‘I live as long as I work…’

Abstract

The essay is devoted to the memory of the critic, philologist and Dostoevsky scholar Karen Stepanyan. His long-time friend T. Gevorkyan carefully reconstructs their encounters as well as episodes of Stepanyan’s personal and scholarly biography: from their first meeting as first-year philology students of Yerevan university to their city walks in Moscow in the 2000s; from Stepanyan’s early student papers and essays on theatre to his later books – To Realize and to Say: ‘Realism in the Highest Sense’ as Dostoevsky’s Creative Method [ Soznat i skazat: ‘Realizm v vysshem smysle’ kak tvorcheskiy metod F. M. Dostoevskogo ] (2005), The Visitation and Dialogue in Dostoevsky’s Novels [ Yavlenie i dialog v romanakh F. M. Dostoevskogo ] (2010), and Dostoevsky and Cervantes [ Dostoevsky i Servantes ] (2013), and to the publication of the almanac Dostoevsky and World Culture [ Dostoevsky i mirovaya kultura ]. While Gevorkyan devotes plenty of attention to Stepanyan’s scholarly legacy and carefully maps its milestones, her essay primarily serves to portray his persona, that of a close and untimely departed friend.