도스토예프스키의 「어린 영웅」: 첫사랑의 초월과 자아의 발견

Abstract

「The Little Hero」 was written in 1849 when F. M. Dostoevsky was set in a prison of Petropavlovsky fortress prison. It was written in a new and uncharacteristic style to Dostoevsky and deals with a reminiscence of an adult narrator about his childhood first-love. Based on a first-love theme, this story nevertheless deals with it from other point of view. The main goal of Dostoevsky was not to describe the love theme, but to reveal how the 11-year old boy, the protagonist of this story, develops himself, faced with events connected with women, one of whom is m-me M whom he admires, and the other is blonde lady who torments him. In this process, traditional and romantic first-love story is reversed, and the boy becomes consoled by the blonde lady and was disappointed at the changed image of m-me M which he never expected. But he doesn't lose faith in m-me M till the time they part with each other, and thus achieves his own mental growth. To realize such a realistic mental growth of an adolescent which cannot be fully achieved in a traditional romantic way of story-telling, Dostoevsky revised this story in 1860, removing the former preface of romantic tone and thus intensifying the voice of the boy. This work can also be treated as a story, oriented to self-reflection and self-discovery of Dostoevsky himself who didn't lose hope and tried to find his real self in a prison. The image of boy of this story in many respects reminds the adolescent Dostoevsky of 1830-s. Dostoevsky wanted to revive his own adolescent self as a positive model for a new life with optimism and hope, not bounded in a prison.