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Charles E. Passage CHARACTER NAMES IN DOSTOEVSKY’S FICTION Ardis Ann Arbor Copyright© 1982 by Charles E. Passage No part of this publication can be reproduced by any means without the express written permission of the publisher, Ardis, 2901 Heatherway, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Passage, Charles E. Character names in Dostoevsky’s fiction. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881—Characters— Dictionaries. 2. Names, Personal in literature—Diction aries. I. Title. PG3328.Z7C477 891.73’3 81-12782 ISBN 0-88233-616-9 AACR2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 7 Introduction 11 PARTONE I. Dostoevski’s Early Stories 1846-1849 19 II. Works of Various Kinds, 1857-1865 32 III. Short Novels and Short Stories, 1866-1881 50 IV. The Long Novels 58 PART TWO I. Types of Family Names 106 II. The Social Classes 108 III. Special Groups of Characters 110 IV. Animals 115 V. Narrators 116 VI. Settings 117 VII. Russians with Non-Russian Names 117 VIII. Given Names 118 TABLES Given Names in Dostoevski’s Fiction 121 Non-Russian Given Names in Dostoevski’s Fiction 128 Family Names of Dostoevski’s Characters 129 PREFACE By explaining the names of characters in Dostoevski’s fiction the present study seeks to enhance the pleasure of English-language readers in those great stories. From the luckless lovers, “Mr. Virginal” and “Miss Good* village,” of “Poor Folk” (1846) to the “Blacksmears”—Karamdzovs—of 1880, the author names his characters meaningfully, and to miss those meanings is to miss an important dimension of his creative art. In most, but not all, cases, the meanings are apparent to Russians—as they were intended to be, so that only small studies have been needed for native readers, whereas our purpose here is to survey the onomasticon as a whole for persons knowing no Russian. Our Part I examines the individual tales and novels in nearly chrono logical order, summarizing the plots only just enough to make a readable text and to display the appropriateness of the names within that particular work; Part II assembles and evaluates categories of names—but with no con cern, except incidentally, with ideology, psychological comment, or literary interpretation. Our concluding pages contain a master list of 513 family names in Dostoevski’s fiction, each with its basic meaning expressed as tersely as possible; for elaboration and for doubtful cases the reader will need to turn back to the appropriate section of Part I. The compiliation of 513 family names was made by the present writer, and it confines itself to fictional personages, unlike the list published in 1933 by Alfred Boehm (Al’fred Bern) and a committee of scholars,1 which includes all proper names, of whatever sort and by the hundreds, ever men tioned by Dostoevski in fictional and non-fictional writings alike. We list each name, e.g. Lebedev, only once; we do not list, as Boehm does, all six Lebedevs who appear in The Idiot. Ours is a names-list, not a characters- index. We include the names from the short stories of the 1870s, omitted by Boehm’s committee, and in Part II a section is devoted to the animal names likewise omitted by Boehm’s committee. Extremely useful to the present study were the extensive Notes and critical apparatus to the “Nauka” edition of Dostoevski’s works,2 fifteen volumes of which, issued since 1972, were available to us out of the an nounced total of thirty. From this source our list acquired seven additional names: Bergstolz, Kopîlin, Reisler, Shapdzhnikov, Ukhvâtov, Zaichikov, and Zaitsev. Gratefully acknowledged also is the excellent, if brief, article by S.V. Belov, entitled “Given Names and Family Names in F. M. Dostoevski.”3 We entirely agree with Belov and wish he had written at greater length. Interesting but tangential to our purposes was the article by M.S. Al’tman, dealing, not with the meaning of the names, but with the real-life prototypes of certain characters.4 In the case of “Yakov Petrovich Golyâd- 7 kin,” central figure in “The Double,” for instance, Al’tman claims (p. 198) that both the given-name-and-patronymic and the personality were taken from an actual Yakov Petrovich Butkov, an unsuccessful writer with whom Dostoevski was personally acquainted. The same Butkov, Al’tman claims, served as the model for Vasya Shumkov, “the faint heart.” Again, the “Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin” of Crime and Punishment was deliberately based on an actual Pavel Petrovich Lyzhin,the “GrushenTea” of The Brothers Karama zov was based on one Grüsha Men’shova, the “Pyotr (Alexandrovich) Miu- sov” of the same novel was based on philosopher-of-history Pyotr (Yakov levich) Chaadaev, and so on. Our concern here, however, is precisely with the element of difference, that is, with the name newly invented or borrowed by Dostoevski. RP. Blackmur’s article, “In the Birdcage,”5 is, however, a strictly lit erary critique of The Possessed, relevant to our present purpose only in its final