Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- List of abbreviations
- General editor's note on transliteration and references
- General introduction
- PART I The creative environment
- PART II The process of creation
- Introduction
- 7 The writer at work
- 8 The great dialogue: the news item
- 9 The great dialogue: migrant images
- 10 The play of dialogue
- 11 The unity of thought in the novel
- 12 The summit of creative interrogation: ‘The Life of a Great Sinner’
- 13 A Raw Youth: reasons for choice
- 14 A Raw Youth: the appearance of the vision
- 15 A Raw Youth: the human architecture
- 16 A Raw Youth: the Idea of the novel
- 17 The composition of the novel in Dostoyevsky's work: choice of chronicle form
- 18 Composition of the novel in A Raw Youth: chronicle and stories
- Part III Time and space in the world of the novels
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
8 - The great dialogue: the news item
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- List of abbreviations
- General editor's note on transliteration and references
- General introduction
- PART I The creative environment
- PART II The process of creation
- Introduction
- 7 The writer at work
- 8 The great dialogue: the news item
- 9 The great dialogue: migrant images
- 10 The play of dialogue
- 11 The unity of thought in the novel
- 12 The summit of creative interrogation: ‘The Life of a Great Sinner’
- 13 A Raw Youth: reasons for choice
- 14 A Raw Youth: the appearance of the vision
- 15 A Raw Youth: the human architecture
- 16 A Raw Youth: the Idea of the novel
- 17 The composition of the novel in Dostoyevsky's work: choice of chronicle form
- 18 Composition of the novel in A Raw Youth: chronicle and stories
- Part III Time and space in the world of the novels
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
Summary
Every newspaper is nothing but a tissue of horrors from first line to last. War, crimes, thefts, lewdness, tortures, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, crimes of individuals, intoxication with universal atrocity. And every civilised man drinks this disgusting brew with his morning meal. Everything in this world reeks of crime: the newspaper, the wall, the face of man.
I cannot understand how a pure hand can touch a newspaper without a shudder of disgust.
Charles Baudelaire, Mon coeur mis à nuNews items in creative research
Unlike Baudelaire, who was writing in the 1860s, Dostoyevsky considered the Press an indispensable tool with nothing sordid about it. In this field he was the initiator of the great American and European literatures of the twentieth century, where the newspaper, even in its raw form, is an integral part of the novel.
Dostoyevsky could not live without the Press, especially abroad, where he needed to keep in touch with his native country. In Geneva, in 1867 and 1868, he found true ‘happiness’ in reading the Russian Press from cover to cover: The Voice, The Moscow Bulletin, The St Petersburg Bulletin, and the foreign papers. He is always mentioning his newspaper reading in his letters. And the two hours, from five to seven, which he spent on this daily activity in some café, were so enthralling to him that, while he was walking in the evening with his young wife, he loved to tell her what he had been reading about, so that she could keep up with ‘everything that was happening in Russia’.
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- Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation , pp. 180 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989