(Janet G. Tucker) Profane Challenge and Orthodox R (BookFi)

Profane Challenge
and Orthodox Response

in Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
Studies in
Slavic Literature
and Poetics
Volume LII
Edited by
J.J. van Baak
R. Grübel
A.G.F. van Holk
W.G. Weststeijn
Profane Challenge
and Orthodox Response
in Dostoevsky’s
Janet G. Tucker
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008

Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2494-6
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008
Printed in the Netherlands
To My Family
Anne, Bill, Sri, Rob
and Nattie
CONTENTS
Preface 5
Introduction 9
Chapter One. The Significance of Orality and the Oral 29

Tradition: Dostoevsky Counter-Attacks
Chapter Two. The Religious Symbolism of Cloth and 67

Clothing in Crime and Punishment
Chapter Three. Iconic Images in Crime and Punishment: 93

Russia’s Western Capital
Chapter Four. “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” in 143

Chapter Five. The Significance of Alterity or “Otherness” 181

in Crime and Punishment: Russian Culture and Western
Change
Chapter Six. The Epilogue Reconsidered 209
Conclusion 231
Bibliography 239
Index 273
Preface
The present study, Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, had its impetus in a
paper entitled “The Religious Significance of Cloth and Clothing in
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment,” read some years ago in
New Orleans, at an annual meeting of the South Central Modern
Language Association. This paper was subsequently published in the
Slavic and East European Journal and then reprinted by Harold
Bloom. (I would like to thank the editors at the Slavic and East
European Journal for their permission to reprint a revised version of
this essay.) I later read essays on Crime and Punishment at national
and regional conferences. These include: “Raskol’nikov and the
Prodigal Son” (American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies), “Raskol’nikov Duels Against God” (South Central Modern
Language Association), and “Sacred and Profane Constructs in Crime
and Punishment” (American Association for the Advancement of
Slavic Studies). In the spring of 2005, I was privileged to present a
lecture focused on my central thesis at the Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. That paper
was entitled “Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.” Together, all of these essays,
later expanded into full-length chapters, constitute most of the present
study. Two additional chapters on alterity and on the epilogue were
added later.
Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment represents an attempt to
understand, as far as it is possible for me to do so, Dostoevsky’s
probable motives for writing the novel. It seems to me that only by
examining Crime and Punishment within the context of its cultural
and social environment can we come close to fathoming these
motives, and to comprehending this work. That Dostoevsky’s novel
prevails for all time as one of the spectacular masterpieces of world
literature is beyond the slightest doubt. But today’s reader must
6 Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response
always remember that Dostoevsky was a writer of his own time, as

well as a writer for all time. Unquestionably, he wrote with a
particular reader in mind, and also with a particular goal as regards
that reader. In the present study, I attempt to determine the ways in
which he tried to convince that reader, to win that reader over to his
side. As a result, I have included chapters touching on aspects of
Russian life and culture that are at once facets of the late nineteenth-
century urban St. Petersburg environment, and symbols of Russian
traditional oral and Orthodox culture. Dostoevsky was acutely
sensitive to inherently Russian and Russian Orthodox themes and
motifs that were central to his work generally. This is true generally
during his post-Siberian years, as well as in this novel in particular.
Dostoevsky is intensely visually as well as orally and aurally oriented.
The topics covered in each chapter reflect an awareness of these
important Dostoevskian traits.
I did not, of course, write this book in a vacuum, and I was
privileged to have the assistance and encouragement of others. My
husband, William Tucker, took time from his own special area of
impressive expertise—the history of the Middle East—to read the
entire manuscript and to offer welcome support and pertinent
suggestions. My son Robert Tucker tendered wise and cogent
commentary. My lovely daughter-in-law Charoensri Supattarasakda
was always encouraging, as were my cousins Paul Silberman,
Deborah Rutty, Robert Shapiro, and Karl Wittman. My wonderful
granddaughter Natjaya Supattarasakda-Tucker was a marvelous
distraction. My special aunt Anne Cour expressed a concerned interest
in this project, as did the late Mildred Walker. I’ll always appreciate
the wise counsel of Nongpoth Sternstein, my most wonderful “elder
sister” and my son’s Thai language teacher at the University of
Pennsylvania. Donald Engels, Joseph Candido, the late Brian Wilkie
and Sandra Sherman tendered helpful criticism particularly on Chapter
Two in its original form as an essay, and I’m most grateful to Harold
Bloom for having reprinted that essay. The encouragement and
assistance of the late Jack Hudson buoyed my spirits tremendously
during the hiatus between graduate school and professional
employment. The late Stephen Baehr, editor of the Slavic and East
European Journal, was both marvelously wise and enormously
effective during the crucial period when I was working on the essay
on clothing. I very much value the suggestions of the anonymous
Preface 7
readers. In addition, I’m most grateful for Malynne Sternstein’s kind

invitation to lecture on Crime and Punishment at the University of
Chicago, as well as her judicious and expert advice on the larger topic.
Bill Darden, Ksana Blank, Norman Ingham, Vicki Polansky, Vladimir
Liapunov, Evan Bukey, Alexandra Heidi Karriker, and Joshua Brody
made very apt suggestions that greatly improved my original text.
Deborah Martinsen, Alexandra Kostina, Priscilla Meyer, Clint Walker
and Harold Schefski generously shared materials with me. Paul
Friedrich was a most valuable interlocutor for exchanging ideas as
well as assisting graciously with the final draft and improving it
immeasurably. James Rice was tremendously helpful, as were
Deborah Martinsen, Charles Jelavich and Lawrence Malley. Caryl
Emerson lent heartening assessment and her phenomenal expertise,
reading and commenting on the entire manuscript. I’m indebted to
Maurice Friedberg and to the late Robert Maguire for their support
over many years. William Mills Todd gave much-needed
encouragement. Hope Christiansen read this study and offered
valuable suggestions. Brett Cooke, Olga Cooke and Robert Belknap
were very helpful as regards the chapters on clothing and the iconic.
Esther Roth at Rodopi was patient and most supportive. Roger Henry
and Margaret Hoskins tendered crucial assistance regarding computer-
related issues; I couldn’t have managed without them. I’m most
grateful to my chairs, Kay Pritchett and Joan Turner, and to Nancy
Arenberg, Todd Hanlin, Anita Bukey, James Davis, Tatsuya
Fukushima, Gek Tan, Daniel Levine and Judith Ricker for their help
and support, as well as to my very able teaching assistant Natalya
Shchegoleva, who took over Russian language courses during the
semester I was on leave. And I would especially like to thank the
tremendous students I’ve had over the years, specifically those from
my Dostoevsky courses.
Last, but certainly not least, I very much appreciate the expert
and helpful assistance of the librarians at the University of Arkansas.
These include the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Department of Mullins
Library, particularly Robin Roggio and Michele Tabler. In addition,
the expert staff at the reference desk of Mullins Library—Donna
Daniels, Beth Juhl, Jan Dixon, Judy Dye, Debra Miller, Anne
Candido, John Riley, Elizabeth McKee, Necia Parker-Gibson, Donald
Batson, Steve Chism, Norma Johnson, Tony Stankus, Patricia
Kirkwood and Karen Myers—offered vital assistance. I treasure the
expertise of the late John Harrison. As always, Ann and Conrad

Waligorski asked pertinent and important questions. Any gaffes or
infelicities are, of course, my own.
Transliteration
I have tended to render Russian names in a form most readily

recognizable in English. Hence, for example, I write Dostoevsky, not
Dostoevskij, Pushkin instead of Puškin, Tolstoy, not Tolstoj. In
instances where I cited from Russian primary and secondary
sources—in notes and the bibliography—spellings typically conform
to the Library of Congress system.
“Dostoevskii umer”, skazala grazhdanka, no kak-to
ne ochen’ uverenno. “Protestuiu”!—goriacho voskliknul
Begemot.—“Dostoevskii bessmerten”!
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
(“Dostoevsky’s dead”, said the citizeness, but

somehow not very confidently. “I protest”! Behemoth
exclaimed passionately. “Dostoevsky’s immortal”.)
Introduction
Russia during the 1860s was a country in flux, passionately consumed

by the leading social and political issues of the day. As Charles Moser
suggests (1964: 13), the liberation of the serfs and far-reaching
reforms in the courts and the universities were among the concerns
that captured public and governmental attention. Ever alert barometers
to what was going on in their larger society, intellectuals, particularly
writers, weighed in on contemporary questions and frequently spilled
ink and spleen on opposite sides. Writers and literary critics played a
crucial role in Russia’s culture wars, especially since “ideas that could
not be expressed in the form of straight-forward political commentary
could appear disguised and diluted in the form of characters in novels
and in essays of literary criticism” (Seton-Watson 1952: 64). Readers
turned to literature and literary criticism to keep up with current
issues. Of all the topics that engaged the writers’ and the reading
public’s interest and invective, none resonated more dramatically than
nihilism, which emerged as a label—and a literary concern—with the
publication of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev’s ground-breaking 1862
novel Fathers and Sons. Nor should we forget the impact of the
counter argument to nihilism—and, indeed, the counter argument to
Westernizing philosophies generally—as embodied in Slavophilism
and formulated by the Slavophile leader Ivan Aksakov. Temporally,
Aksakov (1887: 242-243) famously traced the malaise of his
contemporary Russian society back beyond the nihilists and their
cause, ultimately going back to the tsar Peter the Great and to his
reforms.1 All of these factors should be considered when we read

Crime and Punishment.
What is the implication of “nihilism” for Dostoevsky and his
contemporaries, how can we define it, and what is its significance in
the Russian context? Taken from the Latin nihil (‘nothing’), nihilism
in the Middle Ages in the West was originally used to “designate a
person who doubted the divinity of Christ and other articles of the
Christian faith” (Moser 1964: 18). This early definition certainly
touched a chord among the young Russians of Dostoevsky’s day,
many of them atheists. By the last third of the nineteenth century, the
Russian nihilists were a once political radicals, looking forward to a
socialist or even an anarchist “system”, and unfocused individuals
lacking “any positive plans for the future” (Moser 1964: 19).
Moreover, in a move that would have given Dostoevsky fits, they
refused to believe “that anything at all could be attributed to a Divine
Being” (Moser 1964: 37). Their views led them to look to non-divine,
i.e. human, authority in a world now in danger of losing its traditional
moral (Orthodox) compass.
Coupled with their repudiation of religious faith was an
assumption that art—most significantly, of course, literature—was
designed to be tendentious, a propaganda tool for changing public
opinion and, ultimately, society (Proctor 1969: 79). Beset by fractious
conflict, the nihilists were divided into two schismatic factions: a
group linked with the journal The Russian Word (Russkoe slovo) and
led by the radical critic Dmitri Ivanovich Pisarev (the nihilist’s
nihilist) on one side, and their rivals associated with the journal The
Contemporary (Sovremennik) under the aegis of the critic Maksim
Alekseevich Antonovich and the great satirist Mikhail Evgrafovich
Saltykov-Shchedrin on the other. This split became especially bitter in
1
Cited in Clint B. Walker’s fine “Psyche, Soma and Raskolnikov’s Sickness
Revisited: Mind as Microcosm in Crime and Punishment” (Salt Lake City: American
Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 3-6 November, 2005), 1-2, 13-14.
I would like to thank Clint Walker for having shared his work with me. The present
prodigal essay is based on a talk delivered at the University of Chicago on 31 March,
2005. I would like to thank the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and
especially Malynne Sternstein for having invited me to give this lecture.
Introduction 11
1864-65, during the precise period when Dostoevsky was formulating

and writing Crime and Punishment (Moser 1964: 29).2
Any discussion of nihilism in the Russian context leads to
complementary issues: Utilitarianism and Utopian Socialism. We may
also add Positivism—which stresses science over faith—to this mix,
particularly since Crime and Punishment touches on the larger issues
of society, social thought and Orthodoxy. The Russian nihilists should
more readily be labeled “Utilitarians” rather than believers in
“nothing”. They had an intense desire to restructure society according
to the Utilitarian principle of “the greatest good for the greatest
number” and believed that a “rational utopian society” could be
realized in Russia (Gary Cox 1990: 48-49). Utopian Socialism initially
flowered decades earlier and included a group called the Petrashevsky
Circle, which numbered Dostoevsky among its members (Gleason
1998: 111).3 The assumption that Dostoevsky himself would have
been a political rebel in the manner of the characters in his 1872 novel
Demons must be tempered by contemporary observations. Dostoevsky
“was never, and never could be, a revolutionary; but, as a man of
feeling, he could be carried away by a wave of indignation and even
hatred at the sight of violence being perpetrated on the insulted and
injured” (Dolinin 1964: 1, 211; emphasis in original).4
The Utopian Socialists envisioned a “harmonious and
peacefully happy mankind” living in what Frank (1990: 45) terms a
“Golden Age of social justice”, which was unrealizable in the
physical, temporal world. Russian Utopian Socialists somehow
2
For a brief discussion of nihilism in literature, see Daniel R. Brower, Training the
Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1975), 59-173.
3
Richard Freeborn notes that “[…]Dostoevsky repudiate[ed] the idealism of the 1840s
and, more specifically, the highmindedness of the social utopianism that he
discovered at the Petrashevsky evenings”. Richard Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian
Novel: Studies in the Russian Novel from ‘Eugene Onegin’ to ‘War and Peace’
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 175-176. But “[i]t was not until the
1860s with the so-called new Enlightenment and its emphasis on materialism and
social utilitarianism”, Theofanis George Stavrou maintains, “that the peculiar type of
the Russian intelligent, as usually defined and appreciated in the West, was formed”.
Theofanis George Stavrou, “Introduction”, in Theofanis George Stavrou, ed., Art and
Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983)
(ix-xix), xi.
4
Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: the Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976), 256, 276 n. 45.
blended French Utopian Socialism and its doctrine of a perfectible

world of “love and moral perfection” with Utilitarianism (“the greatest
good for the greatest number”) and its attendant rational egoism, plus
the positivist, “egoistic individualism of [Jeremy] Bentham and [John
Stuart] Mill” (Frank 1966: 30-35).5
Whatever his previous inclinations, Dostoevsky had become
strongly disaffected with Utopian Socialism even before he began
writing Crime and Punishment. By 1856, he came to regard it as a
“French” import which had no “power to change the Russian character
[…] Time and again he [would] show in his major characters the
persistence of something he considers ‘Russian’ ” (Frank 1990: 226-
227, 311 n 9). In 1864 in Notes from Underground, he pilloried
Utopian Socialism for advocating the possibility of an earthly paradise
5
Reprinted in Robert Louis Jackson, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Crime
and Punishment: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, 1974), (81-90), 83-84. See also Lesley Chamberlain’s informative analysis in
Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), 48-
52. Gary Cox has an excellent discussion of this same issue in Crime and Punishment:
A Mind to Murder (Boston: Twayne, 1990), 48-49. Peter Gay refers to the
“uncharitable, bloodless, almost literally inhuman philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and
his followers, the Utilitarians [….]”. Peter Gay, Savage Reprisals: Bleak House,
Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), 24. Thomas
Hobbes’s Leviathan, with a “mechanical enlightenment model of the state”, may well
find a latter-day echo in Raskol’nikov’s mechanical movements leading up to the first
murder. Clint Walker discusses this parallel in “Psyche and Soma: Metaphors of
Transformation and the Petrine Cultural Legacy from Dostoevsky to Platonov” (The
University of Wisconsin: Ph.D. thesis., 2006), 61. Utilitarianism as linked with the
pawnbroker’s murder surfaces early on, when the student and officer discuss the
“utility” of killing her, as Raskol’nikov soaks up their conversation. F.M. Dostoevskii,
Prestuplenie i nakazanie. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, ed. V.G.
Bazanov et al., 6 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973), 54, hereafter cited in the text as PSS 6.
All translations are mine. As Gary Saul Morson observes, “Dostoevsky’s genius here
was to see that utilitarianism consistently applied not only makes murder permitted,
but mandates it as virtuous”. Gary Saul Morson, “Gogol’s Parables of Explanation:
Nonsense and Prosaics”, in Susanne Fusso and Priscilla Meyer, eds., Essays on
Gogol: Logos and the Russian Word (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1992), 212. Richard Freeborn comments that “Chernyshevsky justified ‘rational
egoism’ in his famous article ‘The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy’ (1860),
but Luzhin’s theory is a parody of Chernyshevsky’s thought”. Richard Freeborn,
Russian Novel, 196 n. 1. William Brumfield discusses the nexus between rational
egoism and libertine philosophy in “Thérèse philosophe and Dostoevsky’s Great
Sinner,” Comparative Literature 32 (1980): esp. 241, 248-249. Obviously, Luzhin but
especially Svidrigailov fit in here. See also Susanne Fusso, Discovering Sexuality in
Dostoevsky (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 13-14.
Introduction 13
as a precursor/substitute for Heaven. Like nihilism, Utopian

Socialism—arguably anti-Christian and certainly anti-Russian—was
now on Dostoevsky’s “hit list”. That Dostoevsky was profoundly
influenced by Ivan Aksakov during this crucial period6 surely
heightened his suspicions of contemporary Western thought in the
hands of the Russian Socialists. If the Socialists wanted to use
literature for tendentious purposes, he was ready to answer with
tendentiousness of his own.
When the radical nihilist Pisarev boldly asserted (1981: 233)
that only “personal taste” stood in the way of murder and robbery and
only “personal taste” inspired scientific or sociological discoveries,7 a
horrified Dostoevsky put these extremist notions into practice by
turning the theoretician into a murderer. If the radical Utopian
Socialist critic from the intelligentsia—and a markedly inferior
writer—Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky8 could use fiction as a
tool to promote his views of radical social reorganization—
particularly among the young—in his novel What Is To Be Done?,
then a brilliant writer like Dostoevsky would throw his full weight into
answering him.9 (That all three writers—Turgenev, Chernyshevsky,
6
Clint Walker presents a particularly cogent discussion of the important relationship
between the Slavophile Ivan Aksakov and Dostoevsky in his “Psyche, Soma and
Raskolnikov’s Sickness Revisited”, as well as in “Psyche and Soma: Metaphors of
Transformation and the Petrine Cultural Legacy from Dostoevsky to Platonov”,
unpublished essay.
7
Raskol’nikov—of all people!—comments on Luzhin’s personal philosophy, which
would allow one to slit someone else’s throat (literally, cut someone, rezat’) if carried
to its logical conclusion. (PSS 6: 118).
8
“Chernyshevsky”, observes Joseph Frank, “was not a Nihilist at all in the sense in
which this term came to be understood in the mid-1860s”. Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky:
The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 69.
9
For a detailed discussion of the environment that Crime and Punishment addresses,
see M.S. Gus, Idei i obrazy F.M. Dostoevskogo (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1962), 261, 265-267, 269-271. Gus notes
that Raskol’nikov is separated not only from the majority of the population, but also
from his fellow students (270-271). “Only with the third generation of radicals […]”,
Robert Belknap states, “do Dostoevsky’s personal distaste and scorn appear in their
full glory. The imprisonment of Chernyshevskii and the deaths of Dobroliubov and
Pisarev left a gap in the radical journals that lesser figures like G.Z. Eliseev and M.A.
Antonovich emerged to fill. Dostoevsky treats them as greedy operators who are
growing rich by saying what the deracinated intelligentsia desires”. Robert Belknap,
The Genesis of The Brothers Karamazov: The Aesthetics, Ideology, and Psychology of
Making a Text (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, Studies of the Harriman
Dostoevsky—couched their arguments as prose fiction should alert us

to the role of the novel as an instrument for swaying public opinion.)
Nor should we forget that Chernyshevsky does not turn his back on
the iconic. He instead canonizes the civic tradition,10 with the secular
co-opting the authority of Orthodoxy.11
This is the environment in which Dostoevsky embedded his
first great murder novel, Crime and Punishment. That Crime and
Punishment remains one of the masterpieces of world literature—
popular today—is not subject to dispute. Today’s reader, however,
must always bear in mind that Dostoevsky was not only a great writer
speaking to the ages, but also very much a man of his time who dealt
with important contemporary issues. The ways in which he managed
to address and counter radical thought while simultaneously creating a
work of universal scope enables us to see why his legacy endures. We
begin with the audience he considered it most important to reach.
Institute, 1990), 123-124. As Nicholas Riasanovsky suggests, “Dostoevskii and also

Tolstoi were intellectually formed in the decades during which the Slavophiles were
mounting their sweeping attacks on Peter the Great and his legacy. Dostoevskii’s
dichotomies, e.g., between Christian humility and pride or between Russia and the
West, and Tolstoi’s, notably between artificial society and authentic common people,
remind one strongly of the fundamental Slavophile dichotomy and of the Slavophile
criticism of Peter the Great”. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, The Image of Peter the Great
in Russian History and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 149 n. 166;
emphasis added. For further comments, see Charles Henry Arndt III, “Dostoevsky’s
Engagement of Russian Intellectuals in the Question of Russia and Europe: From
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions to The Devils” (Ph.D. thesis., Brown
University, 2004), 2, 91, 93 n. 48.
10
For discussions of this point, see Irina Paperno’s Chernyshevsky and the Age of
Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1988), 216; as well as Stephen C. Hutchings, Russian Modernism: The
Transfiguration of the Everyday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 51.
11
He intended for “lightweight elements” in his work to have “mass appeal”. See
Richard Freeborn, Russian Novel, 132. It was precisely this “mass appeal” that
Dostoevsky intended to counter.
Introduction 15
Dostoevsky’s Target/Implied Reader: Self-Identification with the

Hero12
Written in 1865 and published first in serial form in 1866 in Mikhail

Nikiforovich Katkov’s journal The Russian Messenger, Crime and
Punishment was a brilliant “last word” (until Dostoevsky’s own
Demons) in contemporary literary squabbles. Crime and Punishment
followed hard on the heels of such important and cogent novels as
Fathers and Sons, Chernyshevsky’s turgid but significant What Is To
Be Done? (1863), and Dostoevsky’s own Notes from Underground.
Writers variously fought for or denounced nihilism, Utopian Socialism
and possible social reorganization as central components of their
works. And writers were concerned with reaching the young, the
future of Russia. As John Hutchinson suggests, “[T]hose who had
something to lose were profoundly shaken by the Polish uprising [of
1863], by the specter of revolutionary activity in St. Petersburg, and
by the alarming popularity of nihilist, socialist, and even anarchist
views among the younger generation” (1999: 9; emphasis added). In
the wake of the murders, Raskol’nikov himself muses on
Razumikhin’s “socialism bashing”, convinced himself that the
socialists are “[i]ndustrious people and businesslike, who occupy
themselves with the ‘general happiness’ [….]” (PSS 6: 211).
A common factor in these novels is the central role that a
young protagonist plays, as a particular individual, even if, as in
Notes from Underground, that character is young only in the second
half of the work, set back in the 1840s. This was a literature featuring
and directed at the young, especially those consumed by theory,
although the authors who produced it were not necessarily young
12
I would like to thank Deborah Martinsen for her encouragement regarding this topic.
As James Scanlan observes, “Rational Egoism—was a genuine doctrine, because by
glorifying the self it could turn the minds of impressionable young people away from
sound values [….]”. James Scanlan, Dostoevsky the Thinker (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2002), 61; emphasis added. For a discussion of the implied reader,
see Robin Feuer Miller’s masterful Dostoevsky and The Idiot: Author, Narrator, and
Reader (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 128, 131, 154-55. See also
Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Second Edition (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1983), 138-139. Luzhin makes youth’s infatuation with modish
ideologies look negative; Lebezyatnikov makes this craze seem ridiculous (as on PSS
6: 280), although it must be noted in Lebezyatnikov’s defense that he does stand up
for Sonia.
themselves at the time of writing.13 A youthful Bazarov dominates

Fathers and Sons. Rakhmetov, one of the “new people”, figures
importantly in What Is To Be Done?, Chernyshevsky’s response to
Turgenev. An unnamed “I” recalls his youthful misadventures and
records his mature invective in Notes from Underground. The young
Raskol’nikov functions as an observer of St. Petersburg life, a young
man whose thoughts replicate items that appeared in the contemporary
press. We see the city through his eyes.14 We see the novel, suggests
T.V. Midzhiferdzhian (1987: 66), through his eyes, too. Dostoevsky—
the master of fiction—concentrates an entire generation into a single
character, Raskol’nikov. Dostoevsky attempted to break the
stranglehold of contemporary—and dangerous—Western theory over
the younger generation, as crystallized in Raskol’nikov. Clint Walker
reminds us—separated as we are culturally and temporally from
Russian thought in the 1860s—of Ivan Aksakov and his pivotal role in
Dostoevsky’s conception of this novel. Clint Walker specifically looks
to Aksakov’s essay “On the Despotism of Theory over Life”
(Aksakov 1887: 264-265) that stands “at the conceptual core of Crime
and Punishment”:
The despotism of theory over life is the worst of all forms of

despotism. Even when this phenomenon concerns the fate of a
separate human individual, that is, even when the human being
himself, coming under the control of some preconceived abstract
theory, assimilated by his mind, applies externally and
despotically to his personal life, and prematurely does violence to
his soul without waiting for this theory to freely seize his entire
moral existence by itself—even then such a manner of action
rarely passes without cost to the person and sometimes in the end
perverts his moral nature [….].15
13
Robin Feuer Miller speaks of Dostoevsky’s “manipulation of the reader” in
Dostoevsky, 32.
14
For a valuable discussion of this issue, see Konstantine Klioutchkine, “The Rise of
Crime and Punishment from the Air of the Media”, Slavic Review 61:1 (Spring 2002):
88-108. “[A]ll the central figures in [Dostoevsky’s] major novels”, Richard Freeborn
observes, “are notable for their youth [….]”. Richard Freeborn, Russian Novel, 164 n.
2.
15
Cited in Clink Walker, “Psyche” (2005: 7-8). Clint Walker (2005: 8) likens
Raskol’nikov’s “hacking” with the axe (on porubil) to Peter’s own hacking “a
window through to Europe” (“v Evropu porubil okno”) from Aleksandr Pushkin’s
“The Bronze Horseman”.
Introduction 17
The newspapers of the day record the same problems that

Raskol’nikov encounters—money lending, prostitution, and
drunkenness—in the first pages of the novel. His own crime is
modeled on contemporary news items.16 (By bringing in actual
newspaper accounts, Dostoevsky forces Raskol’nikov to operate in a
liminal world between fact and fiction, giving the contemporary
reader a palpable sense of St. Petersburg realia). Even Raskol’nikov’s
ruminations on St. Petersburg’s future fountains were a “scheme
canvassed in the press” (Malcolm Jones 1976: 76-77). Today’s reader
must bear in mind that newspapers were the CNN of Dostoevsky’s
day, a source of constant headlines and frequently lurid stories
designed to grab popular attention. (In an era without television or
movies, literature was a frequently lurid substitute. Perhaps
Dostoevsky’s works could arguably function as the SVU [Special
Victims’ Unit] of his day?) As an example pertinent for the present
discussion, on 1 March, 1865, the newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie
vedomosti published a story that greatly impacted Raskol’nikov’s
theory of the “superior” man: an excerpt from Napoleon III’s
“Preface” to his book The History of Julius Caesar (Belov 1985:
154).17 Dostoevsky aptly captures Raskol’nikov’s own intense interest
in newspaper stories in a scene following the murders, as he briefly
relishes his “fifteen minutes of fame”. Raskol’nikov drops in at a
tavern, the “Crystal Palace”. Surely contemporary readers would
recognize this name from Notes from Underground, published just
two years earlier. “ ‘Do you have any newspapers’, he asked […]
Some old newspapers […] appeared. Raskol’nikov sat down and
began to search through them […] ‘Ah, here it is’ [“it” being the
murder story]” (PSS 6: 123-124). His intense curiosity echoes young
Russians’ concern for topical issues as addressed in contemporary
newspaper stories.
Not only are the central characters of contemporary prose
young themselves, they relate to others, particularly to young people,
in the course of these works as their authors’ instruments for
16
See the original drafts for the novel in F.M. Dostoevskii, Prestuplenie i nakazanie,
rukopisnye redaktsii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, ed. V.G. Bazanov
et al., 7 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973). Cited hereafter as PSS 7.
17
For a further discussion of Crime and Punishment and its milieu, consult Stephen K.
Carter, The Political and Social Thought of F.M. Dostoevsky (New York: Garland,
1991), 120-124, esp. 124.
addressing major issues.18 “It can be said with [Ju.] Lotman”, Rudolf
Neuhäuser maintains (2006: 3), “that the realist novel made the
transition to a literature that went beyond the fate of the individual,
which had been the central problem of romantic literature, turning to
the problems of society as such in its very existence”. This is the
literary scene when Dostoevsky enters the stage—with what is
arguably a fleshed-out sequel of sorts to Notes from Underground—
featuring a twenty-three-year-old axe murderer in Crime and
Punishment. He addressed problems that touched an entire
generation..
Why the young characters? In Crime and Punishment, for
example, even characters no longer young play at being so, to either
ludicrous (Luzhin) or horrific effect (Svidrigailov).19 The hero Rodion
Romanovich Raskol’nikov’s friend Razumikhin and sister Dunya, as
well as Sonia Marmeladova, are all close in age to Raskol’nikov.
Moreover, Dostoevsky, as is well known from his earlier drafts,
originally intended to have Raskol’nikov himself be a first-person
narrator, that is, to have a young narrator, before switching to a third-
person-omniscient one in his final draft of the novel. But Dostoevsky
definitely intended for the narrator to be young from the start. The
author, states Dostoevsky firmly in his earlier drafts, must seem like
“one of the members of the new generation” (PSS 7:149). Dostoevsky
“left the ‘I-form’ with extreme reluctance, taking it through several
variations and leaving us with two large fragments in the
18
V.V.Rozanov noted that “radical critics of the 1860’s wrote for youth, and it never
occurred to them that adult standards might be applied to their production by men like
Katkov and Dostoevskij. The radicals […] were uncomfortable pedagogues”. V.V.
Rozanov, “Kul’turnaia khronika russkogo obshchestva i literatury za XIX vek”,
Religiia i kul’tura, 2nd edition (St. Petersburg: M. Merkusheva, 1901), 86 n. 87, n. 88.
Cited in Charles Moser, Antinihilism, 28; emphasis in original. “It is probably
supportable to say”, adds Moser, “that the 1860’s phase of the Russian revolutionary
movement was the most thoroughly youth-oriented period in its history”. Charles
Moser, Antinihilism, 27. Leonid Grossman comments that, starting in the 1860s,
Russian novels focused on leaders of the younger generation. Leonid Grossman,
Dostoevskii (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1962), 341.
19
Raskol’nikov’s mother comments on Luzhin’s self-identification with the younger
generation in her letter to her son (PSS 6: 31). Luzhin is held up as a negative model
to be avoided, but also as the inevitable end result of submersion in materialism.
Introduction 19
notebooks”.20 In the “person” of the narrator, however, we still have

the perspective of a young man who finds Dunya, for example,
attractive from a youthful perspective21 and Raskol’nikov’s mother
Pul’kheria Ivanovna prematurely old in her early forties,
approximately Dostoevky’s own age when writing the novel. “In spite
of the fact that Pul’kheria Ivanovna was already forty-three, her face
still retained traces of its former beauty […] Her hair had already
begun to thin and turn gray, little crows’ feet had already started to
appear around her eyes” (PSS 6: 158-159). The investigator Porfiry
Petrovich at age thirty-five has a potbelly and a sickly looking dark-
yellow face (although his desk job and inactivity could have led to
these problems) (PSS 6: 192). The narrator skews the readers’
perceptions in favor of the young, even if inaccurately. By forcing
other characters into premature “old age”, he appeals to and identifies
with the young male contemporary reader.22 More to the point, the
young “target” reader himself identifies with Dostoevsky’s hero, or, at
least initially, feels compelled to. I might add here that I refer to the
“target” reader as “himself” because it was particularly young men
who had to be won back from nihilism, Utopian Socialism, and
Utilitarianism. As he himself noted in a letter to his editor Katkov
(PSS, 28, pt. 2 1985: 137), Dostoevsky specifically wanted to appeal
to the young man of the “new generation” with his vivid, tactile and
visible thought.23 Dostoevsky, notes Zundelovich, seeks to “draw the
reader into an eddy of definite thoughts and feelings and to force him
to think and feel the way the author and his heroes do” (1963: 24).
Throughout, he tries to attract that intended reader and change his
political philosophy and dangerous surrender to revolutionary ideas
and atheism. Having been a young radical, Dostoevsky was well
20
See, for example, PSS 7: 5. For a discussion of the first-person narrator, see Fyodor
Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment”, ed. and tr. Edward Wasiolek
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), 9.
21
Gary Rosenshield notes that “the narrator outspokenly expresses his [positive]
attitude toward Dunya”. Gary Rosenshield, Crime and Punishment: The Techniques of
the Omniscient Author (Lisse: The Peter de Ridder Press, 1978), 90.
22
“ ‘Don’t forget that he is 23 years old’, [Dostoevsky] reminds himself”. Dostoevsky,
The Notebooks, 8.
23
For further comment on this letter, as well as on the “mood of the times” and St.
Petersburg, see W.J. Leatherbarrow, A Devil’s Vaudeville: The Demonic in
Dostoevsky’s Major Fiction (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 68, 69,
85-86, 88.
aware of the seductive appeal of Western thought.24 As Susan

McReynolds states (2008: 7), he “strenuously objects to the belief that
human life and experience can be reduced to quantifiable, comparable
units that make utilitarian calculations about sufferings and benefits
possible”. And, as Robin Feuer Miller has so keenly observed, “[…]
Dostoevsky sought to move his reader beyond mere engagement: he
attempted to make him actually share responsibility with the
characters in the novel for the moral and ethical judgments with which
the characters, often tragically, affected each other’s lives”. She notes
further that “[…] Dostoevsky viewed his audience as a group upon
whom he should exercise the most wily strategies […]. [A]rtists like
Dostoevsky also hope to remake their readers through the impact of
their narrative” (1981: 6). His success is a measure of his brilliant
skills as a debater who knew full well how to make use of the “method
of indirect proof” (Vetlovskaia 1995: 79). Nor should we forget that
Dostoevsky, trained as an engineer who had to master mathematics
and logic as part of his education, would have known how to frame an
argument. And he knew how to appeal to his young readers, with
Raskol’nikov’s physical appearance being a case in point.
Raskol’nikov’s good looks—making him superficially
attractive at the very beginning—are an early draw for that reader who
might then be more likely to identify with him. The narrator tells us:
“He was remarkably handsome, with beautiful dark eyes and chestnut
hair, taller than average, slender and well-built” (PSS 6: 6). Typically
designating Raskol’nikov indefinitely with the pronoun “on” (‘he’),
the narrator shows us a nameless young man drifting through the
sordid St. Petersburg streets. He is a representative of his generation.
At the beginning of July, during an extraordinarily hot time,

toward evening, a certain young man left his [own] ‘closet’ which
he rented from some tenants in S Lane, and slowly, as if in a state
of indecision, headed for the K-n Bridge” (PSS 6: 5).
24
As Malcolm Jones observes in “Dostoevskii and Religion”, The Cambridge
Companion to Dostoevskii, ed. W.J. Leatherbarrow (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 159. Dostoevsky struggled in this novel, as Soviet criticism
noted in the mid-1960s, “against atheism and materialism”. B.I. Bursov, B.S. Meilakh
and M.B. Khrapchenko, eds., “Dostoevskii”, Istoriia russkoi literatury, Vol. IX, Part
2, Literatura 70-80-kh godov (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1956), 65.
Introduction 21
The pronouns “he” and “self” recur, in fact, a record twenty-two times
within the first thirty-two pages of the text, with Raskol’nikov often
simply referred to as “the young man” (Kovsan 1988: 78). And he is a
young man cut off from those around him, most significantly, from his
immediate family and, by extension, from the “larger” family of the
Orthodox community.25
In contrast, various important characters are instead presented
by name before they even surface in the novel. Sonia makes her initial
appearance when her father refers to her and her prostitution in a
drunken exchange with Raskol’nikov. His mother Pul’kheria
Raskol’nikova first turns up as the signatory to a letter we see
Raskol’nikov reading before he commits the murders. (His mother’s
letter introduces Dunya along with her undesirable “suitors”.) This
letter itself includes a reference by name to two major players prior to
their “coming on stage”: Petr Petrovich Luzhin and Arkady Ivanovich
Svidrigailov, the latter designated here by his last name only (PSS 6:
27-34). (Svidrigailov’s name as a label for a sexual predator resurfaces
when Raskol’nikov calls out “Svidrigailov” to a stranger in an attempt
to save a young woman from further molestation out on the street
[PSS 6: 40]).
Nor are characters’ names the only specifics. Dostoevsky also
carefully identifies Raskol’nikov’s environment, providing names for
actual buildings and streets (Antsiferov 1923: 28). In his focus on
urban detail, recalling the London of Dickens as well as the Paris of
Balzac, Dostoevsky recreates on the page the literal city in which his
target reader was probably adrift.26 For example, S.V. Belov observes,
25
“Raskolnikov […] manages to rid himself rather easily of his immediate
interlocutors [….]”. Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 151. But they keep returning, drawing
him back into the larger community. Raskol’nikov as a separate entity represents an
entire class of young men split off from their “real” Russian roots, as Clint Walker
maintains in “Psyche and Soma”, 32, noting further the tremendous impact of Ivan
Aksakov’s articles in Den’ (The Day) on Dostoevsky, “particularly Crime and
Punishment, but also the other major novels to follow”. Walker, “Psyche and Soma”
(2006), 35. Dostoevsky, notes Walker (41), characterizes Peter as “against the people”
(antinaroden).
26
As a very “painterly” visual writer, Dostoevsky’s streets recall the urban details of
Delft in the paintings of Jan Flette Vermeer (although Vermeer’s bright canvases are
in stark contrast to Dostoevsky’s own crepuscular urban landscapes). For a masterful
discussion of the impact of Dickens and Balzac on Gogol and especially Dostoevsky,
see the classic by Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of
it really was scorching in mid-July during the summer of 1865, when

the novel is set (1985: 40).
St. Petersburg—and perhaps somewhat less significantly
Moscow—was the milieu of the youthful intelligentsia. They would
either have been born in the capital, or would, as was the case with
Raskol’nikov, have abandoned their provincial homes to come to the
big city for study at the university or for work.27 On his own, this
reader walks the streets and sees the buildings he is already familiar
with. How much more jarring, then, given Dostoevsky’s careful
attention to his other characters’ names28 and to details of his St.
Petersburg setting, is the early omission of Raskol’nikov’s name
within the context of the novel. Initially nameless, Raskol’nikov then
emerges as a young “everyman” whose allegorical role carries the
weight of Crime and Punishment. We see him suspended between
Western Utilitarian philosophy, and the Orthodox worldview inherent
in Russian culture. As the embodiment of this struggle between Russia
and the West, Raskol’nikov vacillates between acts of charity, and
acts of murder.29
Dostoevky was “extraordinarily sensitive” to contemporary
themes especially as they impacted the young. He was also a master
manipulator! In Crime and Punishment he wrote, notes Leonid
Grossman (1962: 341) what was at once a “tragedy of nihilism” in the
person of Raskol’nikov and a “satire of the radical trend”, that trend
being, of course, nihilism, with some Utopian Socialism and
Utilitarianism thrown in for good measure. The very name
Raskol’nikov (“schismatic”) refers directly to nihilism. His full
name—Rodion Romanovich Raskol’nikov—is a combination of
Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Cambridge MA: Harvard

