F. M. Dostoevskij between psychosomatics and pragmatics of communication, or between ‘unconscious’ and ‘tension to the unsaid’.

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the different dialogic-somatic strategies that contribute to the development of the complexity of Raskol’nikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment. The aim here is to propose a research that, overcoming the obsolete psychological approach to Dostoevsky's work, highlights the Russian writer's ability to give literary voice to the consequences of the two aspects of the "unsaid": the unaware or unconscious one and the conscious one, intentionally silenced. On the basis of M. Bachtin's theories regarding the use of the "second voice" in the characters, the ways in which Raskolnikov expresses his emotions emerge, namely through internal dialogue and through bodily intrigues: these sometimes reify an unconscious suffering, sometimes instead interpret the reaction to the conflict between what one would like to say and what is voluntarily silenced. If in the first case we can speak of psychosomatics, in the second we enter the field of pragmatics of communication which, among other themes, also addresses the relationship between verbal and non-verbal language.