The Adolescent as Sentimental Education

This article dwells on my earlier method, of mining discursive taboos, specific for each novel by Dostoevsky, for the key values made prominent in these novels. More than the original chapter in my 1998 book, Dostoevsky’s Taboos, the article applies this method to the specific poetics of The Adolescent as Bildungsroman. As Arkady, the character, and then, eventually, the narrator, learns about his own faux pas about violating others’ taboos, he also learns about values entailed by these taboos. He becomes less selfish and more sensitive to the reality of other people and their pain and sore spots. As readers, we learn about compassion and a certain imperative system of values, together with this character, just as these newly unmentionable values emerge or transpire for him. Rather than being told about the “before and after” of the character, we are implicated in his transformation, learning his lessons together with him and never having any moral immunity from his faults or any opportunity to judge him from above.