Proust reading Dostoevsky: references, influences, and literary dialogue

This paper examines the reception and influence of Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s works on Marcel Proust’s poetics, with particular emphasis on the ways in which Proust reads, interprets, and transforms the experience of the Russian novel within his own literary system. Through an analysis of Proust’s correspondence, his explicit references to Dostoevsky in the novel cycle In Search of Lost Time, and a comparative reading of their respective poetics, the paper explores the thematic and structural affinities between the two authors. The paper also examines the historical context of the reception of the Russian novel in France at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, when Dostoevsky’s works became a significant aesthetic and intellectual model for French writers. Particular attention is devoted to the approaches of Dostoevsky and Proust to the structuring of the novel and the psychological construction of character, as well as to their treatment of the issues of memory, suffering, religion, guilt, love, and the spiritual mystery manifested through female characters. The analysis demonstrates that Proust does not adopt Dostoevsky as a direct poetic model; rather, he establishes a complex dialogue with his work, transforming the metaphysical and moral questions of the Russian novel into aesthetic and psychological concerns of modernist consciousness.