About the author:
Nikon I. Kovalev, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2155-3264
E-mail:
Abstract:
The article proposes a discussion of Dostoyevsky reception by German expressionist writer Gottfried Benn (1886–1956). Benn’s reception is strongly influenced by Dostoyevsky’s critics such as Merezhkovsky, Berdyaev and Thomas Mann. The most important influence was Berdyaev’s Dostoyevsky: An Interpretation (≪Миросозерцание Достоевского≫). Benn has read a German translation of the work and possessed a copy of it where he had left multiple notes. In a letter to a friend, Friedrich Oelze, Benn quoted Notes from Underground. Most likely, he quoted not the original, but Berdyaev’s quotation. The exact words he quoted, “Leid is die einzige Ursache des Bewusstseins, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness”, are not to be found in current German translations of Dostoyevsky. However, in one of his essays, Benn coined the term Dostojewskidunkel (“Dostoyevsky’s darkness”) which could be seen as a reference to German translations of 1921–1922 under the title Aus dem Dunkel der Grosstadt (From Big City Darkness). Berdyaev also speaks about Dostoyesky expressing “darkness of Russian people”. The main traits of Berdyaev’s Dunkel which lured Benn are irrationalism, labeling of Dostoyevsky’s art as Dionysian, lack of traditional novel-like psychologism and concept of suffering as the main source of art.