“Scroudge et Marly”: A Literary Allusion as Another Formula for the Inner Idea of Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent

Abstract

“Scroudge et Marly” is a literary allusion recorded by Dostoevsky in Notes and Plans (1874–1879) after his work on the novel The Adolescent, when he was contemplating the unexecuted work The Dreamer. This allusion refers to Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Unlike conventional literary allusions — typically directed at the reader and intended to evoke a complex of associations, ideas, and emotions — this reference appears to be addressed by the writer to himself. It is within the author’s own mind that the allusion is meant to provoke correlative ideas and associations. In this sense, the literary allusion functions as a kind of compressed formula for a specific idea linked to both works. The discussion also draws parallels between Dickens’s story and Dostoevsky’s Mr. Prokharchin and White Nights. Furthermore, the essay advances the idea that at the heart of A Christmas Carol lies the biblical Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which is implicitly present both in the epigraph to Dostoevsky’s debut novel, Poor Folk, and in his later novel, The Adolescent.