The Birth of Man: Makar Devushkin’s Self-Fabrication Through Blind Rhetoric Sydney Shiller
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he degree to which existentialism is a product of either humility of self-vilification is a question of cognizance. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel, which is as much an analysis of the urban poor as it is a nugatory mission of self-discovery for the lovelorn, addled protagonist, concerns itself with such finesse. In Poor Folk, Makar Devushkin alludes to Russian literary giants such as Gogol and Pushkin, feels his disposition depracatorily, and consistently divulges detailed accounts of his life in letters to Varvara Dobrosyolova. Though Devushkin is known to be a clerk and copyist and presents himself clearly through his dialogue with Varvara, it becomes evident that he is a product only of his own literary imagination as the novel winds on. Instances of Devushkin’s self-identification with the subjects of Varvara’s writing, feelings of extreme marginality, and literary allusion all suggest the protagonist’s lack of true ethos and undermine any accessibility to his version of reality. In Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk, the reader’s only source of context is the contents of the letters exchanged by Devushkin and Varvara. The novel immediately involves only the dialogue between the two main characters, and it is from dialogue alone that the reader gains insight as to the thoughts, feelings, and personalities of the protagonist and his counterpart. As the novel advances, Devushkin’s dependency on Varvara for self-definition becomes apparent. Evidentiary of this phenomenon is Devushkin’s letter to Varvara on April 12th, “You express the desire, my dear, that I should tell you in some detail about my everyday life and its circumstances. It gives me joy to carry out your desire without delay.”(1). This excerpt indicates that Devushkin invents himself for and from Varvara, a pattern common
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to his letters. Varvara’s presence is directly correlated, according to Devushkin, to having provided him some definition: “Once I had got to know you, I began [...] to know myself better [...] Before I knew you, I was lonely and spent my life asleep,” (108). This August 21st passage indicates that Devushkin not only acknowledges the considerable number of qualities inherited from his interaction with Varvara, but requires it as an alternative to erasure. The final testament to Devushkin’s one-dimensionality is his reaction to Varvara’s marriage to Bykov: Devushkin simply ceases to exist altogether. Not only does the novel end with his final letter to Varvara, but he expresses his devastation at her inexorable fate in terms of how she affects him, suggesting she was the sole creator of his substance. “I lived for you alone! The reason I worked, and copied out documents [...] was always you, dearest, were living there,” (143). Devushkin’s character primarily comes from his dialogue with Varvara because of the characteristics assigned to him throughout and the fact that he tasked her with his sustenance. Common phenomena in Devushkin’s letters to Varvara are self-deprecation and comparison of himself to others. Devushkin’s feelings of extreme marginality drive him to question whether he truly exists. Of Ratazyayev, Devushkin only says praise, however he compares himself to Ratazyayev in the following way: “What am I compared to him? Nothing. He’s someone, he’s known, and what am I? I simply don’t exist,” (65). Devushkin recurrently expresses the same sort of existential dread concerning his own successes sized against the successes of others, particularly relating to literary prowess. In Devushkin’s eyes, his status as a copyist for little remuneration is particularly scathing because of his
