This article emerged from a master’s thesis submitted to the Department of Slavic Lan-guages and Literatures at Stanford University. Most of all, I would like to thank Monika Greenleaf, a profoundly inspiring interlocutor and generous reader who was instrumental in the genesis and transformation of this article over the past six years. I also am indebted to Nariman Skakov for his theoretical insight and intensive introduction into the world of Bakhtin, to Gabriella Safran for helping me to think through the structure of the article, and to Gregory Freidin for challenging me to be more rigorous in my treatment of silence. Slavic Review editor Harriet Murav and my anonymous readers have made substantial con-tributions to the quality of this article. Research toward this article was carried out with the support of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Europe Center at Stanford University, the Fulbright Program, and the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia.

1 Tiutchev, F. I., “Silentium!,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Moscow, 2002–2004; hereaft er PSSP), 1:123. Google Scholar All translations from the Russian are my own.

2 Dostoevskii, F. M., “Zametki, plany, nabroski 11(23) iiulia–7(19) sentiabria 1874,” Podrostok: Rukopisnye redaktsii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, (Leningrad, 1972–1990; hereaft er PSS), 16:67–68 Google Scholar.

3 Dostoevskii, Zapiski k “Dnevniku pisatelia” 1876 g., PSS, 24:132 Google Scholar; Dostoevskii, “Dva samoubiistva,” Varianty chernovogo avtografa, PSS, 23:326 Google Scholar.

4 “Silentium!” was composed in Munich around 1830 and published in Talk (Molva) in 1833 and again in Aleksandr Pushkin’s The Contemporary in 1836. The corpus of Russian poems addressed to silence and “Silentium!” in particular is too large to reference here. Particularly relevant to the context in which “Silentium!” itself emerged are Konstantin Batiushkov’s “There is Also Enjoyment in the Wildness of Forests,” Vasilii Zhukovskii’s “Inexpressible (A Fragment),” and Dmitrii Venevitinov’s “The Poet.” For a thoughtful and concise study of “Silentium!” and its place amongst these poems, see Sofya Khagi, “Silence and the Rest: The Inexpressible from Batiushkov to Tiutchev,” The Slavic and East European Journal 48, no. 1 (Spring, 2004): 41–61.

5 Sofya, Khagi, Silence and the Rest: Verbal Skepticism in Russian Poetry (Evanston, 2013), 25, 36, 56 Google Scholar. On the relation of Tiutchev’s verse and “Silentium!” in particular to German idealist philosophy and the metaphysical poetry of his Russian contemporaries, see Richard, Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev: The Evolution of a Poet (New York, 1965 Google Scholar); and Sarah, Pratt, Russian Metaphysical Romanticism: the Poetry of Tiutchev and Boratynskii (Stanford, 1984)Google Scholar.

6 Mikhail. N., Epshtein, Slovo i molchanie: Metafizika russkoi literatury, (Moscow, 2006), 199 Google Scholar. “Silentium!” figures prominently in the work of Silver Age poets, including Zinaida Gippius, Viacheslav Ivanov, Aleksandr Blok and Osip Mandelstam, and remains a compelling intertext today, appearing in the postmodernist fiction of writers like Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin. Zinaida, Gippius, “Nastavlenie,” in Zinaida Gippius, Stikhotvoreniia (St. Petersburg: 1999), 272 Google Scholar; Viacheslav, Ivanov, “Molchanie,” Sobranie sochinenii (Brussels, 1971; hereaft er, ISS), 2:262 Google Scholar; Aleksandr, Blok, “Molchi kak vstar΄, skryvaia svet,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1997), 1:84 Google Scholar; Osip, Mandelstam, “Silentium,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 2009), 1:48 Google Scholar; Vladimir, Sorokin, Tridtsataia liubov΄ Mariny, Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomax (Moscow, 1995), 2:11 Google Scholar; Viktor, Pelevin, Chapaev i pustota (Moscow: 1996), 359 Google Scholar.

