The Image of Garibaldi in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Works

The study is the first to collect, describe and analyze the main body of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s comments related to Giuseppe Garibaldi. The image of the Italian political figure is reconstructed in the creative works of the Russian writer. The image is analyzed from historical and political perspectives of the nineteenth-century Russia (1860–1870) and the Italian Risorgimento. The relevance of the study is due to the modern perception of Dostoevsky as an original political thinker and the wide context of Russian-Italian relations. Giuseppe Garibaldi is one of the most distinguished political figures in the European history of the middle of the second half of the 19th century. He is a national hero of Italy, one of the leaders of the Risorgimento whose main political achievement was unification of the country and nation. Dostoevsky repeatedly referred to Garibaldi during two decades, from 1860 to 1876. Dostoevsky’s creative works related to the image of Garibaldi are as follows: Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, The Double, The Adolescent, A Writer’s Diary, as well as his letters of 1867 and 1868. The way Garibaldi’s image is reflected in Dostoevsky’s creative writing is worth noting: Garibaldi is mentioned only in final versions of two works of the beginning of the 1860s, i.e. Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions; in the works of the 1860s–1870s (The Double, The Adolescent, A Writer’s Diary), Garibaldi is mentioned only in preliminary drafts, not in the final canonical versions of the works. Garibaldi’s image is of particular importance in Dostoevsky’s creative writing; however, it is often “hidden” being not explicit, but implicit textual evidence. All the mentioned materials show that Dostoevsky was aware of the events and circumstances related to Garibaldi and the Italian Risorgimento as a whole. He received the information from European and Russian newspapers and journals, Garibaldi’s Notes, and, finally, an occasional face-to-face meeting with him in 1867. Garibaldi’s image is created in different ways: Dostoevsky simply mentions his name or creates a vivid artistic image (A.G. Dostoevskaya also contributed to shaping Garibaldi’s image). With all the attention that Dostoevsky paid to Garibaldi’s political activity, the image that he finally created in his works stands out for personal features and traits associated with the unique personality of the “Italian hero”. According to Dostoevsky, “genius” and “open-heartedness” are the essential features of Garibaldi’s personality.