“We laughed like from a tickle on the heart.” Dostoevsky’s Muddy Confession. When considering laughter in Dostoevsky, one immediately thinks of the long “tirade” in The Adolescent, which proposes a kind of physiology of laughter, and its unpredictable effects on the perception of those who witness it. Laughter and caustic humor color even the most intimate confessions and can serve to partially mask the difficult action of revealing oneself before others. Modernity itself is the era of self-exhibition, of a sort of widespread confession. And yet, the laughter of modernity has lost the essence of joy. Joy is a function of that almost impossible sincerity that unveils the essence of man. The grimace of the fool, who shamelessly denudes himself before others in confession, becomes a sign of the isolation of the modern self and the end of the utopia of sincerity pursued by Rousseau.
University of Parma, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-0814-9833
Chapter Title
«Мы смеялись, словно от щекотки по сердцу». Мутная исповедь у Достоевского
Authors
Maria Candida Ghidini
Language
Russian
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0122-3.11
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Ф.М. Достоевский: Юмор, парадоксальность, демонтаж
Editors
Dar'ja Farafonova, Laura Salmon, Stefano Aloe
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
222
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0122-3
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0121-6
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0122-3
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0123-0
Series Title
Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici
Series ISSN
2612-7687
Series E-ISSN
2612-7679