A ‘trace of Stendhal’ in Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent [Podrostok]

Abstract

The question of Dostoevsky’s attitude towards Stendhal’s oeuvre remains unanswered. In the absence of direct references, the author suggests searching their works. The novels The Red and the Black and The Adolescent [Podrostok] share in common the issues of a young man’s psychological coming-of-age. Both in their late teens and coming from a peasant background, Julien Sorel and Arkady Dolgoruky are thrown into the alien social milieu of the capital city. Another similarity is the contrast between the immature ideas about life and life as the writer perceives it. In Stendhal’s book, the contrast is depicted as a catastrophic disruption of all social ties, which allows the hero to see the world with new eyes right before his demise. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, shows the process of maturing as a gradual development of new social ties. The comparative analysis of the two novels enables better appreciation of the distinctive character depiction for the two protagonists, and reveals common features that suggest Dostoevsky’s awareness and interpretation of Stendhal’s artistic experiments.