Love Blocked by Pride: about the “System” Illusiveness and Mechanism of Death in F.M. Dostoyevsky’s story “A Gentle Creature”
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- Issue: 2018 no. 2
- Department: HERMENEUTICS. POETICS. CONTEXT
- Pages: 85-101
- DOI: Visit Website
- UDK: 821.161.1
- Keywords: Dostoevsky, Krotkaya, system, death, mechanism.
- Abstract: Dostoyevsky’s novel Krotkaya (translated in English as A Gentle Creature or The Meek One) reveals a problem of conflict between love and will behind the story of the husband and the wife. It discloses the relationship between one and other, one and oneself, and man and highest existence. The argument presented in the book is a metaphysical issue concerning sin and death. Among people with close ties, the inertia in man together with the indolence of a conservative society colludes, forming an unequal system of sin. This system of sin develops an automatic running mechanism. And the lack of “love for each other” processed this automatic running mechanism, spreading sin, resulting in psyche abuse to one another as well as one’s own perish. The deconstruction factor embedded inside the system of sin per se ultimately led to the collapse of the system. However, to gain an understanding of truth, one needs to pay the price of death. This paper introduces the concept of narrative-as-dynamicexperience, and will unravel the core semantics of the novel from the perspective of narrative progression.