Appeal to the Work of F. M. Dostoevsky by Russian Emigration in Chekhia: A. L. Bem and the Psychoanalytic Method of Interpreting a Work of Art

Abstract

The article is devoted to the conversion around works of F. M. Dostoevsky which took place among Czech intellectuals, among whom there were a lot of immigrants from Russia. In this context, the example of Alfred Ludwigovich Bem is indicative. The article reveals main reasons for the interest in Dostoevsky in Czechoslovakia. An important role in the study of Dostoevsky was played by the so-called ‘Russian action of aid’ and ‘Russian trace’ left by the exiles in Prague. In this regard, A. L. Bem is interesting not only as a researcher who devoted many works to Dostoevsky’s work but also as one of the founders of Dostoevsky’s fi rst international society. Bem was also one of the first researchers who applied psychoanalysis to the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s literary works. He was also one of those who also analyzed the specifi cs of using psychoanalytic methods in literary criticism. The article reveals the methodological basis of Bem’s interpretation: attention is drawn not
only to the connection between the theme “Dostoevsky and his Reader” and psychoanalysis (Bem’s ‘method of small observations’), but also to the origins of Bem’s interpretation of psychoanalysis associated with the formal school in literary criticism; the disadvantages of psychoanalysis as a way of interpreting a work of art are emphasized.