University Press, 1965).
27
All the Raskol’nikovs, along with Svidrigailov and Luzhin, have come to Petersburg
from the provinces, as Richard Freeborn has remarked in Russian Novel, 269.
28
For a careful discussion of the names in Crime and Punishment, see Charles E.
Passage, Character Names in Dostoevsky’s Fiction (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), 58-67.
29
As my student Jonathan Perrodin has commented to me, Raskol’nikov recapitulates
the Christian doctrine of never putting someone into a blind alley, a situation that he
doesn’t have a way out of. I feel that Dostoevsky has Raskol’nikov commit his
murder/s in order to force him to seek that way out. Jonathan Perrodin has also
remarked that Raskol’nikov’s uncertain state recalls the state of being “lukewarm”,
from Revelations 3:16, where the lukewarm person, neither hot nor cold, is spat out.
Hovering between the “heat” (warmth) of belief and the “cold” of rationalism,
Raskol’nikov might well be construed as “lukewarm”.
Introduction 23
untenable opposites. Rodion, as Norman Ingham has noted to me,

refers to the rose, an important Christian symbol realized in the form
of rosary beads. The Russian root of Rodion, rod, refers to one’s
genetic base, and that base is, in Dostoevsky’s work, inherently
Russian and, by extension, Orthodox.30 His first name is, of course,
Raskol’nikov’s baptismal, given name, connecting him intimately
with the Russian Orthodox Church at the same time his last name
separates him from that same Church, drawing him instead toward the
nihilist movement and secularism in general in the wake of Peter’s
Westernizing reforms. As we see from the title of an article published
in 1864 in his journal Epoch (Offord 1983: 51), not only is belief in
God and Christ central to Dostoevsky’s argument as embodied in this
novel. Russian Orthodoxy, moreover, is a national church, with
Christianity and nationality conflated.31 The threat he counters is not
only secular, but Western. Secular means Western, an inheritance
from Peter, and part and parcel of contemporary Russian nihilism and
Utilitarianism. And, for Dostoevsky, this “Western” city was always
ephemeral,32 as opposed to the “solidity” of the Russian tradition.
Dostoevsky himself employed the term raskol (schism) to
denote the split among the radical intelligentsia. Why the tremendous
concern with reaching young readers? It would surely have been
because these young readers were especially attracted to the
philosophical and political ideas that spoke to them most persuasively,
30
I am grateful to Malynne Sternstein for pointing out to me the Church Slavonic roots
of Raskol’nikov’s first name. Dostoevsky, incidentally, is hardly the first major
Russian writer to extol Russianness. We encounter this same emphasis on native
Russian culture in Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, notably in reference to food,
and specifically in regard to the eating habits of Tat’iana and Onegin.
31
“Religion”, notes Theofanis George Stavrou, “chiefly that of the Orthodox church,
continued to leave its mark on the social behavior of Russian society as well as on its
aesthetic sensibility”. “Introduction”, Art and Culture, xix.
32
As Emily Johnson suggests, “To Dostoevsky, [Nikolai] Antsiferov explains, the
city’s grand palaces and ministries represented a shimmering mirage, the product of a
spell laid on the Finnish swamps by the ‘miracle-working builder’, and hence might at
any moment disappear. The water element, the primeval destructive force that so often
threatened imperial St. Petersburg, Antsiferov notes, pervades Dostoevsky’s
descriptions of the city and, in the form of canals, rivers, foul weather, and wet snow,
plays a negative role in the lives of many of the author’s most famous characters”.
Emily Johnson, How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of
Kraevedenie (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006),
137-138. Antsiferov, however, does not deal with baptismal imagery.
ideas of change, radical transformation, and even, if necessary,

political violence. Having turned their backs on the (Orthodox)
teachings of the past, the young were vulnerable, ready to scrap all
tradition. They were prepared to undermine or even destroy an
oppressive system that seemed finally to be on the edge of abrupt
change. Perhaps, as Joseph Frank noted importantly back in 1966, in a
comment that seems to have attracted far too little notice since, the
purpose of Crime and Punishment
was to persuade Dostoevsky’s readers among the radical

intelligentsia that they had to choose between a doctrine of love
and a doctrine of power. Both were embodied […] in the strange
mixture of impulses and ideas that went by the name of Russian
nihilism (1966: 35; emphasis added).
If “love” denotes the central feature of Russian Orthodoxy and

“power” represents political or revolutionary violence (symbolized by
Raskol’nikov’s first murder, his “theoretical” one), then in
Dostoevsky’s hands the role of the “Orthodox” novel as a defensive
weapon against profane and/or Western “aggression” becomes
perfectly clear.
Crime and Punishment is but one of the most important
novels—the others being Dostoevsky’s own Notes from Underground
and Demons—out of a whole sub-school of Russian antinihilist
fiction.33 Just what did the nihilists (and Utopian Socialists) advocate
that so frightened Dostoevsky? Why did he devote three major works
to hammering his opponents’ views? What were the ideas underlying
nihilist beliefs (an odd statement on the face of things, given that
nihilists by definition believed in “nothing”)? They were creatures of
negation strongly influenced by Western thought. More precisely, they
were self-motivated to put Western thought into action. Such German
materialists as Jacob Moleschott (1822-1892), Karl Vogt (1817-1905),
Adolph Wagner (1835-1917), and Ludwig Büchner (1834-1899) had
33
Examples of antinihilist works include Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s markedly inferior
play An Infected Family (1863-1864), Dmitrii Vasil’evich Grigorovich’s short story
“A School for Hospitality” (1855), Aleksei Feofilaktovich Pisemsky’s novels
Troubled Seas (1863) and In the Whirlpool (1871). Nikolai Semenovich Leskov
contributed No Way Out (1864) and At Daggers Drawn (1870-1871) to this sub-genre.
Lesser lights who published antinihilist works include Viktor Petrovich Kliushnikov,
Vsevolod Vladimirovich Krestovskii, Nikolai Dmitrievich Akhsharumov, and Vasilii
Petrovich Avenarius. See Moser, Antinihilism, 61-70.
Introduction 25
an especially marked impact on Russian youth (Moser 1964: 30),34

and nihilism can certainly be considered a “philosophy” of the young.
Russian young people were definitely opposed to the inherited
traditions of Russian culture, especially to the values of Russian
Orthodoxy. Most particularly, that they were atheists was abhorrent to
Dostoevsky, whatever his youthful revolutionary tendencies—leading
to his arrest in 1849—may have been. Reared in a pious family,
Dostoevky was a (complicated) believer in God and Christ. And this
belief, notes Leonid Karasev (1995: 68) was always important to him
as part of his very earliest memories imbibed through hearing texts
read aloud, memories predating his own independent reading.
More than once in his Diary of a Writer Dostoevsky addresses the
power of the impressions, especially the very earliest ones, which
left a “trace” in a man’s soul for his entire life. For Dostoevsky
the very earliest impression was the reading of the Gospels […]
the trace of [the knowledge of the Gospels] was imprinted both in
his soul, and in his work.35
As a believer, Dostoevsky would have been firmly committed to

dissuading his youthful readers, the target audience he needed to deter
above all, from the dangerous atheism of their nihilist persuasion,
atheism that in his eyes meant renouncing a belief in any absolute
moral standards or values.
In contrast to Chernyshevsky and other lesser writers, who
attempted to appeal to these readers rationally, Dostoevsky sought
instead to reach them emotionally, that is, on a non-rational level. That
Pisarev “broke down and wept when he read Crime and Punishment”
is a palpable measure of Dostoevsky’s success (Frank 1966: 35).36
Two significant precedents for Dostoevsky’s method come to mind
here, both linked with the eventual abolition of serfdom: Aleksandr
Nikolaevich Radishchev’s 1790 Journey from Petersburg to Moscow
and especially Ivan Turgenev’s 1852 short-story collection
Sportsman’s Sketches, specifically “Bezhin Meadow” but other tales
34
See also Priscilla Meyer, “Introduction”, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and
Punishment, tr. Constance Garnett, translation revised by Julia Salkovskaya and
Nicholas Rice (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2007), xx.
35
Dostoevsky, notes Robert Belknap, “knew the Bible well”. Robert Belknap,
Genesis, 19.
36
But, Frank adds, Pisarev then wrote an article “proving that Raskolnikov’s crime
was really caused by hunger and malnutrition”.
as well, including for example “The Singers” (with song as social

commentary) and “Mumu” .37 The “Russian Harriet Beecher Stowe”,
Turgenev “forced” his serf-owning readers to identify emotionally
with their human property. Taking a major step beyond his
predecessors, Dostoevsky added religion to the mix.38 He compelled
his readers, notably his young readers, to reach back into their earliest
years and memories—a period he identified with his own aural
exposure to and immersion in the Gospels and in the Russian oral
tradition—to guide them away from dangerous Western and nihilist
currents through their emotional attachment to religious faith instead
of rational thought. Dostoevsky brilliantly employs emotional
religious imagery throughout to attack the threat of nihilism on two
fronts, to be discussed below. He “forces” his readers to become
nihilists/rationalists, exploits their incipient nihilism, and has them
suffer as a result of their error. Walking the streets with a nameless
young everyman who could be anyone—or any young nihilist—
Dostoevsky’s target readers engage in murder, cogitate on the
theoretical arguments that underlie Raskol’nikov’s crimes, and
undergo psychological torments along with the hero. And, of course,
religion, based on faith, is intended to reach us emotionally rather than
rationally. Dostoevsky constantly demonstrates the limits of rational
thought, the infinitude of religious belief.
Dostoevsky engages the reader’s emotions through references
to his everyday world that resonate at once with the images of
Orthodoxy and folk religion. One particularly masterful touch lies in
fusing Orthodoxy with popular belief (folk religion) to exploit—
within the context of this novel—the system of dvoeverie (dual belief)
that the contemporary reader would have been well acquainted with
from childhood.39 These target readers, the youthful deracinated
intelligentsia (to recap Robert Belknap’s apt phrase [1990: 124]) had
been torn—or had torn themselves—from their Russian roots.
37
Interestingly enough, Dostoevsky would have been following in the footsteps of a
man he respected as a writer but disdained as a human being: Ivan Turgenev. In such
widely-spaced works as his A Sportsman’s sketches (1852) and Fathers and Sons,
Turgenev always knew how to elicit a “gut reaction” in his readers.
38
We should in fairness bear in mind that Radishchev and Turgenev dealt with the
most significant contemporary evil in focusing on serfdom.
39
We see comparable exploitation in, once again, Goncharov’s Oblomov, not merely
in the chapter “Oblomov’s Dream”, but also as linked with Oblomov’s landlady,
eventually his wife, Pshenitsina.
Introduction 27
Dostoevsky grafts them anew onto these roots through Orthodox and
oral imagery. The component parts of the novel work on these two
levels at once: within the sphere of the physically “real” contemporary
city, and the transcendent realm of Orthodox belief. The setting, the
characters, the clothing they wear or refer to, even individual scenes
that constitute the plot: all of these components of the novel fit this
paradigm.
The present study represents an attempt to break down the
novel along those lines that relate and appeal to the target reader.
Dostoevsky draws that reader back into pre-Western/modern Russian
culture, reminding him of his ethnic and religious roots. Thus, Chapter
One deals with orality as it fits in with Orthodox Christianity and the
oral tradition. Clothing is at once as an economic barometer and a
religious symbol. It is a significant focal point and the subject of
Chapter Two. Faces are indicators of emotional reactions and images
that also acquire an iconic function. Dramatic scenes, whether
centered on a single character or incorporating more than one,
frequently have iconic as well as situational significance. So do
architectural constructs. Chapter Three is concerned with the iconic
and the anti-iconic. In Chapter Four, the focus is on the young
Raskol’nikov as a follower of Western intellectual trends. In his
separation from his God, his family, and Russian traditional values, he
recalls “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. Chapter Five concerns the
significance of alterity, or “otherness”, in the novel. The epilogue
figures not only as a capstone to the larger novel, but also as a tale of
the redemption of the sinner, finally purged of his nihilist leanings.
The epilogue will be the focal point of Chapter Six. All of these will
be considered in turn in the course of the present book.
Chapter One
The Significance of Orality and the Oral Tradition:

Dostoevsky Counter-Attacks
Having caused/enabled his readers to identify with a killer,

Dostoevsky then worked on bringing them back into the fold by
employing recurrent images or situations that recalled his own and
their earliest childhood memories of the Gospels and Christ, and of
Russian traditional culture. By appealing on an emotional level, he
also exploded the very validity and efficacy of his opponents’ rational
arguments, indeed, of any rational argument. In other words, he
carried further the process he originally developed in Notes from
Underground by sapping his opponents’ premises from within. And,
because literature is first of all art, surely it is intrinsically designed to
appeal precisely on this emotional level, rather than rationally.
To this end, Dostoevsky exploits oral and visual devices—he
is, of course, an intensely dramatic and visual writer—to engage his
readers. He deals with the everyday world to make his most profound
points.1 The novel works at once on two different levels and in two
different worlds: the contemporary urban setting that figures so
prominently in European nineteenth-century fiction generally (as seen,
for example, in the novels of Dickens and Balzac) and the underlying
world (the “real” world, as it were) of traditional Russian culture
(which emerges as dominant in the second chapter of the epilogue, as
discussed in Chapter Six).2 This duality figures prominently in the
1
As Maurice Friedberg once cogently observed regarding The Brothers Karamazov,
Dostoevsky takes a kept woman, an old lecher, a disgraced officer, and a young
novice, and he loads the biggest question of all onto them: is there a God? Private
conversation. This essay was originally a presentation at the University of Chicago on
31 March, 2005. I would like to thank the Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures and particularly Malynne Sternstein for their kind invitation.
2
We see this same dichotomy between apparent and underlying, true, reality in the
verse of the great nineteenth-century Russian poet Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev.
“doubling result-sequence” of the Russian oral tradition (Yovino-

Young 1993: 3, 4-6, 23-50). It is endemic in Russian culture.
“Real” Russian culture is embodied, for Dostoevsky, in
orality: in the Gospels on one hand—strongly and specifically
identified with Russianness—and with the oral tradition as
exemplified by Russian folk belief on the other. If we recall that
Dostoevsky was immersed in orality while in a Siberian prison, having
been cut off from books and the written word excepting for the
Gospels,3 we can further connect orality with the intrinsically Russian
culture of Russian peasant convicts with whom he shared his life
during this period.4 Orality, moreover, functions as a counterweight to
the Westernizing/modernizing measure of Peter the Great, always a
tremendous presence throughout nineteenth-century Russian
literature.5
We have here the sort of dichotomy that Mikhail Bakhtin
addressed in his conception of heteroglossia, most particularly in the
works of Dostoevsky. But it is my view that this dichotomy is realized
in Crime and Punishment not just between characters or even sets of
characters and their dialogue per se, but between the two different
layered worlds of the novel, between the oral/Russian tradition on one
hand and the written/Western on the other. The oral/Russian
tradition—encompassing Russian Orthodoxy—constitutes the basis of
essential “Russianness”, what, for Dostoevsky, it means to be truly
“Russian”. Russianness is linked with childhood memories of
religious services, with Mother’s prayers, with family (as we see in
3
My thanks to William Darden for reminding me of Dostoevsky’s Siberian immersion
in orality.
4
Iurii Lotman maintains that Gogol and Dostoevsky “ ‘canonized’ the oral literature of
Petersburg […] and carried its stories, along with the oral tradition of the ‘anecdote’,
into the realm of ‘high literature’ (vysokaya slovesnost’)”. Iurii Lotman, “Simvolika
Peterburga i problemy semiotiki goroda”, Izbrannye stat’i v trekh tomakh 2 (Tallinn:
Aleksandra, 1992), 15-16. Cited in Julie A. Buckler’s fine Mapping St. Petersburg
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 128. Julie Buckler observes that “It is a
Petersburg commonplace that mysterious legends and oral lore play an integral role in
the imperial capital’s cultural life and convey an essential part of the city’s history”.
Mapping, 116.
5
As discussed in Clint Walker’s “Psyche, Soma and Raskolnikov’s Sickness
Revisited: Mind as Microcosm in Crime and Punishment”, unpublished paper,
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Salt Lake City,
November, 2005); as well as in “Psyche and Soma: Metaphors of Transformation and
the Petrine Cultural Legacy from Dostoevsky to Platonov”, unpublished essay.
Significance of Orality 31
Crime and Punishment). It is genetic, innate. More to the point, it is

imprinted. As Peter Gay observes, a “child has imbibed rules of
conduct, canons of taste, religious beliefs from its educators formal
and informal [….]” (2002: 22; emphasis added). Written/Western
culture is rather acquired, typically, outside the intimate family
setting, in time and circumstance. Thus we have Raskol’nikov who
has strayed—or so his mother justifiably fears—upon arrival in St.
Petersburg to attend the university. He has become deracinated—from
his native traditions—just as Robert Belknap so aptly noted in regard
to the generation of the young intelligentsia of the 1860s (1990: 124).
Dostoevsky seeks to heal this rift, to bring young intellectuals back
into the fold, and to do so through non-rational, non-intellectual means
(at least in part to undermine the legitimacy of rationalism, and as
explored in the present study). But Dostoevsky, of course, is far from
simple. He was, as Malcolm Jones observes (and as Paul Friedrich has
reminded me), quite
capable of seeing Western European Christian socialism not

simply as a step on the baleful, downward path from Catholicism
to atheistic socialism [compare with the iconic ladder, discussed
in Chapter Three of the present study], as he was later to insist so
stridently, but also as a bright reflection of the central idea of
Orthodoxy. For Dostoevskii was able to appreciate the central
ideas of Orthodoxy wherever he found them, even in Western
Europe, even when entirely shorn of their Orthodox context and
colouring.
Most importantly, Dostoevsky always found pure joy in Christ.

Malcolm Jones reminds us of Dostoevsky’s famous reaction to
Belinsky’s comments on Christ, when “Every time I mention Christ
the expression of [Dostoevsky’s] face changes; he looks just as if he’s
going to burst into tears” (Malcolm Jones 2002: 152). The
conflict/dichotomy between the written or printed word of the West
and the oral Word of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian traditional belief
is Dostoevsky’s engine, the force that drives Crime and Punishment,
giving it the dynamism, breadth and depth that mark it as one of the
world’s greatest novels.
And Dostoevsky was able to drive this engine precisely
because he himself was caught in the middle, between his own
overwhelming love for Christ and belief in the Resurrection on one
hand, coupled with his “rage at the oppression of the lower social
classes” (Malcolm Jones 2002: 153), and his moral and intellectual
attraction to Western thought on the other. Dostoevsky’s youthful
infatuation with revolutionary ideals and practice clashed, by the
1860s, with his youthful memories of Christ and Christianity,
particularly since his earliest childhood memories were of saints and
saints’ lives (Malcolm Jones 2002: 150).6 Crime and Punishment
marks an attempt to heal that rift, not only in the larger society, but for
Dostoevsky personally.
Dostoevky deliberately focuses on oral usage at the expense
of the written word, which can be seen in the present context as linked
with political or philosophical tracts imported from the West. He
simultaneously reinforces the oral teachings associated with his own
earliest childhood exposure to the Gospels. Even, perhaps especially,
common objects in Crime and Punishment are endowed with a two-
fold significance, as part of the details of everyday life and as an
allusion to the Gospels or to Russian folk belief. Everything in the
novel is invested to this end: the cityscape, the characters, their
clothing, the dialogue and action.7 Dostoevsky alerts us to these two
levels of meaning at the very start with a title invested at once with
secular/civil meaning—crime and punishment—and religious
significance: crime or, literally, transgression (prestuplenie) and
punishment or chastisement (nakazanie), with undercurrents in the
Church Slavonic of education or learning (uchenie, obrazovanie).
(Indeed, Raskol’nikov will be “re-educated” by the end of the
epilogue.) Related to skazat’ (to say or tell), the word nakazanie is
inherently oral, reinforcing the oral foundation of the novel.8 As with
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s epigram at the beginning of Anna
6
Even at the end of his life, Dostoevsky was actively engaged in addressing—and
attempting to heal—the rift between Orthodox Christianity and the revolutionary
impulse. James Rice addresses this issue brilliantly in “Dostoevsky’s Endgame: The
Projected Sequel to The Brothers Karamazov”, Russian History/Histoire Russe 33:1
(Spring 2006): 45-62. My thanks to Paul Friedrich for having alerted me to this essay,
and to James Rice for generously sharing it.
7
Much later, Anton Chekhov would similarly privilege orality in his 1887 short story
“At Home” (“Doma”). The child Seryozha, caught smoking, can only be reached
through orality. “When Seryozha asks to hear a fairy tale, he wants it to be told, not
read. The child wants an oral word, one colored by the tone and feelings of the
narrator, a word addressed directly to him”. Vladimir Golstein, “Doma”: At Home
and Not at Home”, Robert Louis Jackson, ed., Reading Chekhov’s Text (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1993), 80.
8
Thanks to Norman Ingham for pointing out these definitions to me.
Karenina, “Vengeance is Mine, and I will repay”, the title is a red flag
designed to alert the reader to the complexity of layers in the novel.
Raskol’nikov’s very name of schismatic—once we encounter it—
works both on the contemporary sociological level (noted earlier) and
as a religious allusion to the great Schism in the Russian Orthodox
Church, in 1652.
The Power of Oral Discourse
Since oral usage, not written, constitutes the basis of language,

communication can be considered “overwhelmingly oral”, with orality
fundamental in human communication. As Walter Ong (1982: 7-8)
has incisively observed:
Written texts all have to be related somehow, directly or

indirectly, to the world of sound, the natural habitat of language,
to yield their meanings. ‘Reading’ a text means converting it to
sound, aloud or in the imagination […]. Writing can never
dispense with orality.
And Patrick Slattery (1994-1998: 19; emphasis added) suggests:
Dostoevsky’s novel [Crime and Punishment] reveals the limits of

writing over against the more open, temporally present, and
incarnate quality of speech […] Dostoevsky’s novel is an
important witness to what is lost when a more communal [which
we can designate in the specific Orthodox sense as sobornost’]
and generative orality is replaced by a more private and
autonomous literacy.
Dostoevsky relies on the orality inherent in the Gospels to dispel the

dangerous sense of autonomy so crippling to young rebels while
simultaneously reinforcing their sense of belonging to the Orthodox
community. Orality unites listeners just as Orthodoxy unites believers,
turning them into part of a larger community. Dostoevsky wants his
target readers to recall the communality of a pre-literate period in their
lives, and he accomplishes this through sound. It is by “broadcasting”
and “recording” the spoken, not the written, word that Dostoevsky
attempts to appeal to and convert his target reader. One oral medium
used to striking effect in the novel is the song, and singing.
Song
The most powerful voice in Orthodox authority was the sung liturgy,
imbued with impressive oral power. It was during worship that God
was felt to be “present in the community” (Chamberlain 2004: xv).
Songs are also essential vehicles for oral culture. As Malcolm Brown
observes (1983: [57-84] 63), folk music and the music of the Russian
Orthodox Church are “Russia’s two ancient and indigenous musical
practices [….]”, conflating religion with oral culture. Because
Dostoevsky would have been well acquainted with the liturgy, and
since Orthodoxy and traditional belief play a vital role in the novel, we
expect songs and music to be represented here as well. Dostoevsky
employs songs or singing at crucial points in the main body of the
novel, always in public places. He does so in clear opposition to the
liturgical or traditional songs they undermine.9 Song in Petersburg is
song corrupted. The church is transformed into the tavern or the urban
street. Raskol’nikov hears these “recitals” and is Dostoevsky’s
obvious intended audience—along with the target reader—for songs
that encapsulate the decay of traditional Russian life—especially of
the oral tradition—in the urban environment of St. Petersburg.
Malcolm Brown addresses the issue of “urban folk songs”, “which
frequently incorporate identifiable elements from the older rural folk-
song tradition” (1983: 67). Singers function as a kind of chorus,
commenting on the urban setting, the characters, and their actions.10
Most importantly, song as musical sound—coupled with the visual
image—constitutes a vital component of Petersburg realia in the
novel. We as readers—more to the point, Dostoevsky’s readers—have
a heightened sense of being “present” on the scene.
Raskol’nikov is initially linked with song, specifically, street
song, at the very beginning. He has just gone out to rehearse his crime,
9
Nor is Crime and Punishment the only Dostoevsky work with songs or music. As far
back as his 1848 short story “A Christmas Tree and a Wedding” (“Ёlka i svad’ba”),
Dostoevsky adds a pianist to the “festive” scene. Songs are used to ironic or satiric
effect in Demons, as well as in The Brothers Karamazov. Just before his first
interview with Porfiry Petrovich, Raskol’nikov muses that he will have to “sing
Lazarus”. The phrase pet’ Lazaria means ‘to complain of one’s troubles’ (PSS 6:
189). David Matual comments on the irony of this phrase in “Fate in Crime and
Punishment”, The International Fiction Review 3:2 (July 1976): 123.
10
Victor Peppard discusses the discordant songs of the novel in his “The Acoustic
Dimensions of Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky Studies 9 (1988): 146-148.
and Dostoevsky immediately exposes him to orality. The evening light

of the setting sun, a significant iconic marker for Dostoevsky,
illuminates the pawnbroker’s room.11 He leaves the pawnbroker’s “v
reshitel’nom smushchenii” (‘in decided confusion’), a strangely
oxymoronic state that speaks volumes about the limits of his rational
planning. “He walked down the street like a drunkard” and popped
into a dive for a drink. There he hears a drunkard singing this song:
“For a whole year I caressed my wife/For a whole year I caressed my
wife […] Down the Civil Servant’s Road I went / I found my girl from
before” (PSS 6: 8-11).
There is no pronoun in this song, which resonates for
“everyone”, including Marmeladov. A down-and-out drunkard has
recovered his lost happiness with a woman. But the song has little
charm, since Dostoevsky drags it into the urban blight of St.
Petersburg, and—through the term “civil servant”—to Peter’s Table of
Ranks. This song foreshadows the despairing alcoholism, marital
strife, and poverty of the Marmeladov family and relates their terrible
state to the Westernized rationally-planned Russian “city-state”: St.
Petersburg. So does the brief performance by a seven-year-girl (about
Raskol’nikov’s own age in the horse nightmare). She sings “The Little
Farmstead” (“Khutorok”, a popular song of the day) in a tavern (PSS
6: 18).12 The country, corrupted, has been forcibly imported into the
city. So has the little girl. Taverns/alcohol and peasant culture are
always a bad combination in Crime and Punishment, speaking to the
corruption of Russian tradition. Dostoevsky underscores this
11
The rays of the setting sun, associated with the icon of the Mother of God, will be a
treasured memory much later, in Alyosha Karamazov’s remembrance of his mother.
F.M. Dostoevskii, Brat’ia Karamazovy, Knigi I-IX, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v
tridtsati tomakh, ed. V.G. Bazanov et al, 14 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), 18. For a fine
discussion of this scene, see Diane Oenning Thompson, The Brothers Karamazov and
the Poetics of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 76.
12
According to David McDuff, “Khutorok” was a ballad by Aleksei Vasilievich
Koltsov. David McDuff, “Notes”, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
(London: Penguin Books, 1991), 635. In his subject matter, lexicon and metric
scheme, Koltsov closely followed folk traditions. Geir Kjetsaa, “Koltsov, Alexei
Vasilievich”, Victor Terras, ed., Handbook of Russian Literature (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985), 230-231. Marmeladov’s alcoholism was linked at least in part
with pre-Petrine Russian culture and with the ancient Russian/Orthodox tradition of
suffering. See Eve Levin, Dvoeverie i narodnaia religiia v istorii Rossii (Moscow:
Indrik, 2004), esp. 110, 118-119. In his nocturnal and tortured wanderings around
Petersburg, Marmeladov ironically recapitulates Jesus and the Stations of the Cross.
corruption vividly in the following scene: the slaughter of the old

horse.
The next bit of song is part of the fabric of Raskol’nikov’s
horse nightmare. This song rings out immediately after Mikolka
orders that his mare—the poor nag trying to pull a heavy, overloaded
cart—be beaten on her eyes. The word “eyes” is repeated for
emphasis. Someone calls for a song:
“A song, brothers”!—shouts someone from the cart, and everyone

sitting in the cart takes part. A rakish song rings out, a tambourine
rattles, there’s a whistle during the refrain. A peasant woman
cracks nuts and sings to herself (PSS 6: 48).
This song forms a negative counterpart to the later epilogue singing—

to be discussed below—that drifts across the Irtysh toward
Raskol’nikov. Just as beating on the face and eyes is anti-iconic (a
topic to be discussed in Chapter Three), so is this song anti-liturgical,
a profanation of song within the Orthodox context. The song speaks to
peasant corruption before the tavern (Petersburg in miniature), which
stands for the corrupt urban environment of St. Petersburg. In this
sordid capital city, peasants who drift away from Orthodoxy are lost
souls, which is precisely what we encounter in the next song episode.
Taverns and street singing are intimately—and negatively—linked in
Russian culture, which doesn’t speak to Svidrigailov’s advantage. And
entertainers, including the itinerant skomorokhy, were viewed
negatively.13
Following his return home after the murders, Raskol’nikov
flees to the street to escape the unwelcome kindness of the kindly
servant girl Nastas’ya. He heads for the Haymarket and encounters a
young man playing a street organ, with a young girl singing in an
“ulichnym, drebezhashchim, no dovol’no priiatnym i sil’nym golosom”
(“in a jingly but quite strong, pleasant street voice”). Her feathered hat
anticipates Sonia’s own prostitute’s “costume” (although this feather
has religious connotations in Sonia’s case, as discussed in Chapter
Three). When Raskol’nikov gives her a five-kopeck coin, she breaks
13
See Sergei Fomichev’s “The World of Laughter in Pushkin’s Comedy”, in Chester
Dunning, with Caryl Emerson, Sergei Fomichev, Lidiia Lotman and Antony Wood,
The Uncensored Boris Godunov. The Case for Pushkin’s Original Comedy. With
Annotated Text and Translation (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006),
144.
off the song and calls out to the street organ player “that’s it”!
Raskol’nikov turns to the older man next to him who looks like a
“flâneur” and launches into a chatty commentary as much about the
unpleasant St. Petersburg ambiance as about music:
“Do you like street singing?” […] “I like it”, Raskol’nikov

continued, but with a look suggesting that he wasn’t talking about
street singing at all. “I like the way they sing with a street organ
on a cold, dark and dank autumn evening, it’s got to be dank,
when all the passersby have pale-green and sickly faces; or, better
yet, when the wet snow’s falling, straight down, with no wind,
you know? And the gas lights shine through it” (PSS 6: 120-121).
If he isn’t, as the narrator informs us, talking about street singing, then
what is he really talking about? (We do know that Dostoevsky has
quite obviously taken song out of the church, into the street.)
Raskol’nikov questions a young fellow in a red shirt about a
tradesman and peasant woman he saw talking to Lizaveta, but the
young man is evasive and wily, and his response should remind
Raskol’nikov that the intelligentsia had no monopoly on brains and no
authority to dictate (a reference at once to Raskol’nikov’s theory and
to the horse nightmare). Raskol’nikov keeps rehashing his “crime and
punishment”, and his agitated fear of being caught is summed up
handily when the girl starts singing again and her couplet reaches him:
“You’re my ‘handsum’ [the sub-standard prikrasnyi, instead of
prekrasnyi] duty p’liceman [butoshnik, instead of the standard form
budochnik] / Don’t you beat me for no reason”,14 foreshadowing to the
murders and to later nightmares.
Dostoevsky combines trenchant commentary on
Raskol’nikov’s psychological state with a scathing look at the
deterioration of (oral) Russian peasant culture in the negative post-
Petrine environment, encapsulated in the city of St. Petersburg.
Shortly afterwards, Raskol’nikov banters with a group of prostitutes,
whose comment on his “skinniness” recalls his own aside about sickly
St. Petersburg faces (PSS 6: 120-123). Raskol’nikov is ready to rejoin
(Russian) humanity, but it is only a Russian populace ruined in Peter’s
14
Thanks to Vladimir Liapunov for reminding me that butoshnik is really budochnik, a
policeman. See also S.V. Belov, Roman F.M. Dostoevskogo Prestuplenie i nakazanie
(Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1985), 135. Belov notes that a budochnik is a low-ranking
policeman.
brutal capital. Poverty appears to be the obvious, superficial cause of

this Russian affliction, but the true problem is the danger of a
community outside of Orthodoxy. What is tawdry in this setting later
becomes repugnant when this scene is repeated in Svidrigailov’s
presence, near the end of the novel.15
In the next “performance”, Marmeladov’s widow Katerina
Ivanovna forces her three small children to sing and dance out in the
street, a sordid backdrop to their performance. Katerina Ivanovna’s
songs are pertinent to her tragic personal circumstances, especially her
horrific economic straits. She also chooses songs linked with her
fixation on foreign, specifically Western, culture. Katerina Ivanovna
recapitulates through her superficial enslavement to Western fashion
her own homelessness in the brutal St. Petersburg environment, as
well as Raskol’nikov’s spiritual “homelessness” caused by his
addiction to Western thought at the expense of Orthodox values. Most
significantly, the Marmeladov family’s songs—all chosen by Katerina
Ivanovna—speak to main themes in the novel: money (materialism),
and death.
The children are to begin with a performance in French, to
demonstrate their status as “noble children”. “Marlborough s’en va-t-
en guerre,/Ne sait quand reviendra… (“Marlborough’s gone off to
war,/who knows when he’ll return”).16 Marlborough is the opening
15
This might be the appropriate place to comment on the etymology of Svidrigailov’s
name. According to Charles Passage, there was an historical personage named
“Svidrigailo/Shvitrigello/Swidrigiello, 1355-1452, [who] was a devious man with a
reputation for cruelty and with a habit of making radical changes in religion, in
political faction, and even in names, since, in 1386, he changed his given name of
Leone to Bóleslav”. Charles E. Passage, Character Names in Dostoevsky’s Fiction
(Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), 62. See also the notes to Crime and Punishment:
“Dostoevsky’s contemporaries were acquainted with [Svidrigailov’s] name”. He was
a chinovnik (‘civil servant’, ‘bureaucrat’) who would take care of all sorts of errands,
a follower of gossip, a man of dark origin, the promptest intermediary. PSS 7, 367-
368; emphasis added. That Svidrigailov was a “chinovnik” links him intimately with
chin (rank) and Peter the Great’s Table of Ranks (and, by extension, the ills of
Petersburg). The reminder to consult the notes comes from Gene Fitzgerald, by way
of James Rice. I’m most grateful for James Rice’s assistance (and for Paul Friedrich’s
suggestion that I investigate Svidrigailov’s name). Dostoevsky was himself, like
Svidrigailov, of Lithuanian origin on his father’s side. See Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky:
The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 8.
16
“Marlborough”, Belov informs us, was a “popular French comic song, the hero of
which was the English Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), or Malbruque, as the
French called him. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, English forces led by
frame that concludes with Mikhail Iur’evich Lermontov’s 1841 poem

“Dream”, Katerina Ivanovna’s death-bed “performance”. Dostoevsky
again plays on the liminality between the conscious and subconscious,
as well as on the orality linking song and dream: “In the noonday
heat!.. in a valley!.. of Daghestan!../ With a bullet in my breast”!
(Belov 1985: 201). Both of these songs mirror Katerina Ivanovna’s
desperate psychological state and her—and the reader’s—palpable
sense of impending death. Each song features a violent end that
prefigures Katerina Ivanovna’s own “cruel” and imminent death from
a savage disease associated with poverty. In between these songs, the
children are to sing in French and German about money. These
languages recall, on the one hand, Dostoevsky’s negative views of
Western European materialism in Winter Notes on Summer
Impressions, and, on the other, the materialism of French and German
thought and their impact on Russian culture: “Cinq sous, cinq sous, /
Pour monter notre ménage…”. (“Five sous, five sous, to establish our
household”) is a clear request for money. (Katerina Ivanovna, too,
focuses on the material world.) She follows “their” song with two
numbers that frame her own life and fate: “Du hast Diamanten und
Perlen…”, and “Du hast die schönsten Augen, / Mädchen, was willst
du mehr”? (“Thou has diamonds and pearls”, “Thou has the most
beautiful eyes / Maiden, what more dost thou want”?) (PSS 6: 329-
331).17 This linkage of commodities (diamonds and pearls) with a
young girl reiterates the theme of women and money associated with
the pawnbroker Alyona, Katerina Ivanovna, with Svidrigailov’s young
fiancée, and with Sonia. The songs sandwiched in between
“Marlborough” and Lermontov address economic anxiety coupled
the Duke of Marlborough gained brilliant victories over the French […] The rumor of
Marlborough’s death inspired one of the most famous French songs”. Belov,
Prestuplenie i nakazanie, 200. But Dostoevsky’s reader has already encountered this
song in Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, when Nozdryov’s barrel organ inexplicably
(since this is Gogol!) ends a mazurka with “Marlburg v pokhod poekhal”
(“Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre”), which itself gives way to a well-known waltz.
N.V. Gogol’, Mertvye dushi. Poèma. Tom pervyi. Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi
tomakh 5 (Moscow: Pravda, 1984), 74. Dostoevsky’s textual density—touching on
both Lermontov and Gogol’ (specifically, Nozdryov) ironically undermines Katerina
Ivanovna.
17
“Cinq sous” is the beggars’ aria from Grace de Dieu by Gustave Dennery and A.P.
Lemoine, tremendously popular in Russia. “Du hast Diamanten und Perlen” is from a
poem by Heinrich Heine, set to music by Franz Schubert. David McDuff, “Notes”,
646.
with aristocratic desperation, both of which are symptomatic of St.

