The creative work of the writer is intimately based on his culture. It is his standard, his model, his reference, his stern school of apprenticeship, his constant critic. Like a parent, it educates, dominates, even oppresses. Yury Tynyanov's study Dostoyevsky and Gogol, towards a theory of parody opens with the words: ‘In discussions of tradition or literary heritage, one usually imagines a straight line linking the young representative of any literary movement with his predecessors. The thing is really much more complex. There is no direct line of descent, but a deviation, a repulsion from a particular point, a struggle.’ This is a literary critic's view of the eternal dialectic process of the creator, who is both a creature of his own culture and a rebel against his heavy and paralysing inheritance, before he becomes the bearer of a ‘new word’.

So the search for influences, confluences, rejections should be general and dynamic. Each study of individual influences has its dangers, since Dostoyevsky received different legacies at the same time, and accepted only part of them; sometimes he took a universal theme, sometimes a form, reacting against them at the same time. Besides, Dostoyevsky was not a man for detail. He always elevated the discussion, generalised spontaneously, and threw himself heart and soul into his judgements.