A Writer’s Diary by F. M. Dostoevsky as a subject of axiological psycholinguistics

The paper considers the possibility of applying an axiologically oriented interdisciplinary psycholinguistic method to the analysis of A Writer’s Diary by F. M. Dostoevsky, a periodical bestseller of the 1860-70s. Warmly received by contemporaries, A Writer’s Diary became almost an outcast in the next century. For decades, it was overlooked by scientists until a comprehensive historical and philological research, undertaken by I. L. Volgin, caused a new wave of scientific interest to it. The analysis of A Writer’s Diary provides insight into value-oriented meanings of the author’s consciousness, which were relevant not only for Russia of the second half of the 19th century but also for contemporary society given the social challenges and psychological problems of the personality associated with the loss of values. The gospel ideals that formed the basis of Dostoyevsky’s ideology never fade when it concerns searching for the “super sense” of life. The writer’s method, whose life experience, worldview, and numerous insights are embodied in A Writer’s Diary , finds a response in the modern approaches of the existential analysis of V. Frankl and Christian or “moral” psychology. These approaches extend the methodology of psycholinguistics in axiological dimension. Some common features between new psychological approaches and the method of Dostoyevsky can be revealed: a personal approach, the openness of a personality to the future, axiological approach, the opposition of morality and utilitarianism, etc.

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