Petersburg’s predatory significance.
Raskol’nikov hears a further recital (in the main body of the
novel), which Svidrigailov has paid for, in, of course, a tavern
(although he listens to one more performance of unnamed song after
Katerina Ivanovna’s death (PSS 6: 337). The setting recalls that of the
horse dream. Desperate to possess Dunya, whom he loves so much,
Svidrigailov threatens to blackmail Raskol’nikov. Singing forms a
backdrop to this scene:
[Raskol’nikov] found [Svidrigailov] in a very small back room

[…] where, at twenty small tables, in the midst of the desperate
shouting of the pesenniki [male peasant choral singers] merchants,
civil servants, a lot of various kinds of people were drinking tea
[…] In the little room there were also a boy playing the hand-
organ, and a healthy, red-cheeked girl in a tucked-up striped skirt
and a Tyrolean hat with ribbons, a singer, of about eighteen who
[…] was singing a kind of manservant’s song to the
accompaniment of the hand-organ in a rather hoarse contralto
(PSS 6: 355).18
The very first singer Raskol’nikov encountered retained a memory of

love and a hope for love in the future, but his song betokens a Russian
population adrift in the big city. The next two songs speak to the
corruption of Russian peasants. The Marmeladov children’s
performance underscores their mother’s desperate attempt to cling to
an illusive and doomed sense of aristocracy. By the time Raskol’nikov
meets Svidrigailov in the tavern, there are no ideals to be found in St.
Petersburg. Russian traditional culture (personified by the male choral
singers) has been “prostituted” in the Western capital, in a scene that
foreshadows the horrors of Svidrigailov’s last night before his suicide.
Dostoevsky takes Raskol’nikov through a progression of scenes
representing Petersburg (Westernized Russia) as expressed in song:
from drunken lost-and-found love to money and death, and ending
18
Song is Western—specifically French—and negative, like Svidrigailov, as in the
scene leading to his suicide, when he refers to himself as looking like someone
returning from a “kafeshantan” (café chantant). PSS 6: 388. But along with
Svidrigailov we hear a song when he’s on his way to suicide, a song about “someone,
a ‘scoundrel and tyrant’ [and Svidrigailov is arguably both], ‘[who] began to kiss
Katya’ ” (PSS 6: 383). And we recall the unholy combination of tavern, mask, and
entertainment that Svidrigailov embodies.
with a final degradation of Russian popular and religious culture, and

the Russian oral tradition. To make sure that Raskol’nikov and the
target reader get the point, this dramatic scene is a particularly
unpleasant version of what song ought to represent for Russian
believers. In the presence of a lost soul—more about him below—the
“service” has plummeted to hell.
To these instances of variously degraded or sordid little
choruses, Dostoevsky juxtaposes a single, brief counter example:
Razumikhin’s bit of Russian song. Razumikhin is walking out in the
street with Raskol’nikov’s doctor Zosimov. Attempting to distract
Zosimov from Dunya’s quite obvious charms, Razumikhin instead
“sings the praises” of Raskol’nikov’s landlady. No one actually sings
here, and Raskol’nikov isn’t present:
I assure you, there isn’t much trouble involved, just talk any old
wish-wash you want. Since you’re a doctor, you could just begin
to treat her for something. I swear, you won’t regret it. There’s a
clavichord standing in her apartment; well, you know, I clink on it
a little bit; I have one little song, a Russian one, a real one: “I’ll
drown in burning tears”. She loves real ones. Well, it all started
with that song […] (PSS 6: 160; emphasis added).
Razumikhin’s favorite is a traditional peasant lament.19 His choice

demonstrates his intimate links with Russian culture, in contrast to
Raskol’nikov’s infatuation with Western thought. That Raskol’nikov
himself will return to Russia—specifically, Orthodoxy—through the
good offices of Sonia, is demonstrated in the final song he hears.
It is set in the epilogue, outside the text of the novel proper.
When Raskol’nikov goes out of his shed right down to the bank of the
Irtysh River,
a barely audible song was borne to him from the far bank. There,
in the boundless steppe flooded with sunlight, barely perceptible
nomad yurts appeared as black dots. There was freedom over
there, and other people lived there, not at all like the ones here; it
was as though time itself had stood still, as though the age of
Abraham and his flock had not yet passed (PSS 6: 421).
19
For a brief discussion of this episode, see V.P. Vladimirtsev, “Zal’ius’ slez’mi
goriuchimi”, Russkaia rech’ 1 (1988): 119-123, esp. 121-122.
Sonia comes to him immediately afterwards. Freed from the brutal

environment and temporal limitations of St. Petersburg, song is
reconnected with age-old biblical imagery and, by extension, with the
sung liturgy. Because of the distance involved, the whole of nature—
focused, of course, on the flowing water of the Irtysh River—has been
transformed into a church. Sonia’s arrival reinforces the religious
symbolism here iconically, in issue to be discussed in the third chapter
on the iconic and the anti-iconic. But the special significance of the
river in the context of the present chapter will be treated below.
Raskol’nikov and Oral Usage
For all of his exposure to written texts, the former law student
Raskol’nikov remains strikingly vulnerable to oral usage.20 His
patterns of behavior even recapitulate the formula central to the oral
tradition. In keeping with Vladimir Propp’s (1969: 30-31, 40-44, 48-
50, 53-54, 56, 58-60) observations on the oral tale,21 Raskol’nikov
abandons his home and violates an interdiction. He goes out on a
“quest” and is aided by helpers: a false “helper” (Svidrigailov) and a
true one (Sonia). Perhaps there are two different quests involved here:
the false quest that Svidrigailov represents, and the true, Christian one
identified with Sonia. Eventually, Raskol’nikov returns triumphant (in
the epilogue).22
Dostoevsky, whose susceptibility to oral stimuli resulted in an
auditory hallucination when he was very young, was also intensely
susceptible to sound. Walking through the woods, the child
Dostoevsky thought he heard someone calling “wolf”, and wolves did
indeed roam this area. The peasant Marey comforted him, “blessing
him with the cross and crossing himself, and then sending him home
20
He is at once sensitive to oral usage and cut off from others. Perhaps he can hear
better than he can listen (at least, until the epilogue, when he and Sonia communicate
on a non-verbal, spiritual level). Caryl Emerson has commented on Raskol’nikov’s
inability to listen in The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997), 140-141.
21
Mikhniukevich touches on Russian folklore in Dostoevsky, but not from this
perspective. V.A. Mikhniukevich, “F.M. Dostoevskii-khudozhnik i russkoi fol’klor”,
Tvorchestvo F.M. Dostoevskogo: iskusstvo sinteza: Monografiia (Ekaterinburg:
Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo Universiteta, 1991), 89-124.
22
And we remember, as my student Joseph Rodriguez has pointed out, that
Raskol’nikov is quite literally suspended between two worlds.
with the reassurance that he would be kept in sight”. Dostoevsky’s

distant memory of this comforting childhood incident changed in a
qualified way his views of his fellow-convicts, whom he had
previously regarded as brutish. Combined with his change of heart,
this memory was a crucial component of his re-immersion in
Orthodoxy (PSS 19: 209; emphasis added). Martin Bidney (2004: 473)
discusses this incident as resulting in a “quantum change” for
Dostoevsky.23 What is especially relevant about this particular
“quantum change” within the context of the present study is that
Dostoevsky specifically links the orality of this remembered scene
with a more committed commitment to Orthodoxy in his own life.
That linkage will function in a comparable way in Crime and
Punishment, particularly in regard to Raskol’nikov’s own seminal
shift. Oral usage at once points the way to murder, and the road to
salvation.
Raskol’nikov is first of all a most sensitive receptacle for what
he hears, especially in the netherworld of St. Petersburg’s streets and
dives. A bystander’s loud comment on Raskol’nikov’s hat (“Èh ty,
nemetskii shliapnik”! [‘Hey you [the informal “you”], German hatter
[or ‘hat wearer’]) sends our hero into a tailspin of frenzied anxiety just
before he rehearses his crime, during his tense hours before the
planned murder (PSS 6: 7).24 This chance comment is significant not
only because it reinforces the oral power of the novel. It also
emphasizes Raskol’nikov’s initial anonymity besides fitting well with
Raskol’nikov’s horse nightmare; more about that nightmare later.
Dostoevsky foreshadows here to the epilogue, when Raskol’nikov will
have to live with convicted peasants in Siberia and, in effect, will
again find himself in an inferior position, just as he does in this dream.
The label “hatter” focuses right on that part of Raskol’nikov’s
anatomy—his head—most vulnerable to Western influence and the
very body part he will smash while committing his crime.
23
My thanks to Martin Bidney for sending me an offprint.
24
The significance of oral usage appears cross-culturally and would seem to be
universal. Thus we read in Michael Chamberlain that in Islam “The sense that
transmission established a tangible link between the auditor and the Prophet is why
elderly transmitters were valued so highly”. Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and
Social Practice in Medieval Damascus 1190-1350. Cambridge Studies in Islamic
Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 139. Emphasis added. I
would like to thank my husband William Tucker for this reference.
He drew the axe all the way out, swung it with both hands, barely
aware of himself and almost without any effort, almost
mechanically, brought the butt down on her [the pawnbroker’s]
head […] In one hand she continued to hold the ‘pledge’. Now he
struck again with all his strength, still with the butt and still on the
crown of her head (PSS 6: 63).25
In a later conversation with Raskol’nikov and Razumikhin (PSS 6:

174; emphasis added), Zosimov will underscore the dream-like
qualities of actions under certain conditions:
“It’s a very well-known phenomenon”, added Zosimov, “the

carrying-out of an action is sometimes masterful, most tricky, but
the control of actions, the onset of actions, is diffuse and depends
on various diseased impressions. It resembles a dream”.
A chance conversation between a student and a young officer

in a tavern when they discuss the efficacy and justifiability of killing
off the old pawnbroker, whom Raskol’nikov will himself murder,
strongly recalls an analogous situation in Balzac’s Le Père Goriot that
had a striking impact on Dostoevsky (Grossman 1973: esp. 22).26 But
both Raskol’nikov and the reader encounter Dostoevsky’s
recapitulation from Balzac as eavesdroppers on a spoken
conversation, not as readers. Balzac’s text is rendered into an oral tale,
as it were. But the West is still the negative West, terribly dangerous
in spite of Balzac’s very obvious appeal for Dostoevsky.
In a parallel move, Dostoevsky has Raskol’nikov constantly
ruminating as he lurches down the street. He does not truly have
anyone to talk to, from the heart, until his later exchange with
Polen’ka and his confession to Sonia. Raskol’nikov is in effect his
own interlocutor, having “conversations” with himself. Significantly,
25
Raskol’nikov’s “mechanical” action recalls Svidrigailov’s words on socialism: “man
in socialism becomes a man mechanically”. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for
Crime and Punishment, ed. and tr. Edward Wasiolek (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1967), 194.
26
So important was this scene from Balzac (when Rastignac and Bianchon discuss
murdering the old mandarin) that Dostoevsky inserted it into his famous Pushkin
speech. See also Boris Georgievich Reizov, Balzac: sbornik statei, (Leningrad:
Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1960). In How the Russians Read the
French: Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2009), Priscilla Meyer deals with this same issue. I would like to thank Priscilla
Meyer for generously sharing her work with me.
among other things, he muses about the fairy-tale hero Tsar Gorokh,
himself the subject of the oral tradition, not the written text (PSS 6:
6).27 Incidentally, Dostoevsky’s careful attention to sound in the
speech patterns of his characters and his descriptions are facets of his
attention to detail that marks this novel. The old chestnut that
Dostoevsky—the “Johann Sebastian Bach” of prose literature—was a
careless stylist must be considered as a mark of superficial or careless
reading, as Victor Peppard observes (1988: 143).
This heightened susceptibility to oral usage, as both a
verbalizer and a listener, will hasten the beginnings of Raskol’nikov’s
later redemption when Sonia recites the passage from the Book of
John about Christ raising Lazarus from the dead. Instead of reading
the germane verses himself, Raskol’nikov insists that Sonia read to
him. She does, albeit nervously and unwillingly at first. He receives
this important text, so relevant to his own fate and his return to the
“living” following the brutal murders, aurally (PSS 6: 250). The story
of Lazarus from the Gospel of John refutes the earlier semi-quoted
text from Balzac: the overheard conversation between the student and
the soldier about murdering the old mandarin in China. Thus, notes
Priscilla Meyer (2009), does Dostoevsky employ the biblical text to
repudiate the French one. In place of death, we have a return to life.
Nor should we forget—as William Darden has pointed out to me—
that Lazarus is the patron saint of the hopeless, which works here for
both Sonia—who retains her faith in spite of terrible circumstances—
and Raskol’nikov, who will return to faith, bolstered by his childhood
memories of ritual and belief.
27
For a discussion of the role of Tsar Gorokh in Crime and Punishment, see James L.
Rice’s marvelously astute “Raskol’nikov and Tsar Gorox”, Slavic and East European
Journal 25:3 (Fall 1981): 38-53. Among other interesting and important points in his
essay, James Rice notes that the verb ogoroshit’ (related to the noun gorokh [‘pea’])
means ‘to give a stunning blow [on the crown of the head]’, certainly apt in the
context of Crime and Punishment. Rice, “Raskol’nikov”, 46. The song Raskol’nikov
hears earlier (about the drunk “caressing his wife”) has an additional couplet, “I
walked down Gorokhovaya (Pea) Street/And didn’t even find a pea (gorokhu)”,
leading “back”, notes James Rice, “to the diminutive, vulnerable, and ultimately
undiscoverable self (Gorox) one does not dare to acknowledge or confront”. Rice,
“Raskol’nikov”, 49. In a related scene, Raskol’nikov thinks about the moon in his
dream (on the pawnbroker, already dead): “ ‘Ekh, there’s so much quiet because of
the moon (mesiats)’,—mused Raskol’nikov,—‘it (‘he’) is probably riddling riddles
now’ ”. (PSS 6: 213).
Sonia reads aloud that Lazarus has been dead for four days.
Significantly, Dostoevsky, notes Belov (1985: 177), does not cite the
Gospels exactly, word for word. In Dostoevsky’s text, the line reads:
“Byl zhe bolen nekto Lazar’, iz Vifanii […]” (“Indeed there was sick a
certain Lazarus, from Bethany [….]”). In the Gospel according to John
(John 11:1), this line actually reads “Byl bolen nekto Lazar’ iz Vifanii”
(“There was sick a certain Lazarus, from Bethany”). This inexactness
fits in with the orality of the novel, as well as with Sonia’s obvious
reliance on her memories of the Gospels as essentially a text accessed
aurally as opposed to visually. Perhaps this was how Dostoevsky
himself preferred to receive the Gospels. The emphatic particle zhe
(meaning roughly ‘and’, ‘as for’, ‘indeed’) reinforces and fits in with
Sonia’s passionate involvement in this scene.28 That zhe emphases the
surrounding text emphatically stresses her application of the biblical
text for Raskol’nikov’s specific situation. Zhe reminds the reader of
the link between Lazarus, dead for four days, and Raskol’nikov
himself, “dead” within the context of the novel to the Orthodox
community, for the same period of time.
The number “four” is repeated in the structure of the novel,
with this episode occupying all of Part IV, Chapter Four. John is the
fourth Evangelist.29 “[Sonia] energetically stressed the word: four”
(PSS 6: 251; emphasis in original).30 In John 11:23, Jesus tells Martha
that her “brother will rise”, a comment with special significance for
Raskol’nikov, given his separation from the Orthodox community and
the significance of the word “brother” in the larger Orthodox Christian
context. The scene illuminated by a solitary candle where ‘a woman
who has gone astray’ (bludnitsa, Dostoevsky uses the biblical term
28
That Sonia is “sent out on a quest” (actually, of course, pushed into prostitution) by
her step-mother Katerina Ivanovna resonates with numerous tales in the Russian oral
tradition. Typically, the young step-daughter is ordered to go to Baba Yaga on some
trumped-up pretext, actually to get her killed off. Of course, Katerina Ivanovna’s
desperation caused by horrible poverty in no way marks her as the wicked stepmother
of myth, but the basic pattern is present.
29
See the discussion in G.V. Kogan, “Vechnoe i tekushchee: (Evangelie
Dostoevskogo i ego znachenie v zhizni i tvorchestve pisatelia)”, Dostoevskii i
mirovaia kul’tura 3 (1994): 27-42.
30
As a doubling of the number two, the number four also fits in with the duality
inherent in the oral tradition. On dualities, see Marjorie Yovino-Young, Pagan Ritual
and Myth in Russian Magic Tales: A Study of Patterns (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin
Mellen Press, 1993), esp. 53, for “doubled doubles”.
here, instead of the modern borrowed [Western] word prostitutka,

‘prostitute’) reads to a murderer resonates not only with biblical
language, but also with the icon (to be discussed in Chapter Three),
itself central to Orthodoxy. Language, notably oral language, is
particularly crucial for Christianity when we recall that Jesus
represents the “Word made flesh”, the great revelation of God to
humanity. Walter Ong (1967: 184-185) reminds us that
Finally, there is the Word of God Who is Jesus Christ. Once

Christ comes, this sense of the Word of God becomes for the
Christian more central than any other sense. […] “In the
beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God”. (John 1:1). The Father’s Word, which God the
Father “speaks”, is a substantial Word, a Person, God like the
Father, but a different Person from the Father—another “I” Who
even to the Father is “Thou” […]
Sonia’s recapitulation of the particle zhe gives a “weight”, a degree of

“solidity”, to the text, underscoring that the Word has indeed become
substantiated as Christ. Her recitation is particularly significant given
the connection between the raising of Lazarus and the Resurrection,
linked with salvation.
We can consider the “concept of revelation” to be
fundamental in all religions that trace “their origins to a God or a
divinity” (Deninger: 2005: 7773). The Word functions particularly in
Christian theology as the “corpus (the body) of truth about Himself
which God discloses to us and […] the process by which His
communication takes place” (Cross 1997: 1392). “Traditionally
revelation has been understood in terms of verbal or quasi-verbal
communications by God to recipients who then pass on what they
have heard—‘Thus says the Lord [….]’ ” (Pailin 1983: 505; emphasis
in original.). “From what theology tells us of the historical portrait of
Christ, we know”, says Patrick Slattery (1994-1998: 19), “that He was
not a writer but a speaker; He left it to others to write down what He
said […] The tradition into which He apprenticed himself was one of
orality, not literacy”.31 The very notion of orality as opposed to the
31
We encounter this same emphasis on the immediacy of orality and negativity, and
perhaps even the inaccuracy, of the written word in The Master and Margarita by
Dostoevsky’s great twentieth-century literary descendant, Mikhail Afanasievich
Bulgakov.
written word is, therefore, central to Christianity. Dostoevsky’s

reliance on orality to counter the written text not only lends Crime and
Punishment striking immediacy as a record of its time, but also
underscores the significance of the Orthodox foundation of his novel.
Dostoevsky certainly needed to counter the disbelief of his time. As
Malcolm Jones (2002: 149; emphasis added) observes,
This was an age, like our own, in which Christianity, at least

among the educated classes, was liable to go by default, to be
seen as a curious survival of pre-scientific folklore or as evidence
of mental derangement.
Water and Dreams, and Dreams of Water
The oral underpinnings of Crime and Punishment, whether religious

or folkloric in nature, are realized to great effect in water and in
dreams.32 At times, these are combined, attesting to their shared
function as non-rational constructs or symbols. Corresponding not
only to the everyday world, but also to the immediacy of oral
presentation, dreams and water resonate at once as part of the (St.
Petersburg, Petrine) urban watery landscape and as religious or
traditional images (as in Tat’iana’s magical bathhouse dream in
Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin). Dreams in both Judaism and Christianity
have special significance as instruments of revelation (Everts 1992:
231). They figure strongly in this role for both Raskol’nikov and
Svidrigailov.
Water typically functions as a symbol of great significance
denoting, states George Gibian (1989: 529) “rebirth and regeneration
for Dostoevsky”.33 We are not surprised when we encounter it at an
early point in the novel. On his way to the murder(s), Raskol’nikov
32
For a discussion of the significance of the dream in Russian popular belief, see W.F.
Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in
Russia (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 151-156. As
Ryan observes (151): “[…] the biblical mode of dream interpretation may be
specifically reinforced in folklore [….]”.
33
See also Liza Knapp’s comment that “the specific activity of washing is [normally]
symbolic of purification”. Liza Knapp, The Annihilation of Inertia: Dostoevsky and
Metaphysics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 77. Nastas’ya, for
instance, brings Raskol’nikov water in a white cup. (PSS 6: 92). As we read in
Revelations 22:1: “And he showed me the pure water of life, clear as crystal,
proceeding from the throne of God and the Lamb”.
unexpectedly muses on the improvement that tall fountains would

bring to the city (PSS 6: 60),34 alleviating the oppressive heat equated
with an equally oppressive urban environment.35 Water figures
importantly Raskol’nikov. He encounters it in dreams, canals (dirty St.
Petersburg water [PSS 6: 7, 131-132]). Water is linked negatively with
both Luzhin and Svidrigailov.
Just before he goes out to commit what he assumes will be
only one murder, Raskol’nikov dreams about water. The lead in to this
redemptive dream is Nastas’ya’s charitable gift of tea and soup (PSS
6: 55-56), both of which, significantly, are liquids based on and
related to water. Dostoevsky uses the Russian words grezilos’ and
grëzy here (‘the act of daydreaming’, ‘daydreams’), instead of snit’sia
or son, both denoting dreams during sleep, even sleeping itself.
Raskol’nikov’s daydream is presented in the present tense, which
underscores the eternality, the timelessness, of biblical imagery and
symbols that it evokes. Sparkling, flowing water evokes living waters
(“rivers”) for believers in Christ, from John 7:38:
He dreams (greza, a vision) that he is somewhere in Africa, in

Egypt, on some oasis. A caravan is resting, the camels are lying
quietly; the palms are growing all around in a circle; everyone is
eating dinner. He keeps drinking water right out of a stream that is
right next to him, flowing and gurgling. And it is so cool, and the
wonderful, wonderful sky-blue water, cold, runs along the
varicolored stones and on the so wonderful clean sand with golden
sparkles (PSS 6: 56).36
34
Dostoevsky himself followed this route in the period just before he began writing
the novel. See B.N. Tikhomirov, “Iz nabliudenii nad romanom “Prestuplenie i
nakazanie”, Dostoevskii: materialy i issledovaniia 13 (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1996):
235-236.
35
This same oppressive heat, as Richard Freeborn notes, figures in Dostoevsky’s
earlier novel Unizhennye i oskorblennye (The Insulted and the Injured). Richard
Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in the Russian Novel from ‘Eugene
Onegin’ to ‘War and Peace’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 177.
F.D. Reeve points out that “[t]he image of the garden” symbolizes paradise. When he
passes the Yusupov Gardens and “plans” on how he would expand them, he
“appropriates to himself […] the role of divine gardener, charged with beautifying and
harmonizing the earthly city, viz. Petersburg”. F.D. Reeve, The Russian Novel (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 177.
36
For a discussion of the phenomena of dreams and daydreams in Crime and
Punishment, see J.Thomas Shaw’s fine essay “Raskol’nikov’s Dreams”, Slavic and
East European Journal 17:2 (Summer 1973): 131-145.
In a nightmare following the murders, Raskol’nikov has a much less

pleasant dream about water. Here Dostoevsky uses past instead of
present tense, with the verbal tense a grammatically and temporally
enclosed echo of a malodorous urban puddle and of Raskol’nikov’s
sense of being trapped.
He lost consciousness. It seemed odd to him that he didn’t

remember how he could have found himself in the street. It was
already late evening, the twilight had thickened […] it was
somehow especially sultry […] it smelled of dust, mortar, and
stagnant water” (PSS 6: 212).
This stagnant water is a lead in to Luzhin’s appearance.37

Pëtr Petrovich Luzhin (from luzha, meaning ‘puddle’) is
originally introduced in Pul’kheria Raskol’nikova’s letter and
personifies/embodies Dostoevsky’s third water reference in the novel.
Luzhin seems to have materialized directly from the above-mentioned
dream and its stagnant water (and, as a “puddle”, is beneath one’s feet,
lowered). He looks forward to Smerdiakov, generated from the scum
in the bathhouse, in The Brothers Karamazov. Luzhin invades
Raskol’nikov’s room in the wake of the murders. With his ostentatious
attire coupled with monetary selfishness, he embodies the essence of
the Western materialism that constitutes a basic component of the
modern capital city. Founded and planned by Tsar Peter the Great, the
author of the (partially) Westernized Russian state, St. Petersburg is a
city of crowds, material greed and predation, negative both in the
immediate economic sense and the larger philosophical/religious one.
Thus it is that Dunya’s erstwhile fiancé Pëtr Petrovich Luzhin makes a
particularly bad impression on Raskol’nikov himself and on the reader
who sees him through Raskol’nikov’s eyes. His last name conjures up
unpleasant, negative connotations of dirty water38 as opposed, as Caryl
Emerson has suggested to me, to the pure, shared water of baptism. In
his “puddleness”, Luzhin undermines the baptismal water central to
37
Stagnant water represented in Luzhin’s name and in the dream figures in the
negative image of inertia, itself the subject of Liza Knapp’s excellent The Annihilation
of Inertia: Dostoevsky and Metaphysics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1996).
38
My thanks to Caryl Emerson for this typically astute observation. Private
correspondence. Perhaps we can also consider the canals as Peter’s anti-baptismal
water.
Christian ritual. Nor is his name negative in the religious context

alone. Water also figures importantly in the oral tradition, where the
mërtvaia voda (‘dead water’) restores the hero’s cut-up body and the
zhivaia voda (‘living water’) brings him back to life (Ryan 1999: 286).
Through his name as well as his behavior, Luzhin undercuts the
essence of Russianness as embodied in water, functioning as an
opposite of particularly Lizaveta, Raskol’nikov’s second victim, with
her inherent Orthodoxy and narodnost’ (‘nativeness’).
Water appears for the fourth and last time in the epilogue once
Raskol’nikov has definitively been redeemed. Raskol’nikov, having
“returned to life”, is looking out at the Irtysh River. Sonia sits down
and joins him.
Raskol’nikov came out of the shed onto the very bank, sat down
on logs piled near the shed and began to gaze at the wide and
empty river […] There was freedom over there, and other people
lived there […] as though the age of Abraham and his flock had
not yet passed (PSS 6: 421).
This scene, which also figures in the discussion of song, functions as a

closing frame, a coda, to his earlier daydream about the cool water.
The river unites the liturgy through song with the flowing water of
baptism.
It is a commonplace of criticism that Dostoevsky makes
significant use of dreams. Dreams are a mechanism for moving the
plot along (through foreshadowing) and recall past events (through
what Gary Saul Morson terms “backshadowing”).39 They play an
important role in reminding us of the limitations of the conscious,
rational mind, as envisioned in Dostoevsky’s fictional world. Dreams
have an oral and/or visual foundation, not being conceived as text.
They function as weapons in Dostoevsky’s ongoing “war” against the
rational argument basic to the nihilists and antithetical to the Orthodox
Church. Dreams also have a significant biblical pedigree as augurs of
the future and as venues for a higher truth, as in Jacob’s dream of the
ladder to heaven or Joseph’s interpretations of Pharaoh’s dreams in
Egypt. The dreamer must accept on faith the vision in the dream,
39
For an extensive treatment of foreshadowing, sideshadowing and backshadowing,
see Gary Saul Morson’s fine Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
which has nothing to do with rational thought at all.40 Why, then, is

the water of the epilogue outside the dream? Could the answer be,
perhaps, that Raskol’nikov, having returned to the Orthodoxy of his
early childhood, has overcome the disbelief associated with
rationalism for the faith that transcends logic, and he can now reach
that higher truth through faith alone?
All of this above-mentioned business of dreams—whether or
not they are related to water—leads us, of course, to one of
Raskol’nikov’s most significant and striking dreams of all: the
nightmare immediately preceding his horrific crimes. As is generally
the case with dreams in Russian, it ‘dreamed itself to Raskol’nikov’
(prisnilsia Raskol’nikovu), putting him into the dative case and a
grammatically passive position that helps to demolish his sense of
rational control. The dream drifts, as dreams so often do, and moves in
time as well as space. It starts with Raskol’nikov as a seven-year-old
boy accompanying Father past the tavern to the church (which they
never arrive at). The church has warmly positive associations for
Raskol’nikov.
He loved this church and the ancient icons [obraza, literally,

‘images’] in it, the majority without frames, and the old priest
[sviashchenik, linked with the word sviatoi meaning ‘holy’,
instead of the common term for priest, pop] with his shaking head.
Near his grandmother’s tomb, on which there was a slab, there
was also the little grave of his younger brother (PSS 6: 46).
In Russian the word for church is feminine gender, reminding us that

salvation in this novel is clearly associated with female figures. Not
until we reach The Brothers Karamazov does a man, the Elder
Zosima, figure in this role. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
foreshadows and links salvation with Sonia—who represents Sophia,
Holy Wisdom—and posthumously with Lizaveta. Associations with
death here should not be considered negative, since they look ahead to
the raising of Lazarus and to belief in life after death.
One significant issue is why what is arguably a memory, or
most probably a memory, is couched in the form of a dream instead of
being presented as a recollection. We never know, of course, whether
40
Acceptance on faith figures centrally in, for instance, Caravaggio’s dramatic
paintings The Supper at Emmaus and The Conversion of Saint Paul and is basic to
belief in the Resurrection.
or not the events of this dream actually took place. Dostoevsky leaves
no doubt in an earlier draft, where the horse killing is clearly a
memory and not a dream at all (Shaw 1973: 145 n. 7). One might
speculate here that the dream format enables the author to circumvent
and undermine Raskol’nikov’s rational machinations, foreshadowing
his delirious lack of focus on the way to murder. The dative case
accomplishes the same function grammatically.
Another related and particularly important topic is the dream
killing itself.41 The peasant Mikolka brutally butchers an old nag (a
klyacha, also clearly identifiable with the old pawnbroker, but also
with the overburdened Lizaveta), beating her steadily especially on the
head and overloading his cart that she is too weak to pull. He calls her
“my property” (literally, moë dobro, ‘my goods’, with an obvious pun
on the word dobryi, designating ‘moral good’.42 A horrified old
bystander labels Mikolka a leshii, a forest spirit (PSS 6: 48). Cowering
after the murders, Raskol’nikov hears “leshii” again (PSS 6: 69). The
leshii was not to be trifled with. He was capricious at best, and, in
some regions, clearly resembled the devil (Ivanits 1989: 65-70). And
the devil was a palpable presence. As Paul Friedrich notes, “More
immediate than the one beneficent God, however, was the devil,
conceptualized as God’s brother, in a remarkably dualistic system, and
the host of water nymphs, hobgoblins, demons, and other spirits that
41
Two significant dreams follow the murders and are related to them. In the first,
Raskol’nikov has a nightmare that the landlady is being beaten. This dream is related
to the horse nightmare by both noise level and also the narrator’s comment that
Raskol’nikov “quivered like an over-driven horse”. PSS 6: 90-91. In the second
nightmare later in the novel, Raskol’nikov hits the pawnbroker who refuses to die.
PSS 6: 212-214. That dream will be treated in the chapter on iconic underpinnings of
the novel. For a discussion of dreams in Crime and Punishment, see Shaw,
“Raskol’nikov’s Dreams”, 131-145. See also Temira Pachmuss, “the Technique of
Dream-Logic in the Works of Dostoevskij”, Slavic and East European Journal 4:3
(Autumn 1960): 220-242; and Raymond J. Wilson III, “Raskol’nikov’s Dream in
Crime and Punishment”, Literature and Psychology 26:4 (1976): 159-166 (which
focuses on the horse dream).
42
Priscilla Meyer observes that “horse beating was a routine event and appeared often
in literary texts, several of which have been suggested as a source for Raskolnikov’s
horrifying dream […] Balzac’s Un début dans la vie, Nekrasov’s poem ‘About the
Weather’ […] and its probable sources, Victor Hugo’s poem ‘Melancholia’ […] and
his Les Misérables”. Meyer (2009): 10 (pagination from ms. copy). In comparable
fashion, Raskol’nikov himself turns gifts from his loved ones—a watch from his
father and a ring from his sister—into “goods” at the pawnbroker’s. See PSS 6: 9.
Does the watch “quantify” eternity?
peopled the houses, streams, trees, and other objects in the animistic
world.”43 (This temporally backward glance at Russian popular belief
will resurface in the description of Svidrigailov, below.)
Mikolka is clearly not to be trifled with either and prevails.
Dostoevsky’s choice of a dream killer is significant as well as striking.
Raskol’nikov’s theory of the “superman” (echoing Pisarev) entitled to
kill anyone who stands in his way as he tries to create a “perfect”
world constitutes the basis not only of his crime, but of the larger
nihilist movement as well. Mikolka, a peasant, also “wants a piece of
the action”. He considers himself one of the elect, and he has the
support of the people in the wagon, which we can expand within the
framework of the dream to stand for the entire world (PSS 6: 47-49).
Now is the time to recall another “Mikolka’s” hat comment at the
beginning, his physical dynamism relative to the intelligentsia, and his
inherent “power” to commit violent acts.
That Raskol’nikov is at once the boy, the horse, and Mikolka
is arguably true.44 But the larger issue here, it seems to me, is the role
that Mikolka (the demotic form of Nikolai) plays in Dostoevsky’s
continuing “dialogue” with the radical thinker Pisarev. Mikolka’s urge
to drive the horse under impossible conditions can be equated with the
concept of forced progress (forward motion in time) under Utopian
Socialism, and may well be aimed at the Utopian Socialists’ (negative)
ideals. Furthermore, if an uneducated rube like Mikolka can be as
much a superman as an intellectual or a political figure can, then it
would seem that Raskol’nikov’s—and Pisarev’s—theory is in tatters
even before it can be put into action. And if Mikolka in his intrinsic
Russianness can unthinkingly elevate himself by exploiting raw
43
Paul Friedrich, “Semantic Structure and Social Structure: An Instance from
Russian”, Paul Friedrich, Language, Context, and the Imagination. Essays by Paul
Friedrich. Selected and Introduced by Anwar S. Dil (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1979), 139-140. I am most grateful to Paul Friedrich for having sent me a copy
of his illuminating essay. Eve Levin reminds us that popular (narodnaia) religion
must be treated in conjunction “with the official Christianity of the elite” and that
dvoeverie (dual belief) and “popular religion” can be considered synonyms. (E.V.
Anichkov holds the same view.) Dvoeverie i narodnaia religiia v istorii Rossii
(Moscow: Indrik, 2004), 8, 12, 17. Many thanks to Eve Levin for having apprised me
of her valuable book.
44
As in W.D. Snodgrass’s essay “Crime for Punishment: The Tenor of Part One”, The
Hudson Review XIII:2 (Summer 1960): 239. Cited in Raymond J. Wilson III’s
“Raskol’nikov’s Dream”, 159.
power, then there were never any grounds to this theory to begin with.
Perhaps Mikolka reminds Raskol’nikov that bloody violence
underwrites all the elevated theorizing and exposes the potential of its
violence (PSS 6: 50).45 (And “Mikolka”, too, takes suffering on
himself [PSS 6: 270-271], perhaps thereby redeeming the monster of
the nightmare, and foreshadowing to Rakol’nikov’s later redemption.)
All of this indeed proves to be the case as the novel plays out, with
Dostoevsky exploiting the non- or extra-rational medium of the dream
to demolish the rational basis of his opponents’ arguments. And two
central characters—Raskol’nikov and Svidrigailov—have their “final
judgments” in dreams. For Rakol’nikov, this dream will occur in the
epilogue (the subject of Chapter Six). For Svidrigailov, it will take
place just before his suicide (and be treated in Chapter Three).
The Question of Svidrigailov
While Luzhin stands for the puddle, the stagnant water of materialism
and disbelief endemic to St. Petersburg, Svidrigailov is identified with
the devilishly evil and even more dangerous watery realm of the
bathhouse.46 (And, arguably, Svidrigailov functions as much in mythic
time as in the time-frame of the novel.) Because Dostoevsky links
Svidrigailov’s disbelief in the afterlife—and, by extension, in God—
with the sorcery and devilry inherent in the oral tradition and
condemned as evil by the Orthodox Church, the fantastic imagery of
the bathhouse figures importantly here (Ivanits 1992: 138-148).
(Moreover, “Russian thought associates the devil”, observes Stephen
Hutchings (1997: 133), “both with the abstraction of pure reason—
man setting himself over, and apart from God—and with mimicry—
man setting himself apart, to mock and mimic God”. We see the first
in Raskol’nikov, the second in Svidrigailov.) Dostoevsky’s adherence
to the doctrine of pochvennichestvo, defined as a reconnection to the
Russian pochva (‘soil’), looms large here, too. (Frank 1995: 500).
Dostoevsky reconnects his target readers to the oral tradition
45
For a twentieth-century examination of brutality underlying theory, see Isaac
Babel’s short story masterpiece “Moi pervyi gus’ ” (“My First Goose”), from his
collection Red Cavalry.
46
He lives, as Ponomareva has observed, “[…] outside good and evil [….]”. G.B.
Ponomareva, Dostoevskii: ia zanimaius’ ètoi tainoi (Moscow: Akademkniga, 2001),
131.
intimately linked with the Russian folk, and the Russian pochva. This
is realized literally toward the end of the main body of the novel,
when Raskol’nikov kisses the earth (PSS 6: 405), as discussed in
Chapter Three. Dostoevsky manipulates the emotional reactions of his
readers through their memories of Russian popular belief, especially
as this lore is related to Russian Orthodoxy. His attack is two-pronged:
through both Russian Orthodoxy and popular belief (the oral
tradition). He chooses constructs or entities that work in both worlds.
Along with barns and forges, bathhouses were dominant
constructs in East Slavic pre-Christian religious practice, as clan (or
family) temples. With the coming of Christianity, they were driven
underground to become dwelling places for the demonic, writ large in
popular lore as the earthly domain of evil forces where “devils and
other unclean spirits gathered. People prayed to God in church, but to
the forces of evil in the bathhouse” (Lotman and Uspenskij 1984: 9). It
was not protected by an icon, and, Linda Ivanits reminds us, “peasants
removed their [protective, amulet] crosses while bathing” (1992: 143).
The bathhouse demon ruled over this structure, but it was also the
dominion of the wizard, the koldun, who can be identified with
Svidrigailov. A bathhouse was especially perilous after midnight, the
witching hour (Ryan 1999: 50-51). Lest we miss the point,
Svidrigailov opines about the bathhouse as an alternative to heavenly
eternity. “Just why”, Svidrigailov asks Raskol’nikov in their brief
conversation about life after death, “[must eternity] invariably be
enormous? And what if, instead of all this, just imagine, there’ll be
one little room [like Raskol’nikov’s?] something like a village
bathhouse, sooty, and with spiders in all the corners, and that’s all
eternity is”. Bathhouses, as Dale Pesmen cogently observes (2000: 95-
112, esp. 111-112), are liminal zones incorporating not only “meeting
and promiscuity”, but also dualities:
dirt and purity, power and equality, heat and cold, sobriety and
drunkenness, health and sickness, communion with others and
contact with one’s own “deepest” needs […] These elements and
contexts, especially when they meet, are “Russian” […] In
narratives, the baths are a place of change [….].47
47
Many thanks to Paul Friedrich for having reminded me to consult Dale Pesmen’s
fine study.
The bathhouse encapsulates the oppositions endemic in Russian

culture, as does the novel itself. But Svidrigailov’s stark bathhouse
image forces that culture into a narrow construct lacking an important
dimension: the infinitude of salvation (which Sonia recounts in the
raising of Lazarus. It foreshadows to Ivan Karamazov’s narrow
Euclidean world in The Brothers Karamazov).
Svidrigailov’s bathhouse comments chill Raskol’nikov, and
the target reader: “Something cold suddenly seized Raskol’nikov at
this ugly (literally, bezobrazom, ‘imageless’) answer” (PSS 6: 221).48
This is an interesting topic of conversation between two murderers,
one who will surrender himself to faith in the eternal and the other
who will deny the eternal and commit suicide. In the wake of Dunya’s
rejection (Part VI, Chapter Five), Svidrigailov runs around Petersburg
taking care of errands such as final visits to his fiancée and to Sonia
Marmeladova. The weather is awful, a prelude to Svidrigailov’s
suicide. “There was a crack of thunder and the rain came down in
torrents like a waterfall”. (And we must remember that, in Russian
culture, there is no intermediary realm in between the divine and
demonic [Hutchings 1997: 38]. One is either saved or damned.) At the
same time, the narrator remarks on how Svidrigailov had drunk no
alcohol, only tea. His avoidance of spirits means that Svidrigailov is
sober and conscious, all the more reason for him to be terrified when
swept into the classic Dostoevskian whirlpool, here in the guise of a
violent thunderstorm.
Thunder was linked with powerful pre-Christian magic,
specifically, with thunder divination, and books of thunder divination
were quite understandably condemned by the Russian Orthodox
Church and banned between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries
(Ryan 1999: 378-379). Dostoevsky repeatedly reinforces the
connection between Svidrigailov and negative pre- or non-Christian
magic linked with the oral tradition, even, by extension, with the
thunder god Perun, who had the force of the weather behind him.
Moreover, Dostoevsky’s contemporary (young) readers would surely
recall references to St. Il’ya’s Day and the requisite number of
thunderclaps associated with it, as recounted in the chapter
48
Dostoevsky links the bathhouse with hell directly in his Notes from the Dead House.
“When we entered the door to the bathhouse itself, I thought we’d entered Hell”. F.M.
Dostoevskii, Zapiski iz mërtvogo doma, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh,
ed. V.G. Bazanov et al., 4 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972): 98.
“Oblomov’s Dream” from Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov. (Just in

case the [target] reader doesn’t recall the importance of thunder,
Porfiry reminds him: “Remember Mikolka? Boy, that was thunder,
yes sir”! [PSS 6: 347]). Both Goncharov and Dostoevsky reach back
across the great divide in Russian culture perpetrated by the reforms of
Peter the Great, to the Russian oral tradition. While Goncharov’s
narrator looks back with nostalgia tinged with regret and mild
disapproval, so that his readers may respond accordingly, Dostoevsky
instead invokes his readers’ horror by putting them into a waking
nightmare and causing them to react on an elemental, emotional level.
St. Il’ya (Elijah) assumed the powers and “duties” of Perun
and could ruin “a peasant’s fields with hail”.49 Il’ya was believed,
states Linda Ivanits (1989: 29-30) to “ride across the sky in his fiery
chariot striking the earth with lightning bolts as he pursued the
unclean force”. In this novel, that unclean force is embodied in
Svidrigailov. Water that redeems Raskol’nikov condemns
Svidrigailov, the scapegoat of the novel.50 Dostoevsky uses water to
assail Svidrigailov both vertically, in the form of violent rain, and
horizontally, in the form of rising floodwaters. The watery attack is
all-encompassing. The stagnant puddles of Raskol’nikov’s dream and
Luzhin’s name have been transformed into a malignant and powerful
supernatural force pursuing evil as embodied in a single character. It
is Svidrigailov who pays the price so that Raskol’nikov may later be
saved, next to a body of water, in the epilogue.
Dostoevsky reinforces the bathhouse imagery by changing
“rain” to “water”: “The water fell down”, remarks the narrator,
not in drops, but lashed the earth in whole streams. The lightning
bolts flashed constantly, and you could count to five with each
one. Wet to the skin [in Russian, the expression is ‘wet to the
49
For a fascinating discussion on the links between Perun and Elijah, see Yuri I.
Marmeladov, Dostoevsky’s Secret Code: The Allegory of Elijah the Prophet, tr. Jay
MacPherson (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1987), 2, 4, 9. Marmeladov observes
that the great thunderstorm toward the end of the main portion of the novel occurs “on
or near the feast day of Elijah”. Marmeladov, Secret Code, 10.
50
Caryl Emerson has reminded me that Svidrigailov is very complex and is consumed
by despair. He has, as Dostoevsky himself wrote, “moments of deep despair [….]”.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment, ed. and tr. Edward
Wasiolek (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), 197. Of course, he is an
especially complicated and, in some ways, compelling villain/devil. But he’s also
terrifying, and to a particular end.
threads’, an obvious reference to clothing], he got back home

