Notes on Memory and Temporality in Dostoevsky’s Novels

“Notes on Memory and Temporality in Dostoevsky’s Novels,” especially in The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot. Differences between ordinary chronological time, defined by the past, present, and future, — and timeless temporality. The essay considers the relationship between memory and time from the perspectives of the “long time after” and the “rest of one’s life” in The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, in which the future is projected into the past to be remembered beyond the temporal bounds of the novel. By contrast, memories in The Idiot, which have such an important function in the novel, pertain only to the past (it defines the present) because Nastas’ia Filippovna has no future, and Myshkin loses his memory at the end. Narratives of memory in The Idiot pertain not only to its main, but also some of its minor characters, with the difference that the latter’s falsified memories are projected into history, thereby parodying the novel’s leitmotif of memory. Premised on the claim that only Dostoevsky’s open endings offer hope for the future, my essay suggests two temporal arcs: the first is open, as in The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment; the second, closed, as in The Idiot. Other discussed forms of temporality: threshold, spatialized, expanded, accelerated, impeded, stilled, and apocalyptic time.