7 Dostoevskii was not the only reader to take this approach to “Silentium!” Lev Tolstoi removed an allusion to “Silentium!,” his favorite poem and one he referenced oft en in conversation and correspondence, from an insert to a proof of Anna Karenina. In the draft , Levin says of his half-brother Sergei: “He does precisely what Tiutchev says.—Some kind of noise will drown them out, hearken to their singing [and] keep silent. So he hearkens to the singing of his amorous thoughts, if they exist, and won’t show [them] for anything, won’t profane them.” Blagoi, D., “Chitatel΄ Tiutcheva—Lev Tolstoi,” in D. Blagoi, ed., Uraniia. Tiutchevskii al΄manakh: 1803–1928 (Leningrad, 1928)Google Scholar; “Tri avtografa, vpisannye v korrekturu,” in I. P. Borisova, ed., Neizvestnyi Tolstoi v arkhivakh Rossii i SShA: Rukopisi, pis΄ma, vospominaniia, nabliudeniia, versii so 108 fotografiiami (Moscow, 1994), 519; L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, (St. Petersburg, 1907), 19:131.

8 Bakhtin’s book on Dostoevskii underwent numerous redactions. The first published edition, the 1929 Problems of Dostoevskii’s Art, was a revision of an unknown draft completed around 1922. In 1961, Bakhtin submitted a revised manuscript of the book to be published as the preface to a new, Italian collected works of Dostoevskii. The Italian project was delayed indefinitely, and in 1962, Vadim Kozhinov secured an offer to reprint the book with Sovetskii pisatel΄. Bakhtin, not yet satisfied with his manuscript, undertook yet another revision, which would become the 1963 Problems of Dostoevskii’s Poetics. In tracing the development of Bakhtin’s thinking about Dostoevskii, I will refer to individual editions by their year and title and the project as a whole as the Dostoevskii book. Katerina, Clark and Michael, Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, 1984), 53 Google Scholar; Bakhtin, M. M., Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, Kommentarii, Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh (Moscow, 1997–2012; hereafter BSS), 6:475–77Google Scholar.

9 Dostoevskii, “Pis΄mo Vs. S. Solov΄evu, 16 (28) iiulia 1876 Ems,” PSS, 29.2: 102; Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi 60-kh—nachala 70-kh gg, BSS, 6:376.

10 Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi, BSS, 6:413 Google Scholar.

11 Malcolm, Jones, Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of Religious Experience (London, 2005), 140 Google Scholar.

12 Apophatic or negative theology holds that, because God is unknowable, any statements positively attributing a certain quality to Him are necessarily false. Instead, apophatic theologians advocate negative attribution (God is not “x”) and mystic communion with God through silent prayer. On the commonalities between Bakhtin’s thinking and the apophatic beliefs of the Russian hesychasts, see Randall A., Poole, “The Apophatic Bakhtin,” in Susan M., Felch and Paul J., Contino, eds., Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith (Evanston, 2001), 151–75Google Scholar; Charles, Lock, “Bakhtin among the Poets: Towards a History of Silence,” Dialogism: An International Journal of Bakhtin Studies no. 5–6 (2001), 44–64 Google Scholar; and Ruth, Coates, “Bakhtin and Hesychasm,” Religion & Literature 37, no. 3 (September, 2005): 59–80 Google Scholar.

13 Jean-Paul, Sartre, “A Commentary on The Stranger,” in Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (New Haven, 2007), 87–88, 96 Google Scholar; Maurice, Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis, 1993), 425, 430 Google Scholar; Roland, Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York, 1968), 3, 5, 60–61 Google Scholar; Barthes, The Neutral, trans. Rosalind E. Kratiss and Denis Hollier (New York, 2005), 6–7, 21–32 Google Scholar.

14 Barthes, The Neutral, 27 Google Scholar.

15 Jacques, Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” in Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, eds., Derrida and Negative Theology (Albany, 1992), 74, 76, 102 Google Scholar.

