• Russian Language and Literature
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• no.60
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• pp.135-160
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• 2018

This paper is focused on the sympathy in Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's poetics. For Dostoevsky, sympathy is based on the social dimension, which is connected with his experience. Though the writer may have thought of the many prisoners he met in Siberian as his own and others, he saw in them the 'Marey' that he had met in his childhood, and the spirituality that lies within Marey is no different from his faith. In other words, Dostoevsky discovered that they also have faith in common and that it is the main code of understanding them and a link that can be one with them. It differs from the intellectuals of the time in which the writer lived, in order to approach the people, in the sense of reason, logic, or any justification. For Tolstoy, on the other hand, sympathy can be considered in terms of morality and practice. Tolstoy's sympathy extends from the individual to the social level, whereas Dostoevsky's sympathy moves from the social dimension to the individual dimension. Through his personal experience and enlightenment, he emphasizes sympathy in the process of practicing what he realizes in society. In other words, after sympathy, he tried to practice his sympathy and realization. It was not for the Russian people or the Slavs, but for the whole human race. In this sense, Tolstoy tried to overcome the partiality of empathy and tried to obtain universality of sympathy. In particular, Tolstoy emphasizes that patriotism is an example of bias in empathy and should be guarded.