A History by Friedrich Christoph Schlosser in The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The article discusses the role and image of A History by Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (1776-1861), an outstanding German historian, professor of Heidelberg University, in Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (1868), in which different characters call to read and study world and Russian history (the novel also mentions the books of historians N.M. Karamzin, S.M. Solovyov, J.B.A. Charras, etc.) and discuss facts that recreate history. The abbreviated title of Schlosser’s work in Dostoevsky’s novel does not allow us to uniquely identify the exact title of the book, since Schlosser was the author of many works with a similar name at once, of which, however, two main ones stand out - A World History in 18 volumes (1844-1857) and History of the Eighteenth Century and of the Nineteenth Till the Overthrow of the French Empire in 8 volumes (4th ed., 1853-1860). Both of these multi-volume works were translated into Russian, starting from 1858 and until the end of the 1860s. Schlosser’s History has never become a special subject of research in Dostoevsky studies although it is reliably known that Dostoevsky was well acquainted with Schlosser’s works: in letters to his acquaintances, he repeatedly recommended them for reading; Schlosser’s books were available in the writer’s home library; Schlosser was repeatedly referred to by authors of various articles published in Vremya and Epokha, journals of the brothers M.M. and F.M. Dostoevsky. In The Idiot, Schlosser’s History is mentioned directly, and in a very vivid context: high school students Kolya Ivolgin and Kostya Lebedev are on their way to buy Schlosser’s History for their friend Petrov, but on the way they buy a hedgehog and an axe instead of the necessary books. The author of the article attempts to interpret this bizarre scene from the fourth part of The Idiot, in which the characters of the novel themselves see a kind of “allegory”. The study proves that the mention of Schlosser’s multi-volume historical work in Dostoevsky’s novel cannot be called accidental and transient, and that Schlosser’s History is one of the undoubted sources of the text of the Idiot as a whole (A History mentions many historical plots and figures addressed by the characters of the novel), although traces of its influence can be found and in Dostoevsky’s earlier novel Crime and Punishment (1866). A special place in the article is given to how the German historian’s interpretation of the tragic figure of Napoleon I and his era was reflected in The Idiot. In particular, an appeal to Schlosser’s most detailed History of the Eighteenth Century and of the Nineteenth Till the Overthrow of the French Empire may clarify the subtext of Keller’s mention of the Princess de Rohan in a conversation with Prince Myshkin on the eve of the wedding of the latter. The author also suggests that the non-canonical spelling in the novel The Idiot of Napoleon’s famous Waterloo campaign of 1815 as “Waterlo” may be due to the fact that in some places of the Russian translation of Schlosser’s History the Battle of Waterloo was also called “the Battle of Waterlo”.

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