of the monological type, an idea becomes "a mere aspect of reality, one more of reality's predetermined features": in Dostoevsky, it acquires the power to live in the world through its fusion with an unfinalized consciousness in its interaction with others of the same kind.Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 9 The idea, as Dostoevsky understood it, is not some sort of entity residing within a person's head, it is a "live event" played out in the realm of inter-subjectivity. Like the word, the idea inherently seeks the other's response: it is by nature dialogic. Its outwardly monologic form is merely the conventional form of expression that has emerged, according to Bakhtin, from the trend toward ideological monologism characteristic of modern times.Bakhtin (1984). p. 88
Chapter 4: Characteristics of Genre and Plot Composition in Dostoevsky's Works In the earlier work, this chapter only discussed the function of the adventure plot in Dostoevsky's novels. In the revised work it is greatly expanded to include discussions of Dostoevsky's place at the end of a literary tradition going back to the ancient world (Menippean satire), and his translation of the folk carnival ethos—where conventional behaviours and attitudes are suspended, undermined or overturned—into the literary realm (Carnivalisation).Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 85
Chapter 5: Discourse in Dostoevsky Bakhtin argues that dialogic interactions of the kind found in Dostoevsky are not reducible to forms that are studiable by linguistics and can only be understood as discourse. The discursive word is never separate from a subject who utters it in address to another subject: the word must be embodied for it to have any dialogical status. Bakhtin identifies three main types of discourse: (i) unmediated discourse directed exclusively toward its referential object; (ii) objectified discourse (of a represented person); (iii) discourse with an orientation toward someone else's discourse (double-voiced discourse). It is this third type in its various forms (for example, internal dialogization) that is of primary interest to Bakhtin in his investigation into the dialogical process and its striking presence in Dostoevsky's writing.Bakhtin (1984). p. 199Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 147
Key concepts Polyphony
According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky was the creator of the polyphonic novel, and it was a fundamentally new genre that could not be analysed according to preconceived frameworks and schema that might be useful for other manifestations of the European novel.Bakhtin (1984). p. 7 Dostoevsky does not describe characters and contrive plot within the context of a unified, author-imposed reality: rather his function as author is to illuminate the self-consciousness of the characters so that each participates on their own terms, in their own voice, according to their own ideas about themselves and the world. The author's worldview is not absent, but this worldview does not define, limit or qualify the other voices, and hence cannot directly control how events will unfold. It is present only as another participant in "the great dialogue", with no more capacity for direct signification than any other voice. Bakhtin calls this multi-voiced, dialogic reality "polyphony". What unfolds... is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event. Dostoevsky's major heroes are, by the very nature of his creative design, not only objects of authorial discourse but also subjects of their own directly signifying discourse.Bakhtin (1984). pp. 6–7 He later describes it as "the event of interaction between autonomous and internally unfinalized consciousnesses."Bakhtin (1984). p. 176
Unfinalizability Bakhtin summarizes the general principle behind unfinalizability in Dostoevsky thus:Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always be in the future.Bakhtin (1984). p. 166Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 37 On the individual level, this means that a person can never be entirely externally finalized. The ability to never be entirely enclosed in the dictates of the outside world is an essential attribute of consciousness. Though external objectification (definition, description, causal or genetic explanation, etc.) is inevitable, it can never be the whole truth, devoid of the living, dialogical response. That is what Bakhtin calls a "monologic" truth, and he is highly critical of tendencies in Western thought that seek to finalize humanity and individual humans, in this way.Morson and Emerson (1990). p. 91–92 According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky always wrote in opposition to currents of thought that turn human beings into objects (scientific, economic, social, psychological, etc.), enclosing them in an alien web of definition and causation, robbing them of freedom and responsibility: "He saw in it a degrading reification of a person's soul, a discounting of its freedom and its unfinalizability... Dostoevsky always represents a person on the threshold of a final decision, at a moment of crisis, at an unfinalizable, and unpredeterminable, turning point for their soul."Bakhtin (1984). pp. 61–62
Carnivalization