16 Tiutchev’s death in July of 1873, a year before the first plans of The Adolescent, may have served as an occasion to revisit the poet’s work. Dostoevskii had already excluded allusions to Tiutchev’s “These poor villages . . . ” from the plans for the 1870 Eternal Husband. Dostoevskii, Vechnyi muzh, PSS, 9:303; Podgotovitel΄nye materialy, PSS, 9:306; Tiutchev, “Eti bednye selen΄ia”, PSSP, 2:71. We know that Tiutchev’s death caught Dostoevskii’s attention. Dostoevskii published a short obituary in The Citizen praising Tiutchev and promising to write an article assessing his poetry in the near future. Dostoevskii, Podrostok, PSS, 16:416–17; Zametki, plany, nabroksi, PSS, 16:420–21; Ianvar΄—noiabr΄ 1875, PSS, 16:432. Dostoevskii never followed through with the article, but he did heavily edit an article on Tiutchev by his co-editor Prince Vladimir Meshcherskii for the next issue. Kn. V. Meshcherskii, “Svezhei pamiati F. I. Tiutcheva,” Grazhdanin, no. 31 (July 30, 1873): 846–48; Dostoevskii, “A. G. Dostoevskoi, 29 iiulia 1873 g. Peterburg,” PSS, 29.1:285–86. Anastasiia Gacheva proposes that Dostoevskii translated his ideas for the article into his conception of The Adolescent, in her words, the “most Tiutchevian” of his novels. Anastasiia Gacheva, “Nam ne danо predugadat΄, kak slovo nashe otzovetsia” Dostoevskii i Tiutchev (Moscow, 2004), 323. Its draft s included references not only to “Silentium!” but also to “Like a little bird at early dawn . . . ,” though none would appear in the final version. Dostoevskii’s draft of Versilov’s confession includes at least three allusions to the poem. Dostoevskii, Podrostok, PSS, 16:416–17; Zametki, plany, nabroksi, PSS, 16:420–21; Ianvar΄—noiabr΄ 1875, PSS, 16:432.

17 The line containing the citation of “Silentium!” was inserted into an early revision of the sketch. Dostoevskii, “Zametki, plany, nabroski 11(23) iiulia–7(19) sentiabria 1874,” Podrostok: Rukopisnye redaktsii, PSS, 16:67–68.

18 Dostoevskii, Podrostok, PSS, 13:105, 173. Pushkin, A. S., Boris Godunov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1937–1959), 7:98 Google Scholar. Gacheva argues that Versilov, who cites Tiutchev in Dostoevskii’s draft of his confession, was modeled in part on Tiutchev, the prototypical “Russian European” in Dostoevskii’s prose. Gacheva, “Nam ne dano,” 323.

19 Dostoevskii, Podrostok, PSS, 13:6. Another passage bears the same conspicuous relation to the draft and points to Versilov as the source of Arkadii’s realization: “Maybe I did the wrong thing by sitting down to write: immeasurably more remains inside than that which comes out in words. Your thought, even if it’s a base one, is always deeper when it’s with you, but in words it’s funnier and less honorable.” Ibid., 13:36.

20 Ibid., 13:5.

21 Ibid., 13:162.

22 Gary, Saul Morson, The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky’s “Diary of a Writer” and the Traditions of Literary Utopia (Austin, 1981), 59–60 Google Scholar.

23 Dostoevskii, “O liubvi k narodu. Neobkhodimyi kontrakt s narodom.” Primechaniia, PSS, 22:342; G. A. Larosh, “Literatura i zhizn΄: Bozhii bich na sovremennost΄ i obrashchiki patriarkhal΄noi dobrodeteli (Po povodu stat΄i K. S. Aksakova ‘O sovremennom cheloveke΄ v Bratskoi pomoshchi, povesti A. A. Potekhina, ‘Khvoraia,’ v fevral΄skoi knizhke Vestnika Evropy i Polovod΄e g. Insarskogo),” Golos, February 12, 1876, 1.

24 On Dostoevskii’s use of lozh΄ (the “deliberate lie”) and vran΄e (“exhibitionist lying”) as principal tropes in the “metaliterary play” he engages in in Diary, see Deborah A. Martinsen, Surprised by Shame: Dostoevsky’s Liars and Narrative Exposure (Columbus, 2003), 11–12, 26–35.

25 Dostoevskii, “O liubvi k narodu,” PSS, 22:45 Google Scholar.

26 Aksakov, I. S., “O sovremennom cheloveke,” Bratskaia pomoshch’ postradavshim semeistvam Bosnii i Gertsegoviny, Sbornik (St. Petersburg, 1876), 33–88 Google Scholar.

27 Dostoevskii, Zapiski k “Dnevniku pisatelia” 1876 g., PSS, 24:132 Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., 24:132.

