Texts-pictures and ekphrasis in F. M. Dostoevsky's "Idiot"

The reviewed monograph of American slavist Nina Perlina demonstrates the role of ekphrasis in Dostoevsky's novel and different ways to present old masters' paintings. The specific nature of Dostoevsky's realistic talent makes it necessary to give a detailed review of the ekphrasis theory and its Russian sources. The history of the ancient ekphrasis in the works of O. Freidenberg and N. Braginskaya helps the author to create her understanding of the phenomenon and its visual potential for the modern narrative practice. One of the most important points of N. Perlina's ekphrastic theory is the idea of ekphrastic dialogism based on the views of Mikhail Bakhtin and presented in the forms of "reported narration" and a "constructive narrative model." Different forms and formats of Dostoevsky's realization of the ekphrastic strategies are analyzed in five successive chapters: "Meetings with faces and portraits", "Death penalty pictures and talks about the Faith", "Cervantes - Dostoevsky, Myshkin - Don Quixote", "The triangle Nastasya Filippovna - Myshkin - Aglaya: Pictures of the inner struggle", "The reported ekphrastic narrations in the fourth part of the novel". N. Perlina gives the detail description of the iconographic history of the paintings and the nuances of Dostoevsky's visits to the museums of Basel and Dresden and his reception of the works by G. Palma Vecchio, H. Holbein, H. Fries. The paintings play a significant role in the iconical, ideological, symbolical, religious structure of the novel, helping to reveal the profound meaning of the episodes with the most tensed collisions of the characters. © 2019 Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philology. All rights reserved.