Dostoevsky's Dialectics and the Problem of Sin

Acknowledgments

ix The central idea in this book—the coincidence of opposites in Dostoevsky and their reciprocal interactions—first came to me in the mid-1990s, when I was teaching courses on Dostoevsky at Hunter College in New York and taking Tai Chi classes in the evening. Unexpectedly, I realized that the latter was having an effect on the former: “focusing the mind on the movement” enabled me to visualize some recurrent patterns in Dostoevsky’s artistic method. Their dynamics have occupied my thoughts ever since. During the past ten years, I have presented the ideas in this book at many conferences, including the Durham European Literature Symposium (Durham, 1998), the International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies (Imatra, Finland, 1999), the International Symposium on the Studies of Bakhtin (Xiangtan University, China, 2004), the International Symposium on Hierotopy: Studies in the Making of Sacred Space (State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, 2004), the Thirteenth Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society (Budapest, 2007), and National AATSEEL Conventions (St. Louis, 1999, and San Francisco, 2008). I am grateful for the feedback I received at these international forums. Some of these ideas were expanded into articles and became the bases for chapters 1, 2, and 7 of this book: “Saint Andrew of Crete and Dostoevsky’s Great Sinners,” in Aspects of Dostoevsky ’s Poetics in the Context of Literary-Cultural Dialogues, ed. Katalin Kroó, Géza S. Horváth, and Tünde Szabó, Dostoevsky Monographs, a Series of the International Dostoevsky Society, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin , forthcoming). “‘Putem zerna’: motiv elevsinskikh misterii v romane ‘Brat’ia Karamazovy,’” in Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson, ed. Lazar Fleishman , Gabriella Safran, and Michael Wachtel, Stanford Slavic Studies, vols. 29–30 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 416–32. Acknowledgments x “The Rabbit and the Duck: Antinomic Unity in Dostoevskij, the Russian Religious Tradition, and Mikhail Bakhtin.” Studies in East European Thought 59, nos. 1–2 (June 2007): 21–37. I take this opportunity to thank the editors and publishers for their permission to reprint revised material. Many colleagues gave useful comments and advice, among them— Alexei Lidov, Liu Wenfei, Konstantin Isupov, and Olga Meerson. Their enthusiasm and curiosity encouraged me to proceed with this project. I thank Dalia Geffen for her assistance in preparing the manuscript for submission. I would like to acknowledge the warm support of my colleagues at the Princeton University Slavic Department, where I have been teaching since 2000, and to thank them, as well as our students, for the stimulating intellectual environment they created. My special thanks to Michael Wachtel for his careful reading of the manuscript and his comments on style, and to graduate student Jason Strudler who helped to translate the chapter originally published in Russian. My most profound gratitude goes to Caryl Emerson, who read all the chapters as they were written and then the entire work, helping me to tune my voice in English and to keep that elusive addressee, the “informed but general reader,” always in view. She provided invaluable comments and gave encouragement at every stage. Her keen interest, expertise, unfailing support , and friendly counsel made this project possible. I would like to thank the Northwestern editorial staff for the support and advice I received from acquisitions editor Mike Levine, assistant acquisitions editor Jenny Gavacs, and especially senior project editor Serena Brommel . My special thanks also go to the anonymous readers. Their general comments as well as stylistic suggestions helped to crystallize the exposition, which greatly improved the book. Finally, I am very much obliged to my family—my mother, Ludmila, my husband, Gregory, and my daughter, Julia, for their patience and support. I dedicate this book to the memory of my brother, Sergei Dovlatov, and our father, Donat Mechik. Acknowledgments Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin ...