Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel in the mirror of Christian consciousness

M.M. Bakhtin's article is devoted to F.M. Dostoevsky's poetics. The critic suggests the idea of the polyphonic structure of his works having the status of subjectivity of all characters. The artistic dominant in the works is self-consciousness of characters. The pluralities of self-consciousness, which are in dialogue with each other, make real polyphony of voices. Relation with God for a believing artist is the initial foundation of creation. Dostoevsky's Christian outlook of his after prison period of life is not a secret to anybody. It is this outlook by which the framework of both the form and content of Dostoevsky's novels are created. Bakhtin would never have approached to understanding Dostoevsky's works if he had examined them with ''regulations'' alien to them. Bakhtin's insight concerning the form of Dostoevsky's novels can be explained by close world views of both the critic and the writer. Dostoevsky populates his artistic cosmos with characters that in certain extent still feel the call of conscience and are free in their choice. This freedom of Dostoevsky's characters could have been impossible if his artistic dominant in the novels had not become the living self-conscience of characters the author had no power over. Dostoevsky's personalities do not represent common ideas (B. Engel-hard's conception), they are all absorbing, changeable and instable consciousness. A person's self-consciousness is always calling to other people's consciousness and searching for justification before God who gave people tongue and speech for dialogue with Him and with each other for mutual aid in soul salvation. Therefore, Bakhtin's idea about the polyphony of Dostoevsky's novels will not be complete, if to exclude his theory about the dialogical nature of Dostoevsky's prose. Thought, words, idea and self-consciousness of characters are dialogical. Dostoevsky's characters are in constant dialogue. If there is no real interlocutor, characters "speak" to someone imagined, to a double, phantom, shadow and devil. Thus, Bakhtin's conception contains not only methodological views about architectonics of Dostoevsky's works, but also turns to the system of ideas, which reveal the ontological and gnoseological nature of self-consciousness and dialogue. Studying the methodological sources of polyphony, Bakhtin realized that it is not only a novel form, but a type of artistic thinking in a certain system of values. Bakhtin demonstrated the same type of thinking.

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