“The Little Hero” (From Unknown Memoirs) is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published under the pseudonym M-iy in 1857 in the eighth issue of the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski by A. A. Kraevsky.
Historical background
The story was written in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where Dostoevsky was imprisoned after his arrest in April 1849. Initially, the work was conceived as more extensive and was called “Children’s Tale”. In letters to his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky called it a novel and a story. It was written between the end of the investigation and the sentencing in the summer and fall of 1849. The arrested Petrashevskyites were allowed to correspond and read books only in July, and before that time Dostoevsky could only make plans for future works in his head. Work on “The Little Hero” was accompanied by breaks and the forced inconveniences of prison existence: no candles, etc.
By December, when the writer, along with other prisoners, was sent to Siberian penal servitude, the story was already completely finished and handed over to M. M. Dostoevsky. Along with it, other manuscripts were also handed over: “…several sheets of my manuscript, a rough draft of a drama and a novel (and the finished story “Children’s Tale”) have been taken from me and will most likely go to you.” Of the works mentioned by the writer, only the story “Little Hero” has survived; the other manuscripts were not saved by the elder brother, probably because they were unfinished. Fyodor Mikhailovich did not forget about this story during all the years of his stay in prison and wrote to his brother immediately after his release from it in January 1854: “Have you received my “Children’s Tale”, which I wrote in the ravelin? If you have, then do not dispose of it and do not show it to anyone.”
Intending to obtain permission to publish his new works in 1856, the exiled writer was nevertheless interested in the printed fate of his previous story: “I, my dear, asked you about the fate of ‘Children’s Tale’. Tell me positively <…> did you seriously want to publish it? If you wanted to, did you try or not, and if you didn’t try, then why exactly? For God’s sake, write me all this. This request of mine will be an answer to your assumption that I am not forbidden to publish. Agree that the fate of this little thing ‘Children’s Tale’ is interesting to me in many respects.”
Thus, the author is interested not so much in the publication of ‘The Little Hero’ as in the very fact of permission to return to literature and publish in the usual way. Mikhail Dostoevsky published the completed story of his exiled brother in August 1857 in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski under the title “The Little Hero” (From Unknown Memoirs). Instead of the author’s surname, the work had the anagram M-iy. The change of title, apparently, was not agreed upon with the author and was caused by the desire to divert the authorities’ attention from the true authorship of the work. Despite the fact that F. M. Dostoevsky knew about the upcoming publication of the story, after the magazine publication he complained about his inability to improve it: “The news about the publication of “Children’s Tale” was not entirely pleasant for me. I had been thinking for a long time about reworking it, and reworking it well, and, first of all, I started to throw out everything that was no good.” After returning from exile, F. M. Dostoevsky actually returned to the story and made significant changes to the text. Even while writing “The Little Hero” and much later, he repeatedly spoke about the peace of mind he experienced during his imprisonment and writing of the story:
When I found myself in the fortress, I thought that this was the end for me, I thought that I would not last three days, and suddenly I completely calmed down. After all, what was I doing there? I was writing “The Little Hero” – read it, do you see any bitterness or torment in it? I had quiet, good, kind dreams.
Vsevolod Solovyov, “Memories of Dostoevsky”, Historical Bulletin, 1881, No. 3, p. 615.
Work on the story was a kind of outlet for the writer in the oppressive atmosphere of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, gave him the strength to endure and not lose heart, as happened, for example, with some other Petrashevskyites. With the help of his imagination, the writer’s soul was carried away from the destructive dungeon to the world of childhood, joy and happiness with its festive atmosphere and jubilant colors of living nature; it was in the Peter and Paul Fortress that Dostoevsky managed to write one of his most heartfelt, lyrical and bright stories.
Theme and background of the work
According to V. S. Nechaeva, the landscape sketches of the work reflect the writer’s childhood memories of their Tula estate Darovoe. G. A. Fyodorov believes that this could be about the dacha of the Dostoevsky relatives – the Kumanins in Pokrovskoe (Fili) near Moscow. Among Dostoevsky’s early works, “The Little Hero” turned out to be the least “Petersburg”. In a letter to his brother from the fortress, he wrote: “Of course, I drive away all temptations from my imagination, but other times you can’t cope with them, and the old life breaks into the soul, and the past is experienced again.” The first version of the story was written in the form of an appeal to a certain Mashenka.
When reworking it, the writer removed this appeal from the beginning of the work, as well as from the subsequent parts, forgetting to remove it in just one place due to an oversight. Work on the story took place at a time when Dostoevsky was forced to interrupt work on “Netochka Nezvanova”, which remained unfinished, so some of the themes from this novel were transferred to the new work.
As in “Netochka Nezvanova”, the writer was concerned with the theme of childhood and growing up, the development of a child’s soul, the emergence of the first manifestations of love:
love-devotion, love as selflessness. Depicting the sympathetic character of m-me M, her remarkable spiritual qualities and forbidden love, Dostoevsky followed in this description the image of Alexandra Mikhailovna from the story “Netochka Nezvanova”, the same applies to the description of her husband-antipode m-r M, as insensitive as Alexandra Mikhailovna’s husband.
In order to characterize him more accurately, Dostoevsky turned to the analogy of “natural-born Tartuffes and Falstaffs,” “a special breed of humanity that has grown fat at someone else’s expense.” An empty, meaningless gentleman who does nothing and is not marked by anything remarkable, like Falstaff, Mr. M*, nevertheless manages to play out of himself, no worse than Tartuffe, an almost brilliant personality, full, in fact, of egoism, immoderate vanity and cruelty.
Commentators on Dostoevsky report that while in the fortress, the writer read the works of Shakespeare and other authors given to him by his brother. In addition to Shakespearean images, the story also contains images of Friedrich Schiller, Delorge, and the knight Togenburg. The main character, in his own way, repeated the knightly valor and honesty of Schiller’s “adult” heroes. The boy’s first pure and sincere feeling does not require retribution, embodying Schiller’s high ideal of chivalry and selflessness. Later, in “A Writer’s Diary”, Dostoevsky recalled that Schiller “with us <…> together with Zhukovsky, was sucked into the Russian soul, left a mark on it, almost designated a period in the history of our development.”
Literary scholar V. D. Rak notes the abundance of theatrical reminiscences in the story: the entire plot takes place according to the laws of a play, where each character corresponds to one or another theatrical role. The playful blonde is a theatrical grand coquette, the owner of the estate is a vaudevillian old hussar-swordsman, the “little hero” plays the role of a page in love – a character who traces his origins back to Cherubino in “The Marriage of Figaro”.
The theatricality and conventionality of what is happening is accentuated by carnival, dances, charades, tableaux vivants, cavalcades, O.-E. Scribe’s vaudevilles, etc. This also includes the witty squabbles of the playful blonde with her gentlemen in the manner of the reprises of Beatrice and Benedict in Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing”. Mr. M* is not only Moliere’s Tartuffe and Falstaff, he is also a jealous blackamoor, Shakespeare’s Othello, only Othello altered by Dostoevsky’s fantasy. The horse’s nickname Tancred, which got into the story either from Rossini’s opera or from Voltaire’s tragedy, performs the same function. Bluebeard’s costume refers not only to the character in the fairy tale by Charles Perrault (1628-1703), but also to theatrical adaptations of the famous plot in opera, ballet or vaudeville.
Character typology and reflections of the story in criticism
Returning from exile in 1859, the writer published his previous works the following year, including “The Little Hero”. In the same year of 1860, I. S. Turgenev’s story “First Love” was published, thematically and plot-wise close to “The Little Hero”. In both works, the heroic boys acted as “pages” for their ladies, impeccably brave and noble, their chivalry appreciated by their chosen ones. Other motifs of the two works coincided.
Thus, Dostoevsky’s commentators believe that reading “The Little Hero” could have inspired Turgenev to write his autobiographical work in 1858. On the other hand, one can identify similarities and differences in the approaches to the depiction of the “little hero” and Nikolenka Irtenyev from L. N. Tolstoy’s story “Childhood” (1852), which the writer created quite independently of F. M. Dostoevsky’s story.
Critics did not pay attention to Dostoevsky’s story during his lifetime. Soon after Dostoevsky’s death, in 1882, N.