(PSS 6: 384).
Svidrigailov’s water torments don’t end here. He briefly visits Sonia

to make his last financial arrangements for her and the Marmeladov
children, echoing the Kapernaumov children, who run away in
“indescribable horror (PSS 6: 384)” when they catch sight of him.
(This issue will be treated in greater detail in Chapter Five, on
alterity.) Precisely at midnight he set out for the
…kov Bridge in the direction of the Petersburg side. The rain had
stopped but the wind was roaring. He was beginning to shiver and
for a moment he looked at the black water of the Little Neva (PSS
6: 388).
“Sudden, violent gusts of wind”, Elizabeth Warner reminds us (2002:

32), “herald the arrival of demonic beings of all kinds, such as Baba
Yaga [the famous Russian witch], a devil, or […] the wood demon
[leshii]”.51 Svidrigailov is clearly contemplating suicide, echoing a
woman’s attempted suicide earlier (witnessed by Raskol’nikov) and
foreshadowing to Svidrigailov’s own suicide shortly after this scene
(PSS 6: 131-132, 394). The narrator’s reference to midnight reminds
the reader of the polunoshnik, the midnight demon (Ryan 1999: 176),
as well as of the witching hour.52
Svidrigailov ends up at a seedy hotel—the Adrianopolis—and
checks into a sordid room beneath the stairs, as trees blow around
outside. His hatred of water surges up: “Never in my life have I liked
water, even in landscapes” (PSS 6: 389). (Characters are defined by
their rooms, as they are by their clothing and attitudes toward
51
Storms, particularly thunderstorms, were associated with Elijah, who rumbled across
the heavens in his chariot. Yuri Marmeladov notes that “[w]hen thunder rumbled
overhead in pre-Revolutionary Russia, it was a common cliché to remark: ‘There goes
Elijah the Prophet in his chariot across the clouds’ ”. Yuri Marmeladov, Secret Code,
1. In other words, Dostoevsky’s target reader would most likely have made that same
association of storm and Elijah.
52
Lest we think that dvoeverie (‘dual belief’) was confined to the Slavic East, we
should consider a parallel fusion of pagan and Christian religions in England. “In the
Reformation all heads were chopped off the statues lining the walls [in the Lady
Chapel of Ely Cathedral], but Green Men were left intact because of their pagan
fertility origins”. Peter Brooks, “The Aspiring East”, In Britain (April/May 2005): 15.
Emphasis added. I would like to thank my aunt, Anne Cour, for her generous
subscription to In Britain.
cloth/clothing. See Chapters Two and Three for further relevant

comments.) The central role of water in baptism would not have been
lost on the contemporary reader. Dostoevsky juxtaposes Svidrigailov’s
hatred of water to Raskol’nikov’s own visions of flowing rivers
identified with salvation, even before the murders. From the very
beginning, we know that Raskol’nikov will be redeemed because he
sees water as a purifying element with biblical associations.
Svidrigailov has no such belief framework to fall back on, or, more to
the point, he represents instead the evil obverse of Raskol’nikov’s
underlying faith. Instead of saving Svidrigailov, water consumes him.
Feeling stifled in his room, Svidrigailov throws open a
window into the garden, with the wet trees blown about in the
darkness. Through the common word for ‘garden’ and ‘orchard’ (sad,
as in Anton Chekhov’s play Vishnëvyi sad [The Cherry Orchard]), the
garden is linked with the forest, realm of the leshii. Svidrigailov is
scared and seems well aware of the leshii’s power: “How I dislike the
sound of the trees at night, in the storm and the darkness, it’s a
repulsive (skvernoe) sensation”(PSS 6: 389). Garden equals orchard,
and, by extension, the forest. (The leshii, notes Jack Haney [2001: xli],
“could cause [people] to lose their way”, which Svidrigailov certainly
tries to do to Raskol’nikov.) Nature has become an overwhelming
force. There is no escape for Svidrigailov. His claustrophobic room
cruelly parodies a monk’s cell. The gloom outside is opaque, with a
physical thickness that even radiance cannot penetrate or dispel. Light
is missing. So is God. Nature doesn’t provide any relief. Now is the
time to recall the candle central to the scene where Sonia reads from
the Gospels to Rakol’nikov. Later, in The Brothers Karamazov, the
light of the setting sun will provide comparable illumination for
Alyosha.
But Svidrigailov can hear even if he can’t see, and he remarks
on the cannon shot warning of an impending flood: “Ah, the signal!
The water’s rising” (PSS 6: 391-392). This scene, familiar to Russians
from Aleksandr Pushkin’s great poem “The Bronze Horseman” (1833,
published 1837), alerts the reader to the impending St. Petersburg
tragedy attendant, in this case, on (metaphysical) rebellion.
Dostoevsky pushes the flood situation and imagery further than
Pushkin through the earlier allusions to the bathhouse. Lashed by the
torrential rain and inundated by the subsequent flooding, the entire
city of St. Petersburg is transformed, through excessive water, into a
gigantic bathhouse with all of its attendant devilish associations.

Where flowing water in a “landscape” stands for salvation (that
Raskol’nikov can eventually reach), water in Petersburg (including the
canals) is stagnant at best, evil and destructive at worst. Like other
physical entities in the novel, water is invested for “better” or for
“worse” depending on which characters it is associated with.
Darkness also plays a crucial role in Svidrigailov’s scenes. He
is immersed in blackness (in keeping with his “dark origins”). Not
even nature as encapsulated in the garden, a symbol of relief and
salvation for Raskol’nikov, can alleviate Svidrigailov’s torments. The
very name of the hotel, the Adrianopolis, reinforces darkness, since
this name means ‘dark city’ in Greek. The Adrianopolis is St.
Petersburg in miniature, a microcosm of the great outer darkness that
this artificial Westernized capital city represents. Dostoevsky goes far
beyond negative urban landscapes in, for instance, Dickens, by
transforming the city through the name of a hotel and the horrifically
inclement weather. St. Petersburg=bathhouse=hell. (“Universal” water
recalls the “universal”, perpetual winter in Nikolai Gogol’s
masterpiece “The Overcoat”.) By trapping Svidrigailov at the eye of
this storm, Dostoevsky abandons him—positioned like Satan’s worst
sinners in the very innermost circle of Dante’s Inferno—to the devil.
What is most significant for my purposes in the present chapter is that
Dostoevsky terrifies the target reader along with Svidrigailov. After
the murders, the reader cowered behind the locked door in terror—
combined with an impulse to confess—along with Raskol’nikov (PSS
6: 66-68). Now, as the body of the novel is coming to a close, that
same reader experiences the horrors of damnation with Svidrigailov.
Svidrigailov’s terrifying final scenes, including a series of nightmares
and his suicide, will be treated in Chapter Three.
That the bathhouse was associated with the sorcerer, a
practitioner of magic standing clearly outside the Christian faith
(Warner 2002: 49, 56-66), would not have been lost on Dostoevsky’s
contemporary readers. Nor would they have been unaware of
historical associations of the bathhouse with political unrest as well as
sorcery. The anti-behavior linked with political upheaval, including
“royal imposture”, was considered heretical or evil. One engaging in
such acts “was regarded as a sorcerer”. A sorcerer “attended” the
bathhouse instead of to church, with the bathhouse “a kind of antipode
to the church” and “sorcerers [were] recognized by the fact that they
went to the bathhouse instead of to church”.
The bathhouse is also identified with political rebellion or
imposture. In an historical song from the Time of Troubles (the smuta,
1598-1613), the imposter, the False Dmitrii, visited the bathhouse
instead of church: “But that thief Grishka the Unfrocked went to the
bathhouse” (B.A. Uspenskij “Tsar’ ”, 1984: 273-274). Perhaps the
Time of Troubles figures importantly for Dostoevsky in contemporary
Russia, too, as a dangerous, transitional period. The evil of the
bathhouse is ancient, predating Christianity, and it evokes a deep fear
going far beyond the puddle revulsion inspired by Luzhin. The
political anti-behavior linked with the bathhouse touches not only
Svidrigailov. With his own “royal imposture” a factor in at least his
first murder, Raskol’nikov, too, is in grave danger of being sucked
into the hellish whirlpool of destruction that the bathhouse ultimately
betokens. That he instead confesses, however awkwardly, sends a
powerful signal to Dostoevsky’s intended, target reader.
When Svidrigailov performs a rare good deed (giving money
for the orphaned Marmeladov children [PSS 6: 334], he wants Dunya
to know. (Perhaps this represents a desperate attempt to reconnect
with the humanity he’s been separated from in the wake of her final,
definitive rejection.) And Dostoevsky gives him a devilishly terrifying
handsomeness that resonates most unpleasantly with the bathhouse
symbolism.
[Svidrigailov] was a man of about fifty, taller than the average

[…] his face was quite pleasant, and the color of his face was
fresh, not Petersburgian. […] His eyes were blue and gazed
coldly, fixedly and reflectively; his lips were scarlet (PSS 6: 188).
This first impression is reinforced later in a more sinister way when

Svidrigailov puts in an encore appearance:
This was somehow a strange face, somehow resembling a mask:

white, rosy, with rosy, scarlet lips, with a light-blond beard and
fairly thick light blond hair. His eyes were somehow too blue, and
their gaze was somehow too heavy and immobile (PSS 6: 357).
Read: dead, but also backshadowing to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s monstrous

dolls. And we know that the mask covers darkness, since the historical
Svidrigailov was of “dark origin”. Svidrigailov’s face will figure

importantly elsewhere, in Chapter Three.53
Of course, notes Ryan (1999: 39) the Orthodox Church took a
very dim view of masks, linked with “pagan, usually midwinter,
rituals which were regularly condemned […] as satanic, a ‘soul-
destroying’ place [….]”. Susanne Fusso observes (2006: 9) that
Svidrigailov removes his mask—revealing a hellish interior or
unbridled and rapacious sexuality—when talking with Raskol’nikov,
whom he wants to “seduce” morally. The contemporary readers would
have associated Svidrigailov’s evil face with beliefs and fears that
undoubtedly dated back to their earliest childhoods (an evil linked, in
addition, with the skomorokhy, Russia’s ‘traveling minstrels’ (Ryan
1999: 30).54 Perhaps this childhood was spent, as was Raskol’nikov’s
own, in the village with its traditional structures: churches, taverns and
bathhouses. While Luzhin is linked with the Godless materialism of
St. Petersburg, Svidrigailov looks all the way back to devilry, to
Russian popular lore and fears. Like Turgenev before him (in “Bezhin
Meadow”), Dostoevsky says “boo”, and the reader jumps.
53
Svidrigailov is also associated with the number seven. His name is related to this
number (as Leslie Johnson has pointed out). This number, as my student Joseph
Rodriguez has reminded me, has special significance in numerology and in the Bible.
(Leslie Johnson has observed that it denotes the breaks between periods of time.
Leslie A. Johnson, The Experience of Time in Crime and Punishment [Columbus:
Slavica Publishers, 1984], 97.) Joseph Rodriguez has also called my attention to the
repetition of the number seven for Svidrigailov: seven years of marriage, seven days
in St. Petersburg, Marfa Petrovna’s ghost that reminds him to set a seven-day clock.
Seven also has its non-biblical side. Seven, Ryan notes, is “common in spells”. Ryan,
Bathhouse, 314. Seven in this context ties in with Svidrigailov as a wizard or a
demonic figure.
54
See also Russell Zguta’s Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 4-5, 8-9, 28-31, 60-61, 110-
111. Caryl Emerson and Chester Dunning discuss the skomorokhi in “Introduction:
Reconsidering History and Expanding the Canon”, (3-24), 16-17. Caryl Emerson
notes that Maxim the Greek “denounced the skhmorokhi as tools of Satan [….]”,
which certainly resonates with Svidrigailov. Caryl Emerson, “The Ebb and Flow of
Influence: Muffling the Comedic in the Move toward Print”, (192-232), 216. Chester
Dunning, Lidiia Lotman and Antony Wood all note that “the skomorokhi [were]
wandering minstrels [consider Svidrigailov’s ramblings] who were linked with
Russia’s pagan past and with witchcraft and sorcery”. Chester Dunning with Lidiia
Lotman and Antony Wood, “Notes to Pushkin’s Comedy”, (454-510) 472 n. 88. All
the above citations are from Chester Dunning with Caryl Emerson, Sergei Fomichev,
Lidiia Lotman and Antony Wood, The Uncensored Boris Godunov, 2006.
So does Raskol’nikov, still vulnerable to traditional beliefs in

spite of the veneer of his modern St. Petersburg education and his
nihilist tendencies to believe in nothing. Dostoevsky reminds him and
his contemporary readers, most especially his target readers, that they
are all still scared little boys too young to be playing at revolution. He
reaches his target readers through fears based on the oral tradition, a
childhood world predating exposure to Western influence,55 and he
extends to them the grace of Orthodox caritas.
Conclusion
What’s left standing in the wake of Dostoevsky’s stylistic

experimentation in Crime and Punishment? Dostoevsky crafted a
hybrid of the Western novel plus Russian traditional genres in what is
framed as a crime novel but is of course about a murder in which we
know “who done it” from the start. On the surface of things, he has
created a written text that—by privileging oral discourse over the
written word—appears to undermine its very form as printed
communication. Dostoevsky’s arguable experimentation has
anticipated by about fifty years Andrei Bely’s (Boris Bugaev’s)
eponymous experimental novel Petersburg, which at once summed up
earlier prose practice and exploded the novel form.
I think we should assume here that Dostoevsky in no way
intended to destroy the novel, but rather to manipulate it. He valued
the Western-European novel tradition inherited from Balzac, Victor
Hugo and Dickens far too much for that. But Dostoevsky was also a
man of his time, anxious—or even desperate—to influence young
readers who were easy prey for the dangerous propaganda of
especially nihilist but also Utopian Socialist and Utilitarian thought.
By combining the inherited novel form with the orality intrinsic to
Orthodox and popular/folk usage in his imagery, characterizations and
situations, he created in effect a new synthetic form. In his hands, the
novel was still recognizably Western, but, in its reliance on Orthodox
structures and the oral tradition, it also became intrinsically Russian.
Of course, Dostoevsky was no stranger to formal experimentation,
55
One is reminded here of the role that the oral tradition plays in, for instance, Ivan
Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s 1859 novel Oblomov. His nanny’s recapitulated tales
from the oral tradition, which the young Oblomov hears instead of reading, are central
to the chapter “Oblomov’s Dream” and to the novel as a whole.
having tweaked the belated epistolary novel in his very first published
work Poor Folk (1846). Perhaps this combination of Western and
Russian genres will help us to better understand and appreciate the
form and the role of the unjustly criticized epilogue, the subject of the
final essay in the present study.
Dostoevsky’s counter argument isn’t really a rational
argument per se, but rather a blow to his reader’s emotional solar
plexus. Instead of just responding with a rational line of reasoning,
Dostoevsky turns that rational argument against itself, much as he did
two years earlier in Notes from Underground. While his opponents
assume a reasoned basis for human behavior, Dostoevsky reminds the
reader through the very form of Crime and Punishment that human
beings at bottom aren’t rational at all. He guides them to access his
“higher” truth in the same way they receive religious “truth”: through
orality and visual images. To this end, he presents not only the mental
processes and resultant actions of Raskol’nikov, but also the fate of
Svidrigailov. Dostoevsky exploits the young, target reader
emotionally, just as he exploits the novel form itself, in order to bring
Russia back from the edge of a dangerous precipice, saving it along
with his hero from the dangers of disbelief. The ways in which he
does this will be dealt with in the succeeding chapters.
Chapter Two
The Religious Symbolism of Cloth and Clothing

in Crime and Punishment
In Crime and Punishment, the religious theme that would dominate all of
Dostoevsky’s subsequent fiction emerges as a central element for the
first time. Dostoevsky embedded this theme not only in the architecture
of the city and the behavior of his characters, but also in their clothing
references and the clothing itself. He redirected the inherited focus of the
physiological sketch, in which a character’s apparel was principally a
socio-economic indicator, to invest clothing with intense spiritual power.
No single motif more aptly captures the essence of an individual than the
clothing with which he covers his body. Clothing now came to
symbolize a character’s spiritual state, specifically, his/her acceptance or
rejection of Christ.1 The symbolic use of cloth/clothing has
traditionally been an accepted practice in the Western tradition. We
1
John Jones has commented briefly on Katerina Ivanovna’s green shawl, which Sonia
takes with her to Siberia. John Jones, Dostoevsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983), 237. T.A. Kasatkina discusses the religious significance of Sonia’s green shawl
and burnoose in the epilogue. T.A. Kasatkina, “Ob odnom svoistve èpilogov piati
velikikh romanov Dostoevskogo”, Part One, Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura 5
(Moscow: 1995): 21. This chapter is based on a paper originally delivered at the South
Central Modern Language Association 1998 annual meeting, in New Orleans. In
revised form, it was published in the Slavic and East European Journal 44:2 (Summer
2000): 253-265 and subsequently reprinted in Bloom’s Modern Critical
Interpretations: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, edited and with an
introduction by Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2004), 215-
229. I would like to thank the anonymous readers for their helpful comments and
encouragement. I would like most especially to thank the late editor of the Slavic and
East European Journal, Stephen Baehr, for his enormously valuable suggestions and
his patience and gentle prodding, and Harold Bloom for having selected my essay. I
am particularly indebted to my husband William Tucker and to Sandra Sherman,
Joseph Candido, the late Brian Wilkie and Beth Juhl for their comments, suggestions,
and help. I very much appreciate the Slavic and East European Journal editors’
permission to reprint this essay.
encounter it in works as wide-ranging as the Bible (Joseph’s coat), Greek

myth (the fates who spin and sever man’s fate), and Homer’s Odyssey
(Penelope’s “web” or shroud, with its “unraveling” of fate). Shakespeare
echoes the cloth, thread and spinning images of antiquity. Lear’s storm-
soaked clothing is a mark of impending tragedy and a generalized
symbol of the human condition (Larry Campion 1980: Vol. 1, 38, 49-50,
56-57, 82; Caroline Spurgeon 1970: 325-326): “Through tatter’d clothes
small vices do appear; / Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with
gold, / And the strong lance of Justice hurtless breaks”, bemoans Lear
near the end (William Shakespeare 1937: King Lear Act IV, Scene VI).
Clothing equals sleep, comfort, and an illusive clear conscience in
Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth: “Methought I heard a voice cry, / Sleep
no more! / Macbeth, does murder sleep,—the innocent sleep, Sleep that
knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore
labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief
nourisher in life’s feast” (William Shakespeare 1937: Macbeth Act II,
Scene I; emphasis in original).
Shakespeare echoes the cloth, thread and spindle images of
antiquity, where they denote fate. In the epic,
the gods spin, with a thread, the great realities—death, misfortune,

riches, homecoming—around a man, as if he were a spindle […] The
gods’ spinning takes place usually at […] birth, once at marriage as
well […] The Moirai may either finish their spinning at birth […] or
continue throughout a man’s life, until all the thread has been drawn
off the distaff, bringing death. They also weave, and a birth-goddess,
the “Stitcher”, was worshipped at Athens.2
Clothing acquires a socio-economic dimension with the impoverished

heroine in Thomas Hood’s “Song of the Shirt”3 and in Eugène Sue’s The
Mysteries of Paris, as well as poignant overtones in Charles Dickens
2
Noel Robertson, “Fate”, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. N.G.L. Hammond and
H.H.Scullard, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 430-431. Penelope
from The Odyssey both weaves and unweaves to delay forced remarriage to one of her
unwanted suitors.
3
Thomas Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” was translated into Russian by M.L. Mikhailov
and D.D. Minaev in 1860, well before Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment.
A.N. Nikoliukin, “Hood, Thomas”, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, ed. A.M. Prokhorov,
3rd ed., English tr. Rachel Berthoff et al. 7 (New York: MacMillan, 1975), 535.
Religious Symbolism of Clothing 69
(Miss Havisham’s wedding “finery”).4 From Dickens’ ragged slum

dwellers to Sue’s urban poor, clothing and the labor necessary to
produce it are central economic indicators in British and French
literature, typically symbolizing wealth or poverty, victimization, and the
enormous disparity between rich and poor.5
Of course, Dostoevsky read these Western models with an
enormous appetite (Robert Belknap 1990: 17, 37). But he clearly broke
new ground in Crime and Punishment by using cloth and clothing as a
specifically Christian symbol. No longer the passive toy of fate that we
associate with the Greek model, or merely the victim of social injustice
central to Sue, Hood, Victor Hugo or Dickens, man now chooses his
destiny by following or disavowing the Gospels and Christ.6 His attitude
toward clothing mirrors that choice. By giving clothing an intrinsically
symbolic Christian significance going beyond its role as a superficial
economic indicator,7 Dostoevsky seeks to appeal to his target readers’
memories of the Gospels and to counteract their excessive fondness for
Western materialism. Throughout Crime and Punishment clothing
functions—as in antiquity—as a marker of a character’s role and fate.
But Dostoevsky juxtaposes the concept of an individual freely choosing
that destiny—through bivalent images of clothing that denote variously
belief in or rejection of Christ—to the classical model of an individual
passively submitting to his fate.8
4
In Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris, La Goualeuse learned to sew in prison. Eugène Sue,
The Mysteries of Paris, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates & Co., s.d), 1, 25.
5
As Hope Christiansen has noted to me, Balzac and Émile Zola represent the same
phenomenon in French literature.
6
In his discussion of Dickens’ impact on Dostoevsky, Grahame Smith states that “the
pupil clearly outstripped the master […]. Victorian domesticity […] forbade the
rigorous examination of character in its fullest depths and screened off the wild and
unpleasant aspects of humanity in a way that effectively prevented the creation of
character on a deeper level”. Grahame Smith, Dickens, Money, and Society (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1968), 122.
7
For a discussion of the role of cloth in Orthodox Christianity, see Ewa Kuryluk,
Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a “True” Image
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 4. Ewa Kuryluk also discusses cloth as shroud on
78, and cloth/clothing in greater detail in her chapter “Cloth”, 179-198.
8
Not that Dostoevsky was the only Russian writer to focus on clothing. Early on in
Aleksandr Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter, Pugachev saves Grinev, remembering
the timely gift of a hareskin coat. Aleksandr Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati
tomakh, ed. D.D. Blagoi et al. IX (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960),
300, 302, 356, 373, 391-392. But it is chance, not charity, that figures most
significantly here, and the coat is an instrument of “Providence”, as discussed in
Dostoevsky breaks new ground in pointing to specific passages

in the Gospels to reveal a character’s spiritual state. Social problems,
poverty and inequity were Dostoevsky’s arena where competing
Western and Russian—specifically Orthodox—solutions were played
out. He opposed a religious answer, founded on belief in Christ, to the
Western solution—borrowed by Russia’s Utopian Socialists—based on
secular institutions. Dostoevsky expanded inherited clothing images to
imbue this theme with the same kind of overwhelming, sustained power
that distinguishes Shakespeare’s dramas. As in the plays of his great
predecessor, Dostoevsky threaded symbols throughout characters,
imagery and plot, giving them a universal resonance now pervaded by
religious faith.9 The pivotal role of Russian Orthodoxy in Crime and
Punishment is clearly evident in and symbolized by clothing images
recalling the New Testament. And, as Joseph Frank reminds us (1976:
43), Dostoevsky was familiar with the Gospels from his earliest
childhood.10 That clothing figures significantly before Dostoevsky is not
at issue here. His innovation lies in connecting clothing images with a
specific Russian Orthodox reading of the Gospels in Crime and
Punishment.
It is the purpose of the present chapter to discuss the symbolic
role of clothing in Crime and Punishment and to analyze the relationship
Svetlana Evdokimova, Pushkin’s Historical Imagination (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1999), 74-76. In Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, the iurodivyi (‘holy
fool’) spurns the material world, with its temporal power, luxury, and temptations.
Typical of the iurodivye, his metal hat mocks the Cap of Monomakh that weighs so
heavy on Boris. For a fine discussion of the holy fool in Pushkin, see Ewa Thompson,
Understanding Russia: The Holy Fool in Russian Culture (New York: University
Press of America, 1987), 8, 72, 104, 112, 116. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii, 277. For
commentary on the holy fool’s metal cap, consult Caryl Emerson’s seminal study,
Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986), 198, 204. But it is Dostoevsky who is the first to exploit clothing
references in the Gospels in a systematic fashion.
9
I am especially indebted to the anonymous reader who noted the significance of cloth
and clothing images in Shakespeare’s King Lear.
10
As Michael Holquist notes, “Leonid Grossman long ago pointed out [that]: ‘The
Book of Job, The Revelation of St. John, Gospel texts, the Epistle of Peter in the New
Testament […] are combined in a manner peculiar to [Dostoevsky] with the
newspaper, the anecdote, the parody, the street scene, the grotesque or even the
lampoon’ ”. Michael Holquist, Dostoevsky and the Novel (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977), 76. Emphasis added. Robert Belknap (1990: 19) observes
that “Dostoevsky’s first reading was a book of Bible stories, which he may have
known already from his deeply religious mother or the churches where she took him”.
between the central characters in the novel and their attire. A character’s
attitude toward clothing in Crime and Punishment functions variously as
a marker for charity or hoarding.11 Charity is expressed by donating or
repairing clothing, trading in used clothing, and sometimes even making
do with poor-quality clothing. These all denote caritas (love, esteem,
affection) and agape (love of mankind).12 Shared clothing is linked
directly with the Mother of God, whose veil (pokrov) “sheltered her
body in life, so now she spiritually sheltered her followers”.13
References to clothing—denoting material wealth opposed to
spiritual riches—are infrequent yet momentous in the New Testament,
which operates as a crucial backdrop for Crime and Punishment. The
‘coat’ in the English translation of the Bible is actually a rubashka
(‘shirt’) in the Russian version, echoed in Lizaveta’s link with shirts and
perhaps serving Dostoevsky as a Russian spiritual counterpart to Hood’s
economic argument in his “Song of the Shirt”. Had Luzhin read the
Gospels attentively—or even at all—he would surely have recalled the
message in Matthew 5:40, where we are exhorted to give away our outer
garment to the man who successfully sues for our shirt.14 (Luzhin
obviously considers himself one of the elect and resembles Raskol’nikov
here.) Luke 6:29 echoes this sentiment, expressed yet again in the form
of clothing: “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also
the other: and him that taketh away thy outer garment forbid not to take
thy shirt also”.
11
Charity is central to Orthodoxy. John Chrysostom preached the necessity of giving
charity to the poor, and charity is combined with agape, love for the poor being
synonymous with alms giving. G.P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind. Kievan
Christianity: The 10th to the 12th Centuries (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960),
219, 222, 269,
12
I am grateful to Donald Engels for pointing out these distinctions to me. These
references are vital because they touch on essential issues in Christianity: caritas
(love, charity) and sacrifice versus pride, selfishness, predation. Harriett Murav has
written about the link between the Gospels and Crime and Punishment but has not
included clothing in her comments. See Harriett Murav’s Holy Foolishness:
Dostoevsky’s Novels and the Poetics of Cultural Critique (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1992), 60-61.
13
George Heard Hamilton, The Art and Architecture of Russia, 3rd ed. (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1983), 146.
14
Grinev’s gift to recalls this passage from Matthew and functions as an ironic subtext
to Luzhin’s miserly selfishness. Stephen Baehr is the source of this typically keen and
helpful observation. Moreover, one makes cloth “whole” in the spiritual sense
(echoing Veronica) by dividing it in two and giving half away.
These sentiments are especially cogent for Lizaveta and for

Sonia, whose hat with a flaming-red feather recalls the fire associated
with St. Sophia.15 Matthew 25:43 reminds us of the need for charity,
symbolized by clothing: “I was a wanderer, and ye took me not in:
naked, and ye clothed me not […]”. Charity joins faith and hope as one
of the three virtues in the New Testament (in I Corinthians, I
Thessalonians, Colossians, Romans, I Peter, and Hebrews). It is, states
F.L. Cross (1997: 321), “[t]he greatest of the ‘theological virtues’ […]
directed primarily towards God, but […] also owed to ourselves and our
neighbours as the objects of God’s love. Its natural opposite is hatred,
which may also take the negative form of indifference”. Combined with
the four cardinal virtues of Greek philosophy (wisdom, courage,
temperance, and justice) these three virtues yield the seven cardinal
virtues, the positive counterpart to the seven deadly sins (Alexander
1925: 430-432).16
Since charity is linked with humility and Christ’s love for
humankind, the necessity of wearing unfashionable or rough clothing
would seem a small price to pay, material goods being of little
consequence for the Orthodox believer. Reveling in his luxurious and
fashionable clothing, Svidrigailov has forgotten this crucial point. Not so
Lizaveta, clad in goatskin shoes. In Matthew 6:28, Jesus reminds us:
“And why take ye thought for raiment?” [Russian version: “And why are
you anxious about clothing”?] Look at the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin”. (Might Christ's tunic without a
seam [John 19:23] fit in here?) Garments purified with the blood of
Christ appear in Revelations 7:14: “ ‘And I said unto him, Sir, thou
knowest’. And he said to me, ‘These are they which came out of the
great tribulation, and have washed their clothing, and made them white
with the Blood of the Lamb’ ”. Dostoevsky fuses clothing, blood and
sacrifice in Lizaveta’s rough, bloodied garments (PSS 6: 51-54).
Philanthropy in the form of bestowing or sharing clothing—
Razumikhin’s clothing “gift” to Raskol’nikov comes to mind—forges
15
Caitlín Matthew notes the association of St. Sophia with fire in Sophia Goddess of
Wisdom: The Divine Feminine from Black Goddess to World-Soul (London: The
Aquarian Press, 1991), 291. See also Evgenii Trubetskoi, Tri ocherka o russkoi ikone:
umozrenie v kraskakh dva mira v drevno-russkoi ikonopisi. Rossiia v eë ikone
(Moscow: InfoArt, 1991), 52.
16
I am grateful to Dennis Slattery of the Pacifica Graduate Institute for this timely
suggestion.
bonds with others and extends charity and agape. The apocryphal St.
Veronica, said to have wiped Christ’s face with a cloth (surely part of her
own clothing) when he fell on his way to Calvary, comes to mind here
(Farmer 1992: 477).17 That this piece of clothing retains Christ’s image
following Veronica’s charitable act denotes its significance as an
emblem of the divine love represented among men by the philanthropic
gesture, a gesture retained in Veronica’s memory and soul, as well as on
her clothing.18 Clothing as a realization of the memory of a charitable act
plays a significant role in Crime and Punishment, when Nastas’ya
reminds Raskol’nikov that the murdered Lizaveta once fixed a shirt for
him (discussed below).
Kenotic humility—which echoes Christ’s incarnation—
functions as an important and related principle of Russian Orthodoxy. It
is
the most ambiguous among Christian virtues […] The consciousness

of one’s sins […] is enhanced by the feeling of the abysmal distance
between God and man [and] on the contrary, an expression of
nearness to the incarnate God (Fedotov 1960: 210).
Throughout the novel, Sonia and Lizaveta represent through clothing the
acceptance of kenotic humility.
Hoarding or taking clothing denotes rejection of the Gospels and
functions as a negative marker. Characters who dress too well have
17
The legend of Veronica is also part of Orthodox apocrypha, as attested in the
Chronographia of Johannes of Malala X, 306-308, cited in Samuel Macauley
Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge XII (New
York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1912), 166. See also Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her
Cloth, for further commentary. I am grateful to Joseph Candido for reminding me
about St. Veronica.
18
Nor should we forget that cloth also functions in icon painting. Icons were painted
on boards. As George Hamilton notes, “When the panel was thoroughly seasoned, it
was often covered with a linen cloth upon which was laid a fine gesso ground. The
design was drawn on this [….]”. George Heard Hamilton, The Art and Architecture of
Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 104. Konrad Onasch and
Annemarie Schnieper further note (in Icons: The Fascination and the Reality, tr.
Daniel G. Conklin [New York: Riverside Book company, Inc., 1995], 233) that “a
layer of cloth called a pavoloka was placed over [a] layer of glue. All sorts of
materials were used for a pavoloka, from women’s scarves to expensive linens; the
cloth layer on an icon by Andrei Rublev was taken from a patterned table cloth, for
instance”. Alexandra Heidi Karriker has remarked to me that linen was not always
employed in the production of icons, but it certainly could be. Private conversation.
failed to heed the message of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew

5:40). So has the pawnbroker Alyona, who conceals bits of hoarded
cloth among her pledges. Expensive, ostentatious clothing—associated
with economic and sexual predation in reference to Luzhin and
Svidrigailov—is a distinctly negative image in Revelations 17:4-5: “And
the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with
gold and precious stones and pearls, and held a golden cup in her hand
full of the abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her
forehead was a name written, ‘mystery, Babylon the Great. The Mother
of Harlots and Earthly Abominations’ ”. “Babylon”—read Rome—and
St. Petersburg are linked as two corrupt capitals, personified by the
sexual and/or financial greed of Luzhin and Svidrigailov. That this
accusation does not also refer to the humble, the self-sacrificing
prostitute Sonia (Sophia) Marmeladova and the pregnant Lizaveta
follows from their crucial association with Christian charity. The
charitable impulse distinguishes both of these characters throughout,
with Sonia remaining “pure” in spite of her prostitution.19
Raskol’nikov’s clothing points to revolt and murder right from
the start, an immediate marker of his rejection of Christ. This
renunciation is conflated with his espousal of nihilism and
Utilitarianism, with their roots ultimately in the West. In spite of the heat
(“Na ulitse”, the narrator informs us, “zhara stoiala strashnaia [..]”:
‘There was terrible heat out in the street...’, the verb stoiala—literally
‘stood’—suggesting that this heat is motionless, permanent [PSS 6: 6]),
Raskol’nikov wears a foreign-looking hat in addition to his usual rags,
synonymous with negative bits of cloth:20
He was badly dressed, such that someone else, even a man used to it,
would have been ashamed to go out into the street in such rags [....]
And meanwhile, when one drunk, who was being hauled off down
the street in an enormous cart pulled by an enormous dray horse [all
of which will be echoed in his dream]—for some unknown reason—
19
The prostitute as societal victim comes right out of French literature. Albert Joseph
George, The Development of French Romanticism: The Impact of the Industrial
Revolution on Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1955), 185. Edna St.
Vincent Millay recapitulates self-sacrifice in the creation of clothing in her 1922
poem, “The Harp Weaver”.
20
There is a possible link here between Raskol’nikov and the iurodivye (‘fools in
Christ’), who typically went around in rags, perhaps pointing ahead to his future
redemption. Ewa Thompson, Understanding Russia, 1-2.
shouted to him all of a sudden while he was going past: “Hey you
there, you German hat wearer [hatter]”! (PSS 6: 7)21
His foreign hat—a special marker of revolt—and rags do not really

bother him because of his “zlobn[oe] prezreni[e]” (‘malicious
contempt’) (PSS 6: 6) for the world, the opposite of charity. His looming
crime born of revolt separates him from everyone. And, as Razumikhin
reminds him (PSS 6: 101), one’s headgear is a most important item of
clothing.
He could be better dressed. At the beginning of Part One,
Chapter Five, the narrator makes us privy to Raskol’nikov’s thoughts on
his financial state. Raskol’nikov muses that he could have approached
Razumikhin, who would have readily shared his meager funds with his
friend to buy shoes and fix up his clothing. But Raskol’nikov has chosen
not to do so, having dismissed the whole thing as smeshno (‘ridiculous’
[PSS 6: 44]). He is particularly concerned only that his obviously foreign
hat will make him look conspicuous on the day of the actual murder,
missing entirely the more important point that his German
“Zimmermann” hat cuts him off still further from Russian traditions and
mores. Even his clothing is alien, a point noticed, significantly, by a
“man of the street” of peasant origins. The hat comment reminds us that
Raskol’nikov has drifted dangerously far away from the Orthodox
community. As Ewa Thompson (1987: 116) has cogently noted, “the
Christian custom [is to wear] garments that are as plain and ordinary as
possible, so as not to stand out in the crowd and not to attract attention”.
The name “Zimmermann” (das Zimmer, ‘room’, moreover, a “German”
room, or at least the German word for ‘room’) links Raskol’nikov
sartorially with his small chamber, his “cell”, under the roof. “His room
was located under the very roof of a tall five-story building and
resembled sooner a wardrobe than an apartment” (PSS 6: 5). (The roof
here echoes the iconic ladder; see the third chapter, on the iconic.)
Raskol’nikov “carries” his room, “worn” on top of his head in the form
of a hat, down the stairs and out into the street. Razumikhin (PSS 6: 101)
21
The epithet “German” links him with the “German” (foreign) clothes associated
with the reforms of Peter the Great and, by extension, with Peter himself, and with the
city of St. Petersburg. For a brief comment on “German” clothes, see Nicholas V.
Riasanovsky, The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985), 247.
labels the hat a “palmerston”, reinforcing Raskol’nikov’s foreign

leanings.
Suspecting Raskol’nikov from the start, the police inspector
Porfiry Petrovich associates the cardinal idea contained in
Raskol’nikov's essay, that everyone is divided into the extraordinary and
the ordinary, with distinctive clothing that could distinguish them from
each other. Wondering how to tell these groups apart, Porfirii Petrovich
muses that there must be some kind of external sign: “Wouldn't it be
possible, for example, for them to acquire some special clothing [....]”
(PSS 6: 198-201). While lurching toward murder in his distinctive and
foreign (Western) hat, Raskol’nikov has anticipated him.
His student overcoat merges with the Zimmerman hat to
engulf Raskol’nikov in garments linked with a youthful flirtation with
Western ideas and with the Western-oriented city of St. Petersburg,
with intellectual (as opposed to spiritual) inquiry conjoined with
rebellion.22 This rebellion is enacted as murder. A sartorial
accomplice, his overcoat even abets his crime. Raskol’nikov’s
preparations for committing the murder entail altering his coat by
sewing a sling inside to hold his murder weapon, an axe. He tears the
cloth for the sling from an unwashed shirt (PSS 6: 56), having
transformed a “seamless” garment with Gospel associations (cf. John
19:23) into bits of cloth that have negative echoes in the novel. Now
linked with his second murder victim Lizaveta as well as the Gospels,
the shirt will come back to haunt him. Clothing has been transformed
from an object representing Christian charity into a bit of cloth used as
a murder weapon, conflated here with a shirt forever associated with
Lizaveta:
“Lizaveta was killed too”! Nastas’ya suddenly blurted out, turning

toward Raskol’nikov [....] “Lizaveta”? muttered Raskol’nikov in a
barely audible voice. “Lizaveta, the second-hand clothes dealer, or
don’t you know? She used to come down here. Fixed a shirt for
22
Baedeker informs us that “[n]early one-tenth of the male population of St.
Petersburg wear some kind of uniform, including not only the numerous military
officers, but civil servants, and even students, schoolboys, and others”. Cited in
Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad, “Notes”. Andrei Bely, Petersburg
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 310. Like Raskol’nikov, Ivan
Karamazov from The Brothers Karamazov was a university student. See F.M.
Dostoevskii, Brat’ia Karamazovy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, ed.
V.G. Bazanov et al, 14 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), 14.
you once”. Raskol’nikov turned toward the wall [....] (PSS 6:

105).23
Nastas’ya’s reference to Lizaveta is a painful reminder not only of

Raskol’nikov’s unintended second murder, but also of a charitable act
(toward him!) associated with divine grace, Veronica’s, for example.
Raskol’nikov’s reaction underscores the enormity of a theory that has
backfired with tragic consequences.
Following the murders, he wipes the axe on some laundry (bits
of cloth?), connecting crime, guilt, blood, and clothing. Then he worries
about his blood-soaked clothing, particularly a sock and pocket, but ends
up soiling clean cloth in an attempt to cover up his crime.
[H]e wiped everything clean with some laundry that was hanging to
dry on a clothes line strung across the kitchen […]. Then, as much as
the dim light of the kitchen would allow, he examined his coat,
pants, boots […] Then a dark thought suddenly entered his head:
that, maybe, all of his clothing was covered with blood […] (PSS 6:
65-66, 72)24
That Raskol’nikov carries this bloody clothing around with him

underscores the fact that the murders are always with him. One of
Dostoevsky’s (many!) masterful touches lies in placing bloody and
peripheral bits of clothing—a sock and pocket—within Raskol’nikov’s
garments. Hidden from view to outsiders, they are lodged in his memory
and readily apprehensible to the murderer himself. The pawnbroker’s
concealed bits of cloth form a counterpoint to Raskol’nikov’s.25 He
23
This passage is almost identical in the earliest redaction of the novel, demonstrating
that Dostoevsky developed his shirt image early on. See PSS 7: 64. I am grateful to
Brett Cooke for his reminder to consult the earlier redactions.
24
Benedict Carey has noted that “researchers call [the] urge to clean up the ‘Macbeth
effect’, after […] bloodying her hands when her husband, at her urging, murders King
Duncan”. “Lady Macbeth Not Alone in Her Quest for Spotlessness”, The New York
Times (12 September 2006).
25
John Jones asserts that these bits of odd cloth “belong with the extremely important
disjunctive flotsam of the book: paintpots, old rope, the odd sock, boots […], frayed
blood-soaked strips torn from trouser bottoms and coat pockets, an axe-sling in
ribbons […]”. The present author maintains that cloth plays a unique role because of
its overriding religious purpose. Jones, Dostoevsky, 204. My student Jonathan
Perrodin has astutely reminded me that Christ was buried in strips of cloth. See John
11:43-44, Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46 and Luke 23:53 for specific Gospel references
to Christ’s burial.
committed murder to elevate himself above others and attain man-

Godhood, but the blood that adheres to his clothing is the reverse of the
blood that Christ (God-manhood) shed as a sacrifice for the sake of
others, the Blood of the Lamb from Revelations 7:14. Murder born of
intellect undermines charity born of Christian belief.
Luzhin’s expensive attire echoes the New Testament twice. In
his initial appearance in the novel when he drops in on Raskol’nikov’s
miserable garret, Luzhin shows off his finery, designed to appeal to
and conquer his fiancée Dunya—Avdotya Romanovna—
coincidentally Raskol’nikov’s sister. Dostoevsky’s sarcastic irony
knocks the props out from under Luzhin:
In the first place, it was evident and even too noticeable that Pëtr
Petrovich had earnestly rushed to make use of his several days in the
capital to make time to outfit himself and adorn himself in
anticipation of his bride, this, however, being highly innocent and
proper. Even his perhaps too self-satisfied consciousness of his
pleasant change for the better could have been forgiven, since Pëtr
Petrovich was on the verge of being a bridegroom. All his clothing
had just come from the tailor and everything was good, even though
it was perhaps too new and too evident in its obvious purpose (PSS
6: 113).
Dostoevsky next alludes to Luzhin’s top hat, lilac-colored, real Jouvenet

gloves, and the light and youthful color of his clothing. Each item is
enumerated in a detailed description that drips with sarcastic irony. “He
wore a handsome summer jacket of a light-brown color, light-colored,
light-weight pants, a waistcoat of the same material, fine linen that had
just been bought, the very lightest little necktie with rosy stripes, and
best of all was the fact that all of this even suited Pëtr Petrovich”.
Dostoevsky then proceeds to describe Luzhin’s face and hair. His hair,
with only the “slightest touch of gray”, had been curled, with the
unfortunate result that “his face bore an unavoidable resemblance to a
German going to the altar” (PSS 6: 114). Luzhin’s “German face”
recapitulates Raskol’nikov’s “German hat”. Dostoevsky uses Luzhin’s
appearance to undermine Raskol’nikov’s—and the intended reader’s—
misguided flirtation with “German”, Western, intellectual currents.
Luzhin appears younger than forty-five (the age of Dostoevsky
himself at the time the novel was written). “If there was anything in this
quite handsome and solid-appearing physiognomy that was really
unpleasant and repulsive”, the narrator informs us, “then it came from
other causes” (PSS 6: 113-114). Which other causes? Perhaps it

stemmed from his repulsive, predatory sexuality? We know that Luzhin
plans to marry a much younger woman whose poverty puts her into an
even weaker relative position relative to his own (PSS 6: 165). And pride
in his new clothing is the opposite of humility. In a deliberate misreading
not only of Matthew 5:40 and Luke 6:29, cited above, but also a parody
of Raskol’nikov’s own philosophy of blatant inequality underlying the
murders, which itself reverses the message of the Gospels, Luzhin
informs Razumikhin, Zosimov and Raskol’nikov that “if I were to rip
my coat in half and share it with my neighbor, we’d each be left half-
naked” (PSS 6: 116).
The larger point he overlooks is the essence of the Gospel
message: not to render clothing unusable by transforming it into bits of
cloth, but to give of one’s intact “seamless” garment.26 Luzhin leaves his
fiancée and her mother in want while spending money on himself. As
Raskol’nikov bitterly observes, “[y]ou cut your coat according to your
cloth” (“po odezhke protiagivai nozhki”) (PSS 6: 36). Within the world
of material possessions as exemplified by clothing, Luzhin acts out
Raskol’nikov’s philosophical premise of taking power and life.27 In a
striking contrast, Dostoevsky juxtaposes Raskol’nikov's tearing of cloth,
the pawnbroker’s bits of torn or cut cloth, and Luzhin’s refusal to give
cloth to Lizaveta’s mending or fixing clothing, specifically,
Raskol’nikov’s shirt. The act of mending clothing—of putting clothing
together instead of tearing it apart—recalls Veronica and the shroud, as
well as the seamless garment of Christ, a symbol of divine perfection,
caritas, agape. Lizaveta acts out Christ’s divine love and sacrifice on a
human level by making clothing, the material symbol of sacrificial love,
whole. Luzhin reverses it.
Dostoevsky contrasts Raskol’nikov’s “Zimmermann” hat and
Luzhin’s vaguely German appearance to the innately Russian attire of a
26
Luzhin’s philosophy of acting according to what seem to be his own best interests
fits in well with the materialism of one of Dostoevsky’s favorite targets:
Chernyshevsky. For a discussion of the materialism that Chernyshevsky admired and
Luzhin parodied, see Robert Anchor, The Enlightenment Tradition (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967), 9-10, 107, 109.
27
As Liza Knapp observes, the message from “The Sermon on the Mount” is: “Do not
be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your
body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than
clothing?” (Matthew 6:25). Liza Knapp, Annihilation of Inertia: Dostoevsky and
Metaphysics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 65.
woman who comes to Raskol’nikov’s aid. Dostoevsky carefully sets the

stage for this scene. Having just turned down Razumikhin’s charitable
offer of translation work, Raskol’nikov goes out into the street. He drifts
along without paying attention and walks right into the path of a
carriage. The driver strikes him on the back with a whip, exciting
Raskol’nikov’s fury and the amused laughter of passersby. The narrator
never reminds us of an earlier horse-beating scene from Raskol’nikov’s
nightmare, but the reader recalls it and Raskol’nikov probably does
himself. An elderly woman clad in the goatskin shoes of a iurodivaia (a
‘fool in Christ’) notices and pities him. (Through her clothing, she recalls
Lizaveta.) The girl accompanying this woman is “probably her
daughter”, observes the narrator. The girl’s “prop” is a green umbrella
(PSS 6: 89). Green is a significant color marker that resurfaces in the
form of Sonia’s green shawl in the epilogue. It is a color, notes
Kasatkina (1995: 21), “directly connected with the image of the Mother
of God, who is the intercessor and representative before the Lord for
man and the earth, for every kind of earthly creature. [The color green] is
constantly present in icons as well”. The woman gives Raskol’nikov a
coin, her act linking her with the larger themes of caritas and sobornost’.
She underscores verbally her Orthodox associations with clothing, when
she asks him to “take it, sir, for Christ’s sake” (PSS 6: 89).
Through the medium of clothing, Dostoevsky represents
Dunya’s relatively weak position as Luzhin’s potential prey and
Svidrigailov’s near victim. In contrast to Luzhin and Svidrigailov and
their finery, the impoverished Dunya was “dressed in a sort of dark dress
of flimsy material, and with a white sheer scarf tied around her neck.
Razumikhin immediately noticed that [...] the situation of both women
[Dunya, and Pul’kheria Aleksandrovna, her mother] was extremely
poor” (PSS 6: 165). His sympathetic, non-exploitative reaction to
Dunya’s poverty places him in the camp of charitable, caring
individuals. And this reaction juxtaposes him to Luzhin, whose
selfishness (as one of the “elect”) forces both women to go around in
rags. Even Dunya’s clothing is “insulted” upon her abrupt expulsion
from the Svidrigailovs’, with all of her possessions carried to her
mother’s in a “simple peasant cart, into which all her things—linen,
dresses, everything [...] unpacked and messed up, had been tossed” (PSS
6: 29).
If Dunya and her mother are poor, Katerina Ivanovna and her
family are destitute, the clothing representing their former status literally
in tatters. The narrator informs us that “[e]verything at the Marmeladovs’

was scattered about and in disorder [like Dunya’s belongings up to this
point], especially the children's rags”(PSS 6: 22). Katerina Ivanovna still
tries to keep up appearances, as evidenced by desperate laundering and
sewing. She washes her little boy’s only shirt at night. Any rips must be
fixed immediately; perhaps the negative symbolism of bits of cloth plays
a role here, in addition to Katerina Ivanovna’s practical considerations.
But her most important garment is the one forever lost to her, the shawl
she wore before the governor. It is a garment at once uniting clothing,
status, and pride (PSS 6: 138-139). Sonia, observes Kasatkina (1995: 21-
22), will redeem this shawl in the epilogue.
We can see this same link between urban decay and poverty—
symbolized by clothing—in Dickens’ Little Nell from The Old Curiosity
Shop.28 Yet poverty in and of itself is not destructive in Dostoevsky,
whose religious symbolism transcends the immediate socio-economic
issues we encounter in Dickens. In spite of Lizaveta’s murder, she re-
emerges triumphant within the context of memory, initially Sonia’s,
eventually even Raskol’nikov’s. Katerina Ivanovna’s suffering, which
she could have avoided had she only heeded the lessons of the New
Testament by which Sonia and Lizaveta lived, results in part from her
injured pride—one of the seven deadly sins, and the opposite of Sonia’s
humble love.
And what of Marmeladov himself, the cause of so much
distress? Even before the murders, he engages Raskol’nikov in a spirited
monologue about the domestic wreckage his drinking has precipitated.
He finally obtains a bureaucratic position, symbolized by clothing in the
form of a uniform. A salary would make it possible for him to support
his family. But he soon drinks away his new post, with his official
uniform lying in its own drunken stupor (PSS 6: 13-22). Marmeladov
plays out Raskol’nikov’s rebellion on sociological and economic levels:
clothing figures in self-abuse and familial victimization. Through his
drinking and self-destructive behavior, Marmeladov undermines clothing
as a symbol of self-sacrifice and destroys the larger connection between
28
I would like to thank Olga Cooke for sharing her observations on Little Nell. For an
examination of this theme in Dickens, see F.S. Schwarzbach, Dickens and the City
(London: Athlone Press, 1979). Donald Fanger’s Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism:
A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1965) contains a fine treatment of Dickens’ impact on
Dostoevsky.
clothing and charity. His behavior is the opposite of his daughter

Sonia’s.
It would be instructive to consider the narrator’s assessment of
Luzhin’s attire in light of his description of Svidrigailov’s analogous
combination of sartorial splendor, youthful pretensions, and moral
repulsiveness. Interestingly and significantly, these characters not only
resemble each other; they are also presented at neighboring points in
the novel:
He [Svidrigailov] was a man of about fifty, taller than average [....]

He was elegantly and comfortably dressed and looked like a portly
gentleman [barin]. In his hands was a red walking-stick [suggesting
aggressive sexual behavior] which he tapped, at each step, on the
pavement, and on his hands were a pair of brand-new gloves [like
Luzhin’s] [....]. Generally, he was an excellently preserved man who
seemed much younger than his years (PSS 6: 188).29
We meet Svidrigailov later when Raskol’nikov runs into him in a tavern,

in a scene that eerily anticipates Ivan Karamazov’s encounter with his
brother Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov (PSS 14: 208-241).
Raskol’nikov finds Svidrigailov being entertained by a boy-accordionist
and a girl with a tucked-up striped skirt and Tyrolean hat with ribbons,
once again linking Western attire with prostitution, as well as with
Raskol’nikov’s “German” hat. Svidrigailov’s clothing was “foppish,
summery, light. His linen was especially foppish. On his finger was an
enormous ring with a precious stone” (PSS 6: 355-358). Svidrigailov’s
expensive and showy jewelry denotes hoarding as well as sexual
predation, and his tailor-made summer clothing worn in a cold climate
spells ostentatious expenditure. Dostoevsky uses clothing to equate
Svidrigailov with Luzhin. With their amalgam of stylish clothing worn
for the particular purpose Dostoevsky spells out—sexual dominance
directed at much younger women and girls—both characters conflate the
sins of Babylon/Rome from the Book of Revelations with the city of St.
Petersburg, a locus of “power, influence, idolatry, and wickedness […]”
(Watson 1992: 566). St. Petersburg, Russia’s Western-oriented capital,
teemed with destitute women, with prostitutes, and with the men on the
make who preyed on them. The concerns here are not only poverty and
29
Shortly before the murders, Raskol’nikov encounters out on the street this same
combination of victimized, poorly-dressed young girl-victim and dandyish, well-
dressed sexual predator. Significantly, he calls this man a “Svidrigailov”. PSS 6: 40.
rampant sexuality, but also the obvious predatory materialism

antithetical to Orthodox values of charity and agape, materialism linked,
by extension, with Western philosophical currents.
Svidrigailov’s sexual stalking extends beyond young women to
include children, dressed in a way that hints at their sexual vulnerability
and, in the case of his fiancée and the child in his nightmare, their
resemblance to prostitutes. His fifteen-year-old fiancée is still young
enough to be in a short little dress (“v koroten’kom plat’ice” [PSS 6:
369]). Her garment evokes the singer’s dress in the tavern. The figure of
the child-bride or child-prostitute will evolve during Svidrigailov’s
macabre last night, where initially it takes the form of his child-victim
dressed all in white satin, an image of desecrated purity. The first girl of
Svidrigailov’s nightmares is a suicide lying in her coffin and surrounded
by flowers, symbols of spring and the Resurrection.30 Her white garment
parodies raiment washed with the Blood of the Lamb. Her death by
drowning parodies baptism:
The floors were strewn with freshly-mowed, fragrant grass, the

windows were open, fresh, light, cool air penetrated into the room,
little birds chirped under the windows, but in the middle of the
chamber, on some tables covered with white satin shrouds, stood a
coffin [...]. Garlands of flowers entwined it on all sides. A young girl,
all in flowers, lay in it, in a white tulle dress [...] her hair [...] was
wet; a wreath of roses encircled her head (PSS 6: 391).
This image of a violated child-suicide degenerates still further in

Svidrigailov’s final nightmare about the child in the corridor in a wet rag
of a dress, a terrified little girl of about five. The repetition of wetness
functions as a negative reversal of baptism and suggests damnation
instead of salvation, especially for Svidrigailov, who, states George
30
In his twelfth-century “Sermon on the First Sunday After Easter”, (“Slovo Kirilla
Turovskogo v novuiu nedeliu posle Paskhi”), Kirill of Turov links spring (symbolized
by flowers) with Easter and salvation. Adolf Stender-Peterson, in collaboration with
Stefan Congrat-Butler, Anthology of Old Russian Literature (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1954), 119-120. See also Dmitrij Čiževskij, History of Russian
Literature from the Eleventh Century to the End of the Baroque (‘S-Gravenhage:
Mouton, 1962), 86-87. Dostoevsky’s contemporary Russian reader familiar with Kirill
of Turov would also have been aware of Hilarion’s “Sermon on Law and Grace”.
Dostoevsky recapitulates Hilarion’s opposition of law—Raskol’nikov, who has
created his own—with grace, embodied in Lizaveta and Sonia. For this sermon, see
Stender-Peterson, Anthology, 109-113, and also Čiževskij, History, 36-39.
Gibian (1989: 529), hated water as the “symbol of rebirth and

regeneration [for Dostoevsky]”.31 Attempting to help, Svidrigailov
removes her clothing and covers her with his blanket. The blanket
combines the detested wetness with sexual predation that overwhelms
his attempt at charity. So does the act of taking off her clothes, in spite of
what appear on the surface of things to be good intentions. (These good
intentions backshadow to his monetary gift to the Marmeladov children,
a gift tainted by Svidrigailov’s predatory associations.)
Her scarlet lips seemed to burn and seethe [...] It suddenly seemed to
him that her long black lashes appeared to quiver and wink, as
though they were going to lift, and from under them there peered out
a sly, sharp little eye, which gave a wink that was somehow not
childlike, as if the little girl weren’t sleeping but pretending. Yes,
that's how it was, her little lips parted in a smile [...] now this was
laughter [...] There was something infinitely hideous and outrageous
in that laughter (PSS 6: 393).32
The corruption of baptism confirms that Svidrigailov’s soul is beyond

redemption and symbolizes his fate. He is completely divorced from
Orthodox sobornost’ and caritas. Whereas Lizaveta’s goodness enables
her to “live” even after death, Svidrigailov is “dead” even though he is
still alive.
While Dostoevsky couples clothing with sexual predation, greed
and acquisitiveness, and even murder, clothing also can and does
symbolize and reinforce positive qualities in Sonia, Lizaveta, and
Razumikhin. It denotes giving, the charitable impulse that symbolizes
Christ and His great sacrifice to grant salvation to all who will accept it,
even the pawnbroker and Raskol’nikov. Both Lizaveta and Razumikhin
are associated with charity, in contrast to Luzhin’s and Svidrigailov’s
pointed hoarding, symbolized by their new and stylish wardrobes.
Infusing the sociological topic of clothing with religious significance,
Dostoevsky juxtaposes Lizaveta’s and Razumikhin’s cloth sharing,
linked with Christianity, to the secular cloth-sharing co-operative and
unrealizable earthly “paradise” of Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is To
31
Liza Knapp suggests that the “specific activity of washing is [normally] symbolic of
purification”. Liza Knapp, The Annihilation of Inertia, 77. Svidrigailov’s nightmare
reverses this symbolism.
32
Svidrigailov is responsible for the deaths of his wife Marfa Petrovna and servant
Filip, his actions in counterpoint to those of Sonia and Lizaveta and even, eventually,
Raskol’nikov. PSS 6: 175, 219-220.
Be Done?,33 a novel Dostoevsky despised. Giving clothing evokes the

charitable impulse and eventual Christian redemption. Hence
Razumikhin, although acting on the mistaken (sociological) assumption
that his friend’s troubles are principally economic in nature, extends
charity, love, and redemption that start Raskol’nikov back on the road to
forgiveness and salvation. That Razumikhin has spent Raskol’nikov’s
money effectively converts materialism to caritas. This scene with
Razumikhin and the clothing he shows Raskol’nikov contrast ironically
to our introduction to Luzhin, noted above. Naturally, shirts are included
in the mix:
[H]e spread out before Raskol’nikov a pair of gray trousers made of

light-weight woolen material [...] [saying, “here’s] a waistcoat to
match, just as fashion demands [...] I made a summer purchase,
because toward autumn you’ll need warmer material [...] But what’s
this”? And he pulled from his pocket Raskol’nikov’s old shoe,
cracked, all caked with dry mud, full of holes. “I went out with this
in reserve and managed to reconstruct some kind of actual
measurement on the basis of this monster [...] Here [...] are three
shirts, unbleached linen, but with stylish fronts [...]” (PSS 6: 101-
102).
The gift of clothing anticipates Raskol’nikov’s gradual return to the

Orthodox community and his eventual acceptance of Christ later, in
the epilogue.
Work with clothing seems to be the only type of legitimate
employment available to women as a last step before prostitution. Just
before she became a streetwalker, Sonia made half a dozen Holland
shirts for State Counselor Klopstock, who never paid her for her work
(PSS 6: 17). Klopstock seems to be just another predator linked with
the West, as is reflected in his name. Dostoevsky, however, makes a
33
“In his numerous articles, book reviews, translations, and compilations of Western
treatises on politics and science”, Irina Paperno informs us, “Chernyshevsky was an
ardent propagandist of materialism in epistemology and aesthetics, utilitarian ethics,
and the politics of anti-liberalism […] What Is To Be Done? is a social as well as an
emotional utopia […]”. Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A
Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 22-23.
Dostoevsky parodies What Is To Be Done? savagely in Crime and Punishment, notes
Paperno, in Chernyshevsky, 19. Late in What Is To Be Done?, Vera Pavlovna’s girls
are members of a sewing co-operative, a detail not lost on the ever-alert Dostoevsky.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, tr. N. Dole and S.S. Skidelsky (Ann
Arbor: Ardis, 1986), 392-397.
complex network of connections here. Klopstock’s German name

relates him, of course, to both Raskol’nikov (the Zimmermann hat)
and Luzhin (his bridegroom’s face), but his rank is also a significant
marker. As an official in Peter the Great’s bureaucratic system,
Klopstock represents the corrupt and artificial Western European
veneer that has been forcibly superimposed on Russian culture in the
wake of Peter the Great’s rule.34 This Westernization is inimical to
Russian Orthodox values and, typically for Dostoevsky, is represented
through the visual object; here, that medium is clothing.
After reading his mother’s letter about his sister Dunya’s
projected marriage to Luzhin—in a scene preceding the murders—
Raskol’nikov angrily conjectures, surely, correctly, that his mother
would have to live on her own after the wedding. She would be
forced, he assumes, to support herself by knitting winter kerchiefs and
“embroidering cuffs” (PSS 6: 36).35 This apparently minor detail is
echoed in a later scene between Sonia and Katerina Ivanovna. His
mother’s sacrifice is underscored by her probable loss of vision: “in
ten years, mother will have managed to go blind from these kerchiefs
[…]” (PSS 6: 38).
Raskol’nikov’s bitter irony recalls Thomas Hood’s “Song of
the Shirt”: “A woman sat in unwomanly rags, / Plying her needle and
thread / Stitch! stitch! stitch! / In poverty, hunger and dirt…Work—
work—work— / Till the brain begins to swim! / Work—work—work
/ Till the eyes are heavy and dim”! (Hood s.d.: 123-125).
Raskol’nikov echoes such Utopian Socialist Western thinkers as
Claude Henri comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, who
inspired angry rebellion among fictional and non-fictional Russians
alike and had an enormous impact on the young Dostoevsky prior to
his Siberian imprisonment (although Dostoevsky always held on to his
Russian Orthodox values).36 The theme of women’s labor, with
34
As Charles Passage notes in Character Names in Dostoevsky’s Fiction (Ann Arbor:
Ardis, 1982), 67.
35
Work with cloth and clothing was one of the limited options available to girls and
young women in the West, as well as in Russia. See Colin Heywood, Childhood in
Nineteenth-Century France: Work, Health, and Education among the ‘Classes
Populaires’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). These conditions find
literary reflection in Eugène Sue’s novel Les Mystères de Paris.
36
For a discussion of Saint-Simon’s and Fourier’s impact on Dostoevsky, see Joseph
Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990), 46. For all his early attraction to Western social thought, Dostoevsky
women depersonalized as part of a cloth-making mechanism, recalls

the negative machine imagery running through nineteenth-century
Russian literature (Baehr 1989: 86-87, 97-98).37 Dostoevsky has
transformed an economic (Western) symbol into an Orthodox one,
undermining through an emotionally charged image the superficial
economic issue central to Utopian Socialism.
Where a mother’s loss is visual, a daughter’s is moral or
societal. Daughters turn to streetwalking. Sonia sacrifices herself
(kenotic humility, agape) for her stepmother, stepsiblings, and her father
Marmeladov, who drinks up her earnings: “Well, here I am, her own
blood father, took those thirty kopecks and filched them for myself, to
get drunk” (PSS 6: 20). Linked with prostitution, Sonia’s degradation is
far lower than Katerina Ivanovna’s destitution combined with the
embittered, injured pride of her ruined noble status (PSS 6: 22-25).
Humility (iurodstvo, ‘humiliation in imitation of Christ’) and her innate
purity protect Sonia and recall the redemption of prostitutes in the New
Testament, most notably Mary Magdalene’s. Her parents’
impoverishment highlights the economic suffering of an oppressed urban
class composed principally of low-level bureaucrats. Socio-economic
issues related to the Marmeladovs comprise the embedded plot of The
Drunks—a novel that Dostoevsky originally conceived separately from
the murders of Crime and Punishment—with the focus on family
problems stemming from drunkenness (Mochulsky 1971: 271-274). In
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky takes this theme of socio-economic
suffering away from the Utopian Socialist/nihilist writers—
Chernyshevsky comes to mind here—and instead associates it with the
larger religious issues of Crime and Punishment, tying it in through
poverty with caritas and agape. Dostoevsky realizes this end partially
through Lizaveta and Polen’ka but most strikingly of all through Sonia,
whose caritas shows Raskol’nikov the way to redemption.
nevertheless “maintained that the social institutions of the Russian peasantry provided
‘more solid and moral foundations’ for the solution of Russian social problems
‘than…all the dreams of Saint Simon and his school’ ”. Joseph Frank, Years of
Ordeal, 229.
37
Stephen Baehr further notes that “[s]ewing machines were sometimes linked in
literature of the nineteenth-century with the liberation of women”. Stephen Baehr,
“The Troika and the Train: Dialogues Between Tradition and Technology in
Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature”, Issues in Russian Literature Before 1917:
Selected Papers of the Third World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies,
ed. Douglas Clayton (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1989), 97.
More to the point, both Sonia and Lizaveta are poor—at least in
part—because of their acts of charity and their closeness to the teachings
of Christ. The opposite of Raskol’nikov, the humble Lizaveta totally
lacks pride and thereby anticipates Stinking Lizaveta from The Brothers
Karamazov. Her poverty is directly connected with Christian humility.
Three different observers concur here, Raskol’nikov, the narrator, and
the student Raskol’nikov overhears in the tavern, before the murders.
The narrator presents her from three different points of view. Lizaveta is
a
tall, awkward, shy and meek wench [devka] somewhat retarded,

about thirty-five, a complete slave to her sister [...] Lizaveta dealt in
[second-hand clothing], took a commission [...] and had a large
clientele, because she was very honest and always gave a fair price
[...] She generally spoke little and, as I’ve [the narrator] already said,
was very humble and timid [...] Lizaveta was a petit-bourgeois, not
of the civil-servant class, an old maid, and terribly clumsy, incredibly
tall, with long, splayed feet, always in goatskin shoes [...] the main
thing was that Lizaveta was always pregnant (PSS 6: 61-64).38
She pays with her life for her devotion to her sister, their bond
symbolized by the pawnbroker’s icon and crosses.39
Why is Lizaveta always pregnant? Corresponding to her used
(shared) clothing, her body functions as a literal marker for charity (as
noted elsewhere in this study) and echoes the kenosis and the Passion of
Christ (PSS 6: 65). Yet she somehow remains pure in the Russian
Babylon. Perhaps Lizaveta’s pregnancies can best be explained as a
literal, physical manifestation and result of her charity (caritas),
extending eventually to her ultimate sacrifice as an innocent. Imbued
with humility, Lizaveta has transformed eros into agape. She is typical
among Dostoevsky’s prostitutes and/or childlike or even retarded
women—Liza from Notes from Underground, Sonia, Stinking Lizaveta
from The Brothers Karamazov—for practicing agape stripped of all
38
Dostoevsky directly links clothing with charity when the merchant woman in
goatskin shoes—like Lizaveta’s—gives Raskol’nikov a coin, discussed above (PSS
6:89). In her fine study of the holy fool (iurodivyi), Ewa Thompson has observed that
Isaakii the Anchorite wore the undressed hide of a goat. Ewa Thompson,
Understanding Russia, 7-8.
39
The narrator wants the reader to see Alyona as Jewish: She’s as “rich as a yid”
(bogata kak zhid), Raskol’nikov overhears in an early tavern scene before the murders
(PSS 6: 53). We readers are astonished along with Raskol’nikov to discover that she’s
a religious Orthodox believer.
sexual coloration. Her asexual state is symbolized by her clothing,

especially her clumsy goatskin shoes. Lizaveta’s trade in second-hand
clothing parallels and is juxtaposed to the pawnbroker’s rapacious trade
in used objects—including, of course, the bits of cloth and clothing that
Raskol’nikov finds. Her attire is in direct contrast to the new clothing
Luzhin and Svidrigailov strut around in. Raskol’nikov’s realization of
her agape, represented by the shirt she had fixed for him that echoes the
shirts of the Gospels—causes his anguished reaction noted above, when
he reflects on his murder of a woman who extended charitable love to
him.
While Sonia sacrifices the physical purity by which society
judges her, she somehow manages to retain her innocence throughout:
At this moment the door quietly opened and a young girl [devushka,
not devka] entered the room [....] This was Sophia Semënovna
Marmeladova [....]. This was a modestly and even poorly dressed
girl, still very young, almost resembling a little girl, with a modest
and attractive manner, with a clear but somehow frightened face. She
was wearing a very simple house dress, [...] only in her hands, like
yesterday, she had an umbrella (PSS 6: 181).40
This umbrella is a “prop” in the dry Saint Petersburg summer and is

present for reasons that have nothing to do with the weather (unless it
functions as a parasol). It recalls the green umbrella of the girl
accompanying the woman in the goatskin shoes, and it links Sonia—
along with the use of her given name Sophia—directly with the Mother
of God (Matthews 1991: 292-294).41 The earlier pairing of the charitable
40
Perhaps Dostoevsky wants the reader—and Raskol’nikov—to view her as a figure
totally divorced from eros, a much more difficult proposition in the case of a mentally
normal woman. More to the point, Sonia has literally transformed eros into agape, or
perhaps we might also consider that she is associated with eros solely because of
agape. The awkward-looking Lizaveta may be continually pregnant to make her an
object of ridicule and salacious joking. Here we have associations with ‘humiliating
oneself in imitation of Christ’ (iurodstvo), as well as charity: she was a “girl who
cain’t say no” because of always giving to others. Dostoevsky himself suggests as
much in his drafts, where pregnancy is more of an issue. See PSS 7: 79-81, and also
Edward Wasiolek (1967: 96-97). More importantly, Lizaveta’s perpetual pregnancies
may be a reminder that she, like Sonia (and everyone) is a sinner in need of salvation.
My deepest appreciation to the late Stephen Baehr, who encouraged me to explore this
issue further.
41
Pavel Florensky discusses Sophia’s direct connection to the Church in Stolp i
utverzhdenie istiny: Opyt pravoslavnoi feoditsei v dvenadtsati pis’makh (Berlin:
woman in the goatskin shoes and the girl with the green umbrella
backshadows and foreshadows through the image of the umbrella—here,
an “item of clothing”—to the parallel coupling of Sonia (umbrella) and
Lizaveta (goatskin shoes). All of this serves as a reminder that there are
no “minor” details in Dostoevsky’s great novels!42
’s clothing confirms her unchanged state of purity. Yet even Sonia has
a moment when selfishness gets in the way of her usual charitable
impulse, and she refuses to give something away. Significantly, that
“something” takes the form of clothing, the symbol of acquisition and
an economic marker in the material world of the nihilists and the
Utopian Socialists. Quite naturally, Lizaveta figures in this small but
crucial episode that encapsulates the central issues of the novel. The
two women are always joined together, even after Lizaveta’s death:
“Lizaveta the peddler brought me some cheap collars and cuffs,

pretty ones, almost new and with embroidery. And Katerina
Ivanovna liked them a lot, she put them on and looked at herself in
the mirror, and she really liked them very much. She said ‘[G]ive
them to me, Sonia, please’. She asked ‘please’, she wanted them so
much! And where could she wear them? [...] But I regretted giving
them away and said, ‘What do you need them for, Katerina
Ivanovna’? That's how I said it: ‘what for’? I never needed to say
that to her! The way she looked at me, and she became so terribly,
terribly pained because I’d refused [....]. If I could take it all back, do
the whole thing over, all those former words [....]” (PSS 6: 244-245;
emphasis in original).43
Why, one may ask, did Sonia act in so uncharacteristically selfish a way,
even though her joy at having something pretty to wear seems almost to
have justified her actions? Katerina Ivanovna, the stepmother who in
desperation forced Sonia into prostitution, is the very person who wants
the clothing earned at such enormous cost.44 Sonia’s immediate negative,
Rossica, 1929), 350-351. T.A. Kasatkina also identifies Sophia with the Mother of
God in “Sofiologiia Dostoevskogo”, Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura 17 (2003): 75.
42
Which, as Hope Christiansen has so aptly reminded me, is also quite true of Gustave
Flaubert.
43
We encounter Katerina Ivanovna’s collars and cuffs still earlier, in Marmeladov’s
drunken confession to Raskol’nikov. PSS 6: 19. Clearly these small items are her last
vestiges of respectability, expressed, of course, through clothing.
44
It would be instructive to remember the relationship between the self-sacrificing
Lizaveta, whom Dostoevsky recalls here, and the pawnbroker sister who probably
even selfish, reaction to Katerina Ivanovna’s desperate appeal (for

charity in the larger sense of love? for pretty clothing associated with her
former state?) and her later recollection, tinged with guilt and sorrow, are
dramatized in this seemingly minor scene. Once again, the memory of
Lizaveta plays an important role and reminds us of the significance of
memory as an Orthodox marker.45 (Although Sonia must have given
collars and cuffs to Katerina Ivanovna in the end, as we see from
Marmeladov’s comment about his wife’s attire [PSS 6: 19]). At this very
point Raskol’nikov’s own vanity and selfishness slowly begin to yield
through the unswerving support of Sonia herself, who also carries a
burden of guilt.46 Sonia’s acknowledgement of her own guilt engenders a
sense of shared guilt that leads to his redemption. It enfolds him once
again within the larger community. She recounts this central episode to
him alone, a parallel account of his confession to her. Clothing and bits
of cloth, the earlier accessory in two murders and in the sexually
predatory (read anti-Christian) behavior of Svidrigailov and Luzhin, has
become an instrument of deliverance for Raskol’nikov.
Conclusion
In the course of Crime and Punishment, indeed, throughout his oeuvre,

Dostoevsky blurs the line between saint and sinner. The pawnbroker
wears two crosses, perhaps to emphasize her need for redemption.
Fyodor Karamazov, as repulsive a character as ever emerged from
Dostoevsky’s pen, bears the name “Theodore”, “God given”. For each of
them, something worn or borne (here, a cross, a name) denotes God’s
love for man, even when that man would be deemed unlovable to our
limited human perception. Sonia, that meekest and most selfless of pure
pushed her out into the street to bring in a few roubles. The stepmother who forces
Sonia out into the street to be a prostitute recalls the wicked stepmother from the oral
tradition (see Chapter One) who sends her stepdaughter out on a dangerous errand
(“quest”) in hopes that the girl will be killed (will never return!). See Jack V. Haney,
The Complete Russian Folktale: Russian Wondertales. I. Tales of Heroes and
Villains, ed. and tr. with an introduction by Jack V. Haney, Vol. 3 (Armonk: M.E.
Sharpe, 2001), xliii.
45
Diane Oenning Thompson has dealt with the significance of memory in her The
Brothers Karamazov and the Poetics of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
46
John Jones points out that “the main and mystic burden of creative, regenerative
suffering” falls on Sonia. John Jones, Dostoevsky, 233.
souls, falls prey to the combination of pride and immersion in the

material (non- or anti-spiritual) world that ensnares the most negative
characters in the novel, Svidrigailov, Luzhin and, most significantly,
Raskol’nikov himself. The painful guilt she shares with Raskol’nikov
kindles his eventual attempt to come to terms with his own horrific
crimes. The clothing that figures in this scene, as in the novel as a whole,
symbolizes the great universal issues of pride, humility, forgiveness and
redemption far more profoundly than any materialist or socio-economic
arguments and is central to Crime and Punishment (and, for that matter,
to all of Dostoevsky’s great novels).47
47
Clothing as economic marker is tied in with numbers: holy (Sonia’s) juxtaposed to
profane(d) (Svidrigailov’s, Luzhin’s). See Jung Ah Kim, “Number Symbolism in the
Story of Sonia”, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 37:4 (Winter 2003): 377-394.
Chapter Three
Iconic Images in Crime and Punishment:

Russia’s Western Capital
In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky palpably recreates the tangible

physical presence of St. Petersburg, showing the reader specific streets,
squares, and buildings in this typically dramatic novel. Characters walk
through a city that Dostoevsky’s contemporary reader is already familiar
with and live in buildings we can identify today. They make their homes
in cramped or oddly shaped rooms that similarly constrain the reader and
seem to fit perfectly well in Dickens’ gritty London slums. It is well to
remember that Dostoevsky, like Dickens, skews the physical depiction
of the city.1 His St. Petersburg is the environment of the down and out.
Dostoevsky focuses, Donald Fanger notes (1965: 132), on middle- and
lower-class neighborhoods at the expense of the grand palaces and
districts that the reader encounters as, for instance, habitual haunts in
Aleksandr Pushkin’s 1833 novel in verse, Eugene Onegin.2 And, as my
student Rachel Stuckey has reminded me, Dostoevsky gives Petersburg
“character-like qualities”, such that it functions as a “personality” in its
own right.
The physical setting has a palpable presence that makes
Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg of the mid-1860s “real” and visually
tangible even now. As with two other European capitals that were at
once settings and subject matter—Dickens’ London and Balzac’s Paris,
to be specific—this city, too, looks “real”. The readers of Dostoevsky’s
day typically recognized this urban environment from having lived in or
visited St. Petersburg.
1
And London can readily be seen as a metaphor for evil in Dickens. The present
chapter is based on a paper delivered at the annual conference of the American
Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Toronto, Canada, November,
2003. I would like to thank Robert Belknap for his helpful and gracious comments.
2
Although Pushkin also gives us the workaday world of daytime St. Petersburg in
Eugene Onegin.
Even Russians who had never set foot there would have known
the city well from its role as a literary setting, an issue to be discussed
below.3 The urban population in Dostoevsky’s work generally, and in
Crime and Punishment in particular, is an important issue related to the
urban physical structure. Just as Dostoevsky shows us lower-class
neighborhoods at the expense of the imposing ones, St. Petersburg’s
“paradnye komnaty”, its parlors, as it were, he populates these poorer
districts with residents who conform to its socio-economic limitations
(Fanger 1965: 133). And, according to Burton Pike (1981: 94):
Two features of the image of the city in Crime and Punishment are
especially striking: it is restricted to a limited topographical area,
consisting mostly of one of St. Petersburg’s seedier neighborhoods,
and the naturalistic realism with which Dostoevsky describes this
small part of the city makes it expand to fill almost the entire space
of the novel.
The city becomes an extension of Raskol’nikov’s mind and crimes.

