https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5570-8987
This Special Issue of the journal ‘Slavonica’ features a selection of articles presented at the Dostoevsky 200th Anniversary Conference: Between Angels and Demons, which took place in November 2021 at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon. Hosted by the Centre for Slavic Languages and Cultures of the Department of General and Romance Linguistics, this event brought together scholars and researchers from various institutions, including the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, the Portuguese Catholic University, Universities from the United Kingdom, Spain, the Russian Federation, Brazil, the United States of America, and Mexico. The Conference, which took place via zoom allowed participants from around the world to engage in discussions. These days included the presentation of students’ research, as well as presentations by attendees.
In his address to the Conference, Professor Doctor Miguel Tamen, the Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Lisbon, emphasized the significance of cultural exchanges between the Slavic countries and Portugal. He highlighted the importance of the research carried out on these exchanges, including intellectual contacts, the circulation of literary texts, and cultural mediators.
This special commemorative occasion also featured an Exhibition in the Faculty’s Library. The Exhibition showcased a curated collection of books sourced from the Faculty Library’s extensive holdings, alongside a selection of posters of famous actors portraying characters from films based on works by Dostoevsky provided by Mr. Vladimir Yaroshevskii, a representative of the Rossotrudnithcestvo Agency.
Turning our attention to the Iberian side, particularly to Portuguese Slavic Studies, it is noteworthy that we can proudly assert the existence of Slavic Studies in Lisbon in 2023, a statement that would not have been possible some 15 years ago! The field has evolved and expanded over time, with activities and regular production in four main areas: (i) teaching and the development of didactic materials, (ii) scientific research and scholarly articles, (iii) scientific and cultural encounters, and (iv) mobility and exchange programmes. As the number of researchers engaged in Slavic Studies continues to grow, these areas have fostered an increasing need for international collaboration and communication.
One event that has significantly contributed to international contacts, communication, and cultural and scientific exchange is the series ‘Iberian and Slavonic Cultures in Contact and Comparison’ International Conferences, which have taken place annually in Lisbon in May. These Conferences have provided a platform for researchers and scholars primarily from Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and other European countries to present and discuss their research achievements and projects. Unfortunately, the XXIII edition of the Conference was interrupted due to the pandemic in 2020-2021, but there are hopes for its resumption soon.
In parallel with these Conferences, there have been dedicated gatherings focusing on prominent Russian, Ukrainian, and other Slavic literary figures. The following list provides a mere glimpse of some of the events centred on Eastern Slavic Literature because Dostoevsky belongs to this group: ‘Aleksandr Pushkin: A Man for All Seasons’ (2022), ‘An Afternoon with Sergey Yesenin’ (2021), ‘Taras Shevchenko – 205 Years’ (2019), ‘Leonid Leonov as Dostoevsky’s Successor’ (2019), ‘The Caucasus and the Other in Russian and Georgian Literature of the nineteenth Century’ (2019), ‘Lev Tolstoy’ (2018), ‘100 Years of October in Society and in the Arts’ (2017), A Colloquium: ‘Nikolai Fedorov and Universal Resurrection’ (2017), featuring Professor Jeff Love from Clemson University, USA (who also contributes to this volume), ‘A Week of Russian Language and Culture: 40 years of Teaching Russian at the School of Arts and Humanities’, including a Commemorative Colloquium, two Exhibitions, a Literary Translation Workshop, a Film Exhibition, and a Conference (2017), ‘Isaac Babel’ (2017), ‘Aleksandr Ostrovsky’, at Vila Literária of Óbidos and the University of Lisbon (2016), A Colloquium on the occasion of the presentation of the book by William Rougle: Russian Literature Seen by Portuguese Authors (with the special participation of Professor João Dionísio and Professor Paula Morão) (2016), ‘Oblomov and Oblomovism’ (2016), ‘Dostoevsky’ (2015), ‘Mikhail Bulgakov’ (2015), ‘The Translation and Editions of Russian Literature in Portugal’ (2011), and many more.
Returning to the Conference, its central theme Between Angels and Demons was intentionally broad, allowing for the inclusion of research papers that explored different perspectives, positions, and concepts within the extensive and intricate body of work by the great Russian writer. The Organizing Committee was formed by Jayanti Dutta, Nailia Baldé, Ana Carina Prokopyshyn, and Gueorgui Hristovsky, and invitations were extended to researchers from diverse theoretical schools and perspectives, including renowned scholars in the field of literary theory and analysis, as well as specialists focusing on specific aspects of Dostoevsky’s work.
