| Glazunov’s
illustrations for the works of his favorite
writer, philosopher, and Russian prophet,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, brought him worldwide
fame. He is the only artist to have illustrated
the complete works of the great writer.
Glazunov’s illustrations, which portray the
inner world of Dostoyevsky’s heroes, represent
one of his crowning artistic achievements.
Many of the writer’s novels and short stories
are set in St. Petersburg, the artist’s beloved
city of birth. “White Nights” is an extraordinary
short story in which fantasy and reality are
reversed. In Glazunov’s rendering of the story’s
hero, the dreamer, many see a likeness of
the artist himself, whose youth was enveloped
in a haze of white nights, loneliness, and
love. In 1956, while still a student, Glazunov
created the images of Prince Myshkin, Nastasya
Filippovna, and the powerful merchant Rogozhin,
which hang today in the Dostoyevsky Museum.
Glazunov’s illustrations of “The Possessed”
succeeded in visually revealing the essence
and modern relevance of this most beloved
of Dostoyevsky’s works, which he wrote “with
hands trembling in anger.” Glazunov’s illustrations
and portraits of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russia’s
national treasure, are imbued with a philosophical
profundity and with the spirit of the great
imperial city of St. Petersburg, where the
writer’s oppressed and downtrodden heroes
and anti-heroes lived and suffered. Copies
of Dostoyevsky’s novels illustrated by Glazunov
have become rareties.
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