[
The Live Corpse], written in 1838 and dedicated to Countess Rostopchina, was first published in 1844. It has been described as “a striking tale of out-of-body experience, based ultimately this time on dream” (Neil Cornwell: Introduction to
Salamander, 4), influencing Dostoevsky's later fantastic stories such as
Bobok(1873) and, in particular,
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man(1877). The last lines of
The Live Corpsehad in fact formed the epigraph to Dostoevsky's first work,
Poor Folk(1846), and the theme, also present in Odoevsky's
Kosmorama[
The Cosmorama] and
Salamandra[
The Salamander], was taken up by Tolstoy in
The Death of Ivan Ilyich(1886), his similarly entitled play
Zhivoi trup[
The Live Corpse, 1900] and
The False Coupon(1904). It may also be seen as…
2237 words
Citation: Sucur, Slobodan. "Zhivoi mertvets". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 May 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16245, accessed 23 April 2024.]
