Polyphony in Dostoevsky’s Novels and the Multiplicity of Voices in Norwid’s Poetry (original) (raw)

Bakhtin's discovery of polyphony in Dostoevsky's novels1 became one of the most important and influential events in literary studies in the twentieth century. Although even before the publication of Problems of Dostoyevsky's Art and after it there appeared supplementary and polemic texts, it was the findings of Bakhtin which have become deeply grounded in the Humanities worldwide. Bakhtin connected the novel techniques of Dostoevsky with his conviction of respect which every man deserves; respect, the fundamental expression of which is freedom of speech. This approach to this problem (although not stated by Bakhtin in these very words) is particularly intriguing from the perspective of the situation of publishing, both in the Russia of the tsars and in the Soviet Union. A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky's novels. What unfolds in his works is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event. Dostoevsky's major heroes are, by the very nature of his creative design, not only objects of authorial 1 On Bakhtin's concept and analysis of polyphony see Halina Brzoza, Polifonia I wielostylowość czy przewrotna spójność rozpadu? Bliżej Bachtinowskiej koncepcji estetyki Dostojewskiego, i, Dostojewski. Myśl a forma, Łódź 1984.

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