‘A Gentle Creature’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Author As an Observer, an Interpreter and a Fantasist

Abstract

Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story “A Gentle Creatureˮ, first published by the writer in 1876 as the November issue of his “Diary of a Writerˮ, is usually viewed in the context of the author's discourse on suicide contained in the previous issue of The “Diary of a Writerˮ, where the writer’s lot is described as an in-depth interpretation of life. At the same time, the theme of suicide is also brought up in connection with the overwhelming task of interpreting the event. However, the writer ultimately changed his writing strategy to produce “A Gentle Creatureˮ. Basing the story on an actual case of a suicide committed by a young woman amplified with autobiographical details, Dostoevsky develops a narrative model with complexity exceeding that of the original interpretation of the fact while in its essence being equivalent to the complexity of reality itself. The images of a straight line and a dot, employed by the author to interpret the event and the text of the short story, demonstrate that the author sees as a problem converting true-life information into a compressed narrative. Thus, in his short story “A Gentle Creatureˮ Dostoevsky offers the reader a model as complex as the life itself.