Painting ekphrasis in ''The Idiot'' by F.M. Dostoevsky. Article 1. The verbal and the visual in ''The Idiot'' by F.M. Dostoevsky

There is much current debate on visuality brought into sharp focus by numerous scholars, philosophers, psychologists and culture experts. M.M. Bakhtin explained the peculiarity of Dostoevsky's art by such categories as mirroring reflection, doubling and mirror images. These are the categories that are currently at issue in terms of visuality as a key notion of other arts. It is already the drafts to Dostoevsky's novel ''The Idiot'' that have a rather essential image ''Language in Mirror'' which can be regarded as a metaphor of a double, mirror image in the verbal (word) and visual (mirror) forms of art. The novel reveals intensive aesthetic reflection on the intersection of verbal and visual representations which structure literary texts. This aesthetic phenomenon of the novel has not yet been investigated and that is why it has become the subject of the present research. The author's reflection on the verbal and the visual is represented in the novel at least at two levels: the sphere of the author's unconscious, and deliberate, well thought-out author's aesthetic position. It is the first time when ''speech on calligraphy'' of Prince Myshkin has been interpreted as the scene of writing in accordance with postmodernism. ''Speech on calligraphy'' is the first unconscious level of Dostoevsky's aesthetic reflection on the interrelation of the verbal and the visual in the novel. Contemporary scholars have taken up visuality mainly as a part of ekphrasis study. Ekphrasis is a vivid artistic peculiarity of ''The Idiot'' novel. The painting itself is associated with the image of Adelaida Epanchina. Based on the deliberately intended image of an artist, Adelaida, the second level revealing the author's aesthetic reflection on the interrelation of the verbal and the visual in the novel is represented. Basing both on the analysis of Myshkin's writing process specified in ''speech on calligraphy'' and study of the creative process of Adelaida as an artist, it is possible to state that the basic artistic principle of the novel ''The Idiot'' fostering the mirroring and doubling character of the verbal and visual media of the text is the principle which can be called as ''copy - variation'' following Dostoevsky himself. It is the first time when this artistic principle has been revealed in the aesthetics and poetics of Dostoevsky's novel ''The Idiot''.

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