‘Waiting for a Ghost’. J.M Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg

This article deals with the complex declinations of the figure of the ghost in J. M. Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg. In this this dark and poignant book, Coetzee imagines an ageing and self-tortured Dostoyevsky secretly returning to St. Petersburg after the mysterious death of his stepson. A sensitive and hyperconscious mind, he is a bereaved father, trying to come to terms with his loss, wrestling with his guilt and desires. The narrative follows his relationship with the landlady and her young daughter and his equally intense relationship with Nechaev, a young revolutionary who turns out to have been a major influence on his stepson. The figure of the ghost is explored from a private and psychological point of view – idea of ghost-parenting and generational strife – but also with the political ghosts of pre-revolutionary Russia: the conflict between a disillusioned and concervative father who professes an individualized view of suffering and the Nihilist views espoused by the young Nechev, demanding destruction of the social order. Finally, there is the ghost of Dostoyevsky himself, since the novel is also a fictional account of the genesis of The Possessed, wich Dostoyevsky began to write just one month after the close of Coetzee’s narrative.