Zhongwen, Qian - Problems of Bakhtin's Theory About Polyphony

7/28/2019 Zhongwen, Qian - Problems of Bakhtin's Theory About Polyphony

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Problems of Bakhtin's Theory about "Polyphony"

Author(s): Qian ZhongwenReviewed work(s):Source: New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 4, Philosophical Thoughts (Autumn, 1997), pp. 779-790Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057455 .Accessed: 24/08/2012 11:43

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Problems of Bakhtin's Theory about "Polyphony"Qian Zhongwen

The problem of "polyphony," put forward by Bakhtin almosthalf a century ago in his study of Dostoevsky's novels, has nowbecome a quite influential theory of narration with much practical significance.The "polyphonic" phenomenon deals first of all with the heroes infiction. In Bakhtin's opinion, the Dostoevskian "hero has his own

ideological authenticity and, meanwhile, has an independent nature; hemight be regarded as a creator who possessed his own complete

ideology."1 Secondly, the "polyphonic" phenomenon also relates to therelationship between the hero and his author. The hero, to Bakhtin's

mind, "is not the object through which the author manages to issue hisspeech" (PD 28); that is to say, the hero's argument with both himselfand the world has the same value as that of the author. "Just like

Goethe's Prometheus, what Dostoevsky created was not a speechlessslave (as created by Zeus), but a free man who could place himself in anequal position with his creator, being able to refute the latter's opinionsand even revolt against him" (PD 28-29). Thirdly, the breakup of theabove-mentioned relationship would, in this critic's eyes, surely lead to aprofound change in the structure of fiction. Thereupon, Bakhtinassumed that the fictions in the past were all under the completecontrol of their authors, so in spite of their different characters havingbeen woven together with each other, there remained nothing but"homophony," namely, a sort of "monologic fiction." As for the Dostoevskian novels, instead of falling into this category, they were "polyphonic fiction," namely, a sort of "all-round dialogic fiction" (PD 76).

Surely, Bakhtin's theory about "polyphony" has its originality. Toanalyze Dostoevskian works with this theory captures the major featureof the celebrated Russian novelist. As a matter of fact, Dostoevskianheroes are more complicated than those appearing in ordinary novels;they are fond of self-analysis and full of ideas. In short, "self-consciousness" is "the main artistic element in the structure of his heroes" (PD121). In his novels Dostoevsky sought "to create the hero who couldembody a kind of special view of both the world and himself, the hero

who could embody the standpoint of human beings' thinking andcomment on themselves and the relationship between them and thesurrounding reality" (PD 82). That is to say, the heroes themselves

New LiteraryHistory, 1997, 28: 779-790


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780 NEW LITERARY HISTORYexplored reality and themselves, so that their thinking became the

major object of the author's artistic description. For example, theUnderground Man in Notes from the Underground was none other than

such a self-explorer. Since the features of many contradictory ideas weremixed in this hero's body, they were an embodiment of a sort of ideologythat possessed the value of completeness itself: he may after all beaccepted as "one of the representatives of the living generation."2

Though there have been a good number of papers on Dostoevsky,almost all researchers set a low value on his language, a move probablyinitiated by Tolstoy.3 On the contrary, Bakhtin discovered the newfeature in Dostoevsky's integrated structure of language, namely, itsstrong "dialogic nature." He asserted that it was the dialogue thatformed the fundamental content of "polyphony." Bakhtin regarded allfiction prior to Dostoevsky's as "monologic fiction," assuming that only

Dostoevsky had created the genuine "dialogic fiction." In "monologicfiction," "another person becomes the object of thinking, and not theone who can think himself (PD 29). In such a case, "monologue tendsto become the final conclusion; it has covered up the depicted worldand characters,"4 neglecting the subjective nature of characters. Inreality, however, to live means to take part in social intercourse and indialogues. This relation "is, in fact, a sort of all-embracing phenomenon,it seeps into all languages, all relationships as well as manifestations ofhuman life, and permeates all the significant and valuable fields" (PD77). The succinct point of this theory of Bakhtin's lies in pointing outthe fact that if a writer wants tomake his literary work reflect reality in atruthful and sincere way, he must manage to depict his characters withobjectivity, and consequently, he must strengthen their subjectivity allthe more. Only in this way can his purpose be achieved through theircomplicated thinking and further mutual infiltration of their multifarious relationships. The terms "large-scale dialogue" and "micro-typedialogue" put forward by Bakhtin are none other than the importantmeans by which Dostoevsky fulfilled his artistic task.

