In this case we seem to have a certain mechanization of the imagery device. The word deprived of sense is constantly associated with a number of other words, which are thus removed from the way they are usually perceived. I cannot trace the history of this device outside Russian literature, but I think that perhaps Dostoevsky borrowed it from Dickens, who was a great devotee of it. In Our Mutual Friend the same use is made of the conversations about lime, with which at first the detectives concealed their real intentions, but which later became for them a sort of game. . . . It seems clear to me that for a writer words are not at all a sad necessity, not just a means by which something is said, but are rather the very material of the work.
Literature is created from words and takes advantage of the laws by which they are governed.
It is true that in a work of literature we also have the expression of ideas, but it is not a question of ideas clothed in artistic form, but rather artistic form created from ideas as its material. In verse, rhyme is opposed to rhyme, the sounds of one word are connected by repetitions with the sounds of another word and form the sound-aspect of the poem. In parallelism, image is opposed to image and forms the image-aspect of the work. In the novel, thought is opposed to thought, or one group of characters to another, and this constitutes the meaning-form of the work. It can, however, be expressed indirectly by the description of images, actions, situations in words.