“Goodbye, I Love You”: Fyodor Dostoevsky in the Farewell Notes of Anna Dostoevskaya in 1881

• Published in: Neizvestnyj Dostoevskij Vol. 11; no. 2; pp. 16 - 73
• Main Authors: Andrianova, Irina, Tikhomirov, Boris
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Russian
• Published: 01.07.2024
• ISSN: 2409-5788; 2409-5788
• DOI: 10.15393/j10.art.2024.7241

The notebook of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s widow for the fatal 1881 is the most sought-after by the writer’s biographers. It contains the notes made by Anna Dostoevskaya for herself about her late husband within a few months after his death, according to the most recent memories of him. On paper, using shorthand signs in some cases, she recorded joint purchases, gifts received from her husband, his characteristic words, habits, tastes, manner of bearing, dressing, reciting aloud, peculiarities of eating, conversation, creative work (including the January issue of “A Writer’s Diary,” published after Dostoevsky’s death), recorded information related to the writer’s childhood years spent in Moscow, as well as the last days and hours of his life, the details of the funeral and funeral service, the children’s memories of their father. These recordings have already been published, but not in full and in violation of the sequence. Despite their fragmentary nature, unformulated into processed memories, and chaotic arrangement, they have their own composition and logic. The memoirist structures the farewell text with a dear person who continues to live in her memory in a specific way: she opens the entries with sketches of the writer’s plans for the next 10 years, and concludes with a dialogue about children as successors of the Dostoevsky family. Memories of the writer are not the only materials in the composition of Anna Dostoevskaya’s notebook. It also includes other documents of historical and literary value (bills, receipts, receipts, address records, letters, a newspaper clipping with an obituary about Doctor of Medicine Ivan Verevkin, etc.), a comprehensive review of which is presented for the first time in this article. In the course of the study, corrections were made to the previously transcribed text of Anna Dostoevskaya’s transcripts (by the Leningrad stenographer Ceciliia Poshemanskaya), errors in the manuscript rendition made in previous publications of this document were corrected. In the Appendix to the article, memoirs from Anna Dostoevskaya’s notebook of 1881 are published in full, accompanied by historical and literary commentaries based on the latest achievements of the study of Dostoevsky’s work.