CORRECTING THE MISREADINGS OF DOSTOEVSKY’S MANUSCRIPTS (THE CASE OF “DEMONS” AND “THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV”)

The article deals with graphological and textological aspects of studying Fedor Dostoevsky's manuscripts, with a special focus on non-creative changes in the author's text, in particular, the semantic misreading of the manuscript by the publishers. We have attempted to define and describe the main causes and types of such distortions. The article also looks at some examples of misinterpreting the syntactic structure of the manuscript in the course of preparing for print. Also analysed are the cases of misinterpreting the intonational nature of Dostoevsky's punctuation, when the publishers adapt the text to the contemporary orthography, paying no attention to the author's use of punctuation. We have complemented the analysis with the overview of the commentary on the novels. The article contains new facts from the history of Demons, discovered by additional elaboration of the existing textual commentary. Locating and correcting misreadings helps us restore the genuine text written by Dostoevsky.