Sometimes novelists amuse themselves not by aping God – which is their basic task – but by aping themselves, telling us how one of their marriages with reality has ended in divorce. Once Dostoyevsky, usually secretive about his creative effort, chose himself as subject, the creating subject, though without admitting it openly. It is to the journalist of ‘Petersburg dreams in verse and prose’, published in Time in 1861, that we owe the amused self-portrait of the novelist watching himself in a mirror as he talks to his past, his dreams, his previous works, news items, migrant images. The self-portrait, like some self-portraits of Rembrandt, is spritely, but the eyes of the novelist shine with all their inspiration and wisdom. Before we begin our analysis of the subterranean logic of Dostoyevsky's creation, we shall give a brief illustration of his creative process and the game of dialogue in action.