Money Liaisons Dangereuses in Dostoevsky’s Novel “The Gambler”

Abstract

The money relations of characters play a significant part in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Gambler”. Only the right understanding of these relations gives us a clue to the novel’s interpretation. Hypertextuality of the “Gambler” to H. de Balzac’s “Le Père Goriot”, A. Dumas’son’s “La Dame aux Camélias” and A. Prévost’s “Manon Lescaut” let us make clear some “economic knots” of the novel. In their turn, they give us the opportunity to define a central plot collision of “The Gambler”. This analysis let us clarify Russian classical literature, and of the so-called Dostoevsky’s “five books” as a result of new literary synthesis based on Balzac’s and Hugot’s novels (Dostoevsky himself defines the central theme of the latter as “resurrection of a perished man”).