F.M. Dostoevsky in Italy: influence on the italian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries

Abstract

The article analyzes the influence of F.M. Dostoevsky on Italian literature. In particular, the reception of his oeuvre in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first time the name of the Russian writer appears in Biographic Dictionary of the Contemporary Writers by Angelo De Gubernatis, an Italian indologist, interested in Russian literature. According to De Gubernatis, Dostoevsky was seen more as a moralist, a philosopher rather than a writer. Thanks to Gabriele D'annunzio, Dosotevsky will be recognised as a great writer a few years later. Influences by the Russian author are evident in his novel Giovanni Episcopo, where the monologues of the main character are very similar to the monologues of the protagonist of The meek one. Dostoevsky had a big influence on Luigi Pirandello and Italo Svevo, too. In Pirandello we can find the same use of irony. For Pirandello irony is a way to analyze reality in a very complete way, to search and find in tragedy a reason to smile. Italo Svevo was inspired by Dostoevsky for the construction of his characters, his “inetti”. Inetto is a man who is not able to live in society. Nevertheless, the condition of this man is a sort of reaction to the terribile, false world that surrounds him. Probably, Svevo was strongly influenced by the ideas of Schopenhauer and the common aspects in both authors' works are related to the effect of the German philosopher. Dostoevsky was also one of the most important sources of inspiration for Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini wrote not only critical works on Dostoevsky but was also strongly influenced by him while he was writing his last, fragmentary and incomplete novel Petrolio. © И. Уччелло, 2022 Petrolio is a huge work full of philosophical, political and social lucubrations. It is a novel in which it is possible to read ideas on the function of a writer, but especially it is a novel that wants to show how power can destroy people. The last work of Pasolini wasn't studied enough especially because it was an “inconvient” book for the Italian elite, but also because the scenes of incest and pedophily weren't totally approved by the critics. In Petrolio, Pasolini wants to show a society in which the Demons have won and this is the reason why he takes intere scenes from the Dostoevskian novel Demons and just translates them. The Italian author wants to show that the “terrible” reality in Italy during the “Years of Lead” (Anni di Piombo) is not much different from the nihilist reality shown by Dostoevsky in his book. This article shows that Dostoevsky had an incredible influence on some cornerstones of Italian literature that are still active today. Moreover, it shows that topics, personages and atmospheres expressed by the Russian writer can be translated and transformed in another language and in another culture since they are universal.