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| | St. Petersburg: Dostoevsky and Gogol (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) |
 | | While his first novel has many elements of a Gogolian fable (a poor, educated, lonely clerk with a vague past, unrequited love, taking place within the immortal city of St. Petersburg, death), his treatment of the subject matter, the interpretation of characters’ emotions, and the overall effect produced by the young writer are markedly different. |
 | | Appearing from Diary of a Madman are the themes of madness, the commitment to a mental institution, and the peculiar epistolary forms of delusion (letters from the dog, Medzhi, in Diary and from the beauty, Klara, in The Double). |
 | | In Diary of a Madman, it is on Nevsky that the narrator observes the two dogs chatting, relating to the Nevsky as ‘surreal and absurd,’ as well as the Nevsky as ‘focal point of action.’ Propischin also takes an “incognito(296)” stroll down Nevsky on the “Date none. |
| www.stanford.edu /~skij/piter.html (9311 words) |
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