9791221501223-08.pdf

In Dostoevsky’s binary poetics, an opposition can be drawn between two fundamental stances – asceticism and incontinence. Ascetics adhere to an ethos of self-restraint in response to the desires of the flesh. Incontinents act spontaneously to gratify their desires. The current study draws an analogy...

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Λεπτομέρειες βιβλιογραφικής εγγραφής
Γλώσσα:Russian
Έκδοση: Firenze University Press 2023
Διαθέσιμο Online:https://books.fupress.com/doi/capitoli/979-12-215-0122-3_8
Περιγραφή
Περίληψη:In Dostoevsky’s binary poetics, an opposition can be drawn between two fundamental stances – asceticism and incontinence. Ascetics adhere to an ethos of self-restraint in response to the desires of the flesh. Incontinents act spontaneously to gratify their desires. The current study draws an analogy between the behavior pattern of Dostoevsky’s self-denying intellectual heroes and that of exiled castrate (skoptsy) communities. Dostoevsky’s ascetics represent a cerebral mindset attracted to visions of social utopia; their intellectualizing detaches them from the life of the body and thus weirdly parallels the strictures of the skoptsy. An encounter between an ascetic and a prostitute serves as a central plot moment in works such as Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground.