Prototype of Hieromonk Misail in F. M. Dostoevsky's Novella Uncle's Dream

In: Izvestija Ural'skogo federalʹnogo universiteta: Ural Federal University journal. Serija 2, Gumanitarnye nauki = *Series 2*Humanities and arts, Band 23, Heft 1, S. 236-253

Abstract

This article comments on one detail of the artistic world of the novella Uncle's Dream. The mention of monk Misail in Svetozersky Hermitage is considered as a topographic sign, which allows one to accurately determine the local attribution of Dostoevsky's text. According to the author of the article, the prototype of the priest is Father Macarius (Mikhail Yakovlevich Glukharev), also known as "the Apostle of the Altai Land". The author introduces into scholarly circulation M. Ya. Glukharev's autograph found in Barnaul and analyses the missionary activity of the Archimandrite and the reasons for his getting closer to Tobolsk Decembrists M. A. Fonvizin and his wife N. D. Fonvizina, P. S. Bobrischev-Pushkin, and P. N. Svistunov. The paper also discusses the question of F. M. Dostoevsky's interest in the personality of the Archimandrite and the channels through which the writer could know about the old man: Fonvizin's circle, the book about father Macarius of his succеssоr S. Landyshev, Dostoevsky's Semipalatinsk fellow ethnographer N. A. Abramov, or oral legends, including raskolnik ones. The extant humorous stories about the Archimandrite might have served as an impetus for the comic transformation of his image in the novella Uncle's Dream, in which the writer easily and ironically used facts known to him encrypting Father Macarius and using the secular name Mikhail. In the writer's later works, the figure of Macarius is presented in the rough drafts of the novel The Brothers Karamazov and "the monk of Obdor" is included in the environment of Elder Zosima in the final text of the work. Long before the emergence of the conception of The Brothers Karamazov, M. Ya. Glukharev becomes not only a catalyst in the creative process and one of the prototypes for Dostoevsky, but also an example of the "romantic missionary", a popular spiritual leader and reformer of the Church.