Suspended Between Music and Words: Memory in Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Novel Netochka Nezvanova

• In Event: Dostoevsky on the Margins

Abstract

The writing of Dostoevsky’s novel Netochka Nezvanova (1849) was interrupted by his arrest, mock execution, and Siberian labor camps. After his release, Dostoevsky did not return to Netochka and instead wrote Notes from the House of the Dead (1862), adapted as a three-act opera by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. We do know from Dostoevsky’s notes, however, that had he finished the novel, Netochka would have become a celebrated opera singer after discovering her soprano voice. Five operas have been written based on Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) alone; other classic operatic compositions include adaptations of The Gambler (1866) by Sergei Prokofiev and The Idiot (1869) by Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Surprisingly, Netochka Nezvanova, so full of musical motifs and plotlines advanced by music and musical instruments, has not yet been adapted into an opera. Though at least one piece, Elena Anisimova’s Suite for Piano in three parts from 2001, was inspired by it. This presentation will discuss the role of music in the novel, including the way in which it triggers Netochka’s own memories as opposed to her imagination ignited by stories she had heard and retells —as well as its theatrical productions, including Nameless Nobody (2013), a monodrama in English staged by the Russian Nights Theatre in Saint-Petersburg and the Dovzhenko Studio in Kyiv, Ukraine (dir. Alexander Markov and Valentina Beletskaya; feat. Vera Filatova), and a 2017 Yerevan Dramatic Theatre staging in Armenian (dir. Grigor Khachaturyan; feat. Lidia Grigoryan and Emma Manukyan), and their use of music and musical instruments.

Author

• Victoria Juharyan, Johns Hopkins U