Dostoevsky’s economically disadvantaged characters—
principally Raskol’nikov, but also such figures as Marmeladov, Sonia,
and Razumikhin—are the principal actors in the novel. Their (urban)
financial plight—in contrast to the pawnbroker Alyona’s hoarded
treasure and Svidrigailov’s and Luzhin’s ostentatious displays of
wealth—is precisely designed to draw the sympathy and the ire of
Dostoevsky’s target readers, the young nihilists, would-be nihilists, or
Utopian Socialists whom the author attempts to dissuade and convert
during the course of the novel. Target readers would also identify with
what Raymond Williams (1973: 281) terms the “loss of connection”4 or
atomism endemic to the great nineteenth-century city, a condition
synonymous with a parallel loss of religious faith and separation from
3
Ponomareva shows us a photograph of the thirteen steps leading down from
Raskol’nikov’s room. G.B. Ponomareva, Dostoevskii: ia zanimaius’ ètoi tainoi
(Moscow: Akademkniga, 2001), 140.
4
As de Jonge observes, “[…] less than a third of its inhabitants were St. Petersburg
born. This makes the city a suitable medium to render the alienation and rootlessness
which Dostoevsky felt to be so characteristic of his age. He saw the traditional values
of grass-roots Russian culture, community and family […] being destroyed by the
centrifugal, disintegrative pressures of modern society. City life was the incarnation of
those divisive forces”. Alex de Jonge, Dostoevsky and The Age of Intensity (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 61. G.B. Ponomareva (in her Dostoevskii, 134) labels
Petersburg Raskol’nikov’s “co-participant”.
Iconic Images 95
the Orthodox community. Dostoevsky worked to “create recognitions”

(Williams 1973: 281), what we define as memories of non- or pre-urban
culture. These “recognitions” are also present in Dickens in the form of a
bucolic alternative to the hellish urban environment. (We encounter a
twentieth-century expression of the urban-rural dichotomy in, for
example, E.M. Forster’s Howards End).
In Crime and Punishment, for the first time, “recognitions” have
religious significance. We can further identify “recognitions” with visual
images that trigger specific Orthodox memories, and with remembrance
associated with the oral tradition. These memories of Dostoevsky’s
target readers are the ones he has attempted to access not only through
orality, but also through the physically visible symbolism linked with the
iconic image.5 Traditionally, there was a tangible and significant
connection between oral language and the visual image as realized in the
icon. Icon painters and priests were compared to one another. The priest
“constitute[d] the Lord’s Body ‘through the Divine Word’, the icon-
painter ‘in place of the word, paint[ed] and depict[ed] and [gave] life to
the body’ ”.6 Icons in Medieval Russia were treated like sacred books:
both were kissed, “placed in holy niches in the home”, neither could be
thrown away if in a state of disrepair. Both books and icons could be
buried with the Orthodox believer (Uspenskij 1976: 10, 23 n. 21). Nor
should we forget the “regular association of rural living with the past and
with tradition, and then by symbolic rather than historical association
with religious faith […] The city it seemed, was what man made without
God” (Williams 1973: 288). In the case of Dostoevsky, “anti-urban
recognitions” are readily discernible through the medium of traditional
Russian culture, notably Orthodoxy and folk belief, employed to counter
the Godless foundation of the modern Western city. Religious imagery
remains one of Dostoevsky’s most powerful weapons in his struggle
5
For an excellent discussion on the face as iconic image in Dostoevsky’s prose, see
Konstantin Barsht, “Defining the face: observations on Dostoevskii’s creative
processes”, in Catriona Kelly and Stephen Lovell, eds., Russian Literature,
Modernism, and the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp.
23-29, 32-33, 54-55.
6
From the preface to the manuscript podlinnik, from the collection of E.E. Egorov
(Department of Manuscripts, Lenin State Library, Moscow, fund 98, No. 1866). Cited
in Boris Uspenskij, The Semiotics of the Russian Icon, ed. Stephen Rudy (Lisse: The
Peter de Ridder Press, 1976), 10, 22 n.19.
against the atomism7 of urban life, a state especially pernicious for his
“target reader”.
There are other important issues peculiar to the history and
cultural definition of St. Petersburg to consider in addition to the
cityscape. As similar as St. Petersburg may have seemed, on the surface
of things, to Balzac’s Paris or Dickens’ London, two cities with ancient
pedigrees, Dostoevsky’s capital was different from its peers in crucial
ways. First of all, it was established late in the day, and by imperial fiat.
As the modern capital (founded in 1703) of the Russian Empire, this city
was a “window on the West” that opened Russia up to European
influence. A modern metropolis may not be jarring in the context of the
“new Europe” of the Americas—with the planned capital cities of
Washington, DC and Brazilia—but it certainly struck a discordant note
in the “old” Europe, including Russia, even by the latter part of the
nineteenth century.
We must also bear in mind that St. Petersburg, which
encapsulated Peter the Great’s whirlwind if partial transformation of
Russia into a semi-modern country, was one of two Russian capitals, the
other being Moscow. They were antipodes of each other. Moscow was
the traditional “wooden” city, but Petersburg was constructed of stone, at
least as far as the most important buildings were concerned. The very
name “Petersburg” resonates not only with St. Peter and Peter the Great
but also with petra (Greek for stone). Wooden Moscow was not only
significantly older than St. Petersburg, but also intrinsically Russian,
lacking the foreign, specifically, the Western, accretions that
distinguished its rival to the north. While Moscow had “forty times
forty” churches and streets that were laid out in traditional medieval
fashion, St. Petersburg was bisected with long, straight avenues, the most
prominent among them being, of course, the famous Nevsky Prospect.
This dichotomy between the two capitals is symptomatic of the great
split in Russian society in the wake of Peter, between the traditional,
Orthodox, wooden Russia on one hand, and a modern, worldly, stone
new society on the other.
Nor should the popular, traditional view of Peter himself be
forgotten here, especially since it resonates with the oral tradition. Peter
was well known for his blasphemous versions of church rites (Lotman
7
For a somewhat more detailed comment on atomism, see Raymond Williams, The
Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 290.
Iconic Images 97
1984: 235). His personal conduct and his bureaucratization of the

Orthodox Church led to contemporary reactions such as the famous
lubok (wood-block print) of The Mice Burying the Cat, with Peter, of
course, the latter. Peter was held in such low esteem in popular culture
that he was perceived as a pretender, not a “real” tsar. Synonymous with
sorcerers, pretenders were given sorcerers’ burials.8 Behind the stone
façade of Petersburg, arguably identifiable with Western modernity,
lurked the shadowy presence of a “devilish” tsar.
Because of its anomalous position as a city at once Russian and
foreign and arguably a microcosm of the country as a whole, St.
Petersburg was a problematic entity in Russian cultural expression,
especially in the nineteenth century. As such, it became a natural choice
as a literary setting and subject. Themes central to Russian literature
figured prominently within fewer than one hundred years of St.
Petersburg’s founding. As the subject of the eighteenth-century poet
Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky’s poem “Praise to the Izhorsk Land, and
to the Reigning City of St. Petersburg” (1752), St. Petersburg was a
“monument to enlightened reason”. This initially positive view
underwent an unpleasant metamorphosis during the nineteenth century.
The “enlightened reason” of St. Petersburg is no longer a positive
concept by the time we get to Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin’s
influential Memoirs on Ancient and Modern Russia (1810-1811).
Karamzin was appalled at the human toll incurred by building a city in a
swamp, which should, in his view, have remained uninhabited.9
Karamzin’s assessment of St. Petersburg as an unnatural city built at
horrific cost in an uninhabitable place would be a literary constant in the
works of his successors.
St. Petersburg came to be regarded as a complex entity,
politically and culturally. It was identified at once with the oppressive
autocracy, which was rigorously conservative especially during the reign
of Nicholas I (1825-1855), and with a Western superficial culture at odds
with and inimical to Russian traditions. Such significant literary themes
8
For a fine discussion of this topic, see B.A. Uspenskij, “Tsar and Pretender:
Samozvanchestvo or Royal Importure in Russia as a Cultural-Historical
Phenomenon”, tr. David Budgen, Ju.M. Lotman and B.A. Uspenskij, The Semiotics of
Russian Culture, ed. Ann Shukman (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions,
1984), 274-75, 277.
9
See Robert Maguire’s excellent, “The City”, Malcolm V. Jones and Robin Feuer
Miller, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 22-23.
as East versus West, tradition versus modernization, autocracy versus

revolution, and country versus city are centered in St. Petersburg. Even
in works set in the provinces—Dostoevsky’s Demons (1872) and The
Brothers Karamazov (1880) are two later nineteenth-century novels that
come to mind here—St. Petersburg is still an unseen ominous presence
lurking in the background. “The real city”, states Burton Pike (1981: ix),
“may furnish the material for the literary myth, but it is not a myth by
itself; mythic value is imputed to it”. No city more aptly captures this
“mythic value” than Petersburg in the nineteenth century, and in the
years preceding the revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
St. Petersburg figures as a dangerous and unnatural environment
in Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin’s short story “The Queen of Spades”
(1833) and his seminal poem “The Bronze Horseman”. His successor
Nikolai Vasil’evich Gogol would further develop the theme of an eerily
dangerous, even devilish, city, in such short stories as “Nevsky Prospect”
(1835), “The Portrait” (1835), “The Nose” (1836), and “The Overcoat”
(1842).10 Along with the “human” personae of these pieces, the city
emerged as an important character in its own right. This phenomenon
comes to dynamic fruition in Andrei Bely’s 1916 novel Petersburg.
Dostoevsky’s pioneering role as an experimenter who blazed a trail in
his own depiction of St. Petersburg in Crime and Punishment should
never be underestimated.
The Orthodox Subtext: Iconic Images
Notwithstanding St. Petersburg’s apparently solid physicality, which

gives the environment of Crime and Punishment the kind of heft we
associate with “reality”, the city functions simultaneously on an abstract
level, as it did in the works of Dostoevsky’s predecessors, most notably
Pushkin and Gogol. However, by investing St. Petersburg with a readily
perceptible religious substructure for the first time in Russian literature,
Dostoevsky differed from both of them.11 Gogol arguably paints a grim
10
Although it must be said that Gogol’s St. Petersburg is hardly treated in a “realistic”
manner.
11
Not that St. Petersburg is the only Russian city to have secular and Orthodox
dominions. We get the same sense of bifurcation plus unification in the great trade
city of Novgorod: “the secular life of a once-grand commercial city; and the religious
life of the same city, which was itself in some sense a giant icon, a sacred space”.
Iconic Images 99
picture of a St. Petersburg in which the devil lights the street lamps, from
“Nevsky Prospect”, and a devilish tailor crafts a witch-coat in “The
Overcoat”. But Gogol, unlike Dostoevsky, never develops the same kind
of thoroughly systematic and, most significantly, readily discernible
pattern of religious symbols that permeates the work. And Gogol is
never positive.
In Crime and Punishment, St. Petersburg’s very streets, squares,
buildings, staircases and rooms are endowed with religious—
specifically, iconic and cruciform—symbols and structures tied in with
the Orthodox images that permeate and define this novel.12 Sacred and
profane architectural structures contend in a struggle for hierarchy.
Frequently concealed, sacred constructs nonetheless exert enormous
power and eventually prevail over their profane counterparts. That they
are “hidden in plain view”, to borrow from Gary Saul Morson, serves as
a reminder that the majesty and teachings of Christ, typically expressed
as parables, are accessible through faith, not reason, and are readily
apparent to believers. Dostoevsky is attempting, it seems to me, to
remind his target audience that beneath the apparent surface reality—the
urban geography—of a seemingly Western city, there is an intrinsically
Russian foundation (“hidden in plain view”). This foundation is
intimately identified with Orthodox belief, arguably the central element
in Russian culture.
Not functioning just as urban thoroughfares, streets form
intersections or crossroads. Buildings are not merely dwelling places but
also iconic compositions, interlaced with staircases like the ladders
commonly found in Orthodox religious painting. As Donald Fanger
(1965: 196) has aptly remarked, these staircases are “half-public, half-
private, uniting into great and artificial groups the various closed worlds
of rented rooms and apartments”. The world of this novel is—
comparably—half-public, and half-private, with particularly
Raskol’nikov at once self-contained and exposed to the reader. So does
this physical reality illustrate the interior world. The rooms within them
have odd shapes that recall iconic or cruciform structures—whether
Holland Cotter, “Russian City’s Sacred and Secular Visions”, The New York Times
(18 November 2005).
12
Caryl Emerson notes that “[Dostoevsky] was for more attuned to the healing effects
of nonverbal communication—silence, icons, genuflections, visual images—than he
was to the alleged beneficent effect of words”. The First Hundred Years of Mikhail
Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 147; emphasis added.
positively or negatively—as well as the poverty of the slums.13 Like their

clothing, characters’ rooms are extensions of their personalities. More
importantly, particularly within the specifically iconic context of Crime
and Punishment, the room (like clothing) is an indicator of salvation,
potential salvation, or damnation. The shape of a room, its position
within a building, and the exterior environment of the street: all of these
function together as markers for the final judgment of a character
associated with them.
Within the confines of the novel, St. Petersburg is at once a great
nineteenth-century city and, on a symbolic level, a giant icon.
Dostoevsky is a “poet” of the city, not the country, because the urban
environment was the one he knew and, most importantly, the one that
most vividly encapsulated important contemporary issues. But he also
used Petersburg as a giant graph, the most apt Russian environment on
which to plot iconic equations. Nor are the physical components of the
setting the only elements of Crime and Punishment enhanced with
religious overtones. On one hand, Dostoevsky’s characters come across
within the context of this nineteenth-century novel as somewhat
eccentric people encountered in the “real” world. Dostoevsky describes
their faces distinctively and painstakingly, as we would expect a great
novelist to do. But he also gives them names and especially faces that
recall religious images, and he places them in settings or environments
that function not only as components of the city, but also as Orthodox
symbols, most particularly, once again, the icon. It is important to
remember here that the iconic symbolism related to Dostoevsky’s
personae functions in a positive or negative fashion, depending on the
particular character and his or her role in the work. That Dostoevsky is a
“visual” writer who wrote an intensely visual novel should also be borne
in mind. Just as he exploits orality to draw in Raskol’nikov and the
“target reader”, Dostoevsky also relies on the “visible” image, standing
out from the text. He thrusts this image—with its tactile physicality—
across a fictional threshold.
In order to better understand Crime and Punishment, we must
first appreciate the significance of the icon that functions so importantly
13
For a fine treatment of these constructs, see Ganna Bograd’s “Metafizicheskoe
prostranstvo i pravoslavnaia simvolika kak osnova mest obytaniia geroev romana
Prestuplenie i nakazanie”, unpublished paper. I would like to thank Deborah
Martinsen for not only bringing this essay to my attention, but also generously giving
me a copy.
Iconic Images 101
in the novel. Russian Orthodoxy, as symbolized by icons, is incorporated

into the Western/urban/profane world encapsulated in the city of St.
Petersburg from the very beginning of the novel. The title itself—
Transgression and Punishment—is a microcosm of the two worlds
(religious and civic) that co-exist throughout, with the Orthodox side
emerging as obviously triumphant in the epilogue. What we have in
Crime and Punishment is not just the presence of Orthodox themes, but
an actual Orthodox novel visible beneath the surface of the novel form
inherited from the West. Major characters—Raskol’nikov, Sonia,
Svidrigailov, and even little Polen’ka—operate at once on the superficial
level of the contemporary plot and on the deeper level of the Orthodox
symbol. These characters are challenged, rewarded, or punished
according to the presence or absence of religious beliefs, a state
expressed and realized through Orthodox symbols underlying the urban
environment. And exposure to icons could begin very early on, pre-
verbally, thus appealing to the contemporary reader on a pre-verbal
level, from earliest childhood.
Sacred Orthodox constructs are aptly encapsulated in Crime and
Punishment in visual imagery, specifically, the iconic ladder, the iconic
image, iconic perspective, and the cross. Icons were painted on wood
and were designed to appeal as pictures. Even the illiterate could look at
these pictures and, in the words of St. Nilus of Sinai (writing in the fifth
century), “become mindful of the faith” (Uspenskij 1976: 9). The visual
power of the icon gave it universal appeal, not only for the illiterate for
whom it was used as a substitute for text, but also of course for the
literate. Because it links physical/visible and unseen/spiritual worlds,14
the icon functions as an intermediate zone between the visible and the
invisible. Instead of separating these sectors, icons unite them (Florensky
1995: 37). The true subject of the icon, and what the viewer of that icon
perceives, is not a “representation of holiness”, but holiness itself.15 The
14
Pavel Florensky speaks of God as “Creator of the visible and invisible” in his
Ikonostas (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1995), 37. Can this construct not also be extended to
icons and iconic ladders? I am grateful to Vicki Polansky for the reminder to consult
Florensky.
15
Richard Borden states that the image “obtains in Russian culture far more
significantly than we are accustomed to in the West, given the centrality of icon
veneration in the Russian Orthodox Church and, more importantly, in the popular and
historical consciousness of the Russian people. In the Eastern tradition—and in the
popular imagination—the portrayals of saints in icons constitute no mere plastic
representation of the sanctified. They embody, rather, a “true image”—one made
believer is drawn into the picture, stepping, David Bethea suggests

(1998: 164-165), “through the frame from the profane, everyday world
into the “realm of the holy”,16 which the penitent can literally see
transformed into a physical presence.
Just as he exploited the nexus of memory and oral discourse,
Dostoevsky utilized in a comparable way this iconic function to connect
the text to visual memory. The visual representation of the divine—in
other words, the icon—and the orality associated with the Word are
intimately related to each other as thresholds or links between God and
humanity. The icon incorporates the Word in the image, allowing the
Word to be expressed while still unuttered. The unuttered Word in turn is
linked with the Orthodoxy of the Russian people (the narod), whom
Shanti Elliott (2000: 55) describes as “illiterate and unconscious of its
spiritual depth”. The icon becomes, then, part of the “narrative”.17 The
Word, however, is always present as a vital component and is realized
independently through orality. Dostoevsky has enlisted the iconic and
the Word to reach his target reader through sense—specifically, sight
and hearing—instead of rational argument.18 Their shared function is
particularly striking when Sonia reads from the Gospels to Raskol’nikov,
a crucial scene that will be treated below. She is clearly intended as a
(metaphorically) “not by human hands”, but immediately, that is, from the living
image of the sanctified, whose representation remains fixed for all time—à la
Veronica’s Cloth or the Shroud of Turin—and comprise nothing less than an
incarnation of spiritual essence”. Richard C. Borden, “Making a True Image:
Blackness and Pushkin Portraits”, in Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Nicole
Svobodny, and Ludmilla A. Trigos, eds., Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Under
the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 2006), 187-188. Emphasis added.
16
As George Hamilton suggests, “Russian painting, in contrast to European painting,
had been for centuries concerned, not with the conquest of space or of movement, but
with the discovery of the mystical world which lies beyond sense experience”. George
Heard Hamilton, The Art and Architecture of Russia, third edition (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1983), 101.
17
Stephen Hutchings has importantly observed that “A narrative icon is thus, not a
visual icon in narrative form, but an iconic system translated into imagic logic within
narrative fiction”. Stephen C. Hutchings, Russian Modernism: The Transfiguration of
the Everyday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 240 n. 79.
18
Roger Anderson notes that Dostoevsky adapted “some visual and homiletic
properties of the icon to the composition of Crime and Punishment”. Roger Anderson,
“The Optics of Narration: Visual Composition in Crime and Punishment”, in Roger
Anderson and Paul Debreczeny, eds., Russian Narrative & Visual Art: Varieties of
Seeing (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 85.
Iconic Images 103
messenger for Christ, with Marmeladov designating her as his

edinorodnaia (firstborn) (PSS 6: 16).19 And, as Victor Terras comments
(1998: 59), edinorodnyi is “[…] usually applied to Jesus Christ in
relation to God the Father [….]”.20
Shanti Elliott (2000: 57) defines the icon as quintessentially
visual, representing “a way of seeing things and acting […]. The
principle that justifies its veneration by the Orthodox is its ‘likeness’ to
its subject [..,] the icon is like the saint, the saint is like God, be like the
saint”. Using the intensely visual icon, Dostoevsky links the physical,
superficially Western reality of visual St. Petersburg with the unseen
spiritual world. The superficially visible world is the city environment of
slums, dirty streets, prostitution—and murder. The invisible world
accessed through iconic imagery—which the reader can sense beneath
the surface—is the realm of belief, unseen yet palpably present in the
form of symbols associated with the icon and iconic constructs. One
such symbol is the iconic ladder.
The Iconic Ladder
Iconic ladders are realized in the contemporary setting in numerous

urban staircases. Intermediate constructs linking floors and allowing
characters to access each others’ rooms; stairs function as “vertical
thresholds” in Dostoevsky’s world. Raskol’nikov “crosses this
threshold” twice when rehearsing and then committing the murders.
The liminal zone that the stairs represent has particular significance
for Raskol’nikov. Suspended in the no-man’s land of the liminal
staircase/ladder, a threshold between worldly thought and Orthodox
belief, he attempts to find a firm footing in a vertical environment.
These urban thresholds are also intermediate sectors in the
Orthodox world, where they stand for iconic ladders.21 By linking
19
Clint Walker (in his “”Psyche, Soma and Raskolnikov’s Sickness Revisited: Mind
as Microcosm in Crime and Punishment”, unpublished paper, American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies [Salt Lake City, 12 November 2005]: 12)
observes that Sonia “is associated with St. Mary of Egypt, a prostitute who converted
to Christianity and withdrew to the Egyptian desert”.
20
Like Christ, Sonia is sold for “thirty pieces of silver” (PSS 6:17), “exploded” when
Svidrigailov reveals to Raskol’nikov that Marfa Petrovna “bought” him for 30,000
roubles, i.e. “pieces of silver”. PSS 6: 218.
21
For a discussion of the staircase as threshold in Mikhail Bakhtin, see Gary Saul
Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford:
staircases with ladders, Dostoevsky in effect pulls Russian

constructs—realized here architecturally—back from the Western city
and into the realm of Russian Orthodoxy. Iconic ladders have an
honored pedigree in Russian popular belief, where they are associated
with salvation. Because they figure in rural practice and are linked
with the peasants’ religious practices, the ladder is intrinsically
Russian and iconic instead of Western, as can be seen when we
consider ladders made of dough. W.F. Ryan states (1999: 281) that
Pastry ladders, with seven rungs for the seven heavens, were baked
as part of the funeral ritual, to enable the dead to climb to heaven.
Similar bread ladders were also baked in several regions of Russia
for feast days which had obvious upwards connotations, such as the
Ascension, Raising of Lazarus [especially important in Crime and
Punishment], St. John Climacus.22
Realized as staircases in the contemporary, “mundane” urban

environment of the novel, ladder-staircases function as physical links
in multi-storied buildings, as well as connecting the Orthodox realm
with the worldly or profane.
Nor was Dostoevsky the only Russian “artist” to use the ladder
in this way. A comparable superimposition of the iconic ladder in an
ostensibly non-iconic scene can be seen approximately twenty years
after the publication of Crime and Punishment, in Vasily Surikov’s
famous 1887 painting The Boyarina Morozova. Her sledge replicates the
slant of the iconic ladder, with the redeemed above and the damned
below. Among Russian writers, Nikolai Gogol preceded Dostoevsky in
capitalizing on stair symbolism. The chernaia lestnitsa (‘back/black’)
Stanford University Press, 1990), 375. We encounter a comparable exploitation of

staircases in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. In Western art,
staircases figure prominently in the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi . Nor should
we forget St. John Climacus, associated with a symbolic ladder into heaven.
22
Snejana Tempest remarks on “an East Slavic burial practice [that] consists of
placing small ladders baked of dough beside the corpse to assist the soul to leave the
body in its ascent from this world to the other world—a clear survival from heathen
times and a rather conspicuous indication for scholars”. See Snejana Tempest,
“Stovelore in Russian Folklife”, Musya Glants and Joyce Toomre, eds., Food in
Russian History and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 6. See
also A.B. Strakhov, Kul’t khleba u vostochnykh slavian (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner,
1991), 144, cited in Tempest, “Stovelore”, 12 n. 18. Bread plays a comparably
important role when baked as larks to welcome spring. Ivan Goncharov
commemorates this practice in Oblomov.
Iconic Images 105
stairs of Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat”, stairs with a devilish

association, come to mind here. But Dostoevsky was the first Russian
writer to embed stairs within a larger Orthodox framework and to give
urban structures a systematic religious symbolism. While Gogol
arguably has a religious undercurrent investing his works from the
beginning, Dostoevsky makes sure that his readers, most notably his
target readers, can recall and recognize the relevant Orthodox images.
The celestial ladder figures early on in the Bible, specifically in
Jacob’s dream in the Old Testament. Here we see an obvious link
between the subconscious dream state—related to orality as opposed to
the printed text (and that dream state is so important for both
Raskol’nikov and Svidrigailov)—and the icon. An iconic ladder specific
to Orthodox Christianity typically transects the icon, the holy image,
from upper left to lower right, with the heavens above and hell below.
Mortals are suspended on this ladder between them.23 The Russian word
lestnitsa, handily denoting either a staircase or a ladder, can stand at once
for the staircases of the modern city with its multi-storied urban
buildings—especially for the staircases of the poor—and for the ladder
of the icon. Taking advantage of this dual connotation, Dostoevsky uses
a lestnitsa as an emblem at once of the contemporary Western city, with
its urban decay and sprawl, and of the sacred world.
Raskol’nikov has to take to the stairs more than once. He goes
down to the street, up to pawnbroker’s to rehearse his crime, then returns
to these same stairs on the day of the murder. Stairs are used as an iconic
symbol again immediately afterwards, at the very beginning of Part Two.
Raskol’nikov has been summoned to the police station and assumes that
the authorities suspect him of the murders. He is tempted to confess.
Stairs figure prominently in this scene, tying in confession with the
iconic ladder:
23
Florensky speaks of God as “Creator of the visible and invisible” in Ikonostas, 37.
As Kurt Weitzmann observes, “From about the eleventh century onward we
repeatedly find frontispieces in manuscripts with monks climbing and falling from a
ladder […] Devils interfere to impede the ascent of some monks, dragging them down
into the open mouth of Hell”. Kurt Weitzmann, The Icon: Holy Images—Sixth to
Fourteenth Century (New York: George Braziller, 1978), 88. For a vivid Byzantine
icon with a ladder and flailing monks, see Weitzmann, Plate 25. This same imagery
enriches the Russian icon. In Kostroma, in the Monastery of St. Ipaty, “one [icon]
showed a monk ascending a ladder, each rung representing a sin”. Jeffrey Taylor,
“Escape to Old Russia”, The Atlantic 298, 3 (October 2006): 132-133. Many thanks to
my husband William Tucker for showing me this essay.
“If they ask me, maybe I’ll tell them”, he thought […] “I’ll go in, fall
on my knees and tell them everything…”, he thought, going up to the
fourth floor. The stairs were narrow, steep and awash in dirty water
[the St. Petersburg motif, linked to canals] (PSS 6: 70, 74-75, 84-85).
This persistent verticality flattens Western linear perspective with its

illusory recreation of a three-dimensional world.24 Instead, by repeatedly
using stairs (“ladders”) as a setting, Dostoevsky substitutes the inclusive
perspective of the icon, an issue that will be dealt with later. (Stephen
Hutchings [1997: 27] reminds us that the Renaissance saw not only the
introduction of linear perspective [by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435], but
also the “beginning of the secular age”, an issue that so concerned
Dostoevsky.) Raskol’nikov then goes back up to his room, and, on the
evening of the murder, he repeats this process. Stairs are his transitional
arena for decisions and incipient actions, just as the iconic ladder is itself
an intermediary zone. Like the larger icon in which it is a component
part, the ladder stretches between two different realms: the world of the
saved and the world of the damned. As Ganna Bograd has so ably
demonstrated throughout “Metafizicheskoe prostranstvo”, the icon—
along with the cross—is reflected in the architectural structures of the
rabbit-warren rooms and the crossroads of Petersburg.25
These ladders/stairs have special significance for Raskol’nikov,
since his penury forces him to make his home up at the very top of the
stairs. Dostoevsky couldn't have him living any higher. His tiny room is
the typical dwelling place for the poor in nineteenth-century St.
Petersburg. “His little chamber was located under the very roof of a tall
five-storied building” (PSS 6: 5).26 Raskol’nikov’s mother reinforces the
24
Perspective in painting in the West can be traced to Filippo Brunelleschi. See Mark
Lennox-Boyd’s fascinating Sundials: History, Art, People, Science (London: Frances
Lincoln, 2006), 73. I would like to thank my husband William Tucker for this
marvelous book.
25
Hope Christiansen notes that ladders also abound in Stendhal’s (Marie-Henri Beyle’s)
novels, marked by “verticalities”. For a fine treatment of verticality in Stendhal, see
Frederick Littleton Toner’s “Vertical Movement in the Completed Novels of Stendhal”
(Ph.D. thesis., University of Kansas, 1988), esp. 4-5, 12, 24-26, 49, 54, 56, 58, and 167.
For a specific reference to Stendhal’s “ever-present ladder”, see 96. Many thanks to Hope
Christiansen for having brought this dissertation to my attention. But, as with clothing,
Dostoevsky invests the physical, material world, realized here architecturally, with
powerful religious symbolism.
26
As Hope Christiansen has cogently observed to me, Balzac moves his characters up
higher and higher in his pension as they get poorer.
Iconic Images 107
reader’s reaction. “But my God”, she declared. “What a little closet he’s
living in”! Shortly afterwards, she identifies the room as part of his
problem: “ ‘What an evil room you have, Rodia, like a coffin/tomb’ […]
‘The room’? He answered abstractly. ‘Yes, the room was a great
enabler’” (PSS 6: 170, 178).27 Mother may on the surface of things be
looking to her son’s financial difficulties (and, superficially, emphasizing
economics), but her comments considered in combination with his
response are also in keeping with the religious underpinnings of the
novel.
Why does Dostoevsky house Raskol’nikov in such a terrible
little cell? The extreme poverty represented by living up so high may
have been yet another way to elicit the sympathy—and ire—of the target
reader, who would have reacted angrily to the overt economic issues that
the room signifies. No single anecdote demonstrates more cogently that
the young nihilist reader would focus on economic issues than the
reported reaction of Dmitrii Pisarev, who stated in an essay about Crime
and Punishment that “Raskolnikov’s crime was really caused by hunger
and malnutrition” (Frank 1966: 35). In other words, Pisarev, of course,
blamed Raskol’nikov’s poverty. In presenting economics as an overt
cause, Dostoevsky was able to elicit the sympathies—and the reaction—
of his target reader, drawing him in while at the same time undermining
that reader’s rational argument by forcing him to respond emotionally.
By emphasizing the fact that Raskol’nikov lives right up under
the eaves, Dostoevsky not only shrinks his room but also squashes it.28
This crushing lowers the ceiling and gives the illusion of a room placed
low, under something, as though under the stairs—or a ladder.
Dostoevsky elicits this reaction in spite of the fact that Raskol’nikov of
course lives on the very top floor, above the stairs. Not until late in the
novel do we—and, significantly, the target reader—see clearly that
Raskol’nikov is crushed by nihilism and by separation from the
Orthodox community, and not by poverty at all. After all, it doesn’t
oppress Sonia, Polen’ka, or Razumikhin. Because Raskol’nikov’s
room—which we see at the very beginning—seems to be below a
staircase (or “ladder”), it serves as a counterpoint to Svidrigailov’s room
that literally is below the stairs and functions here as a “control” to
Raskol’nikov’s. Their rooms help to tie these characters together.
27
Raskol’nikov’s coffin-like “closet” reinforces his connection to Lazarus.
28
Raskol’nikov’s vertically compressed room recapitulates the Underground Man’s
own situation.
Rushing up and down the stairs/ladders of his great icon,

Raskol’nikov feels lost and is perhaps aware that his “theory” is out of
control. On his way to rehearse the murder, “he slipped unnoticed
directly from the gate into the first staircase on the right. The staircase
was dark and narrow, a ‘back’ [chёrnaia, ‘black’ or ‘devilish’] stairs
(PSS 6: 7). On his way up the stairs, Raskol’nikov is on the verge of
plummeting into the abyss of nihilist revolt, a point that would not have
been lost on the contemporary reader. The significance of the
stairs/iconic ladder in Crime and Punishment is realized most vividly
and horrifically, however, not with Raskol’nikov himself, but in one of
Svidrigailov’s final scenes. Just as the hell of his last night is captured in
the bathhouse imagery so crucial for traditional belief, damnation is
realized in the literal placement of his room below the stairs at the
Adrianopolis (‘dark city’) hotel:
He entered and asked the ragamuffin who met him in the hallway for
a room. Looking Svidrigailov over, the ragamuffin shook himself
awake and immediately led him to a distant room, stuffy and
cramped, somewhere down at the very end of the hallway, in the
corner, under the stairs […]. [Svidrigailov] lit a candle and examined
his hotel room in greater detail. It was a tiny cell […]. One part of the
wall and ceiling were cut obliquely, as is usual in mansard rooms,
but above this jamb ran the staircase (PSS 6: 388; emphasis added).
Like Raskol’nikov’s little closet, low-ceilinged because of being crushed

under the roof, Svidrigailov’s hotel room is also compressed vertically.
But where Raskol’nikov’s room is flattened under a roof, Svidrigailov’s
is squashed beneath the stairs as though it were a mansard room.
Dostoevsky has made both rooms at once “mansard” or “attic” rooms
and rooms below the stairs (or ladder). Svidrigailov’s “understairs”
chamber is a reversed counterpart of Raskol’nikov’s “cell”. These two
rooms bracket the novel, with Raskol’nikov’s room the opening frame
and Svidrigailov’s the closing one of two “icons”, which mirror each
other. Svidrigailov, notes Bograd, is “buried” beneath the stairs while
still alive. For Raskol’nikov, the staircase will eventually lead up to
Sonia’s room and his later salvation. Svidrigailov’s staircase goes to hell,
under the earth (Bograd s.d.: 15).
Iconic Perspective
In the process of “crushing” Raskol’nikov’s and Svidrigailov’s rooms,

Iconic Images 109
Dostoevsky undermines the Western conception of artistic perspective

that arose during the Renaissance and entered Russian pictorial art
during the eighteenth century. When he shrinks a construct that is near
the viewer, Dostoevsky reverses Western perspective by moving the
remote vanishing point from the distance to the immediate vicinity. His
reversal of perspective reminds the reader that the Western way of seeing
“reality”, assumed to be logically correct and indeed based on logic, is
inherently flawed in the Russian context. Nor should we forget that
Dostoevsky—or more accurately, the narrator—lets us be privy to the
thoughts of only one character at a given time.29 The narrative technique
of presenting the thought processes of each character in turn draws us in
verbally just as the inverse perspective of the icon draws us in visually.
When he rushes the novel along and compresses the action in the fevered
period leading up to and immediately following the murders,
Dostoevsky produces a temporal inverse perspective comparable to the
spatial inverse perspective of the icon, and of iconic structures realized in
the novel.30 Iconic perspective encloses the observer/believer/reader. In
comparable fashion, Dostoevsky switched from Raskol’nikov as first-
person narrator (in the drafts, as noted in the Introduction) to a third-
person narrator privy to Raskol’nikov’s moods and thought processes. In
other words, the (target) reader is drawn into Raskol’nikov’s mind—
focusing on him—through verbal “inverse perspective”, instead of being
there at the onset of the novel.31 Had Dostoevsky stayed with the first-
person narrator, the reader would have been on the “inside” from the
start, with no sense of being pulled in verbally (as with inverse
perspective).
By skewing perspective, Dostoevsky prepares his readers,
especially his target audience, for the non-Western perspective of the
icon. According to the great art critic Robert Hughes (1991: 17;
emphasis in original), in “realistic” or Renaissance painting, an
29
As noted to me cogently by Paul Friedrich.
30
Even though the icon is flat, it functions as a construction. As Linda Proud observes,
“The iconographer is not painting, he is building. The wooden panel has been
prepared with a plaster surface and sanded repeatedly. He has drawn the image, an
image he has made many times before. The holy light of heaven has been burnished
down in gold leaf on the background […] Stage by stage the image builds. In the end,
with the highlights being applied, the spirit permeates the flesh, both in the maker and
the made. This is an icon”. Linda Proud, Icons: a Sacred Art (Norwich: Jarrold
Publishing, 2004), 1.
31
In comparable fashion, Dostoevsky’s “vortex time” pulls the reader into the text.
ideal view […] is imagined by a one-eyed motionless person who is

clearly detached from what he sees. [Realistic perspective] makes a
god of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the world
converges, the Unmoved Onlooker.32
This is Raskol’nikov’s own perspective as he contemplates his crime.

