F.M. Dostoyevsky and W. Scott: on Napoleon myth

The article raises the question of the significance of Walter Scott's conceptof man and history for Dostoyevsky's oeuvre and attempts to demonstrate the connection between theNapoleon myth (on the basis of the legend about Napoleon in The Idiot) with the historical work TheLife of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French (1827) by Walter Scott. The English novelist'smoral and philosophical stance and his artistic principles of depicting the man were perceived byDostoyevsky primarily through the lens of how Scott was viewed by Russian writers, first of all,Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Gogol. W. Scott's art of depicting history in the "home-like" way was basedon the combination of the ideas of determinism and anthropological theories of the century, which, inposition and epic completeness of the depicted matter.W. Scott's criterion of humanism as a norm of morality requiring keen attention to everypersonality and search of the truly "human" inside everyone was adopted by Dostoyevsky anddeveloped within the context of the urgent issues of the time, including the problem of Napoleonism,one of the key themes of his oeuvre.W. Scott approached the task of depicting Napoleon's personality with the moral, ethic andaesthetical criteria he had earlier developed in his novels. The Foreword (1831) to Quentin Durward isviewed as having a principal significance. In this historical work Napoleon depicted in the "home-like"way appears as a great military leader, outstanding statesman who vastly contributed to the prosperityof France, its commons in particular, and simultaneously as a person suffering the main affliction ofthe approaching epoch, i.e. selfishness and vanity. Napoleon's immorality was demonstrated by Scottas the Emperor's tendency towards falsehood and peacockery. This tragicomical discrepancy betweenthe great and the miserable became a keynote in creating Napoleon's image in General Ivolgin's legendin The Idiot.

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