(Gojko Čelebić: "Dostoevsky and the West", Oktoih, Podgorica, 2012)
The recently published new literary-theoretical study "Dostoevsky and the West" by Gojko Čelebić (the previous year it was The Windmills of Europe) will, without a doubt, mean a great step forward for Montenegrin literature.
How much and in what way, literary criticism should deal with it. According to what it offers to the reader through its in-depth analytical complex, which is the reception of Dostoyevsky in Western European and American literature and, in that context, the interaction of postmodern styles and reading, it can be said that this is a book that, in terms of its genre, (essay-theoretical discourse), as a unique achievement, enriches Montenegrin literature.
In each of the four chapters - Dostoevsky and the modern West, Dostoevsky and structural thinking, Dostoevsky in Montenegro, and In the land of the Grand Inquisitor - the author, knowing and using the original literature in five world languages, not only brought their critical spirit closer to Montenegrin culture, he has already pointed out the growing topicality of dignity studies in the world.
True, Dostoevsky's relationship to the theory and practice of Western literature and philosophy is less represented in relation to the reflection and reception of his literary-theoretical postulates. Although the author states in the introduction that his study "does not pretend to be comprehensive but representative", this work certainly represents a wide, well-systematized panopticon of stylistic development formations (primarily structuralism) in the context of the beginnings of modern thought and reading.
"Dostoevsky in Montenegro" is a particularly interesting chapter, at least for the local literary public
And such a reading of the cultural map of the West began with Cervantes, to whom Čelebić also pays considerable attention in this book. Why is the influence of the Russian literary giant on the literature and philosophy of the West considered epoch-making, almost close to a scientific discovery?
Because the philosophy of his thought imposed a "radical turn from positivist history to modern psychology" on that same culture. Such a ubiquitous psychological paradigm that turns its back on historically packaged facts and a cemented one-dimensional apology of events, and "the human being is superior to the development of world trends", as the author emphasizes in a footnote, and how it shook the analytical matrix of European cultural circles.
This only says that the reception of Dostoyevsky did not proceed in a straight line, there were quite a few deviations, especially at the beginning (Konrad, the Jew, James, Galsworthy... partly Nabokov and Kundera), while some critics even stated that reading his novels "can harm psychological health".
In his study, Čelebić spoke competently about another phenomenon (among many others, no less important) related to Dostoevsky: realism in a higher sense, that is, psychological realism, as interpreted by some theorists.
The first to write about Dostoyevsky was Marko Cara, without a doubt, the most comprehensive Slobodan Tomović
Although Dostoevsky himself considered himself a realist, but with a different profile from the others, Čelebić, deeply scanning his style and novelistic structure, rightly says that his realism "is never bare, nor methodologically clean and reducible to the framework of any literary direction".
Therefore, he concludes that being called a realist "may be more useful to others than to him". "Dostoyevsky in Montenegro" is a particularly interesting chapter, at least for the local literary public, primarily because the author discloses the facts about what the first interpretations of Dostoyevsky were, through which sources they reached him, in which direction Dostoyevsky's influence flowed when is the Montenegrin literary theory map.
The first to write about Dostoyevsky was Marko Cara, without a doubt, the most comprehensive Slobodan Tomović. Čelebić's study, which critically tests contemporary thought and opens up key questions about the reception of not only literary themes, but also from other current spheres - psychology, religion, politics - represents a unique research endeavor.
As such, it is looking for a dedicated reader, patient and ready for a dialogue with Čelebić's not only the basic, otherwise demanding text, but also with the one contained in over 450 footnotes, which are themselves. Montenegrin literary practice lacked his essayistic-theoretical discourse just like that.
Bonus video:
