Роман «Бесы» Ф. М. Достоевского: история текста и вопрос об авторской пунктуации
F. M. Dostoevsky’s Novel “Demons”: the History of a Text and the Issue of Author’s Punctuation

Summary/Abstract: The article is a continuation of the textual study of the draft autograph of the F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons.” It examines the role that a coherent draft text of a novel plays in establishing the main text of a work. The draft autograph was usually followed by final and typeset manuscripts; based on the latter, the first printed publication of the work was created. The novel “Demons” is not represented by final manuscripts: they have not been preserved. During Dostoevsky’s lifetime, it was published twice — in 1871–1872 in the “Russkiy Vestnik” (“Russian Bulletin”) journal and in a separate (book) edition in 1873. In a case of this sort (the absence of final handwritten sources) the draft coherent text is of particular importance because it partially (and sometimes significantly) coincides with the final one and allows uncreative changes (distortions) that have arisen during the preparation of the work for publication. The specified manuscript is considered as a source of information about the author’s punctuation. In many cases, the draft reveals the reasons for a particular punctuation form of the text and shows the nature of the changes made by the author in the process of further developing the novel’s idea. There are cases when a draft manuscript contains certain discrepancies with the lifetime editions that raise the question of the degree of authorization of changes to the text in print. A comparison of sources reveals numerous examples confirming that punctuation is important for interpreting the semantic context of notes. In connection with the study of a draft autograph containing information about the author’s punctuation, both about its individual features and the situational choice of punctuation marks in a particular context, the article examines the problem of the author’s punctuation in theoretical and practical aspects, as well as the principles of reproducing the punctuation of sources in the preparation of Dostoevsky’s texts for print. The changes in the text of the lifetime editions of the novel “Demons” in the publication of the first academic Complete Works of Dostoevsky are analyzed in detail, using, when necessary and possible, these handwritten sources.

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