The discussion revisits two earlier contributions on Dostoevsky – by Preobraženski (1955) and Kreft (1965) – situating them within the broader framework of Slovenian literary scholarship. The unifying theme of both discussions is the problem of the relationship between art and social reality, a problem which, in subsequent Slovenian and international Dostoevsky studies, especially under the influence of Bakhtin’s theoretical interventions, gradually shifted toward an examination of the specific textual realities of the author’s oeuvre. The paper briefly outlines these aspects of Dostoevsky’s relation to both textual and extra-textual reality, before concluding with an emphasis on the distinctive role that the very nature of the artistic text plays in his conceptualization of reality.
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