In Search of a Visualized Metaphor: Dostoevsky in the Languages of Ballet and Cinema

The article “In Search of a Visualized Metaphor: Dostoevsky in the Languages of Ballet and Cinema” explores the phenomenon of a metaphor, a visualized metaphor in particular. Basing on theories and definitions of Roland Barthes, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Nabokov, Jose Ortega y Gasset the meaning and the role of metaphor is being found out. The survey focuses on the problem of a visualized metaphor in various aspects: 1) as the one appearing in the verbal realm of literature, 2) as the means of a non-verbal expression in the realm of visual arts, 3) and basically, as the phenomenon, which encodes the meaning and which the reader or the spectator has to decode. These aspects are explored on the material taken from Feodor Dostoevsky's writings as well as on the material of the comparative analyses of their various cinema and ballet interpretations. Practically all of Dostoevsky's works contain certain codes and ciphers, most of which bear hidden biblical allusions. These “coders” require the search of the keys to them as well as the capacity to read between the lines and so forth. Such approach to reading reveals new and deeper layers of comprehension. This also refers to cinema and choreography texts. Film directors, who take the risk of adopting Dostoevsky's works, have to be able not only to read the encoded text, but also to create their own visual narrative - not an illustration, but an almost emancipated work of art which had been inspired by literature. And this can not be done without metaphors and their visualization. The article focuses on the analyses and comparative analyses of a number of Dostoevsky's works by various film directors: “White Nights”(Ivan Pyriev, Luchino Visconti), “Idiot” (Georges Lampin, Akira Kurosawa, Andrzej Wajda) “Crime and Punishment” (Georges Lampin, Lev Kulidzanov), “The Double” (Bernardo Bertolucci, Richard Ayoade). The analysis of the choreographic versions by a world-famous choreographer Boris Eifman is also presented in the context of the topic formulated in the title. The subject of discourse become Eif-man's ballets staged to Dostoevsky: “Idiot” based on the namesake novel, and “Beyond Sin' based on “The Karamasovs”. In each case the attention is paid to the visualized metaphors as a way to translate the word of the writer into the language of choreography. Some examples of such translations are given as well as the interpretation of their meanings. The major issue of the survey is to prove that the search of metaphors leads to the recognition of the basic truth hidden in the depth of the composition, be it literature or various forms of its interpretation.

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