The "large-scale dialogue" touches upon the structure of the characters' relationship, that is, "counterpoint." Glinka, the famous Russiancomposer, once said, "In life, everything being in counterpoint, it iscalled the phenomenon of counterpoint."5 Dostoevsky appreciated thisidea very much. What it expresses in fiction is "the different voicessinging the same subject in their specific way."6 This kind of phenomenon, such as the antagonistic combination of different characters, canbe found everywhere in his novels. As for Bakhtin, his exposition of the"micro-type dialogue" in multifarious forms possessed an even more

distinctive feature. For instance, so far as form is concerned, somedialogues took the form of the character's monologue, yet, it is a sort of


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PROBLEMS OF BAKHTIN'S THEORY 781monologue containing dialogues: that is to say, while making an innermonologue, he still continued his dialogue with both himself andothers. Other forms included making dialogue amidst dialogues; that isto say, the hero's dialogue contained the epilogue, each echoing theother in a sly way, working in concert with both those in the front andthose at the back and reacting to each other's innermost mentality; wemay call such a phenomenon "antiphonal dialogue" or "retortinganswer." These dialogues are well in tune with the "large-scale dialogues," bringing out the best in each other. Dostoevsky was fond oflistening with great attention to people's voices full of aspirations; he was"good at reading out the arguing element from a voice, making everycontradiction in two persons" (PD 70). To his mind, "the relationship of

dialogue could be sounded out at any place and in all manifestations ofthe acquainted and understood human life. For him, where consciousness began, there dialogue began" (PD 77). All these dialogues had

great originality, creating an artistic atmosphere, using repetition toopen the soul or to produce a heart-stirring force. These proceduresconverged into a marvelous spectacle in Dostoevsky's fiction. Bakhtin'sanalysis of the psychological feature of Dostoevsky's heroes is penetrating and his sagacious elaboration can be regarded as an original idea intheoretical studies. So, it is no wonder that his terms, such as "polyph

ony," "dialogue," as well as "incompleteness"?which we have not discussed here?have been widely accepted and applied by literary and artcritics (AV309).However, in Bakhtin's theory of "polyphony," the question of how todraw a line of demarcation still needs to be discussed further. First, the

formation of "polyphonic fiction," as Bakhtin asserted, is due to theemergence of the "polyphony" phenomenon; for him, "polyphonicfiction has the nature of all-round dialogue" (PD 76). But, I think thisargument is made perhaps somewhat in terms of absolutes. At itsbeginning, European fiction was written generally in the form of

monologues: for instance, the picaresque fiction in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. At that time, novels like the anonymous workLittle Lasaron were of the monologic type; the events of their stories werenearly all tinged with "legendary" color, and at times they even haddialogues. Though uttered through the mouths of their heroes, thecontent of speech was none other than what these heroes had seen andheard. During the period of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century,fiction gradually became more complicated. On the one hand, therebegan to emerge novels like Gil Bias and Tom Jones, which wereinfluenced by picaresque fiction; on the other, a vogue began of diarystyle and letter-style novels. Before long, the latter had not only thrownoff gradually the events of adventure and happy encounter, but also


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782 NEW LITERARY HISTORYchanged to indulge in conveying fervor and dissecting emotions, such asGoethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise andConfessions, Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, and so forth. Thesubject and object of dialogues in these novels were more often than notarranged specially by their writers, whereas the novel from which onecould hear some sound of polyphony, such as Diderot's Rameau sNephew,was as scarce as footfalls in an empty valley (rarity of rarities). In thenineteenth century, novels were generally written in the third person,and there eventually appeared, therefore, a flourishing spectacle: thecombination of dialogues and monologues; the fusion of epic and lyric,the dissolving of narration, diary, letters, dramatic elements, and psychological self-dissection into a unique identity. Serializing and unifying all

of these elements, Dickens, Balzac, and Turgenev set up a completesystem of narration in novel writing.

Nevertheless, Dostoevsky blazed new trails. Itwas by applying "polyphony" that he enriched nineteenth-century fiction and strengthened,with psychological analysis closer to the forms of life, the subjectiveintroversion of characters as well as the openness of fictional form; thatis to say, Dostoevsky's "polyphony" weakened the sealed nature of theconventional story whose beginning and end are designed by the writerin advance. However, the emergence of new procedures did not collapsethe unified system; it continued it by aestheticizing all its merits. Oncethe aestheticized identity came into being it became the principle

governing all narrations; itwas impossible that this unit would become anew Tower of Babel and topple over in a single day. On the contrary, itactually made the structure of fiction more complicated and multifarious in form. In fact, if we investigate Dostoevsky's own creations, we findthat his polyphonic fiction contained monologues and, what ismore,the monologues were well combined with dialogues. Take his Notes fromthe Underground, for instance; regardless that it is full of "multivocal"

phenomena, the novel still unfolds its story in monologic form. Wecannot say, therefore, that it is a sort of "all-round dialogized" fiction.Some of his novels, such as The Brothers Karamazov, possess the characteristics of an open structure, yet taken as a whole, they do not avoid the

monologic element. Besides, ifwe go a bit further, we will surely discoverthat apart from its manifestations in structure, the so-called "polyphonic" phenomenon existed mainly in the few heroes of his fictionand, moreover, it usually happened when the innermost world of theseill-fated heroes was in a highly

tense state. Forexample,

the characteristics of the "multivocal part" displayed in the image structure ofRaskolnikov is inseparable from the fact that instead of becoming a

Napoleon after committing his crime, he was unable to endure thesuccessive moral attacks upon his behavior and finally became a "trem


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PROBLEMS OF BAKHTIN'S THEORY 783bling animal." When Raskolnikov felt that this action was no differentthan self-destruction, his relationship with others became estranged andthe distance between him and his kinsmen grew farther and farther. Theso-called "polyphony," that is, the dialogues and arguments in theheroes' innermost monologue, was precisely the product of their heartsbeing extremely embittered and wavering, their consciousness full ofantagonism and compromise, and their whole mentality losing itsbalance. Through all of this, the result tortuously reflected the multicolored phenomena of the time and the deposit of historical consciousness. But, as a matter of fact, the speech and conduct of Lazumixin(probably, Bakhtin would not look upon him as a "hero") failed to

possess this particular feature; there is no difference in description ofthem when compared to characters in ordinary fiction. So far as weknow, by the time Dostoevsky was working on Crime and Punishment, heintended to write it in the first person and with diary entries. Later on,however, he gave up this plan. He sensed that towrite in the first personwould, of course, bring about a strong color of subjectivity and make itmore possible for the author to grasp the dialectics of his hero'sinnermost struggles, yet, in such a case, itwould probably be difficult forthe author to describe the personality of other characters in a broaderand more objective way.7 Of course, it is necessary to point out here thatthe objective method of narration applied afterwards by Dostoevsky isdifferent from that used by Turgenev and Balzac. Generally, the lattermade it a habit to describe the environment, place, time, and conduct in

detail. In addition, these novelists would sometimes make some comments on their heroes. The static touch thus occupied the leadingposition in their narratives. As for Dostoevsky, this sort of description is,no doubt, also a component part of the method of narration in hisfiction. However, it is by no means a major one and he does his utmostto describe scenes and characters in a moving way. He manages toproject and convey these in accordance with the movement of his hero'seyesight and mood as if these are a camera lens moving at will far andnear, right or left, and making the close-up descriptions with thesubjective color of his hero's gaze. Meanwhile, in the field of analyzingcharacters, Dostoevsky preferred to let his heroes do the analysis themselves as far as possible rather than writing on their behalf; suchdescription would sometimes even be a jumping, shorthand type. All ofthese artistic means strengthened the particular feature of his characters' subjectivity. However, so far as the relationship between heroes andthe description of their mental crisis, transformation, and other states isconcerned, monologue usually remained the medium. Therefore, hisfiction is still composed of both monologues and dialogues.

Secondly, while mentioning in his notebook the principle he had


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784 NEW LITERARY HISTORYadopted, Dostoevsky wrote, "The principle I'm now pursuing is todiscover Man in the body of human beings by way of carrying out athoroughgoing realism. . . . Some people used to regard me as apsychologist, but in fact, that iswrong: I'm a realist in the highest sense;that is to say, what Iwant to depict is the man's whole heart of hearts"(PD 100). Bakhtin asserted that this passage should be apprehendedfrom the following three aspects: (1) "He managed to fulfill his new task

by means of carrying out 'thoroughgoing realism,' namely, 'to depict theman's whole heart of hearts'"; (2) In order to accomplish this new task,"it is not enough to practice monologue-type realism

. . . , so, with anattempt to 'discover man in the body of human beings,' it is necessaryto take a special means, namely, the 'realism in the highest sense'";(3) Dostoevsky denied flatly that he was a "psychologist" (PD 100).

Taking the context as a whole, it is obvious that the central ideaexpressed in Bakhtin's explanation is his emphasis on "polyphony,"because it is through "polyphony" that the writer can perceive a man'sheart of hearts and make his creative method become "realism in thehighest sense." No doubt this explanation of Bakhtin's can be acceptedas an original view, but it is a partial viewpoint; that is to say, Bakhtinhonors "polyphony" and belittles monologue. In his opinion, it wasthrough "polyphony" that Dostoevsky succeeded in discovering "man" inhuman beings. What is the novelist's view of man? Is "polyphony" theonly channel through which this goal can be attained?

Dostoevsky concluded that "man" was both social and biological. Hehimself once pointed out, "man belongs to society, but, so far as hisbelonging is concerned, it is not totally so at all."8 He also said, "any manis complicated, and he is as deep as the sea"; both kindness and eviloriginally exist in his body, and the individualism inherent in the body ofevery man in civilized society is hard to get rid of. In Dostoevsky's view,"man is a kind of organism that can be transformed."9 Man keepschanging incessantly. Moreover, during his transformation, there is nolack of unexpectedness and illogical elements. Thus, instead of lookingat him in a plain and shallow way, the writer should go deep into hisheart of hearts, trying to understand his experiences in their variousforms.

Since man is originally born as an individual and at the same timekeeps changing incessantly, these claims appear contradictory. Canthese be reconciled? Some critics say that it can be done by puttingforward the ideal embodying universal kindness and love, namely, theChristian love attributed to human beings all over the world. However,

Dostoevsky's understanding of "man," on the one hand, had a strongpoint; that is, instead of oversimplifying his heroes, the novelist took intofull consideration the complex nature of man and his various realistic


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PROBLEMS OF BAKHTIN 'S THEORY 785desires, pointing out that man could be "transformed"; on the otherhand, it also had its weakness because the novelist exaggerated thefunction of physiological and even pathological elements in social life.His argument was tinged with the abstract nature of the moral ideal. Asexpressed in his creative work, Dostoevsky sought to depict the complexnature of man and his "possibility of being transformed." "In therotation of life, when an immoral man seeks normal and naturalaffection, he may suddenly become a good one" (LL 447). He urgedthat while studying the face of aman, the artist should find out the mainthoughts expressed there, even though the expression was thoroughlyconcealed. "From a photo one can see a man's original features, yet, it isstill quite possible that Napoleon may behave like a fool in anotherblink, whereas Bismarck may after all be accepted as a mild man."10

Actually, in Dostoevsky's novels, the characters possessing the shadows ofideals were none other than prince Myshkin, Alexis Karamazov, and soforth. Nevertheless, itwas due to the fulfillment of this complicated taskthat Dostoevsky had discovered the "man" in human beings, and that,instead of confining himself to the application of "polyphony," he

accomplished this task through numerous other artistic channels. Thenovelist often depicted his characters' heart of hearts at the juncturebetween their thought and their fate; for example, witness the description of the heroes in The Idiot and Crime and Punishment. At the time theconsciousness of these heroes was being situated in the rotation andreversal, the novelist applied a shorthand to express the sudden changein their psychological state: to display his heroes' mental confusion bymeans of applying intuition, dream, and hallucination. Thus the variouscracks formed after their suffering from a fatal attack are shown clearly.

As soon as Raskolnikov committed his crime, he was greatly confusedmentally: "At the sight of the expression in his eyes, I come to know, and

so do all of them! How Iwish I could run downstairs right now! What itwould be if there's someone there, or, a policeman standing in guard!What's this? Could it be tea? The beer hasn't yet been drunk; there's stillhalf a bottle left. How cold it is!"11This abrupt transition of consciousness seems almost to be incoherent, but, in the reality of life, it isremarkably true to the illogical reflection of the consciousness of thosewho are in a psychologically confused state of mind; there is simply nodifference! While portraying this character, Dostoevsky had repeatedly

used such words and phrases as "unconsciously," "unintentionally,""unwittingly," "illusion," "unexpectedly," "intuitionally," "the most painful thing is that it is not so much perception as consciousness or sense,"and so forth. All of these descriptions greatly deepen his exploration ofthe characters' hearts, and moreover, his descriptions are always soulstirring. Nevertheless, it is by no means a "polyphonic" description. As


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786 NEW LITERARY HISTORYfor the secondary characters, the novelist didn't forget to discover "man"in them, yet, obviously, instead of resorting to applying "polyphony," hetried merely to depict the truth of human nature. For instance, being illbehaved, "cruel," and "crazy," the landlord Svidrigailov used to insultothers at will and, at the same time, he was also hard on himself. Whilefailing to obtain the love he was feverishly pursuing, this scoundrel putan end to his life unexpectedly and secretly. In addition, Rabaigev in TheIdiot always did his best to flatter and speak glibly in the presence of

moneybags, but, when it came to making an argument, his speechturned out to be no longer superficial or full of generalities, though,unavoidably, itwas tinged from time to time with a sad flavor. Of course,this was mainly because Rabaigev, a wily bird at the low strata of theofficial world, had seen and heard a good many things there.

Dostoevsky greatly admired the psychological descriptions of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Turgenev, and Goncharov, and seemingly he himselfdidn't conclude that itwas only his psychological description that couldpenetrate the depth of a man's soul. While talking about Victor Hugo'sLa Dernier Jour d'un Condamn in "author's words" at the very beginning ofhis novel A Gentle Creature, Dostoevsky highly praised this work of Hugo'sin which the psychological description was accomplished throughillusion.12 The story highlights how a dead prisoner related in a dozen

paper scraps his multifarious psychological activities occurring in theday before his execution. But, similarly, it is not by way of applying"polyphony" that this novel depicted the innermost mentality of its hero.

Besides, if we compare Dostoevsky with Tolstoy, we must acknowledgethat, in order to explore "man" in human beings, the latter's psychological description was as excellent as the former's, and that both of themhad their own respective strong points. They were equally matched.

Tolstoy presented a famous argument, namely, "fluidity," which whencompared with the "possibility of being transformed" advanced by

Dostoevsky, allows for the possibility of equal skill though different inexpression. Tolstoy said, "In literary works, the fluidity is shown definitely and clearly. He (that is, the character) remains himself forever, yethe behaves like a scoundrel or as an angel; or like a clever man or anidiot; or like a man of unusual strength or a good-for-nothing. Howgood it would be if a literary work were narrated in this way!"13 As a

matter of fact, the same idea was expressed in his novel Resurrection.Tolstoy's artistic world is known to all, and many of his passagesdepicting the psychology of his heroes are excellent and have wonuniversal praise. In short, in the field of discovering "man" from humanbeings, both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky had attained the "realism in thehighest sense," but the former accomplished it by means of followingthe principle of "fluidity"?the dialectic of human soul?while the latter


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PROBLEMS OF BAKHTIN'S THEORY 787achieved it by putting his theory of "transformation" into practice,ruthlessly dissecting man's psychology; they reached the same goal bydifferent routes. Though having drawn such a conclusion, we do notmean to play down the significance of "polyphony." Without a doubt,"polyphony" can yet be regarded as Dostoevsky's main artistic method.

Finally, the problem we're going to discuss below is: in the relationship between the author and his hero, what degree of independenceshould the hero have? Bakhtin pointed out that the hero's argumentshould have "particular independence": "it ought to be situated in theequal position with his author, and it should be combined in a particularform with the author's argument and other heroes' voices which havethe same value of completeness" (PD 29-30). Lunacharsky highlyapproved this idea, saying, "Either when Dostoevsky was finishing hisnovel, or when he started to work out its plot at the very beginning andproceeded to unfold [it] gradually, it might have been like this: Hedoesn't have a definite and clear plan in advance; most probably, we'venow really come into contact with a sort of 'polyphonic' phenomenonconnected and woven together with absolutely free individuality."14(This was his comment written in 1929.) In the footnotes to the second

edition of Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,15 Bakhtin quoted thispassage, but raised no objection to the wording "absolutely free individuality," and in the second chapter of this book, he even putforward the problem of whether "the heroes and their voice, with thecomposition of polyphony, have a relative freedom and independence"(PZ>82). Nevertheless, to judge from both the beginning and end of the

book, Lunacharsky's remark did not change Bakhtin's fundamental viewof the particular feature of "polyphony."Generally speaking, there is a certain rational nature in Bakhtin's

statement about the independence of the heroes' ideological consciousness and the relationship with their author. If a hero fails to possess suchrelative independence, fails to possess objective reality, it is difficult forhim to exist independently. Similarly, if an author pays no attention toall of these details, tries to force his own thought on his characters, ormakes up a story without any understanding of the characters, he wouldsurely meet with their resistance, namely, the resistance of artistic logic.

Dostoevsky's heroes were all able to express their own multifarious ideasmore freely and thoroughly than the characters in ordinary novels. Butwere they really "free men" created by a Prometheus? Seemingly, ourviews are divergent on this question. In my opinion, we should notexaggerate the heroes' independence to such a degree that they couldconfront their author and refuse to accept his restrictions. The reasonsare as follows:

First, no matter what the extent of the ideological freedom and


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788 NEW LITERARY HISTORYindependence of these heroes, it was impossible for them to escape theauthor's intervention. For instance, consider Raskolnikov, the hero ofCrime and Punishment. His revolting consciousness was changed incessantly soon after he committed the crime: he felt that justice was on hisside, then he realized that he had alienated himself from the people;arguing repeatedly with both himself and others and finally under theinfluence of Sonya's faith, he arrived at the belief that for the sake oflove one should not hesitate to endure any suffering and atone for one'scrime. Of course, itwas the natural result of the logical development ofthe hero's character, yet how can you say it is not the embodiment of theauthor's original intent? To be sure, it was precisely with this point of

view that Dostoevsky expected social renewal.Second, if the heroes could be independent of their author by havingtheir own objectivity (namely, their subjective consciousness possessed a

relatively large value of objectivity), then into what position would suchan independence put the subjective activity of the author? In such acase, would not that make the author's function become a rigid mirror?To this argument Dostoevsky himself would absolutely never agree. Hesaid what the literary creation needed "is not photographic accuracy . . .

but something larger, wider, and deeper. Accuracy and truthfulness arenaturally needed, but there are too few that have them alone."16 Besides,he would not agree that writers were reduced to the level of ordinaryheroes. Dostoevsky once stated, "genuine artists should not be loweredat any rate to the same status as that of the characters they haveportrayed. ... If the author could give a bit of irony to his hero'scomplacency and naivety, then it would be more intimate to the readers"(149). It is thus clear that to overemphasize the heroes' independence is

contrary to the writer's original intention. In my opinion, the hero couldonly be regarded as nothing but the mixture jointly created by Zeus andPrometheus; that is, he has a value of his own, he is independent. But atthe same time, he is the result of the writer's artistic cognition, andtherefore, he is subject to restrictions of his author. In handling the

hero's behavior and action, the writer is none other than the one whocan know and do everything in an all-around way, though somecontemporary writers take a skeptical attitude toward this argument.While working on Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky wrote in his notebook: the writer was "the one who knows everything and will not blameothers wrongly."17 It is thus obvious that Dostoevsky himself had adefinite and clear conception of the above-mentioned phenomena. Inhis early artistic "Notes on the Author and His Hero in AestheticActivity," Bakhtin once wrote definitively, "The author does not only seeand know everything, namely, the things seen by each and every one ofhis characters, but also can perceive much more than this. Meanwhile,