paragraph, where the name “Verhoven” (i.e. Verkhovénski) is said to mean “supreme,” the name “Stavrogin” is connected with Greek stavrôs, and the locale of The Possessed is the town of “Birdcage.” Only the given names of characters can have been “predetermined” in Al’tman’s sense and then only a handful of cases. In hundreds of instances Dostoevski assigned given names and even patronymics on the basis of the etymologies provided in Russian Orthodox church calendars such as par ishioners receive annually. We had reached that conclusion even before dis covering, in Belov’s article, that such an item was contained in Dostoevski’s personal book collection. Again, many a given name and patronymic must have been assigned at the author’s caprice. We stress the cases where we feel the choice was careful and deliberate, but the reader must decide for himself whether a name was chosen or random by consulting pages 121-8 of our study, where the given names of Dostoevski’s characters are listed together with etymologies from two church calendars from American parishes of the Orthodox Church. The present study is focused, however, on the 513 family names of Dostoevskian personages. Invented outright presumably is such a name as “Princess Bezzmel’naya,” i.e., “Princess Landless,” a name tossed off only once and in passing; but an important name like “Raskol’nikov” was, we believe, thoughtfully compounded by the creating author. On the other hand, many a family name may have been selected from real life, and not necessari ly from acquaintances. In A Raw Youth a midshipman turned shyster lawyer has the name of “Osetrov,” from osëtr, “a sturgeon” or “a pike.” Both the fish and the man are marine and voracious, and we exclaim on the author’s splendid name-invention. Yet a 1968 listing of scholarly articles shows the name of “Osetrov” as one of the authors, and the present writer has known persons in real life named “Pike,” who were neither marine nor voracious. In short, Dostoevski coined names and selected names, and we shall not attempt here to distinguish the one sort from the other, our concern 8 being with the meaning and its appropriateness. Since the translation of Dostoevski’s complete fiction by Constance Garnett is the translation most likely to be used by English-language readers, we spell the Dostoevskian names more or less in Garnett’s transliteration, though we use kh for Russian X, rather than reduce the sound to mere h, and we bring back double s’s to a single s. Because we address a literary audience primarily, we avoid the “scientific” transliteration, preferring Zhùchka to 2u£ka, for example. Accent marks, which are not used in Russian, have been placed on the syllable receiving primary stress, and readers are advised that such primary stress is very marked. “Ivanov” is pronounced ee-VAHN-uff, “AlexÄndrov- na” is pronounced alex-AHN-drovna, but rules about placement of Russian accent are difficult to formulate. Vowels have their “continental,” not their English, values. Most e’s are sounded as “yeh,” so that a full transcription of “Berendeev” would produce “Byeryendyêyev;” two dots over an e changes the sound from “yeh” to “yaw.” The “apostrophes” are “soft signs,” modifying the “quality” of apreceding n, I, d, or r. The interpretations here offered of the 513 family names are the work of the present writer in consultation with native Russian speakers. Chief of these, is Yvette Louria, Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Queens College of the City University of New York and of the Ph. D. program of the City University. It was Professor Louria who urged resumption of this long-abandoned project and who patiently read and re read every word of the text as the ideas took shape over a period of years. Professor Louria, in turn, conferred with Lydia Polushkin, formerly a lecturer in Russian literature in the City University. Considerable work on the project was also contributed by Miss Joan Richardson, a former graduate stu dent of Professor Louria’s, and in the early stages of information-gathering valuable advice was given by Filia Holtzman, Professor Emerita of Russian at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Valuable suggestions were also offered by Mr. I. M. Efimov of Ann Arbor, Michigan, during late stages of the book’s printing. The author’s gratitude is herewith extended to all these persons. Illumination, in whatever small degree, of Dostoevski’s genius is the aim of this project. Dansville, New York 1979 1 Dictionary of Personal Names in Dostoevski (Slovar’ lichnikh im'én u Dostoevskogo) compiled by A.L. Boehm (Al’fred Liuvigovich Bem), S.V. Zavadski, R.V. Pletnev, and D.l. Chizhevski, under Boehm's editorship, dated from Prague, August 15, 1933, and contained in Vol. II of a 3-volume Anthology of Essays about Dostoevski (O Dostoev- skom: Sbornik statei). (All three volumes were reissued in 1961, under one cover, by University Microfilms, Inc., of Ann Arbor, Michigan.) 2 FJf. Dostoevski: Complete Works in thirty volumes (F.M. Dostoevski: Polnoe 9