29 Dostoevskii, “O liubvi k narodu,” PSS, 22:44–45 Google Scholar.

30 Dostoevskii, “Pis΄mo Vs. S. Solov΄evu,” PSS, 29.2:101–02Google Scholar. The articles in question are: Dostoevskii, “Moi paradoks,” “Vyvod iz paradoksa,” “Vostochnyi vopros,” and “Utopicheskoe ponimanie istorii,” PSS, 23:38–50 Google Scholar.

31 Dostoevskii, “Pis΄mo Vs. S. Solov΄evu,” PSS, 29.2:102 Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 29.2:102.

33 Dostoevskii, “Pis΄mo 631 Vs. S. Solov΄evu,” PSS, 29.2:102 Google Scholar.

34 Gacheva notes the relation between polyphony and the silencing techniques described in the letter. Gacheva, “Nam ne dano,” 268.

35 Dostoevskii, “Dva samoubiistva,” Dnevnik pisatelia za 1876, PSS, 23:144 Google Scholar.

36 Dostoevskii, “Dva samoubiistva,” Varianty chernovogo avtografa, PSS, 23:326 Google Scholar.

37 Jones, Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of Religious Experience, 141 Google Scholar.

38 Dostoevskii contrasts what he considers the vulgar frankness of Elizaveta’s suicide letter with the silent gesture of the icon, “strange and unheard of in a suicide,” in the case of Borisova. Dostoevskii, “Dva samoubiistva,” Primechaniia, PSS, 23:407–08Google Scholar.

39 Dostoevskii, “Dva samoubiistva,” PSS, 23:146 Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., 23:145. Morson refers to this device, highly characteristic of Diary, as an “ ‘unplanned’ digression.” Morson, The Boundaries of Genre, 60.

41 Dostoevskii , “Dva samoubiistva,” Primechaniia, PSS, 23:408 Google Scholar.

42 Dostoevskii, Krotkaia, PSS, 24:14; Dnevnik pisatelia za 1876 god, PSS, 24:35.

43 Charles, Isenberg, Telling Silence: Russian Frame Narratives of Renunciation (Evanston, 1993), 143 Google Scholar.

44 Robert, Louis Jackson, “Temptation and Transaction,” The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes (Princeton, 1981), 256 Google Scholar.

45 Caryl, Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton, 1997), 17, 132 Google Scholar.

46 Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 62 Google Scholar.

47 Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi, BSS, 6:376 Google Scholar. According to Barthes’ etymological genealogy of the Latin verbs silere and tacere, a lost distinction between the two associates silentium with the stillness and preparadigmatic perfection of divine or natural silence, inaccessible to man, as opposed to the distinctly human abstention from speech implied by tacere and Tiutchev’s imperative molchi. This incongruity heightens the irony of the poem by designating the ideal stillness of silentium as beyond the contemplatively silent subject. Barthes, The Neutral, 21–22.

48 Frank, Farmer, Saying and Silence: Listening to Composition with Bakhtin (Boulder, 2001), 3 Google Scholar.

49 Morson, The Boundaries of Genre, 108 Google Scholar.

50 Bakhtin, Avtor i geroi v esteticheskoi deiatel΄nosti, BSS, 1:202–203, 231 Google Scholar. To borrow Michael Holquist’s concise definition, “Transgredience . . . is reached when the whole existence of others is seen from outside.” Michael, Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (London, 1990), 31 Google Scholar.

51 As Dmitrii Nikulin notes, Bakhtin’s interest in the visible “exterior” or “outer shell of the soul” distinguishes his conception of the self from the binary, inner/outer division of the Cartesian model, which makes the inner world of the Tiutchevian subject impenetrable to the other. Dmitrii Nikulin, “The Man at the Mirror (Dialogue with Oneself),” IRIS: European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate 5, no. 3 (April 2011): 73.

52 Bakhtin, Avtor i geroi v esteticheskoi deiatel΄nosti, BSS, 1:231 Google Scholar.

53 Nariman, Skakov, “Dostoevsky’s Christ and Silence at the Margins of The Idiot,” Dostoevsky Studies 13 (2009): 123–24Google Scholar.

54 Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” 98 Google Scholar.

55 Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Derrida, Writing and Difference, (London, 1967) 289 Google Scholar.

