The space of Moscow in the poetics of A. S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and the artistic consciousness of F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Poor Folk”

The purpose of the study is to identify the specific features of the spatial poetics of A. S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Poor Folk” within the village – city opposition, in which the image of Moscow plays a key role. The article examines the influence of the Pushkinian tradition: in both works, the village is responsible for the moral development of the heroines – Tatyana Larina and Varvara Dobroselova – while the city determines their destinies. The function of Moscow is analyzed in detail: despite the general semantics of the urban locus as a site of existential crisis, Moscow acquires ethical and philosophical meanings in “Eugene Onegin”. In Dostoevsky’s novel, meanwhile, the capital, drawing on his family biography, becomes a city-prototype that determines the characters’ perception of the Petersburg environment. The scientific originality of the study lies in comparing the spatial poetics of the novels across three levels of local-text functioning – compositional, plot-forming, and ethical – and in explicating the role of Moscow, where Dostoevsky departs from the Pushkinian tradition and demonstrates an original approach shaped by biographical experience. The study establishes that, despite its function as a city of trials, Moscow in Pushkin and Dostoevsky cannot be reduced to negative connotations. In “Poor Folk”, the artistic function of a cold and hostile space is assumed by St. Petersburg.