Dostoevsky’s Calligraphy: Problems of Study

The article is devoted to the problems of studying Dostoevsky’s calligraphy. The first paragraph discusses the historical and theoretical aspects of handwriting studies, as well as its main definitions that are important for the analysis of Dostoevsky’s handwriting. When studying the author’s calligraphic sketches, the reasons and conditions for their appearance are important, including the sources that Dostoevsky could use when forming his idea of calligraphic writing and mastering the art of calligraphy. In accordance with this task, an episode of the novel “Idiot” in which Prince Myshkin talks about calligraphy is analyzed in the second paragraph of the article. The information about the historical varieties of calligraphic handwriting is provided, and, according to the novel descriptions, samples of Old Russian writing and letters of Modern times from book sources, including Western European and Russian manuals on cursive and penmanship of the 18th — 19th centuries, are exhibited. The third paragraph analyzes the material of the writer’s workbooks, which contain numerous examples of his own calligraphic exercises, often distinguished by the individualized nature of the writings. The article raises the question of identifying the calligraphic handwriting in Dostoevsky’s notes. The analysis shows that the notes identified as calligraphy have significant differences in their graphic characteristics. Noncalligraphic entries may mistakenly qualify as calligraphy. Thus, when examining handwritten material, it is necessary to develop more precise criteria for the scientific description of Dostoevsky’s calligraphy and similar typefaces, to determine the gradation of their types, which depends on the graphic characteristics of notes and the degree of their similarity to the calligraphic samples.