56 Like negative theology, Derrida’s critics allege, deconstruction is a nihilist, obscurantist, mechanically repetitive doctrine that, finding it easier to negate than to affirm, speaks voluminously (and paradoxically) with an end to ending speech. Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” 75–76 Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., 76–79, 98.

58 Ibid., 99, 117.

59 Ibid., 97.

60 Ibid., 76.

61 The narrator’s regular reporting of silences in Ivan’s conversation with Alesha on the eve of the trial is characteristic: “ . . . Ivan fell silent for half a minute . . . they were silent for a minute . . . the silence lasted half a minute . . . they both fell silent. The silence stretched out for an entire long minute . . . Alesha blushed slightly and silently looked into the eyes of his brother . . . Alesha whispered and fell silent. . . . ” Dostoevskii, Brat΄ia Karamazovy, PSS, 15:38, 40, 49. We see this same attention to silence in Ivan’s conversations with Smerdiakov that follow: “Smerdiakov kept completely silent . . . Smerdiakov . . . didn’t speak first, was silent, and looked . . . Smerdiakov . . . was again silent for a minute . . . He kept motionlessly silent . . . Smerdiakov was silent . . . He met Ivan Fedorovich with a long, silent gaze . . . ‘Why do you stare and keep silent?’ . . . Smerdiakov kept silent for a long time, looking quietly at Ivan as before . . . Ivan silently stared at him . . . Ivan listened the whole time in dead silence . . . Smerdiakov was silent for a bit . . . ” Ibid., 15:42, 43, 45, 47, 51, 58, 59, 65, 67.

62 Jones, Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of Religious Experience, 146 Google Scholar. Dmitrii recites Tiutchev’s translation of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” and three short excerpts from Tiutchev’s translation from Schiller’s “Feast of Victory.” Dostoevskii, Brat΄ia Karamazovy, PSS, 14:99, 362, 15:202, 543, 574, 608. Ivan’s Christ in “The Grand Inquisitor” emerges from the third verse of Tiutchev’s “These poor villages . . .,” which Ivan recites immediately prior to beginning his poema. Ibid., 14:426, 15:557. The chapter title, “A Putrid Odor,” is taken from Tiutchev’s “And the coffin is already lowered into the grave. . . .” Ibid., 14:295, 15:570.

63 Ibid., 14:423.

64 Ibid., 14:425.

65 Dostoevskii, Brat΄ia Karamazovy, Chernovye nabroski, PSS, 15:303 Google Scholar.

66 Khagi, who mentions Dostoevskii’s allusions to “Silentium!” in passing, supposes that Dostoevskii substitutes this “kenotic” formulation “for his own ideological ends.” Khagi, Silence and the Rest, 207 Google Scholar.

67 Barthes, The Neutral, 108–9Google Scholar.

68 Dostoevskii, Brat΄ia Karamazovy, PSS, 14:65 Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., 14:76.

70 Zosima’s characterization undergoes minor modifications, taking on the personal intonations of each speaker. Alesha attributes a great thought to Ivan, rather than an idea. Rakitin ironically refers to Ivan’s depth and cynically translates Zosima’s unresolved to unresolvable. Ibid., 14:76.

71 Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, BSS, 6:97–98 Google Scholar.

72 Dostoevskii, Brat΄ia Karamazovy, PSS, 14:100 Google Scholar. Dmitrii’s version, in turn, enters the discursive echo chamber of the public life of Skotoprigon΄evsk, re-emerging in the prosecutor’s rhetorical appeal to “ . . . broad, Karamazovian natures . . . capable of accommodating every possible contradiction and contemplating two abysses at once. . . .” Ibid., 15:129.

73 Ibid., 14:101.

74 Ibid., 15:27, 30.

75 Ibid., 15:31–32.

76 Ibid., 14:158.

77 Ibid., 15:63.

78 Ibid., 14:242.

79 Ibid., 15:31.

80 Ibid., 15:28.

81 Ibid., 15:28.

82 Ibid., 15:34.

83 Ibid., 15:34.

84 Miusov, Dmitrii, Rakitin, Alesha, Smerdiakov, the Devil, and Ippolit Kirillovich all reproduce Ivan’s formula. Dostoevskii, Brat΄ia Karamazovy, PSS, 14:65, 76, 15:61 Google Scholar, 67, 68, 84, 126.

