Summary
David Goldstein: Dostoevsky and the Jews
An endless library of books in world literature has been written about Dostoevsky. This library is similar to the Babylonian library in all respects, except for one point: it is not, and will not be, the last book about Dostoyevsky. The many-voiced work of Dostoevsky still represents an inexhaustible challenge for plural readings by critics of the most diverse orientations and directions. In the center of polemically intoned articles, Dostoevsky publicly addressed the "Jewish question" in Russia at that time. D. I. Goldstein tried, while researching the work of Dostoevsky, to determine the place occupied by the Jews in the writer's life, in the work and in his view of the world.
He was interested in how Dostoevsky - an ardent advocate of Holy Russia, a zealous Christian and a determined representative of the "humiliated and offended" - viewed the people of Israel. Goldstein explores the answers to this and other questions in the first comprehensive study on this topic, which for many reasons, even a hundred years after Dostoyevsky's death, has remained unlit or, perhaps, obscured by various forms of censorship and possible misunderstandings.
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