Dostoevsky and World-Literature: notes for a solution to the Mister Astley's enigma

Abstract

Schwarz (2000, p. 27) recalls the recurrence of Germanophile and Francophile characters in Russian novels, somewhat ridiculous figures who, although they are forgers and hacks, are the great defenders of the modernization that accompanies capital. In The Gambler, a novel by Dostoevsky published in 1867, the situation goes further. As its action takes place abroad, there is not even a need for a Francophile or Germanophile Russian: Westerners speak for themselves. However, unlike what happens with other characters associated with the West, there is, in the novel in question, an apparently positive portrait of Mister Astley, a British who, in the opinion of many critics, would be a kind of moral paradigm of the novel. What is intended in this article is a problematization of the positive reading of Mister Astley, seeking, by inserting the character in the capitalist world-economy and reading the Dostoevskian work from the problematic of World-Literature, to point him out as the portrayal of the nefarious British imperialism.