85 Ibid., 14:240.

86 Bakhtin, Problemy tvorchestva Dostoevskogo, PSS, 2:51, 91, 96, 111, 114, 137, 139. Viacheslav Ivanov used the concepts inner world, inner person, and inner self to describe Dostoevskii’s attempts to artistically affirm the consciousness of the other in Dostoevskii and the Novelistic Tragedy, a study that informed Bakhtin’s own use of the terms. Ibid., 2:16; V. I. Ivanov, Dostoevskii i roman-tragediia, ISS, 4:402, 421, 422. Elsewhere, Ivanov directly equates the inner world of the subject to silence: Ivanov, “Ideia nepriiatia mira,” ISS, 3:79–80.

87 Bakhtin, Problemy tvorchestva Dostoevskogo, BSS, 2:51–52 Google Scholar.

88 Bakhtin, “Slovo v romane: K voprosam stilistiki romana,” BSS, 3:88 Google Scholar.

89 Bakhtin, “Formy vremeni i khronotopa v romane,” BSS, 3:388–89Google Scholar.

90 Ibid., 3:390.

91 Ibid., 3:390.

92 Lock, “Bakhtin among the Poets,” 55–56; Bakhtin, “Roman, kak literaturnyi zhanr,” BSS, 3:609.

93 Bakhtin, “Ritorika, v meru svoei lzhivosti,” BSS, 5:63–70 Google Scholar; Bakhtin, “Chelovek u zerkala,” BSS, 5:71 Google Scholar.

94 Nikulin, “The Man at the Mirror (Dialogue with Oneself),” 62 Google Scholar. For more on this dark period in Bakhtin’s life, see, Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin, 170.

95 Bakhtin, “Ritorika, v meru svoei lzhivosti,” BSS, 5:65.Google Scholar

96 Ibid., 5:65, 67.

97 Ibid., 5:66–67.

98 Bakhtin, K filosofii postupka, BSS, 1:58–59 Google Scholar.

99 Ibid., 5:66.

100 Ibid., 5:66.

101 Coates, “Bakhtin and Hesychasm,” 76–77 Google Scholar; Poole, “The Apophatic Bakhtin,” 151, 154, 155 Google Scholar.

102 Lock, “Bakhtin among the Poets,” 51 Google Scholar.

103 Bakhtin, “Ritorika, v meru svoei lzhivosti,” Kommentarii, BSS, 5:457 Google Scholar; Bakhtin, “Chelovek u zerkala,” Kommentarii, BSS, 5:465 Google Scholar.

104 Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, BSS, 6:77 Google Scholar.

105 Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi, BSS, 6:376–377 Google Scholar. On the dating of the notebooks see Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi . . . , Kommentarii, 6:543, 578, 627.

106 Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi, BSS, 6:391 Google Scholar.

107 Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi . . . , Kommentarii, BSS, 6:627–28Google Scholar.

108 Bakhtin, Rabochie zapisi, BSS, 6:412 Google Scholar.

109 Ibid., 6:411–13.

110 Alexander, Spektor, “From Violence to Silence: Vicissitudes of Reading (in) The Idiot,” Slavic Review 72, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 562 Google Scholar.

111 Eric, Naiman, “On Soviet Subjects and the Scholars Who Make Them,” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July, 2001): 312 Google Scholar.

112 Tim, Beasley-Murray, “Reticence and the Fuzziness of Thresholds: A Bakhtinian Apology for Quietism,” Common Knowledge 19, no. 3 (Fall, 2013), 426, 444 Google Scholar.

113 This expected silence likely corresponds to what Bakhtin refers to as “great time,” a realm where “forgotten meanings . . . are remembered and come alive,” where “nothing is absolutely dead” and “every meaning will have its holiday of rebirth.” Bakhtin, “ Razroznennye listy,” BSS, 6:433–34Google Scholar. Graham Pechey explains that, for Bakhtin, “great time” is a dimension in which meaning, never self-sufficient in the present, “lives and grows,” “opens out,” and “seek[s] out the means of [its] return.” Graham, Pechey, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World (New York, 2007), 128, 132 Google Scholar.

114 Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” 292 Google Scholar.