The Image of the “Wild Flower” in the Aesthetics and Early Works by F.M. Dostoevsky (To the Problem: F.M. Dostoevsky and Honore De Balzac)

The article focuses on the psychological and symbolic content of the image of a “wild flower” in the early works by F.M. Dostoevsky (A Little Hero, 1849), identifying The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac (1835) as one of its sources. The image of the “wild flower”, popular in Russian poetry of the 1840s, acquires an aesthetic and artistic meaning of high poetry enclosed in the simple and ordinary (White Nights) in Dostoevsky's works, becoming an expression of feeling associated with the democratic idea of compassionate and active love for the insulted, who need protecttion. In Netochka Nezvanova and A Little Hero, Dostoevsky refers to Balzac's image of a bouquet of wild flowers in The Lily of the Valley, which epitomizes the victory of moral sense over the impulses of unbridled passion. The philosophical and aesthetic basis of Dostoevsky's attention to Balzac was the writer's fascination with ideas of utopian socialism, which had a great influence on French literature (J. Sand, V. Hugo, Honore de Balzac) and in many respects determined Dostoevsky's creative search in his early works. The Christian essence of the merciful love in the image of a “wild flower” and in the elegistic-sentimental style of its description was creatively perceived by Dostoevsky in the process of translating Balzac's Eugenie Grandet (18431844). According to the author, The Lily of the Valley, written as the confession of a young hero, Felix de Vandenes, who is platonically in love with a married woman, Countess Henriette de Morsof, aims at revealing the greatness of the soul that overcomes its passions and chooses high moral ideals. In the context of great French literature, solving the problem of the relationship between two types of love as a reflection of the controversial nature of the modern hero, Balzac's position was distinguished by a Christian statement of the issue. This aspect, connected with the ideas of utopian socialism, was shared by Dostoevsky. Solving the question of a love feeling nature by comparing the two types of love (egoistic and compassionate), in The Little Hero, Dostoevsky poeticizes a merciful feeling that could transform the human soul. He quotes the Gospel of Matthew (Matt., Ch. VI, p. 26) and employs the marvelous panoramas to frame the boy's exploit - the collected bouquet for m-me M * - to emphasize the Christian meaning of the “wild flower” image. Thus, the image of the “wild flower” is one of the first forms of “realism in the highest sense”, with its ideal structure of the “earthly” and “heavenly” interpenetration.

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