The Conference featured the following distinguished speakers who made valuable contributions to the discussions:
Professor Pedro Serra, recipient of the PEN Award and director of the Library of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Lisbon; Professor Serra delivered a presentation on the theme of ‘Crisis and Spirituality in The Brothers Karamazov’, exploring the profound philosophical underpinnings of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.
Professor Galin Tihanov, the George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, offered an analysis of Dostoevsky’s work from renewed perspectives in his presentation titled ‘Dostoyevsky and World Literature Revisited’, providing valuable insights with implications for the theoretical approaches to world literature.
Professor José Hita Jiménez, a renowned Russian literature scholar from the University of Granada, presented his research on the topic of ‘Dostoevsky’s Visionary: “The End Justifies the Means” or “Everything is Allowed” and its Current Character’, exploring the contemporary relevance of Dostoevsky’s moral and ethical dilemmas.
Professor Natalia Arsentieva, also from the University of Granada, focused her attention on ‘Apocalyptic Representations in the Work of F. Dostoevsky and its Projection in the Dystopia of the twentieth Century (R. Menéndez Salmon, J. Saramago)’, examining the parallels between Dostoevsky’s prophetic visions and the dystopian literature of the twentieth century, as exemplified in the works of R. Menéndez Salmon and J. Saramago.
Professor Ana Matoso, from the Catholic University of Portugal, presented a paper examining the influence of Dostoevsky on Mikhail Bakhtin’s seminal work published in 1929. Professor Matoso highlighted Bakhtin’s distinction between the monologic and polyphonic artistic traditions and argued that Dostoevsky’s originality lies in his dialogical and carnivalesque approach to character and consciousness, which led to the creation of a new genre: the polyphonic novel. Professor Matoso’s presentation explored various aspects of this new genre, contrasting them with more formalistic approaches to art and examining Bakhtin’s proposition that ‘Dostoevsky would never have depicted death as Tolstoy did in his 1858 short-story Three Deaths.’
Dr. Elena Bollinger, currently a researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, has been engaged in intercultural research exploring memory, history, and (trans)national identity within the realm of literary representations. Drawing upon Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, Dr Bollinger conducted a comparative examination of the relationship between the constitutive, discursive construction of reality and a self-reflective perception of temporal existence, as manifested in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Julian Barnes’s Before She Met Me. In her article entitled ‘I Have a Vivid Memory of Pulling Out Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky’s Phenomenology of the “Grotesque Mind” in Before She Met Me,’ featured in this edition, the author argues that both novels adopt a critical approach to commonly accepted knowledge, challenging the characters’ steadfast belief that mental states possess predetermined and authentic patterns of meaning.
Another esteemed guest was Professor Igor Ruzhitskiy, from the Department of Russian Language for Foreign Students at the Lomonosov State University in Moscow. He has authored numerous publications on Dostoevsky, including the book A Dictionary of Dostoevsky’s Language. In his paper, also included in this edition, Ruzhitskiy challenges the prevailing perception of Dostoevsky as a sombre and unsociable individual. He identifies the reasons behind this perception, which primarily stem from the presence of death in the author’s works and the unsettling themes that Dostoevsky’s readers often find disconcerting, particularly the exploration of their own fears. Ruzhitskiy’s article seeks to refute this view of Dostoevsky and his creative works by presenting experimental data that demonstrate the prominence of the concept of ‘laughter’ in Dostoevsky’s literary repertoire, which is no less significant than the concept of ‘fear.’ Moreover, Ruzhitskiy highlights the interrelation between these concepts, evident in the overlapping semantic fields within the textual landscape of Dostoevsky’s novels.
We had the great honour of hosting Gordon Jeff Love at our Conference. Professor Love holds the position of Research Professor of German and Russian at Clemson University and has an extensive portfolio encompassing numerous articles, translations, and philosophical works. His primary research areas revolve around German and Russian philosophy, as well as the theory of the novel. Professor Love has delivered lectures at universities worldwide and made valuable contributions to the Philosophical Salon at the LA Review of Books. Throughout his career, he has received prestigious accolades, including the John E. Sawyer Fellowship at the National Humanities Centre (2014-2015), the University Research Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award (2018) at Clemson University, and the Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (1997-1998) during his time at Yale University. In his article, Professor Love examines the issue of boredom as articulated in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. He posits that boredom can be classified into two primary types: 1) the boredom that arises from the inability to commit to a definitive standpoint, and 2) the boredom that arises from wholeheartedly embracing a final position, thereby closing off contemplation of alternative avenues for thought and action. From Professor Love’s analytical standpoint, both forms of boredom ultimately prove to be illusory, as they imply a freedom that human beings, bound by the humiliating dictates of nature, do not and cannot possess. Boredom, in the end, becomes a palliative call to action and suffering.
