Versilov’s “confession” in the light of apatetic poetics

Abstract

The article considers Versilov’s “confession” and the topics of “superfluous men”, labor (this notion can conflate peasant toil and Christian endeavor), the Russian people as the keeper of the true image of Christ, Russia’s historical mission, omni-humanity and pan-humanity, and Russian-European relations. In accordance with the principles of apatetic poetics (outward formal similarity that disguises profound substantive differences), Versilov’s statements may appear to reflect Dostoevsky’s real ideas as opposed to the writer’s opinions put forward in other artistic, and particularly journalistic texts. However, a closer investigation of Versilov’s words as a distortion of Dostoevsky’s thought lays bare substantive differences between the writer’s claims and his character’s pronouncements. Versilov’s “confession”, therefore, emerges as an epistemological mistery of sorts, and finding the correct solution prevents readers from subscribing to beliefs fraught with the risk of adopting extreme forms of ethnic or cultural nationalism, and leads instead to the notion of the omnihuman unity in the Mystical Body of Christ where “there is neither Greek nor Jew, …Barbarian, Scythian, …but Christ is all, and in all,” and “there shall be one Christ loving Himself.”