Julia Kristeva

The article examines the unfinished final chapter of Tzvetan Stoyanov’s “The Genius and His Mentor” in light of a recent claim according to which Smerdyakov is not the actual perpetrator of the murder in “The Brothers Karamazov.” How will our understanding of Dostoevsky’s incomplete novel change – if at all – in the case that it turns out that its plot incorporates not only a judicial error but also a cunning trap for its readers, that is, an intended readerly error? Stoyanov’s analysis, which is also a dramatic “novel about the novel,” brings the problem of doubles in Dostoevsky’s work and the splitting in the psychoanalytic sense of the word (Spaltung) to the forefront. At the same time, it constantly renews the question, “Who killed our father?”