Dostoevsky: An Empathy Towards the Extremes

of the expression “vsemirnaya otzyvchivost’” (cf. “a ready universal sympathy”) coined by Dostoevsky in his famous Pushkin speech of 1880, which gave the name to the present Jubilee Round-Table Conference at UNESCO headquarters. The conceptual phrase “l’empathie universelle” (cf. “universal empathy”) is offered as a variant. The categories of empathy / ready sympathy (“otzyvchivost”) are viewed as central for the Russian writer. Special attention is paid to the ways it informed the readings of Dostoevsky’s writings in various cultural-and-historical contexts of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, which include totalitarian experience, inhumanity, mass terror, etc.

Keywords

Dostoevsky, “vsemirnaya otzyvchivost”, “l’empathie universelle”, the Pushkin speech of 1880, genocide, D.S. Merezhkovsky, John Cowper Powys

Received

29.12.2021

Publication date

29.12.2021

Number of characters

15620

Cite

GOST	Nivat G. Dostoevsky: “An Empathy Towards the Extremes” // Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka – 2021. – V. 80. – Issue 6 C. 6-10 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://izv-oifn.ru/S241377150017807-0-1 (circulation date: 07.05.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S241377150017807-0
MLA	Nivat, Georges "Dostoevsky: “An Empathy Towards the Extremes”." Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 80.6 (2021):6-10. DOI: 10.31857/S241377150017807-0
APA	Nivat G. (2021). Dostoevsky: “An Empathy Towards the Extremes”. Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 80(6), pp.6-10 DOI: 10.31857/S241377150017807-0

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