The world is
framed in terms of his ego, which becomes the “I” (or “eye”) that
sees outward into an immense world […] [W]e might imagine him at
the ‘vanishing point’ in a diagram which traces the point of view of
realistic drawing in which all objects converge on him”
(O’Donoghue 1998: 101).
This pictorial universe corresponds to the rational, human-centered

thought central to Utilitarianism, Utopian Socialism, and nihilism. By
switching to the perspective of the icon, more to the point, by forcing
Raskol’nikov into this perspective in his room and on the stairs (and,
most significantly, in Sonia’s room), Dostoevsky emphasizes the
validity—and the overwhelming power and majesty—of the Orthodox
worldview, not only for his central character, but also for his readers.
And he sweeps Raskol’nikov—along with the target reader—into the
Orthodox community.
In contrast to modern Western (Renaissance) perspective, the
perspective of the icon looks inward. While the painter and spectator,
Boris Uspenskij comments (1976: 36, 39), are both outside the picture in
Renaissance perspective, the icon painter puts himself and the viewer
as it were within the picture being painted, depicting the world as

[…] SURROUNDING him, rather than at a distance from him […]
In general, the internal visual position (that of an internal observer)
characterizes the basic (central) part of the representation, whereas
the external visual position (which can be correlated to the position
of the viewer in the picture) characterizes its periphery.33
32
Cited in Jacqueline Zubeck O’Donoghue, Murder in the Name of Theory:
Theoretical Paradigm and Ethical Problems in Works by Dostoevsky, Gide, and
Delillo. Ph.D. thesis (Rutgers University, 1998): 101.
33
James West notes that Oskar Wulff first “introduced the term ‘reverse perspective’
(‘die umgekehrte Perspektive’) into the discussion of early Christian art” in 1907, and
that “Florenskii used its Russian equivalent (‘obratnaia perspektiva’) in 1967. See
James West’s “The Romantic Landscape in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Art
and Literature” in Russian Narrative & Visual Art: Varieties of Seeing, ed. Roger
Anderson and Paul Debreczeny (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 34.
Iconic Images 111
The inwardness of the icon has what can be termed an “inclusive”

perspective, “created technically by inverse perspective, which creates
not depth but a sense of inclusion within the plane of the image”.
(O’Donoghue 1998: 101; emphasis in original). Through inclusive
instead of exclusive perspective in crucial encounters between
Raskol’nikov and other characters, Dostoevsky brings his readers into
dramatic scenes that the reader recognizes as iconic. These characters are
almost invariably female (although Razumikhin and Porfiry Petrovich
are exceptions) and clearly identifiable, by extension, with the Mother of
God. By pulling the viewer into the icon—and the reader into the iconic
scene—Dostoevsky arrests time, reminding us of what Maria Rubins
(2000: 11) terms the “statis of the visual object” of eternity, when time
shall be no more.
Raskol’nikov enters into the presence of an actual icon when he
goes to rehearse the murder, right at the beginning of the novel. The
room that the pawnbroker Alyona admitted him to was small, and
illumined by rays of the setting sun (which draw in the viewer,
functioning as inverse iconic ladder”). “ ‘That must be how the sun will
be setting then’”, he muses, injecting perspective, and an “an anti-iconic
note as he contemplates murder. Slanting sunlight is a heavenly icon
lamp for Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, as well as here. In
addition to some old furniture, the room was blessed with
a small icon [literally obraz (‘image’) here, instead of ikona] in front

of which a lamp was burning. Everything was very clean; the
furniture and the floors had been rubbed to a luster; everything
gleamed. “Lizaveta’s work”, thought the young man. Not a grain of
dust was to be found in the entire apartment. “Only malicious old
widows have everything this clean”, Raskol’nikov continued to
ruminate (PSS 6: 8-9).
He’s only partially correct. All of these shining surfaces are also
associated with Lizaveta: the small icon on the wall, and the larger
“icon” of the gleaming room—that, very importantly, reflects light—at
sunset. The room and its Orthodox fittings link Lizaveta with Alyona
Jacqueline O’Donoghue has a valuable discussion of the iconic in Bakhtin and in

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in “Bakhtin’s Ethics and an Iconographic
Standard in Crime and Punishment”, Bakhtin: Ethics and Mechanics, ed. Valerie Z.
Nollan (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004), esp. 44 (inverse perspective
includes the viewer), 46-51.
and bring Alyona into the Orthodox Church.34 The obraz is coupled by
extension with the human faces that Raskol’nikov will shatter during the
commission of the murders. “That’s how the sun will be shining then”,
he reflects, that is, at the time of the murder(s) (PSS 6: 8; emphasis in
original). Place is important too. That’s how the sun will be shining here,
in the presence of the smaller icon, the larger “icon” of the room, and the
heavenly icon lamp of the setting sun. Deep inside, he seems to sense
that he will commit murder in the symbolic presence of God. This iconic
scene is an opening frame to the “icon” of the epilogue, by the Irtysh
River, when Raskol’nikov has “come back to life”.
A little girl, Sonia’s elder stepsister Polen’ka, figures
importantly in the second of these scenes. Her name has particular
significance. It is the nickname for Polina, the Russian for Pauline.
Pauline is the feminine of Paul, Christian messenger to the Gentiles
(previous non-believers). Sonia (Sophia, Heavenly Wisdom) has sent
her. Just as the icon is a visual “messenger” coming ultimately from
God and leading the viewer, through inverse perspective, back to Him,
so is Polen’ka an envoy in Raskol’nikov’s St. Petersburg, helping him
make a circular journey back to faith.35
Marmeladov has just died as the result of a terrible accident,
and Raskol’nikov is on his way out from the Marmeladovs’ miserable
quarters. He descends the stairs, which continue to figure significantly
beyond the immediacy of the murder scene and Raskol’nikov’s
impulse to get his (legal, civic) confession over with. His brief
encounter with Polen’ka will provide a first impetus for his later civic
and religious confessions, and his redemption. With a cry of
“Poslushaite! Poslushaite”! (‘listen’, but also ‘attend’, ‘hearken’ or
‘obey’), she runs after him. She pauses one step above him, partially
34
As George Hamilton has observed about two churches, the Ascension at Konetsgore
and St. Clement at Una: “In both churches the composition of masses was worked out
in what might well be called inverse perspective, since it progressed from the
relatively near and small, the staircase and arched openings on the landing, to the
remote and large, the huge central mass of the octagon”. Hamilton, Art and
Architecture, 177. Eastern theologians, notes Stephen Hutchings, “customarily
associate grace with light, suggesting that it is in this way that humans experience
grace’s infinite energy, thus confirming the connection between the fallen world and
vision, and again explaining why icons take visual form”. He refers as well to the
“narrative icon”. Stephen Hutchings, Russian Modernism, 36-37. Emphasis in
original. The murders reverse inverse perspective, repulsing the reader.
35
In striking contrast to the behavior of children relative to Svidrigailov’.
Iconic Images 113
erasing their unequal physical stature and putting their faces close
together. “He placed both hands on her shoulders and with a kind of
happiness he gazed at her. It was so pleasant for him to look at her—
he himself didn’t know why”. Polen’ka, having been sent by Sonia,
becomes an interceder once removed. Polen’ka and Raskol’nikov talk
about love within a family (coming to include him).
“Do you [the formal ‘you’, a mark of his respect for her] love
your sister Sonia”? “I love her more than everybody else”!
Polen’ka pronounced with a kind of special firmness, and her
smile suddenly became more serious. “And will you love me”?
Instead of an answer, he saw her little face nearing his and her
plump lips naively protruding to kiss him. Suddenly her arms, as
skinny as matchsticks (literally spichki, ‘matches’), hugged him
very hard, her head rested on his shoulder, and the little girl
quietly started to cry, pressing her face harder and harder against
him. “I’m sorry about papa” (PSS 6: 146).
The kiss is particularly significant in the iconic context. Orthodox

believers would treasure icons as well as holy books; the two acts
were in fact synonymous (Uspenskij 1976: 10). Her kiss reminds
Raskol’nikov that the human image or face reflects the holy one, and
that all images are sacred. Arguably from this point on he must
contemplate his own destruction of two other images: the pawnbroker
Alyona’s and Lizaveta’s. (Their hug anticipates the scene [PSS 6: 316,
318] when Raskol’nikov confesses to Sonia, and she embraces him.)
Papa has taught her to read and write, and “God’s law”. “And
do you know how to pray”? asks Raskol’nikov. “Oh, of course we
know how”! she enthusiastically responds, listing various family
members.
“First we read the Mother of God [a significant image throughout,

and a verbal reference to Sonia and their own iconic pose], and
then one more prayer: ‘God, forgive and bless our dear sister
Sonia’, and then ‘God, forgive and bless our other papa’, because
our old papa already died, and this one’s after all our other one,
and we all pray about that one too”. “Polechka, my name is
Rodion; pray for me sometimes too: ‘and thy servant [slave]
Rodion’—nothing more”. I’ll pray for you for all the rest of my
life”, the little girl pronounced fervently, and suddenly she again
began to laugh, threw herself on him and hugged him tightly again
(PSS 6: 147).36
Polen’ka’s reference to two “papas” reinforces for Raskol’nikov as

well as herself the implication that everyone has two fathers: the
earthly father and Heavenly, unseen Father. Moreover, Dostoevsky
underscores verbally what he has already demonstrated visually: that
Polen’ka is linked with the Mother of God in this crucial scene where
Raskol’nikov begins to reconnect with the Orthodox community.
When he tells Polen’ka his name Rodion—incorporating the Russian
root rod (family, kin)—he is reminding himself and telling her that he
is part of the larger, Orthodox family, her kin. Polen’ka is about the
same age as the child Raskol’nikov in the horse dream, and
Dostoevsky presents the identical juxtaposition of child, father, and
Orthodox Christianity (recalled as the ancient church, icons and priest
in the dream). By turning to Polen’ka at this crucial moment,
Raskol’nikov has in effect returned to himself “as a child”, making his
remembered—or dreamed—child whole again, part of the community
of believers he left behind in the wake of his terrible dream. She
restores his ability to believe in the goodness of man and the infinitude
of God.
By using inclusive perspective to pull him into the “icon”,
Polen’ka brings him into that community—realized as the circle of
family love—as an “adopted” older brother. Replicating the inclusive,
inverse perspective of the icon, her actions are a reminder that the
Church functions as an extended family of “brothers” and “sisters”.
Through verbal inclusive perspective, the conversation draws him
toward the miracle of Christian agape, just as Razumikhin’s gift of
clothing did. This great gift to him, a child’s love, symbolized by a
hug, a kiss, and a prayer, rekindles the deeply buried love in
Raskol’nikov’s own heart.
When Polen’ka hugs his face close to hers, the narrator
pointedly emphasizes her thinness (“arms as skinny as matches”), a
marker of extreme poverty and an issue designed to appeal to his
36
Polen’ka verbally includes Raskol’nikov into her “Orthodox community”; more to
the point, he wants her to draw him in (verbal inverse perspective, like the biblical
usage associated with Lizaveta, who will “behold God”) (PSS 6: 249). This is a
reference, of course, to Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will
behold God”.
Iconic Images 115
disaffected young target audience. Dostoevsky undermines the

economic significance of this marker by using the word “matches”,
instead of, for instance “twigs” (vetochki). Linked with fire, the
matches anticipate Sonia’s flame-colored feather, a marker for St.
Sophia (to be discussed below).37 They make Polen’ka a “Sophia” by
extension. Her deep religious belief and ageless wisdom underscore
this likeness.
The contemporary Utopian Socialist/nihilist reader would
surely recall his own early exposure to icons, just as Raskol’nikov
remembered the ancient icons in his horse nightmare. At the same
time, as Dostoevsky presents ostensible economic support to
seemingly lure and ostensibly agree with his opponents, he
superimposes on this emotionally superficial, rational argument the
classic iconic pose of the Mother of God holding the Christ Child, a
paradigm of love revealed on earth through the Orthodox Church and
its icons. Mother of God icons date from hundreds of years before
Dostoevsky incorporated them into his work. (Christ, notes Stephen
Hutchings [1997: 28-35], figures significantly as the icon of God in
Eastern Christianity.) Both the Mother of God of Tenderness of
Kuben—from the thirteenth century—and the Mother of God
Hodigitria—from the fifteenth century—show the Mother of God
holding Christ in maternal embrace (Yamshchikov s.d.: Plate 22). This
scene will be echoed later with horrific effect in Svidrigailov’s
nightmare, when the child becomes an anti-icon symbolizing hell
instead of heaven, to be discussed below, in connection with the anti-
iconic symbolism associated with Svidrigailov.
The iconic pose of Polen’ka hugging Raskol’nikov in a
gesture of all-embracing love foreshadows a much later scene in
Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, when Alyosha’s
mother holds him up to the icon of the Mother of God with the Child.
Alyosha remembers the setting sun (just as Raskol’nikov notices the
same slanting rays before the murder. Arguably, slanting rays act as
inverse perspective, pulling the viewer in and up.). We can see here
that the memory of visual stimulae and Orthodox ritual experienced
early on was a constant for Dostoevsky, not only in Crime and
Punishment but also, late in life, in The Brothers Karamazov. The
37
But the street singer Raskol’nikov encounters early on also has a “flame colored
feather” on her little hat, so perhaps Sonia’s feather places her at once in two worlds:
St. Sophia’s, and the street. Sonia is at once “saint and sinner”.
light of the sun, representing the divine light of belief, is echoed

visually in the icon lamp standing before the icon. By thrusting
Alyosha up to the protective icon, his mother replicates the pose of the
icon itself as she seeks the protection of the Mother of God for her son
(Diane Thompson 1991: 76-77). If Alyosha and his mother are a
reflective if mortal parallel to the icon, then she is thrusting him out of
their own “icon” into space, or into a liminal, transitional zone
between the physical world and the otherworldly realm that the icon
represents. This scene is to the icon as the icon is to the spiritual
essence of the Mother of God, Christ and God. The same can be said
for Raskol’nikov’s scene with Polen’ka.
Polen’ka as the novel’s initial messenger for Christian love
prepares the way for Sonia’s intervention. “Sonia”, as Deborah
Martinsen (2001: 63) has so aptly put it, “becomes the natural path for
Raskolnikov’s reintegration […] [B]ecause she has experienced shame
and banishment from community, Sonia is an ideal partner for
returning to community […]”. Polen’ka is the “interceder’s
interceder”. Intercession is specifically identified visually, iconically,
with the Mother of God, in the icon “The Intercession of the Mother
of God” (from the fifteenth century) (Yamshchikov s.d.: Plate 20).
Intercession is also realized verbally in the apocryphal tale “The
Descent of the Mother of God into Hell”, or “The Visitation to the
Torments by the Mother of God”. The Mother of God represents
divine mercy (Goldblatt 1985: 24).38 Polen’ka and Sonia are her
representatives on earth.
Why would Sonia need an intercessor? Perhaps the answer
lies in the fact that Polen’ka reaches into the liminal zone that
Raskol’nikov inhabits, a state underscored by his constant use of the
stairs. Polen’ka hugs him on the stairs; the structure of the staircase
places her higher and their heads on the same level. The
staircase/ladder figures prominently in icons. And, as noted above, a
vertical setting functions as inclusive perspective. Finally, Polen’ka as
a child signifies innocence.
38
The text of this apocryphal tale was published in N.K. Gudzy, Khrestomatiia po
drevnei russkoi literature, Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1955), 92-98. A brief
introduction and English translation of this tale can be found in Serge A. Zenkovsky,
ed., Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1963),
122-129.
Iconic Images 117
So does Sonia, with her childlike face and tiny frame. Her
evident poverty masks a deeper spiritual significance. When we first
encounter her after her father’s fatal accident, Sonia is dressed
prostitute-style:
She was in rags too, her clothes were cheap, but adorned street-
fashion […] [Sonia] was wearing a colored silk dress, bought at
fourth-hand, and inappropriate here […] and a ridiculous round
straw hat with a bright, flame-colored feather” (PSS 6: 143;
emphasis added).39
Recalling the fire Saint Sophia flames with, the feather is a clear-cut
iconic marker. It has disappeared by Sonia’s next appearance, but the
association has already been made.
Sonia has just dropped in, and she reacts awkwardly in the
presence of Raskol’nikov’s mother and his sister Dunya:
Having unexpectedly seen a room full of people, she was not so

much embarrassed as completely at a loss, became frightened, like a
small child, and even made a movement as though to go away […]
This was a thin, very thin, and pale little face […] in spite of her
eighteen years, she seemed almost still like a little girl, much
younger than her years, almost completely a child, and this
sometimes even appeared absurd in some of her movements (PSS 6:
181, 183; emphasis added).
Her physical awkwardness echoes Sonia’s slightly irregular face and,

ultimately, her cruciform room. Sonia’s childlike thinness leads the
reader to identify her with Polen’ka and underscores the intense poverty
39
For the association of St. Sophia with fire, see Caitlín Matthews, Sophia Goddess of
Wisdom: The Divine Feminine from Black Goddess to World-Soul (London:
Aquarian, 1991), 291. Evgenii Trubetskoi notes this same association, referring to the
“fire St. Sophia flames with”. Evgenii Trubetskoi, Tri ocherka o russkoi ikone
(Moscow: InfoArt, 1991), 52. So do Tat’iana Kasatkina (“Sofiologiia Dostoevskogo”,
Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura 17) (Moscow: 2003), 74; and Sadassi Igeta,
“Slavianskii fol’klor v proizvedeniiakh F.M. Dostoevskogo: ‘zemlia’ u
Dostoevskogo: ‘Mat’ syra zemlia’—‘Bogoroditsa’—‘Sofiia’, in Japanese
Contributions to the Ninth International Congress of Slavists , ed. Shoichi Kamura
(Kiev, September, 1983), (Tokyo: Japanese Association of Slavists, 1983), 75-88.
André von Gronicka presents a contrary view, linking the feather with “Mephisto’s
realm even if not in his power”. The Russian Image of Goethe: Goethe in Russian
Literature of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 133.
of both characters. We also recall the image of the match, reinforcing fire
imagery associated with St. Sophia. Poverty is a superficial issue here,
since, far more importantly, Sonia represents Sophia, Heavenly or
Divine Wisdom and a significant entity in Russian Orthodoxy.40 Three
major Orthodox churches were named for her: the great Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople, St. Sophia in Novgorod, and, the mother of Russian
churches, St. Sophia in Kiev. Sophia is linked by extension to the
Mother of God and ultimately, as a personification of wisdom, to Christ.
Iconic representations of Sophia, although rare, do exist. In one striking
image, she “sits on a throne surrounded by the five circles of heaven”.
Wisdom also appears as the “Angel of the Lord […] with a starry band
which recalls the very end of creation” (Matthews 1991: 292-294). We
are alerted to Sonia’s crucial role—especially for Raskol’nikov—
through her name, even though we originally encounter her as the young
woman pulled by economic circumstance into the whirlpool of
prostitution. As with Raskol’nikov, her name works on two levels: the
worldly and the Orthodox.
Sonia’s combination “of image and word, speech and presence”
underscores her iconic significance for Raskol’nikov (Slattery 1994-
1998: 26). In her melding of the visual and oral, she extends a two-
pronged appeal to Raskol’nikov, and also to Dostoevsky’s most
important (young) readers. Sonia and Raskol’nikov visit each other’s
rooms. It is she who comes first to invite him to her father’s funeral.
Then, much later, he visits her. She lives in a peculiarly squashed, oddly
shaped room that, as Ganna Bograd (s.d.: 7-8) has observed, looks like
the Orthodox cross;41 more about her room below. (In effect, Sonia and
Raskol’nikov have “traded crosses” with their respective visits.42) Three
40
Pavel Florensky wrote that “if Sophia is the Church, then the soul and conscience of
the Church, the Church of Saints, is chiefly Sophia […]”. P.A. Florenskii, Stolp i
utverzhdenie istiny: Opyt pravoslavnoi feoditsei v dvenadtsati pis’makh (Berlin:
Rossica, 1929), 350-351. Cited in David M. Bethea, “Florensky and Dante:
Revelation, Orthodoxy, and Non-Euclidean Space”, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt and
Richard F. Gustafson, eds., Russian Religious Thought (Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1996), 124.
41
Roger Anderson has commented on the “distortion of architectural angles [in
Sonia’s room], so common in [the] inverse perspective” of the icon. Roger Anderson,
“The Optics of Narration”, 95.
42
As Paul Friedrich has observed, “ritual siblinghood […] was sealed by exchanging
the cross worn around the neck [….]”. Paul Friedrich, Language, Context, and the
Imagination. Essays by Paul Friedrich. Selected and Edited Anwar S. Dil (Stanford:
Iconic Images 119
women are associated with the Orthodox cross: Alyona the pawnbroker,
Lizaveta, and Sonia. Sonia and Lizaveta have one each. Following the
murders, Sonia wears Lizaveta’s cross and has two. She will give her
own, original cross to Raskol’nikov to wear (PSS 6: 324). Ironically,
Raskol’nikov is Dostoevsky’s instrument for revealing Alyona’s medal
and crosses—symbolizing her religious belief—to the reader:
Suddenly he noticed that there was a cord around her neck, he pulled
it, but the cord was strong and didn’t break […] In his impatience he
swung the axe again to cut the cord right there on her body […] on
the cord were two crosses, cypress and copper, and, besides that, a
little enameled icon (PSS 6: 64).
The cross is an obvious symbol of the Crucifixion of Christ,

with further reference to the Resurrection and by extension the Orthodox
Church. Cross and Church are synonymous, since church buildings in
both East and West were cruciform. Russian churches, as William
Brumfield notes (1993: 11), were traditionally constructed in the plan of
an “inscribed cross” or cross-domed, a design that “evolved in
Byzantium in the eighth century […] [T]he design is characterized by a
widening of the central aisle, whose width is reflected in a north-south,
or transept, aisle—thus delineating a cross within a quadrilateral”.43
Because the cross and the church can be considered equivalent, Sonia
lives in a “church” in addition to “wearing” two of them. Since the
church itself—like the icon—represents Christianity, Sonia literally
dwells within her faith.
In spite of her low ceiling—as in Raskol’nikov’s “closet” and
Svidrigailov’s hotel room at the Adrianopolis—we never get a sense of
Sonia being “under” the stairs/iconic ladder. Perhaps this is because
Dostoevsky so clearly identifies the room with the cross. Inverse
perspective is a significant factor too. The room is low, and it also seems
to be squashed horizontally, not vertically (in spite of the low ceiling).
This inverse perspective draws not only Raskol’nikov into the room, but
Stanford University Press, 1979), 138. Many thanks to Paul Friedrich for having
generously shared his work.
43
Also noted in Hamilton, Art and Architecture, 177. For a valuable discussion of the
cruciform layout of buildings in Crime and Punishment, see Antony Johae’s
“Towards an Iconography of ‘Crime and Punishment’ ”, in Harold Bloom, ed.,
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: Bloom’s Modern Critical
Interpretations (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2004), 243-256.
the reader too. We have already been alerted that her room has positive
and significant Christian associations from the information that she rents
from the Kapernaumovs (the Capernaum family), a name that recalls not
only the Gospels (Capernaum) but also, in contemporary usage, the
brothel (McDuff 1991: 634-635). We see here Sonia’s double role in the
novel. But the reader has already encountered the same Orthodox
construct in Dostoevsky’s description of Sonia’s face, anticipating the
sacred space of her room. She has a “very thin and pale little face, rather
irregular, rather sharp, with a sharp little nose and chin” (PSS 6: 183,
248; emphasis added). Most significantly, we’ll remember her face on a
sensory, non-rational level, which is precisely the way Dostoevsky
wants to appeal to/reach his target reader.44 Anticipating her cruciform
room, Sonia’s face becomes an icon that draws Raskol’nikov in. The
structure of her room alerts the reader for the momentous event to
follow: the intimate scene when Sonia reads to Raskol’nikov about
Lazarus’ return to life. And her pallor—as Raskol’nikov observes about
her hands—is transparent, linking her with the flame of the candle (and
St. Sophia) (PSS 6: 242).45 Arguably functioning as inverse perspective,
transparency (and fire) draws in the reader’s eye.46
Dostoevsky evidently considered the scene centered on the
reading of Lazarus sufficiently important to merit almost an entire
chapter (Part IV, Chapter Four). (If we can consider this scene one of
the dramatic high points of the novel, then the [target] reader is
“resurrected” along with Lazarus—and Raskol’nikov himself.)
Building on the iconic imagery first presented in the brief but crucial
episode between Raskol’nikov and Polen’ka, Dostoevsky first has
Raskol’nikov “confess” without words to his friend Razumikhin. A
lamp, “foreshadowing” to the candle in the scene with Sonia
immediately following, functions as an iconic marker.47
“Don’t come to see me. Maybe I’ll come here… Leave me, but don’t
leave… them. Do you understand me”? […] “Once and for all, never
ask me anything about this. There’s nothing for me to answer you”
[…] Some kind of idea had slipped out, a hint, as it were, something
44
She, as my student Lael Simons has noted, resembles an incarnated icon.
45
Thanks to Caryl Emerson for the reminder about Sonia’s “transparent” skin.
46
One is tempted here to remember the lines from Goethe’s Faust: “through suffering
to the light”.
47
For a discussion of the analogous iconic role of lamps and candles, see Uspenskij,
Semiotics, 21 n. 17.
Iconic Images 121
horrible, monstrous [bezobraznoe, literally ‘imageless’, ‘iconless’]

and suddenly understood on both sides… Razumikhin turned as pale
as a corpse [linking him with Lazarus] (PSS 6: 240; emphasis in
original).
Raskol’nikov goes from Razumikhin to Sonia, who lives on the second

floor (a liminal zone?) in an old three-storied house. The candle is
immediately visible on a chair, but she picks it up and holds it so that it
illumines her face (image). “Sonia Marmeladova”, Harriett Murav
comments (1992: 68), “appears as an icon, on which only suffering is
expressed”.48
Dostoevsky depicts Sonia’s room in detail. “It was a large room,
but incredibly low ceilinged […] it had the look of an extremely
irregular quadrangle […] one corner was extremely acute, the other
corner was monstrously obtuse” (PSS 6: 241). Horizontal skewing not
only makes Sonia’s room resemble a cross, it also emphasizes the
inclusive perspective characteristic of the icon. Through this perspective,
Dostoevsky draws Raskol’nikov—and the reader—into the room. And,
because cross and church are demonstrably equivalent, we are drawn in
effect into “church” with Raskol’nikov. The surface issue of Sonia’s
evident poverty is eclipsed—as was the case with Polen’ka—by the
religious symbolism of the scene.
Sonia and Raskol’nikov share a tense conversation during which
he torments her verbally, hitting at her emotional—and spiritual—
Achilles’ heel: her faith in God, the sexual victimization of children, and
prostitution. All of these are combined in the person of Polen’ka. His
verbal assault, reducing Sonia to a commodity, replicates verbally the
physical violence of the literal murders.
“You don’t get money every day, do you”? Sonia was more
embarrassed than before. “No”, she whispered with an agonized
effort. “The same thing’s going to happen with Polechka”, he
suddenly said. “No! No! That can’t be, no”! Sonia loudly
screamed like a person in despair, or as though someone had just
wounded her with a knife. “God, God won’t allow such a horror”!
(PSS 6: 246).
48
Harriett Murav further notes that “Leslie Johnson identifies an iconic presence in
Lizaveta […] who, she writes, ‘functions both for Sonia and Raskolnikov as an icon
or image of eternal life’ ”. Leslie A. Johnson, The Experience of Time in Crime and
Punishment (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1984), 113. Cited in Murav, Foolishness,
185 n. 15.
His terrifying comment linking Polen’ka with prostitution amounts to an

attempt to desecrate the image (obraz) of an innocent child, destruction
Svidrigailov has actually realized. Finally, Raskol’nikov spies Sonia’s
Bible.
On the chest of drawers lay some kind of book. Every time he went
back and forth, he noticed it; now he picked it up and took a look at
it. It was the New Testament in Russian translation. The book was
old, second-hand, in a leather binding [akin to second-hand clothing;
see Chapter Two] (PSS 6: 248).
Lizaveta gave the Bible—the Word—to Sonia, an act of sharing/caritas

that also distinguishes clothing in the novel and has already been treated
in the second chapter. The mention of Lizaveta’s name stuns
Raskol’nikov, especially when Sonia refers to the brutal murder. This
brief but momentous discussion triggers Raskol’nikov’s next action:
He brought the book over to the candle [that is, to the icon] and
began to leaf through it. “Where’s the part about Lazarus’? he asked
her suddenly. Sonia persistently gazed at the floor [literally, at the
ground, v zemliu, an image repeated when Raskol’nikov kisses the
earth of the Haymarket] and didn’t answer (PSS 6:405; emphasis
added).
Sonia had read the passage about Lazarus’ return to life to Lizaveta.
Together, she and Lizaveta constituted their own miniature congregation,
a religious community—juxtaposed to the secular commune—realized
literally in the shape of Sonia’s (church) room, which Lizaveta must
have visited.
Then she reads aloud from John, Chapter Eleven, about the
raising of Lazarus, so relevant for Raskol’nikov’s return to faith and life.
Sonia realized as Sophia “is the watchful and protective mother linking
the living with the dead” (PSS 6: 250-251; Joanna Hubbs 1988: 237;
emphasis in original). This definition of Sophia/Sonia is particularly apt
when we consider whom she read to before: a murder victim who
“would see God” and her murderer (Raskol’nikov) who attempted to kill
his faith but would be resurrected into belief. That she knows this
passage so well marks it as central in her own life; belief in the
Resurrection sustains Sonia during her terrible moments out in the street.
The candle end had long since burned low in the crooked
candlestick, dimly illuminating in this poverty-stricken room the
Iconic Images 123
murderer and the “woman who has gone astray”, who had come
together so strangely to read of the eternal book (PSS 6: 248-252).49
The “woman who has gone astray” immediately resonates with the
Gospels (as does Raskol’nikov’s reference to Luzhin casting a stone at
Sonia) (PSS 6: 232), drawing the reader in to what may be defined as
“verbal” inverse perspective (particularly since this scene is timeless, in
sync with the “eternal book”). Echoing the lamp from Raskol’nikov’s
earlier scene with Razumikhin, the candle recalls the icon, reinforcing
the iconic architecture of Sonia’s room. Dostoevsky manipulates time
here through his lexicon, using words like bludnitsa (‘a woman who has
gone astray’) and eternal book to freeze this crucial encounter, perhaps
to resonate with perpetual, biblical time and to separate this scene from
Western, linear time.50
This static yet intense little scene is yet another iconic reference,
dramatizing the skewed outlines of her room. Dostoevsky creates an
iconic scene by emphasizing the shape of the room, the presence of the
candle, the position of the two actors on this stage, and the Bible. Holy
text equals holy image. Because her room is a “church”, any act within it
acquires sacred status and significance. When she gives her own cross to
Raskol'nikov to wear, Sonia not only brings him back into the embrace
of the Christian community but also gives him back the church from his
childhood, that ancient building, fallen into decay and with its icons
(literally, images, obraza) without frames, that we encountered back in
his dream of the horse (PSS 6: 46).
The final iconic scene within the main body of the novel is set
right before Raskol’nikov’s confession in the police station (when he
wavers and starts to leave without doing what he came for [PSS 6:
409]). Sonia told him to bow down to the earth and ask forgiveness for
the murders. This scene abounds in iconic images and iconic
perspective, illuminated by an iconic light:
He suddenly recalled Sonia’s words: “Go to the crossroads

[perekrestok, incorporating the word krest for cross], bow down to
the people, kiss the earth, because you have sinned before it, and say
49
Thanks to Paul Friedrich for reminding me that bludnitsa should be rendered rather
as “woman who has gone astray” than as “harlot”.
50
And we encounter this same temporal “freezing” at the end of the epilogue, when it
seems that “time stopped” for Raskol’nikov, watching the nomads across the Irtysh.
PSS 6: 421.
aloud to the whole world: ‘I am a murderer!’ ” […] [Spectators are

divided between those “above” the “iconic ladder”, and those
“below”.] Recalling this, he started to shudder. The unbearable
misery and anxiety of all this time, but especially of the last hours,
crushed him, so that he fairly flung himself into the possibility of this
whole, new, and perfect sensation. It suddenly seized him, like a fire,
consumed everything. He fell to the earth. He got down on his knees
in the middle of the [Haymarket] square, bowed down to the earth
and kissed this dirty earth with delight and happiness. He got up and
bowed down another time. [The surrounding populace instantly
reacts.] “He’s tied one on”, observed one fellow near him. Laughter
rang out. “Well, he’s walking to Jerusalem, my brothers, with his
children, saying farewell to his motherland [rodina], he’s bowing to
the whole world, kissing the capital city of St. Petersburg and its
foundations” (PSS 6: 405; emphasis added).
Why the Haymarket? As a trade area frequented by artisans, the

Haymarket was a nexus of urban and rural, including peasants turned
artisans and tradesmen corrupted by the great city. It was the haunt of
drunkards and prostitutes, as we see early in the novel. This is precisely
and repeatedly how Dostoevsky depicted this important urban center in
Crime and Punishment. Drunkenness and prostitution are emblems of
peasant corruption in the urban environment. So is religious cynicism,
reflected in the laughter that greets Raskol’nikov’s action. Spectators are
divided between the callously cynical (the young man) and the believers
(the older one). (This scene eerily prefigures Vasily Ivanovich Surikov’s
painting of the Boyarina Morozova.) Peasant corruption that takes the
form of mocking Orthodox belief echoes and recapitulates
Raskol’nikov’s horrific horse nightmare, the division between believers
and scoffers, and seeks to overcome the spiritual “prostitution” of the
young intellectuals who comprise Dostoevsky’s target readers.
Now that Raskol’nikov has kissed the earth to atone for the
blood he spilled, it would be opportune to recall his two earlier scenes in
which blood figures significantly. In the first one, the blood of the
murdered Alyona “gushed out as though from an overturned glass”
(recalling the Eucharist) and soaked into the floor. “A whole puddle of
blood flowed out” (PSS 6: 63-64), the narrator informs us, linking this
murder through the word “puddle” with the stagnant/dirty water of
Raskol’nikov’s puddle dream and with Luzhin (PSS 6: 212). In the
second dream, Raskol’nikov returns to the crime scene. Blood has been
cleaned from the floor, disconcerting Raskol’nikov:
Iconic Images 125
“I want to rent an apartment”, he said, “I’m taking a look around.

