Leos Janá&chachek;ek's setting of Dostoevskij's fictional
memoir in his 1928 opera seemingly cold,
non-committal description of outer reality
(&Chachekcz;ernohovská). In light of Baxtin's claim that
artistic works outgrow what they were in the epoch of their own
creation
and gain posthumous meaning, I will explore how
Janá&chachek;ek's departures allow him to develop various
creative potentials within the original.
Many of these departures relate to Dostoevskij's biographical circumstances. Gorjan&chachek;ikov's detached objectivity belies the truly horrifying impact the experience had on Dostoevskij. Janá&chachek;ek makes Gorjan&chachek;ikov a political prisoner and gives him a more active, integrated role in the prison, where in Dostoevskij his role is more that of an observer. Such changes bring about an erasing of authorial artifice and the refraction of fictional material back to its original sources. Janá&chachek;ek also casts the other prisoners in more involved and sympathetic roles as listeners of each other's stories than in the original. Further, the prisoners are more fully developed psychologically, exhibiting greater pain over their past crimes and losses. Thus Janá&chachek;ek's humanization of the prisoners goes further than that of Dostoevskij, as he displays their inner suffering more vividly.
Janá&chachek;ek's music also contributes to the development of potentials within the original. Just as the dramatic structure of the libretto ties together events disconnected in the memoir, his repetition of motifs also connects various parts of the narrative. His particular musical idiom, heavily influenced by folk songs, goes along with an emphasis on folk elements of the original. Images of birds in Dostoevskij, for example, are primarily of descriptive interest. Janá&chachek;ek, however, foregrounds this element by using the eagle as a symbol throughout the opera. Thus Janá&chachek;ek's music acts as a prism through which it becomes possible to see the folk potentials within Dostoevskij's text.
In this light I will also consider the posthumous and controversial
revisions made to the score by B&rhachek;etislav Bakala and Osvald
Chlubna. Although these revisions depart from
Janá&chachek;ek's intent in many ways (for example, adding a
cheerful conclusion), they also interact in an interesting way with
the original, and may possibly be justified as a continuation of
Janá&chachek;ek's own revisions
to
Dostoevskij.