Implementation of the aesthetic ideal in the “A Writer’s Diary” by F.M. Dostoevsky

The work is devoted to the study of F.M. Dostoevsky’s aesthetics, in particular, the writer’s aesthetic ideal. Following Kant, Hegel, and Schiller, the Russian writer considered the ideal in an anthropological aspect. The writer’s aesthetic ideal is a person who synthesizes the moral and spiritual in himself. The idea of moral beauty is expressed in the theoretical thought of the Russian writer. Harmony, comeliness serve only as an outer shell, when moral height appears as the aesthetic ideal of F.M. Dostoevsky. His works strive for this beauty and truth. Following the examples of “positive beauty” of world and domestic literature and art, F.M. Dostoevsky recreated in his works positively beautiful characters. The Russian writer speaks of the duality of beauty, the “two abysses” of the human soul: “Sodom” – low, sinful, connected with the beauty of the body, sensual, and “Madonna” – high, connected with spiritual beauty, a person can combine both. The writer’s aesthetic ideal is turned to spiritual beauty. Of particular interest is the “A Writer’s Diary” by F.M. Dostoevsky. It is in this work that the writer’s idea of the aesthetic ideal clearly expressed. The question of the ideal person is considered in the context of underground (afterlife) life in the story “Bobok” and above-ground space in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”. In these stories and journalistic texts framing them, the internal dynamics of the writer’s worldview position are revealed: from stating the corruption of the spirit and immortality of the soul (“Bobok”) to the tragic insight of the truth (“A Gentle Creature”) and the affirmation of the “living” image of truth (“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”). The story explicitly expresses the overcoming of such a painful contradiction between the individual and the general, between a positively beautiful person and society.

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