TRAGEDY IN A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

ALEKSIÉI IVÂNOCITCH AND THE BURDENS OF AN INTELLECTUAL IN THE PERIPHERY

Abstract

The aim of this work is to provide a brief investigation on the novel The Gambler, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). The proposed analysis is based on a regard toward its protagonist, the young Aleksiéi Ivânovich, and on a possible genealogy in which he is inserted: that of the tutor. For this purpose, a reading of two other young educators of Western literature is carried out: Läuffer, protagonist of the play The Tutor (1774), by Lenz (1751-1792); and Julien Sorel, the central character of The Red and the Black (1830), by Stendhal (1783-1842), both occupying subordinate positions in the societies in which they live and subject to somewhat tragic fates, which prefigures Aleksiéi's own miserable destiny. Based on this path, anchored in the theoretical contribution of authors such as György Lukács (1885-1971), in addition to small forays into the works of the Warwick Research Collective (WReC) and Erich Auerbach (1892-1957), it is believed to be possible to build a critical portrait of the Western bourgeois experience and its consequences in the Russian Empire, a theme dear to Dostoevsky and which seems to constitute the core of the novel The Gambler