Roman emperors in Dostoevsky’s calligraphic notes to The Idiot

The article focuses on clarifying the role of names of Roman emperors in Dostoevsky’s calligraphic records in his notebooks of the late 1860s (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Funds 212.1.6 and 212.1.7). One of the reasons for Fedor Dostoevsky’s invocation of images and themes from Roman history was the idea characteristic of the educated class of the mid-19th century, namely, that the history of Rome is a model of virtues and example of vices and atrocities, and is therefore essential to everyone who is not indifferent to the fate of humankind. Since the writer’s creative reflections mainly refer to Gaius Julius Caesar and the rulers of the first two centuries (and the first three dynasties) of the Imperial Period, the writer’s interest in the Roman Caesars must be correlated with his assessment of Imperial Rome in the I–II centuries as the time of strengthening the sole nature of the Emperor’s power and the spread of the Imperial cult, on the one hand, and the formation of Christianity, on the other. At the same time, Dostoevsky’s attention was drawn to Attila and Romulus Augustulus, whose names are associated with the final pages of the history of the Western Roman Empire. For Dostoevsky, Not only texts authored by ancient and Christian authors, but also images of Imperial Rome in contemporary literature and journalism became the sources of associations and motifs associated with the Roman Caesars for Dostoevsky. The most important nuances of meaning were born from the comparison of ancient Roman history with the new history of Western Europe and Russia. The evolution of the subject of calligraphic notes in The Idiot is significant: in the initial drafts of the novel the emphasis was placed on the despotism and monstrosity of the Roman rulers, while the notes for the final version concentrated on the reflection of the history of Imperial Rome and its fate in the Apocalypse.