Dr Margaret Tejerizo, former Senior Lecturer at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow, was another guest at the Conference. With her expertise lying in 19th- and twentieth-century Russian literature and culture, comparative literature (Russian/Hispanic) and Russian and Spanish women’s literature, she has published in these domains. Her presentation entitled ‘Dostoevsky between “The Revolution” and “Nothing” … Some Spanish Re-readings,’ offered fresh insights into the relevance of Dostoevsky as writer and philosopher for major Spanish writers and thinkers in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
We were also privileged to host Professor José Luis Flores López, who ‘travelled’ from Mexico to join us. Professor Flores López, hailing from the Instituto de Educación Media Superior del Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, has dedicated over two decades to public and humanitarian activities centred around the study and preservation of the Russian cultural heritage, as well as fostering cultural understanding of Russia in Mexico. Moreover, he is recognized globally as one of the foremost experts in the field of Dostoyevsky’s works. His enlightening presentation, titled ‘La actualidad de Dostoyevski’ (The Relevance of Dostoyevsky), captivated the audience.
Brazil was represented by the esteemed Professor Bruno Gomide, a scholar of Russian Literature and Culture at the University of São Paulo. Professor Gomide’s publications span various areas, including the Silver Age of Russian culture, emigration studies, and the transnational circulation of Russian literature. Notably, he has researched the work of Boris Schnaiderman, a highly regarded Brazilian translator renowned for his translations of great Russian writers such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Babel’ and Pasternak, as well as the poets Pushkin and Mayakovsky. Professor Gomide’s presentation, ‘Dostoévski e Boris Scnaiderman: aproximações de um tradutor’ (Dostoevsky and Boris Schnaiderman: Approaches of a Translator), shed light on historical facts, documents, publications, and photographs, offering insights for European audiences into the life and work of this eminent Brazilian translator, who was honoured by the Russian government with the Pushkin Medal in recognition of his invaluable contribution to the dissemination of Russian culture abroad.
Nina Guerra and Filipe Guerra are probably the most distinguished and well-known translators of Russian Literature into European Portuguese. In 2002, they received an award from the Portuguese Authors Society and the Portuguese Pen-Club for their translations of the works of Dostoevsky and Chekhov and they received the Special Jury Award from the LER/Booktailors editor group for their literary translations. Nina Guerra’s presentation, ‘Dostoiévski Publicista: conversa direta com o leitor’ (‘Dostoyevsky as a Publicist: A Direct Conversation with His Readers’) focused on the question ‘What motivation drove Dostoyevsky, who was already a famous writer with recognized work and many other interests, to start working as a publicist?’. Nina Guerra argued that Dostoyevsky is one of the most misunderstood writers by his audience and that he was aware of this fact and was most concerned about it. It was for precisely that reason he started his publicist activity, in order to make his ideas more explicit and transparent for his readers; he ‘re-wrote’ some of his central ideas from fictional language into a more direct and clear language and thereby he ‘corrected’ various wrong interpretations that had emerged at that time in literary criticism.
Representing our own Centre for Slavic Language and Cultures, Jayanti Dutta, an expert Lecturer in Russian Language, Literature and Culture, with her published works and involvement in scholarly gatherings, presented ‘Rodney Ackland’s Crime and Punishment on the Portuguese stage and its Reception in the Portuguese Press’. Despite the stringent censorship during these years that had such a negative impact on Portuguese culture, in 1951, Amélia Rey Colaço and the Robles Monteiro Theatre Company brought Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, adapted by Rodney Ackland, to the stage. Dutta’s article examined the press’s reception of the play during that era.
The contributions of all these speakers added depth and breadth to the exploration of Dostoevsky’s literary legacy. This Special Issue of ‘Slavonica’ offers a collection of some of these articles based on the presentations and discussions at the Conference, providing valuable insights into various aspects of Dostoevsky’s work and its significance in the context of literature, philosophy, and cultural exchanges.
This International Conference on Dostoevsky’s 200th Anniversary, entitled Between Angels and Demons, held in November 2021 at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, showcased a remarkable diversity of approaches taken by the participants in their presentations. Most importantly, the event fostered a conducive environment for constructive dialogue and a valuable exchange of information and ideas.
Lisbon, 25th July 2023.
Guest Editor ‘Slavonica’,
Lisbon Special Issue, Summer 2023.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).