"A Female Author" from the Сountry: Attribution of the Letter of Dostoevsky’s Correspondent
Journal Title: Неизвестный Достоевский - Year 2017, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
A dynamic process of professionalization of literary activity in the 19th century involved female writers as well. In contrast to the opinion of many of his fellow reviewers and writers, F.M. Dostoevsky considered female education a way to moral renewal of Mankind and approved of women’s involvement in literary activity. Such a viewpoint of Dostoevsky used to evoke women’s confidence and encourage them to write to him in search of moral support and a trustworthy opinion. The Russian archives keep the letters of more than 20 female writers addressed to Dostoevsky. The authors of two of them remain unidentified up to now. The study of the letter of the third correspondent of Dostoevsky, an emerging author, unknown before, who sent to Dostoevsky the manuscripts of her writings in response to the review, has resulted in the attribution appeared in the given article. Having carried out textual analysis of the autograph, examined documentary, biographic, historic and literary sources, information of genealogy websites, the author has brought to a focuse and adduced arguments in favor of the opinion that the letter to Dostoevsky dated back to March 7th, 1877 and signed with a cryptonym "M.Z." (in the text of the letter referred to as "M.F.Z.") belongs to Maria Florianovna Kharkeevich (whose maiden name was Zavadskaya). She lived in the village Shatalovka of Voronezh province, in the estate of her husband Yakov Alekseevich Kharkeevich. Thus, the extant Kharkeevich mansion in the village Shatalovka as well as being an architectural landmark of the 19th century, takes on a new significance of a site of memory in the Russian rural area where the female author used to write letters to Dostoevsky.
Authors and Affiliations
Irina Andrianova
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP452090
- DOI 10.15393/j10.art.2017.3041
- Views 162
- Downloads 1
Notes on the Сorrespondence between Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Meshchersky
This publication presents a historical, cultural and real commentary on the letters of F. M. Dostoevsky and V. P. Meshchersky, their chronological attribution, reveals their historical and literary value in Russian journ...
From the Speeches of the Participants of a Press Conference Conference dedicated to the restoration of the gravestone on the tomb of F.M. Dostoevsky’s mother held on March 9, 2017 in the Dostoevsky Apartment Museum in Moscow
From the Speeches of the Participants of a Press Conference Conference dedicated to the restoration of the gravestone on the tomb of F.M. Dostoevsky’s mother held on March 9, 2017 in the Dostoevsky Apartment Museum in Mo...
Staraya Russa Realia in Dostoevsky's Novel "The Brothers Karamazov"
In the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” the town of Skotoprigonyevsk appears as a generalized image. On the one hand, it involves prototypical details of various city texts: Kozelsk and the Hermitage of Optina, Moscow and...
From Funeral Speeches after the Memorial Service on March 11, 2017.
The Annex to the article contains the published speeches of several participants of the consecration of the monument and the memorial service taken place on March 11, 2017 on the occasion of 180th anniversary of the deat...
The Case of Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky’s Death, or What Did Judges Sweat Away During a Year and a Half
The primary focus of this article is to cast some light on the procedural aspects which resulted from the investigation into Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky's death. In this article we attempt to interpret the material evi...