Podosokorsky Nikolai Nikolaevitch – Candidate in Philology, Senior Researcher at the Research Centre “Dostoevsky and World Culture”, Institute for World Literature RAS; ORCID: 0000-0001-6310-1579
The article presents a comprehensive examination of the Napoleonic myth in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky through the prism of the “constellation” of the Napoleonic marshals. The article describes the role of the marshals of France in the general construction of the legends of Napoleon in world and Russian culture of the first half of the nineteenth century. In three special sections of the article, the tragicomic references by the writer to specific marshals of the First Empire (Jean Lannes, Louis Nicolas Davout and Charles Pierre Francois Augereau) in the scene of a visit to the Pantheon in Paris in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863), in General Ivolgin’s fantastic story about Napoleon in 1812 in the novel The Idiot are analyzed in detail (1868–1869) and in the draft entry for the novel The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880): “Augereau to Napoleon: ‘you’... And we have an orderly...”. An attempt has been made to establish the main historical and literary sources of artistic scenes involving the named marshals in these works. Special attention is paid to the study of Dostoevsky’s characters’ stories about the death of Marshal Lannes, Duke of Montebello from the effects of a wound he received during the Battle of Essling on May 22, 1809, and the role of Marshal Davout, Prince of Ekmulsky in the fate of Napoleon’s Great Army in captured Moscow in 1812.
F.M. Dostoevsky; the Napoleonic myth; Napoleon; the Pantheon in Paris; Winter notes on summer impressions; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov; Jean Lannes; Marshal L.N. Davout; Marshal S.P.F. Augereau