«ETERNAL DARKNESS» BY SEBASTIAN BACH: ATONEMENT OR PUNISHMENT? (CONCERNING THE ORIGINS OF THE IDEA OF V. F. ODOEVSKY’S NOVELLA SEBASTIAN BACH)

Abstract

The article reinterprets the main idea of V. F. Odoevsky’s novella Sebastian Bach, the fi nal one in the cycle House of Madmen, a project the writer worked on during the 1830s. Later, the stories from this cycle were incorporated into the novel Russian Nights. As a part of the new project, they were edited by the author to meet his current goals. This later edition is generally used by researchers when analyzing the stories about the «genius madmen». The purpose of the article is to return to the author’s original idea and offer a new rendition of the image of Sebastian Bach, as based on the early text (1835).