Yanovsky, Stepan Dmitrievich

Stepan Dmitrievich Yanovsky received special education at the Moscow branch of the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy . The stages of his early professional biography included service in the Preobrazhensky Regiment , where he was enlisted in the winter of 1837 as a doctor, as well as medical activities and lecturing on natural history at the Forest and Land Institute . In the mid-1840s, having received a place in the Department of state medical supplies at the Ministry of the Interior , the doctor began his own practice, which allowed him to enter the circle of St. Petersburg writers ^[1] . In 1855, Stepan Dmitrievich married the Alexandrinsky Theater actress Alexandra Ivanovna Schubert ; the marriage lasted for eight years ^[2] . In 1871, Yanovsky retired, six years later he left for Switzerland, where he died in 1897 ^[1] .

In the spring of 1846, his patient, a student Vladimir Maykov , turned to Yanovsky, asking for advice from his close acquaintance, twenty-four-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky, who in private conversations complained of dizziness and insomnia. The first meeting of Stepan Dmitrievich and the author of the newly released Poor People and the Double took place at the end of May and was almost official, but soon the relations between the doctor and the patient became friendly: they met weekly (and in other months every day) for three years preceding the arrest of the writer. The treatment procedures prescribed by Yanovsky were associated with attempts to eliminate the hallucinations and signs of "headache" periodically appearing in Dostoevsky; the doctor insisted that the patient, who feared "kondrashki", perceived himself as a healthy person. Thanks to the special organization of food, as well as a decoction of the sarsaparilla root, the doctor managed to save Fedor Mikhailovich from the harbinger of consumption - "scrofulous sorrowful thinness" ^[3] .

The conversations conducted between Yanovsky and Dostoevsky were not limited to medical topics: they talked about literature and music, discussed everyday, everyday issues; Stepan Dmitrievich was aware of the family and financial problems of the patient ^[4] . The doctor was one of the first to know about the arrest of the writer: in the early morning of April 23, 1849, excited Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky appeared in his house with the news that his brother was taken to the Third Department ^[5] . In 1859, when Fyodor Mikhailovich, after returning from Siberia, received permission to live in Tver , Yanovsky, according to his memoirs, “was the first of his close friends to visit him in this city” ^[1] .

According to the researchers, the letters that Stepan Dmitrievich and Dostoevsky sent to each other, including those years when the previous relationship actually ceased, have been preserved ^[1] . So, in the spring of 1868, after the release of The Idiot , Yanovsky informed the author about the reaction of readers to his new work: “In a club, in small salons, in railroad cars ... you can only hear from everyone: have you read the last novel Dostoevsky? ” ^[6] . In turn, in a letter dated 1872, Fedor Mikhailovich expressed his gratitude to the doctor and a friend of his youth for caring:

You are one of the unforgettable, one of those who have sharply responded in my life ... After all, you are my benefactor. You loved me and fiddled with me, with a sick mental illness (because I now realize it), before my trip to Siberia, where I was cured ... For all my life, I sincerely devoted to you ... ^[6]

Yanovsky’s wife was Alexandra Schubert, to whom Dostoevsky was very sympathetic - the writer not only worried about her lack of decent roles, but also promised to compose a one-act comedy especially for the actress ^[2] . In 1860, when Stepan Dmitrievich and Alexandra Ivanovna began to have a breakdown, Fyodor Mikhailovich involuntarily found himself drawn into their family problems. Dostoevsky supported Alexandra Ivanovna’s decision to move from St. Petersburg to Moscow and took her side in the conflict with her husband: “He [Yanovsky] seems quite sure that we are constantly texting that you live by my advice ... It seems to me that he is also a little jealous, maybe he thinks I'm in love with you ” ^[7] .

The poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev , who was also devoted to the ups and downs of discord between the doctor and his wife, believed that the culprit of a difficult family situation is Stepan Dmitrievich: “I think living with Yanovsky is boredom, listening to all phrases all of my life - it's like if if anyone had been condemned all his life there is nothing but strawberry jam! ” ^[2]

The couple broke up in 1863, but the history of their relationship was reflected in the work of Dostoevsky's “Eternal Husband” (1870). According to researchers, some of Yanovsky’s traits - suspicion, picky, jealousy - were embodied in the image of Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky ^[8] - a character “capable of being only a husband” ^[9] . After the release of the story (according to Dostoyevsky’s story) “The Eternal Husband”, the poet Apollon Maikov informed the author that “he immediately recognized Yanovsky and his character” ^[2] .

After the death of Fyodor Mikhailovich Yanovsky twice published memories of the writer. First, an article by Stepan Dmitrievich written in the form of a letter to Apollon Maikov and entitled “Dostoevsky’s disease” was published in the newspaper Novoye Vremya (1881, No. 1793), in which the author reported that his patient began to suffer from epilepsy at least three years before departure to Siberia; however, in St. Petersburg the disease manifested itself in a “mild degree” and was stopped by timely treatment ^{[1] [10]} .

Four years later, a more detailed memoir of Yanovsky was published by the journal Russian Bulletin (1885, No. 176). The doctor talked about the medical examinations and treatment of the writer, mutual trust that appeared at a certain stage, the literary predilections of Fyodor Mikhailovich - according to Stepan Dmitrievich, he easily reproduced whole chapters from the works of Pushkin and Gogol from memory, appreciated Turgenev ’s Notes of the Hunter , knew by heart “ Oblomov’s Dream ”from the novel by Goncharov ^[1] . Lyudmila Saraskina , a literary critic, quoting fragments of Yanovsky’s memoirs in a book about Dostoevsky, noted that the doctor may have “slightly embellished the portrait of a friend, portraying him as an exemplary young man who did not chase skirts, did not like wine, did not recognize cards” ^[4] .

• Saraskina L.I. Dostoevsky. - M .: Young Guard , 2013 .-- 825 p. - ISBN 978-5-235-03595-9 .
• F. M. Dostoevsky in the memoirs of contemporaries. In two volumes. - M .: Fiction , 1990. - T. 1. - ISBN 5-280-01023-5 .
• Belov S.V.F. M. Dostoevsky and his entourage. Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M .: Aletheya , 2001. - T. 2. - ISBN 5-89329-379-7 .