This post is a fragment from a chapter of the book which will be published some time next year. The context is a comparison between the ballet "Petrushka" and "The Fairground Booth". Both share roots in the Russian fairground and the figures of the commedia dell'arte. To understand a play like The Fairground Booth which has no plot, no characters, no real sense of forward movement or natural time and broke from the traditions of realism and naturalism, requires an approach to Russian culture which moves beyond its surface reflections. When, as Bakhtin states, Dostoevsky's work embodies elements of carnival, (something which is not immediately associated with Dostoevsky), then it becomes clear why it is possible to find clues to the meaning of "The Fairground Booth" in works of literature as various as "The Brothers Karamazov" and The ballet "Petrushka" and vise a versa.