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PROBLEMS OF BAKHTIN'S THEORY 789he has seen and known as well the things most difficult for thecharacters to understand" (AV 14). As a matter of fact, only when helater overemphasized the particular nature of "polyphony" did Bakhtinproceed to attend to one thing and lose sight of others.

By then there were many explanations for Dostoevsky's creation.Moreover, opinions were always varied. Among them, the method bywhich Bakhtin made a theoretical contribution in analyzing Dostoevsky'sworks is, of course, worth our attention. He said that his starting pointemphasized investigating "the particular nature of the artistic form" in

Dostoevsky's literaryworks. He

pointedout that the general researcherstook no notice of this point, but often tried to seek after this particularnature merely in the works' themes, or a single image taken from thenovel and evaluated in terms of its implication for life. In this way, sincethe most important thing, namely, the new things discovered by Dos

toevsky, were lost, itwould inevitably make the content itself lose lustre.Bakhtin said, "Instead of giving expression to the already found content,the artistic form correctly understood should first of all urge people tolook for and discover the content" (PD 80). It appears that this is noneother than Bakhtin's methodology. His idea should become, to mymind, the component part of the overall study of literary phenomena. Ina certain sense, there is no mistaking what his argument aimed for. It was

the malpractice existing in our approach to literary research.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

notes1 M. M. Bakhtin, Problems ofDostoevsky's Poetics, tr. Bai Chunren and Gu Yaling (Beijing,1988); hereafter cited in text as PD.2 See Fyodor Dostoevsky's own explanation of the title in his novel Notes from theUnderground, tr. Yi Xin (Beijing, 1982), in World Literature, no. 4, ch. 1.3 About the characters' language in Dostoevsky's works, Tolstoy spoke bluntly that it fellshort of characteristics. Heroes "all speak with the author's language, both unnatural andaffected, and what's more whatever they utter is nothing but the author's thinking." SeeLeo Tolstoy, On Art and Literature, ed. Kanstantin Lomunov (Moscow, 1958), 2:105.4 M. M. Bakhtin, The Aesthetics of Verbal Creation (Moscow, 1979), p. 318; hereafter cited intext as AV.5 Mikhail Glinka, quoted in Leonid Grossman, "Dostoevsky: A Great Artist," in his On

Dostoevsky's Creation, ed. Nikloa Stepanov (Moscow, 1959), p. 342.6 Quoted in Grossman, "Dostoevsky: A Great Artist," p. 342. Leonid Grossman also oncestudied this issue.7 George Fredrinjel, On Dostoevsky's Realism (Moscow, 1964), p. 169.8 See Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Legacy of Literature (Moscow, 1971), 83:422, 417; hereaftercited in text as LL.9 Lija Rozinblum, The Diary of Dostoevsky's Creation (Moscow, 1981), p. 311.10 Quoted in Grossman, On Dostoevsky's Creation, p. 50.


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790 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

11 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, tr. Yu Ling (Shanghai, 1979), p. 144.12 Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Gentle Creature, tr. Cheng Shi, in Collection ofNovels byDostoevsky,ed. Nikola Stipanov (Beijing, 1982), 2:598.13 Tolstoy on Literature, ed. B. Ivanova and L. Opulskaja (Moscow, 1955), p. 486.14 See Collection of Essays by Lunacharsky, ed. Ivan Anisimov (Moscow, 1955), 1:159.15 When this book was first printed in 1929, itwas entitled Problems ofDostoevsky's Creation.16 Russian Writers on Literary Creation, ed. Boris Meilach (Moscow, 1955), 3:136; hereaftercited in text.17 Quoted in Fredrinjel, On Dostoevsky's Realism, p. 170.

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Zhongwen, Qian - Problems of Bakhtin's Theory About Polyphony