Dostoevsky, Siberia, and the Russian Person in Donna Tartt’s Novel The Goldfinch

Abstract

This article considers the Russian motifs present in the narrative of The Goldfinch (2014), a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. These include the depiction of the main character’s Russian friend, allusions to the creative work of Dostoevsky, the interpretation of his novel The Idiot made by the characters, and a detail testifying to the Siberian descent of the second main character. The author makes an attempt to analyse previously unstudied motifs connecting the story of the character with the Russian context. More particularly, she substantiates the importance of Boris Pavlikovsky’s Siberian roots. The author concludes that Tartt portrays the Russian person not only as a complex of stereotypes found in culture but in close connection with the Russian literary tradition. The article combines immanent analysis of text with hermeneutic, mythopoetical, intermedial, and intertextual methods. The author concludes that by referring to the Siberian descent of the second main character, Tartt introduces the Siberian myth into the receptive context of her novel formed on the basis of the whole corpus of Russian literature. It is a myth of Siberia as a space of liminal death and Christological initiation (acc. to V. I. Tyupa). It is proved that relying on this mythologeme makes it possible for the reader to decode the underlying semantics of the novel. It relates to the idea of the resurrection of the character facing the tragedy of death. The plot of The Goldfinch is interpreted as a plot of returning to life through the experience of staying in the land of the dead, crime, and dying. Additionally, the author analyses the function of motifs connected with Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot. It is not only present as an allusion in Tartt’s work but as an object of the characters’ reflection. For Theo Decker, this reflection results in the acceptance of Dostoevsky’s idea of the resurrection of a great sinner. It is demonstrated that relying on his perception of Dostoevsky’s works, the character realises the circular plot of accepting life and redemption. This interpretation makes it possible to reconstruct the evangelical subtext of the novel. The novel’s ekphrastic aspect also proves it by means of the character’s reflection on The Goldfinch, a painting by Carel Fabritius. Apart from the liminal chronotope, the author analyses other chronotopes of the character that are also of considerable importance: the Christmas chronotope and the road chronotope. The poetological peculiarities revealed prove that Tartt’s works belong to the genre tradition of Bildungsroman (initiation novel). This is illustrated by other images of Dostoevsky’s works, including the ones Tartt used in her first novel The Secret History (1992).