Ellison and Dostoevsky: A Critical Reassessment of the Aesthetics and Politics
- Issue:
- УДК / UDK: 821.111
- DOI:
- Abstract:
After an overview of the well-known aspects of Ralph Ellison’s interest in and connections to the works and literary ideas of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, this paper reveals the hitherto unknown depths of Ellison’s research into and usage of the works and aesthetic theories of the Russian writer as he applied them to American and African American literary and social contexts. Making use of archival materials (including Ellison’s correspondence, draft of his unfinished novel Three Days Before the Shooting..., highlighting and marginalia in the books from his personal library, which includes numerous works by and about Dostoevsky), this reassessment addresses the role of the Russian classics, and in particular, of Dostoevsky, in Ellison’s intellectual formation, the role that Dostoevsky played in Ellison’s literary relationship with Richard Wright; the ways that Ellison’s interests in the blues, jazz and other folk and vernacular forms of African American culture were filtered through his analysis of nineteenth-century Russian culture; and the Dostoevskyan origins of a number of fictional scenarios that would find their way into Three Days Before the Shooting... The essay concludes with a discussion of the correspondence between Ellison and Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky’s biographer.
- Keywords: Ralph Ellison, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Literary Pluralism, Invisible Man, Three Days Before the Shooting..., Richard Wright, Joseph Frank, Jazz, Charlie Parker.
- For citation:
Rachman, Stephen. “Ellison and Dostoevsky: A Critical Reassessment of the Aesthetics and Politics.” Literature of the Americas, no. 11 (2021): 34–81. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2021-11-34-81
- References:
Anderson 2005 — Anderson, Paul A. “Ralph Ellison’s Music Lessons.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison, edited by Ross Posnock, 82 –103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Bakhtin 1973 — Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Translated by R.W. Rotsel. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973.
Bakhtin 2002 — Bakhtin, Mikhail. Sobranie sochinenii: v 7 t. [Collected Works, in 7 vols.]. Vol. 6: “Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo”, 1963. Raboty 1960-kh –1970-kh gg. [“Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,” 1963. Works of the 1960s –1970s]. Moscow: Russkie slovari Publ.; Iazyki slavianskoi kul'tury Publ., 2002. (In Russ.)
Blackmur 1964 — Blackmur, Richard P. Eleven Essays in the European Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964.
Burke 1964 — Burke, Kenneth. “Literature as Equipment for Living.” In Perspectives by Incongruity, edited by Stanley E. Hyman, 100 –109. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.
Callahan, Conner 2019 — Callahan, John F., and Marc C. Conner, eds. The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison. New York: Random House, 2019.
Conner 2016 — Conner, Marc. “Father Abraham: Ellison’s Agon with the Fathers in Three Days Before the Shooting...”. In The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century, edited by Marc C. Conner and Lucas E. Morel, 167 –193. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
Crable 2011 — Crable, Bryan. Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Dostoevsky 1972–1990 — Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: v 30 t. [Complete Works, in 30 vols.]. Leningrad: Nauka Publ., 1972 –1990. (In Russ.)
Ellison 1952 — Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1952.
Ellison 1982 — Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Random House, 1982.
Ellison 1995 — Ellison, Ralph. The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Edited by John F. Callahan. New York: Modern Library, 1995.
Ellison 2010 — Ellison, Ralph. Three Days Before the Shooting... Edited by John F. Callahan and Adam Bradley. New York: Modern Library, 2010.
Fanger 1965 — Fanger, Donald. Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Foley 2010 — Foley, Barbara. Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Frank 1995 — Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865 –1871. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Graham, Singh 1995 — Graham, Maryemma, and Amritjit Singh, eds. Conversations with Ralph Ellison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
Jacobs 2001 — Jacobs, Karen. The Eye’s Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Lordi 2013 — Lordi, Emily J. Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013.
Morris 1952 — Morris, Wright. “The World Below.” Review of Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. New York Times, April 13, 1952.
Moten 2003 — Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Muyumba 2009 — Muyumba, Walton M. The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Rampersad 2007 — Rampersad, Arnold. Ralph Ellison: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Sale 1965 — Sale, Roger. “The Career of Ralph Ellison.” The Hudson Review 18, no. 1 (Spring 1965): 124 –128.
Steiner 1959 — Steiner, George. Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.
Warren 2003 — Warren, Kenneth W. So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.