[…] They’ve washed the floor, are they going to paint it”?
Raskol’nikov continued. “Isn’t there any blood”? “What blood”?
[asked the workmen] . “Why, an old woman was killed here along
with her sister. There was a whole puddle [luzha] of blood here”
(PSS 6: 134).
(The narrator conflates this blood puddle with the dirty water imagery
that recurs in the novel and is associated with St. Petersburg.)
Dostoevsky equates blood soaking into the floor with blood soaking into
the earth. Now is the time for the target reader to recall the original
biblical murder from Genesis and its aftermath. Cain is jealous of Abel
and kills him, but God “hears” the blood: “And the Lord said to Cain
(Genesis 4:9-10), ‘where is Abel, thy brother’? He said, ‘I don’t know.
Am I after all my brother’s keeper’? And He said: ‘What hast thou done?
The voice of thy brother’s blood calls to me from the earth’ ”. When
Raskol’nikov kisses the earth, he absolves himself of blood-guilt
stretching all the way back to Cain, and resolved in the Crucifixion of
Christ.
In popular Russian belief, the earth is linked with Mother Damp
Earth (Mat’ syra-zemlia), which would eventually figure as Bogozemlia
(Divine Earth) in later Orthodox teaching (post-dating Dostoevsky)
(Rosenthal 1996: 159). Mother Damp Earth wielded great power in
popular lore, “disgorging from east to west a river of fire, which bears
away the souls of sinners into Hell (ad or peklo), where they are flung
into cauldrons of boiling pitch” (Warner 2002: 51). Mother Damp Earth
is the earth personified. She has a “face”, and a face is an image/icon. An
abuse against Mother Earth was tantamount to an abuse against one’s
own parents (Uspenskij “Obscenities” 1984: 298; emphasis in original).
In other words, he who offends Mother Damp Earth has broken one of
the Ten Commandments. The dual belief (dvoeverie) of the Russian
peasant is clearly at work here, and Dostoevsky obviously posits
Orthodoxy as the religious faith of the Russian people.
When he kisses the earth, Raskol’nikov is in effect kissing the
image of Mother Damp Earth. Through this image, her gender, and
her stature in popular (folk) belief, Mother Damp Earth recalls the
Mother of God. As Gleb Uspenskij observes (“Obscenities” 1984:
299),
in Slavonic pagan religion worship of Mother Earth [Mat’ syra-

zemlia] is connected with the worship of Mokosh’ as a feminine
hypostasis opposed to the god of thunder […] With the coming of

Christianity the cult of Mokosh’ was transferred both to St.
Paraskeva Pjatnica (who may consequently be thought of as “mother
of earth and water”) and to the Mother of God, in consequence of
which the Mother of God is associated with damp Mother Earth.51
The Mother of God was “the embodiment of motherhood, divine

Motherhood itself […] The Russian Mary is not only the Mother of God
or Christ, but the universal Mother, the Mother of all mankind […].
Practically all features of this image of the Russian Bogoroditsa [Mother
of God] are taken […] mostly from modern Russian folklore” (Fedotov
1960: 360, 361). (Stavrogin’s wife Mar’ya Timofeevna in Dostoevsky’s
1872 novel Demons makes this same association of the Mother of God
with Mother Damp Earth [Askol’dov 1981: 55].) Raskol’nikov in effect
is kissing an icon of the Mother of God superimposed on the ground he
had earlier profaned by shedding blood.
Dostoevsky’s adherence to the doctrine of pochvennichestvo (a
return to the soil, the pochva) (Frank 1995: 6) is a significant factor in
this scene: in Raskol’nikov’s action, the bystanders’ reactions, and the
setting itself. Dostoevsky forcibly demonstrated that Raskol’nikov had to
return to his Russian roots, which last played a significant role in the
horse dream at the beginning of the novel. In this early dream, the people
are for the most part frightening and violent. Most significantly, they are
alien to the little boy of the dream and the grown young man who will
commit murder, ostensibly in their name. The gulf between educated,
Westernized people—particularly educated young men—and the
“common” people dated back, in Dostoevsky’s view, to the split
engendered by the reforms of Peter the Great (Frank 1995: 32).
Dostoevsky sought to bridge this gap in the earth-kissing scene, to bring
a young nihilist back to his Russian roots, back from disbelief, and from
perilous separation from the roots of Russian culture as embodied in the
ideals of the Russian peasants. Pochvennichestvo is realized literally in
this scene, where Raskol’nikov kisses the “soil” (pochva). Functioning
51
For a comparable linkage in Alexei Remizov, see Stephen Hutchings, Russian
Modernism, 217. We find the same association of the Mother of God (the Virgin
Mary) with Mother Earth in Catholic Poland. See Małgorzata Anna Packalén, “The
Femmes Fatales of the Polish Village: Sexuality, Society and Literary Conventions in
Orzeszkova, Reymont and Dąbrowska”, tr. Ursula Phillips. In Knut Andreas Grimstad
and Ursula Phillips, eds., Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context: Ten Essays on
Polish Prose (Bergen: Slavica Bergensia 5, 2005), 65-66.
Iconic Images 127
as an icon, the ground literally embodies belief in the unseen world and
serves as a concrete realization of faith.
The crossroad figures importantly in this iconic scene. Like
staircases/ladders, crossroads are liminal constructs connecting two
worlds. Here, they not only stand for the cross but also signify a
threshold between Raskol’nikov’s earlier flirtation with nihilism,
disbelief and Utilitarianism and his re-immersion in Orthodox
Christianity. In popular belief, crossroads were frequently haunted by
demons. Linda Ivanits (1989: 40, 120) informs us that suicides, barred
from interment in a consecrated graveyard, were typically buried at the
crossroad. By this point in the novel, Svidrigailov has already committed
suicide (PSS 6: 395). His last moments and demise link him with
demons (Ivanits 1989: 48), the bathhouse and the crossroad, but Sonia's
instruction to Raskol’nikov enables him to redeem this liminal and
potentially Christian symbol from the forces of evil.52 Raskol’nikov’s
kiss reinforces the cruciform symbolism of the crossroad, setting him on
a course toward his eventual redemption in the epilogue. His kiss
redeems him from the hell of Svidrigailov’s disbelief and links him with
Lazarus and the Resurrection. This scene functions as a closing frame to
the consecrated graveyard of his horse dream, where he sees/recalls the
gravestones of his grandmother and little brother and rice with raisins
arranged on top in a cross (PSS 6: 46). Because Raskol’nikov’s kiss
connects the crossroads with the (kissed) cross (Fedotov 1960: 183, 194,
197, 258, esp. 275-295, 307), he is ready to rejoin the Church and the
community of believers (sobornost’). The final iconic scene, set in the
epilogue, will complete that process. This scene will be treated briefly,
since the epilogue is the focus of a separate chapter.
In the epilogue, Sonia—who has followed the imprisoned
Raskol’nikov to Siberia—is clearly identified with the Mother of God.
The peasant convicts who cannot tolerate Raskol’nikov and his
“atheism” call her “Matushka” (Little Mother. Significantly, they also
call her Sophia, not Sonia:
“Little Mother Sophia Semyonovna, you’re our mother, tender,

sickly”! these coarse branded convicts would say to this skinny little
creature. She would smile and take her leave [otklanivat’sia, related
to the verb klianiat’sia, to bow down to, as before an icon], and they
all loved it when she would smile at them. They even loved her gait
52
For a discussion of the crossroads, see Bograd, “Metafizicheskoe prostranstvo”.
and would turn to look at her as she walked, and would praise her;
they would even praise her for being so small, and they didn’t know
how to praise her enough. They would go to her to be cured (PSS 6:
419).
In other words, Sonia can heal through faith, tying her to the Mother of
God. Dostoevsky reinforces this link between Sonia and the Mother of
God by placing her and Raskol’nikov into an iconic pose. Raskol’nikov
sits near the bank of the Irtysh and gazes out at the river and beyond, at
the nomads in the distance. “Suddenly Sonia turned up next to him. She
approached almost inaudibly and sat down next to him […] She was
wearing her poor, old burnoose and green shawl […] She smiled at him
affably and joyfully but, according to her habit, shyly stretched out her
hand to him”. Extending her hand was Sonia’s typical gesture, and he
would take it “with loathing”. But on this occasion, perhaps influenced
in part by the bit of song (standing for the liturgy) that he has just heard,
he holds on to her (PSS 6: 421). Their clasping of hands is the physical
manifestation of a newly discovered bond of love, realized here as an
iconic pose. Once Raskol’nikov takes Sonia’s hand, their pose replicates
an iconic representation of the Mother of God with the Christ Child.
Christ holds the hand of the Mother of God with one of His, raising the
fingers of His other hand in blessing. The Kievo-Bratsk icon (from 1654)
is an example of this image (Kasatkina 1995: 23). Their everyday
physical gesture recapitulates the inclusive perspective inherent to the
icon, causing this perspective device to work across the icon as well as
in front of it. The viewer is pulled into this scene along with Sonia and
Raskol’nikov, at one with the handholding pair of the “image”.
Every one of the iconic references in the novel serves to draw
Raskol’nikov back to Orthodoxy (through “inverse perspective”), and
back to Russian traditional values and images, away from the
temptations of Western secular culture. From the earliest iconic scene
with Polen’ka to the final one in the epilogue, the icon is associated with
agape, Christian love juxtaposed to the sterility of rationalism and
materialism. The most potent visual image in Russian Orthodoxy, and in
Crime and Punishment, is the icon. Dostoevsky recreates icons through
inclusive perspective, poses replicating holy images, and iconic
structures (such as the staircase) to remind the target reader of his native
culture, especially Orthodox culture. Like orality—including song—
icons too attract through the senses rather than rationally. Designed to
work through the emotions, this appeal is in itself an anti-rational
Iconic Images 129
“argument”. Dostoevsky’s anti-iconic images work through the senses

rather than the intellect to repulse or shock the readers. These constructs
will be treated in the next section.
Anti-Iconic Constructs: Raskol’nikov
In Crime and Punishment, the anti-iconic typically consists of smashing

or otherwise undermining the iconic image.53 All instances when faces—
or heads—are attacked or destroyed qualify as anti-iconic, since the
word obraz (‘image’) denotes both. These scenes include the actual
murders, two violent dreams, and one suicide. Functioning as an evil
inversion of the iconic image, the mask is anti-iconic. Where the icon is
distinguished for its inverse perspective that draws the viewer into the
scene, the anti-icon repels the viewer out of the scene through violence
or profanation (anti-inverse perspective), exciting a negative, horrified,
or even disgusted reaction. It is precisely on this emotional level that
Dostoevsky wants to appeal to his readers.
The initial anti-iconic incident is the central component of
Raskol’nikov’s horse dream. The peasant Mikolka has his nag (klyacha)
beaten on the head and whipped with particularly brutal force on her face
and eyes: “ ‘Lash her on the muzzle, on her eyes, on her eyes’! Mikolka
yells” (PSS 6: 48). One old man from the crowd at this “entertainment”
(who foreshadows to the man in the much later Haymarket scene)
correctly observes that Mikolka has no cross, stressing the anti-iconic
tenor of his violent action.
In spite of all the beating, the poor nag hangs on to life.
Someone from this mob suggests using an axe on her (“ ‘Hey, take an
axe to her! Finish with her at once’, yells a third one”). The axe quite
obviously foreshadows to the actual murders. Mikolka grabs a
crowbar and kills her with blows to her spine. The boy Raskol’nikov
runs up. He embraces her “dead, bloody muzzle and kisses her, kisses
her eyes, her lips…Then he suddenly jumps up and in a frenzy flings
53
This destruction of the iconic image—an anti-Christian gesture—should not be
confused with true iconoclasm. Iconoclasm dates back to the eighth century, when the
Byzantine Emperor Leo III banned icons on the grounds that they were idols
prohibited by Scripture. Joan M. Hussey, ed., The Cambridge Medieval History. Vol.
IV, The Byzantine Empire. Part I, Byzantium and its Neighbours (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1966), 65-66.
himself with his little fists on Mikolka” (PSS 6: 48-49).54 By

extension, this is also an attack on the Russian people, seen as violent
murderers in the context of this dream. This view will be corrected
only in Siberia, in the epilogue. Raskol’nikov’s kiss links the dead
nag’s face with the icon. How interesting, then, is his comment upon
waking up and referring to his “bezobraznyi son”, his ‘hideous’ but,
quite literally his ‘imageless dream’. The imageless dream of course
recalls its reverse, the image or the icon.
In the next anti-iconic scenes, the grown-up “boy” of the
dream himself shatters “images” with an axe.
He drew the axe all the way out, swung it with both hands, barely
aware of himself, and almost without an effort, almost mechanically,
brought the butt down on her head. It was as though he had no
strength. But as soon as he brought the axe down, strength was born
in him anew […] The blow landed on the very crown of her head,
made easier by her short stature. She cried out, but very weakly, and
suddenly sank to the floor, although she still managed to raise both
hands to her head (PSS 6: 63).55
In effect, she embraces her own fatally wounded head. This action
backshadows to Raskol’nikov’s embrace of the nag’s head in the
dream and foreshadows to the death of her half-sister Lizaveta, which
follows shortly.
In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta, with a big bundle

[connected with her trade in used clothing, and linked with caritas
and the cloth of the icon] in her arms, and looked rigidly at her
murdered sister, her face was as white as linen [like a shroud] and
it was as though she had no strength to call out […] He threw
himself on her with the axe […] The blow landed right on her
skull with the sharp edge, and instantly split the upper part of her
forehead, almost to the crown of her head (PSS 6: 65).
54
Mikolka “confesses” to the murder, and Porfiry Petrovich further identifies him as
an Old Believer, or raskol’nik (‘schismatic’). For a discussion of this identification,
consult A.L. Bem, Dostoevskii: psikhoanalisticheskie ètiudy (Berlin: Petropolis,
1938). Reprint (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1983), 145-148.
55
And there’s a lot of blood, which “poured out as if from an overturned glass”. PSS 6:
63. Profanation of the Eucharist equals an anti-iconic act. Harriett Murav (2007: 82)
comments on Dostoevsky’s lexical assault in this passage, which acts like a verbal
anti-icon, repelling the reader instead of drawing him or her in.
Iconic Images 131
And we remember the first icon of the novel, hanging on the wall as
witness to these murders. With his axe, Raskol’nikov has shattered
two images in the presence of an iconic image. Nor is this the only
icon in the apartment. Going into the small bedroom, Raskol’nikov
encounters more, a lot more. “He immediately ran […] into the
bedroom. It was a very small room with an enormous icon case with
icons” (PSS 6: 63). The entire room has been transformed into an icon
case. Christ is always present, but the icon brings Him physically,
literally, into the room. It is important to remember that Alyona
herself is the only one of the two half-sisters who had any significant
disposable income. That she chose to spend so much of that income on
icons speaks to her intense—although not readily apparent—faith, and
to her future redemption.56
Perhaps now is the time to discuss the murder weapon. Why
does Raskol’nikov use an axe? The central issue here is: what actually
is Raskol’nikov’s target within the larger iconic framework of Crime
and Punishment. The axe is the weapon of choice when splitting wood
and produces a lot of blood (a “puddle”). By having Raskol’nikov kill
with the axe, Dostoevsky reminds his readers—who would of course
have recalled that icons are painted with egg tempura paint on a
wooden board—that his hero is not merely committing murder. He
also destroys two iconic images with his axe.57 The iconic significance
of wood is realized further in Raskol’nikov’s “pledge”, his lure before
the actual murders. The “pledge” itself is made of wood, carefully
56
With her unappealing appearance and personality, Alyona recalls the convicts of
Notes from the Dead House. Perhaps Dostoevsky is reminding us not to judge people
on the basis of externalia.
57
Of course, an axe was a common tool because people heated with wood. See Robert
L. Belknap, “The Plot of Crime and Punishment”, Stanford Slavic Studies 4:1 (1991):
289. But the anti-iconic significance of the axe should also be taken into consideration
here, as should be the important fact that the axe is a tool intimately associated with
village life and “desecrated” here in the urban environment. My student Jonathan
Perrodin has astutely reminded me that the 730 steps Raskol’nikov takes on his way to
the murder(s) recall the onset of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire, in 730. For a
discussion of this topic, see Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 9; and Glenn Peers, Subtle Bodies:
Representing Angels in Byzantium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001),
13-14.
wrapped up to look like a silver cigarette case (PSS 6: 57).58 It is a

false wooden “icon” with silver overlay.
Following the murders, Raskol’nikov has two nightmares that
resonate with anti-iconic imagery. The first involves his landlady. He
thinks he has just awakened (“He regained consciousness at full
twilight to the noise of a horrible yell”), but he is actually in the
middle of a terrible dream. This dream is full of terrific noise and
physical abuse. It differs from Raskol’nikov’s other dreams in that,
says J. Thomas Shaw (1973: 136), “it consists almost entirely of
sounds: shouting, beating, exclaiming, disputing, whispering”. He
hears the voice of his landlady, beaten mercilessly “on the staircase”,
the iconic liminal zone.
Suddenly Raskol’nikov began to tremble like a leaf: he

recognized this voice; it was the voice of Il’ya Petrovich [from the
police station]. Il’ya Petrovich here and beating his landlady! He’s
kicking her, breaking [kolotit] her head against the steps (PSS 6:
90-91; emphasis added).
Because the head is again the focal point receiving the blows, this
dream recapitulates the original crime. It serves as a reminder that
violence directed against another person is tantamount to desecrating
an icon, a divine image.59 The combination of noise plus the presence
of another perpetrator for this “icon smashing” makes Raskol’nikov
feel that he is in the midst of horrific violence, a sense that will
resurface during his “germ dream” (to be discussed in the epilogue
chapter).
The association of the murderer’s axe with crushed or split
“wood” leads into another anti-iconic scene, another nightmare. In his
dream, he returns to the pawnbroker’s apartment and the scene of his
crimes. The front room looks the same but for two crucial differences:
it is illumined by moonlight (“an enormous, round, copper-red full
moon looked straight through the window”) instead of sunlight, and
the icon is no longer on the wall. “Suddenly a dry momentary crack
resounded, as though someone were breaking a small splinter of wood
58
For an excellent discussion of the “pledge”, see Leonid Karasev, “Kak byl ustroen
‘zaklad’ Raskol’nikova”, Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura 2 (1994): 42-50. We
encounter the same combination of wood plus metal in the axe.
59
And, quite appropriately, the anti-iconic Svidrigailov puts in his first physical
appearance in the wake of this icon-shattering dream. PSS 6: 214
Iconic Images 133
[a luchinka, used for light in a peasant household]”. Splintering an

icon (which Raskol’nikov will do below) equals splintering and
rupturing traditional Russian peasant culture. A woman’s coat was
hanging on a wall in the corner. “ ‘Why is there a coat here’, he
thought. ‘After all, it wasn’t there before…’ ”. That is, it wasn’t there
at the time of the murders. When he moved the coat out of the way, he
saw an old woman sitting on a chair in the corner (perhaps the icon
corner).
[T]he old woman was sitting all doubled up and with her head
hanging down, so there was no way he could make out her face,
but this was she. He stood over her: “She’s scared”! he thought,
quietly freeing the axe from the loop and he hit the old woman on
the crown of her head, once and yet again. But it was strange: she
didn’t even stir from the blows, as though she were made of wood
[backshadowing to the noise of the breaking splinter that he heard
earlier, and to the icon].
He will keep trying to see her face. She will lower it even further and,
as if to spite him, will quietly laugh at him (PSS 6: 213; emphasis
added). Through this dream, we backshadow to the actual murder/s as
dream-like states.
The cloth is, of course, her shroud, associated with symbolic
baptism in the River Jordan and with her own funeral.60 Several
questions remain: why has the icon disappeared, and why can’t
Raskol’nikov see her face? The crack of the splinter (as though split
with an axe) and new information that the pawnbroker seems to be
made out of wood are related to both of these issues. The faces of the
original victims—Alyona and Lizaveta—were also “icons”, as
Raskol’nikov is just beginning to realize on at least a subconscious
level (which may well be the level that counts, segregated as it is from
rational thought). Lizaveta is not present here—perhaps because she’ll
“resurface” during his visit to Sonia. The dream-pawnbroker keeps
turning her face away from him as a subconscious reminder that her
image is being withheld from his sight. Because, as Shanti Elliott has
observed (2000: 62), “the inclination of the saint’s head in the icon
communicates relationship with the viewer […]”, Raskol’nikov
experiences a sense of being severed from the Orthodox community.
Uspenskij states (1976: 60) that “the faces in icons, as a rule, are
60
See Ryan, Bathhouse, 239, for a brief discussion of shrouds and their significance.
turned toward the viewer (the person praying) irrespective of their real
position in space […]”. His inability to look the image in the face—a
face withdrawn from his view—is what Raskol’nikov finds more
disturbing than any other facet of this dream. He himself “turns away”
following the murders, his action foreshadowing to this nightmare.
When Nastas’ya recalls that Lizaveta once performed a charitable act
for him, “Raskol’nikov turned toward the wall […]” (PSS 6: 105).
Alyona’s hidden image mockingly anticipates the unholy image that
haunts Raskol’nikov. This image is definitively realized in
Svidrigailov’s abrupt appearance immediately after this dream, so that
he seems to be part of the nightmare.61
Svidrigailov
The contemporary reader would have known early on that Svidrigailov

meant trouble, and that this “trouble” was linked with unclean spirits.
When Raskol’nikov has his portentous conversation and partial
confession—about Lizaveta’s death—with Sonia in her “cruciform”
(church) room, Svidrigailov is eavesdropping behind the door (PSS 6:
253). Listening at a threshold or window was unacceptable behavior for
an Orthodox Russian, since it was connected with popular magic and
therefore opposed to Christianity (Ryan 1999: 31).
In spite of Svidrigailov's charitable impulses toward Sonia's
step-siblings, Dostoevsky never leaves us in doubt about his true nature.
“This was a man about fifty [...] his broad, high-cheek-boned face was
quite pleasant, and the color of his face was fresh, not Petersburgian. His
eyes were blue and gazed coldly, fixedly and reflectively. His lips were
scarlet”. As noted in Chapter One of the present study, “this was
somehow a strange face […] resembling a mask” (PSS 6: 188, 357).
Russians associated masks, states W.F. Ryan (1999: 39), “primarily with
pagan, usually midwinter, rituals which were regularly condemned by
the Russian Church as satanic”.62 The masks traditionally sported by
61
“As eerie as the dream is Svidrigailov’s materializing out of it, so that Raskol’nikov,
aware now that he was dreaming, wonders whether the appearance of this, the last
important character to be introduced, is a continuation of the dream. Svidrigajlov is
Raskol’nikov’s nightmare, and he appears as though out of a nightmare”. Shaw,
“Raskol’nikov’s Dreams”: 138.
62
And when Svidrigailov mentions the Mother of God in passing—the Raphael and
Sistine Madonnas—is this not also anti-iconic? PSS 6: 369.
Iconic Images 135
Yuletide mummers, Boris Uspenskij notes, were typically frightening, in

the guise of demons (“Tsar’ ”1984: 287 n. 84). The mask can be seen to
function here as an anti-icon, an anti-image of the sacred face.63
Svidrigailov’s anti-iconic mask is echoed in two scenes late in
the main body of the novel: in his initial nightmare about the drowned
girl, in the nightmare about the little girl turned whore, and his
subsequent suicide. His last night is terrible, truly a night in hell (and
discussed as such in Chapter One). He orders a small meal of veal and
tea in his impossibly dirty hotel room, its filth juxtaposed to the shining
cleanliness of Alyona’s and Lizaveta’s front room. Looking through a
chink in the wall at his neighbors (and eavesdropping once again),
Svidrigailov spies a guttering candle. A candle burns dimly in his own
room, but the outer darkness is absolute. No light can penetrate it. Now
is the time to recall Svidrigailov’s observation about the afterlife, already
touched on in the first chapter: “Just imagine, there will be one little
room there, something like a village bathhouse, covered in soot, and
spiders [like little devils] in every corner […]” (PSS 6: 221; emphasis
added). Hell, a shrunken non-infinity akin to and prefiguring Ivan
Karamazov’s limited Euclidean universe, crawls with spiders that
negatively invoke the iconic ladder.
Svidrigailov’s attempts to fall asleep are thwarted by the mouse
that runs across him, although this may be the first of his nightmares. As
the master of the bathhouse, he should know all about omens. If a mouse
gets into one’s clothing, that means misfortune; but a mouse actually
nibbling that clothing betokens death.64 Perhaps this is why, once the
candle goes out, he doesn’t try to relight it. (Is he afraid of what he might
see?) Now complete, the outer darkness penetrates his room (PSS 6: 388-
391). The stage is set for a nightmare. The horrific vision here is a young
drowning victim he drove to suicide through sexual abuse. Water
functions as the instrument of her death (the reversal of baptismal water).
An unclean death by suicide means that the victim had no final
confession or rites. The pointed absence of icons, prayers and candles
marks this scene as anti-iconic and demonstrates the nexus between
visual and oral religious symbolism in the novel. Initially, Dostoevsky
lulls the reader with open windows, birds and flowers, but that vernal
63
Ewa Kuryluk touches on masks in Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism,
and Structure of a “True” Image (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 205-208.
64
This kind of information could be found in the Volkhovnik (“The Book of the
Wizard”). See Ryan, Bathhouse, 123, 127-128
appeal quickly turns to horror. Not even the association with Trinity Day
saves this scene:
Trinity Day. A rich, luxurious rural cottage, in the English

manner, all grown up with fragrant banks of flowers […] He
especially noticed in vases of water, on the windows, bouquets of
white and tender narcissus, bending on their bright-green,
succulent and long stems with a strong aromatic aroma [aroma for
masking the smell of a body]. He didn’t even want to go away
from them, but he climbed the stairs and entered a large high-
ceilinged reception-room […] [I]n the middle of the reception-
room, on tables covered with white satin shrouds [parodying the
wedding gown she will never wear], stood a coffin. This coffin
was wrapped in white gros-de-Naples […] a girl all in flowers lay
in it […] [T]he smile on her pale lips was full of some kind of
unchildlike, infinite sorrow and great complaint. Svidrigailov
knew this girl; there were neither icon [obraz] nor lighted candles
by this coffin, and no prayers were heard. This girl was a
suicide—a drowned girl (PSS 6: 391).
In Siberia, W.F. Ryan recounts (1999: 81, the witch was associated
with the magpie, which had the evil eye and could cause suicide,
resonating here with Svidrigailov’s cold gaze. That connection
extends to this suicide. Dostoevsky links Svidrigailov with unclean
forces through the bathhouse (treated in Chapter One), and here,
through a young girl’s suicide. Perhaps her death by drowning has
transformed her into a rusalka, “who, in folk belief”, notes Linda
Ivanits, “was often the spirit of a drowned maiden”. She “was
especially dangerous during Trinity Week, and was imagined with
light flowing hair, sometimes crowned by a wreath” (Ivanits 1989: 75-
81). Dostoevsky’s contemporary Russian reader familiar with the
leshii (‘forest demon’) would also know all about the rusalka. Rusalki
were virgins (as originally Svidrigailov’s victim was). They were
associated with water, specifically rivers, and could be very dangerous
since they might drown those who invaded their realm. Rusalki,
Joanna Hubbs notes (1988: 28) could be beautiful, but their beauty
was unholy, anti-iconic. Svidrigailov’s young victim was forced into
this liminal zone, this hideous fate, yet another indication of how far
Svidrigailov stands from the community of Orthodox believers.
Whereas Raskol’nikov attempts to shatter the iconic image
with an axe during the murder and in the nightmare with the
“wooden” old woman, he eventually overcomes these split icons
Iconic Images 137
through the positive iconic images of Polen’ka and Sonia.

Raskol’nikov was “inoculated” when he asked Polen’ka to pray for
him, but Svidrigailov has denied prayer and the promise of eternal life
to an innocent victim who herself emerges as anti-iconic. While
Raskol’nikov will go on to eventual redemption, Svidrigailov is on his
own in the howling darkness (PSS 6: 391-392).
The night yields more horrors. Svidrigailov has another
nightmare about a debauched girl, this one a child of five, as an anti-
iconic image. He rescues a crying little girl in the hallway and brings
her to his room, taking off her wet clothes and tucking her into bed.
We see their faces together, just as earlier we saw Raskol’nikov’s and
Polen’ka’s faces. The little girl falls asleep almost at once, but her
awakening brings a horrifying transformation:
Her little scarlet lips [echoing Svidrigailov’s] seemed to be

burning, flaming, but what’s this? It suddenly seemed to him that
her long black eyelashes were quivering and blinking, as if they
were being raised, and that out from under them a sly, sharp
somehow unchildlike-winking little eye is gazing, as if the little
girl wasn’t sleeping but only pretending. Yes, that’s how it was,
her little lips are parting in a smile; the corners are twitching, as
though she’s still restraining herself. But now she’s completely
stopped restraining herself; this is already laughter […] this is
lust, this is the face of the Dame aux Camélias (PSS 6: 393).
The epithet “unchildlike” links both girls, with the hope and innocent
beauty characteristic of childhood replaced by death on one hand, and
depravity on the other. The drowned maiden morphed into a rusalka.
As exemplified by Polen’ka, the image of a child was linked with the
Mother of God and anticipated the iconic scene between Sonia and
Raskol’nikov. In this scene with Svidrigailov, however, a little girl’s
face becomes a mask like his. She is his mirror image, a witch. The
mask marks her as demonic, the opposite of the icons of the Mother of
God, innocence infected with evil. (Perhaps the second girl is a more
horrific transformation of the first one, now definitively hellish.
Dostoevsky reverses inverse perspective here, pushing the horrified
reader out of the picture.) Where Raskol’nikov shatters two icons with
an axe, Svidrigailov transforms the icon into a mask—a satanic face—
an “image” possessed. He will perform one more anti-iconic act when
he wakes up from his final nightmare and commits suicide.
In the morning, Svidrigailov leaves his room and goes into a

milky fog. No sunlight, identified with divine radiance and realized
through the icon lamp and the candle, illumines this scene. He walks
until he gets to a large watchtower, belonging to the St. Petersburg
Side Fire Station. Appropriately enough, he chooses a structure
identified with water for civic use (in the Godless city of St.
Petersburg), but not baptism (a church with a baptismal font).65 Here,
outside the locked great gates of the Fire Station, stood a Jew—more
aptly here, a member of the “Hebrew Tribe”—wearing the Achilles
helmet characteristic of the fire fighter (McDuff 1991: 647). The
Jew—“locked out” of Russian society—underscores the anti-
Orthodox tenor of this scene. The narrator describes him in brief but
significant detail: “On his face could be seen that age-old peevish
sorrow, which in such a sour way is imprinted without exception on
all the faces of the Hebrew tribe”. “Achilles” is “EveryJew”, the
member of an entire “tribe” of faces stamped with the anti-iconic
sorrow associated ultimately with the Jewish rejection of Christ.
“Achilles” and Svidrigailov have a brief yet intense exchange:
“Vat you need here”? he pronounced, all the time without stirring
or shifting position. “Well nothing, brother, hello”! answered
Svidrigailov. “Zis not the place”. “I, brother, am going to foreign
parts”. “To foreign parts”? “To America”. “To America”?
Svidrigailov pulled out the revolver and cocked the trigger […]
He put the revolver to his right temple. “Zis not the place, zis not
the place”! Achilles roused himself, dilating his pupils more and
more. Svidrigailov pulled the trigger (PSS 6: 394-395).
Svidrigailov shoots himself in the temple—the side of his face—

blasting his “image” in an incredibly violent “anti-iconic” act of
desecration and “self-desecration”. Most significantly, he commits
suicide in the presence of a Jew, an unbeliever, who functions here as
an anti-Christian (in contrast to the priest called at the time of death)
and extremely negative presence. Dostoevsky ridicules “Achilles”,
but, like all Jews, he is dangerous. The Orthodox Church, says W.F.
65
We are reminded here that baptism is a liminal state denoting/physically realizing
faith in Christ and the Resurrection (aptly captured in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress, where death and baptism are conflated at the end). Here, Svidrigailov
crosses over to death in an anti-baptismal (suicidal) scene, with his suicide a parallel
to the near-suicide by drowning (with its own anti-baptismal overtones) earlier in the
novel.
Iconic Images 139
Ryan (1999: 408; emphasis added), forbade contact with Jews, who
were lumped together, interestingly enough, with “mixed bathing,
going to horse-races, mimes, animal shows, […] [and] wearing comic,
satiric, or tragic masks”. Here a mask (Svidrigailov) is combined with
a Jew, with the Jew’s face considered intensely anti-iconic. We get
this same unfortunate combination of Jew and iconic desecration when
the Jewish jokester Lyamshin is associated with a mouse put into a
“large icon of the Mother of God”, in Dostoevsky’s later novel
Demons (PSS 10: 252-253).
That Dostoevsky himself could be a vicious anti-Semite is an
unfortunate fact well attested to not only in fictional swipes, but also
in his Diary of a Writer from the 1870s. But Dostoevsky was at least
somewhat inconsistent about the Jews, at once smearing them with
trying to take over the world and pushing for “legislation extending
rights to Jews and attack[ing] the anti-Semitic tirades of [Ivan
Sergeevich] Aksakov’s [newspaper] Den’ (Day)” (Morson 1983: esp.
307).66 It seems to me that the overriding issue here is not
Dostoevsky’s own anti-Semitism, however complicated and
reprehensible it would have been, but his reason for putting Jews and
“icons”, or, in the case of Svidrigailov’s suicide, a Jew (and Jewish
anti-icon) and the “anti-icon” Svidrigailov represents, together. Then,
it seems, we should look to Dostoevsky’s target reader. Orthodox
Russians absorbed not only the Gospels and the lore of the oral
tradition—with which Svidrigailov is strongly connected—from their
earliest childhoods. Dostoevsky’s contemporary Russian readers were
immersed in anti-Semitism as part and parcel of Russian culture.67
66
Luzhin is also linked with “yidness”, as in Razumikhin’s comments, PSS 6: 156.
Dostoevsky identifies materialism—associated with borrowed philosophical
currents—with the Jews, surely in an attempt to elicit a negative reaction on the part
of his target audience.
67
As a case in point, Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov maintained—post-Dostoevsky—that
the “Jews of the world were assembled in a secret ‘cabal’ that was profoundly anti-
Christian and anti-Russian”. Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, “Russian Religious Thought
and the Jewish Kabbala”, in Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ed., The Occult in Russian
and Soviet Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 91. Jewish “anti-
Russianness” clearly fits in quite closely with Dostoevsky’s own anti-Semitic
outbursts, as noted by Gary Saul Morson. For a discussion of anti-Semitism as
Russia’s special gift to modern societies, see Steven G. Marks, How Russia Shaped
the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003), 66, but esp. 140-175, the chapter aptly titled
“Destroying the Agents of Modernity: Russian Anti-Semitism”. We encounter a
Whatever Dostoevsky’s own prejudices, he clearly used anti-Semitism

in Crime and Punishment as a tool for reaching his target audience on
an emotional level, connecting Jews with the evil spirits of popular
lore as they are embodied in the character of Svidrigailov.
Suicides were held in particularly low esteem by the Church
and in the oral tradition, which means that Svidrigailov
simultaneously committed two acts considered “beyond the pale” of
Orthodox belief. Svidrigailov juxtaposes in his person the bathhouse
(his token “dwelling”) and suicide, a scary, evil theme in popular
belief, combined with a Jew and a mask. The Devil aided suicides,
termed the Devil’s steeds. Even into the nineteenth century, suicides
were frequently buried in the forest, the realm of the leshii or forest
demon. Anyone who died by his or her own hand was “greatly feared
by the peasants […]” (Warner 2002: 32-33, 40, 477 passim). Suicide
“indicate[d] a severance from Mother Earth. Unclean corpses are
regarded as unacceptable to the earth […]”, Linda Ivanits recounts
(1992: 145). Svidrigailov’s suicide can therefore be seen in
counterpoint to Raskol’nikov’s act of kissing the earth. Dostoevsky
makes this particular act of suicide directly anti-iconic by having
Svidrigailov shoot himself in the head, instead of killing himself by
hanging (as with both Stavrogin and Smerdiakov in Demons and The
Brothers Karamazov, respectively, where suicide is linked to the death
of Judas). Dostoevsky effectively stops the clock for Svidrigailov
through references to the time of the oral tradition (Leslie Johnson
1984: 12), but his is the stasis of hell, not paradise.
Conclusion
Throughout Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky juxtaposes sacred and

profane constructs that recall at once the symbols associated with
Russian Orthodoxy and folk belief on one hand, and the Western secular
capital city on the other. These constructs serve as a reminder that Crime
and Punishment is at once prose fiction and an instrument of instruction
for a target reader who has drifted away from or repudiated his roots.
Russian Orthodoxy and the disbelief linked with Western intellectual
trends contend for hegemony. Frequently concealed, sacred constructs
comparable anti-Semitic outburst earlier, when Raskol’nikov overhears a student

comment that the pawnbroker (protsenshchitsa) is as “rich as a Yid” (as noted above).
PSS 6: 53.
Iconic Images 141
nonetheless exert enormous power and eventually prevail over their

profane counterparts. That they are partially hidden serves as a reminder
that Christian symbols, frequently disguised as rooms, affectionate little
girls who pray for sinners, or “a woman who has gone astray” reading
from the Gospels are present in the everyday world. So are evil
counterparts of the iconic realized as demons and unclean magic, sure to
touch a familiar chord in late nineteenth-century Russia, even in the
Westernized Russia of St. Petersburg.
Religious “icons” are accessible through faith, not reason, and
are readily apparent to believers. Iconic ladders may be realized as
staircases and do not seem to have the real physical “presence” of their
counterparts, but they exist in the spiritual world of the icon, as well as in
Raskol’nikov’s physical universe. The enameled icon plays a similar role
for Alyona the pawnbroker, the protsentshchitsa (or, “she who figures
percentages”) with her Orthodox core still surviving in spite of her
despised profession and her immersion in the rational world of numbers,
associated with Utilitarianism.
Dostoevsky counters Petersburg as a negative, profane
“bathhouse” (whose “sovereign” is the masked Svidrigailov), with the
power of the Cross and Church. Sonia’s cruciform “Church” prevails
over Svidrigailov’s bathhouse, and the power of the crossroads is
wrested away from evil forces. The iconic ladder leads firmly upwards,
with demonic powers unable to pry the newly faithful from their firm
ascent toward salvation. But it is not just the salvation of the character
Raskol’nikov we are witnessing. An entire generation of young Russian
intellectuals who have gone astray is now returning, however slowly and
painfully, to Russian Orthodoxy. And a generation of contemporary
Russian readers, seduced by Western thought, is reminded of its
Orthodox and Russian roots through such references to popular culture
and belief. Orthodox Christianity finally triumphs in the epilogue, by the
Irtysh River in Siberia (just as it did during his Siberian years for the
author himself).
Chapter Four
“The Parable of the Prodigal Son”

in Crime and Punishment
For sheer dramatic intensity, very few scenes in world literature can
match the crucial candle-lit episode in Crime and Punishment where
Sonia reads to Raskol’nikov from the Gospels about the raising of
Lazarus. It is a redemptive episode comparable in its power to the
horrific murder scenes—scenes that it parallels—at the beginning of the
novel. “The candle-end had long since burned low in the crooked
candlestick, dimly illuminating in this poverty-stricken room the
murderer and the woman who had gone astray (bludnitsa) who had
come together so strangely to read the eternal book” (PSS 6: 248-252).
That she reads from Lazarus, who rose from the dead after four days in
the tomb, is especially important for the twin motifs of death—whether
spiritual or physical—and the subsequent regeneration that underlie
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s great novel. And the Lazarus story is crucial as a
symbolic key for Raskol’nikov’s own four days between murder and his
first hesitant steps toward recovery. So essential is the tale of Lazarus
for Raskol’nikov’s eventual redemption that it occupies all of Part IV,
Chapter 4, in Dostoevsky’s novel, with a significant repetition of the
number four) which figures as temporally comparable to
Raskol’nikov’s own period in “hell”).
Yet, for all its passionate dramatic force and its central
importance for understanding Crime and Punishment, the story of
Lazarus—however crucial it may be—is not the only biblical tale to
play an important role in the novel. The twin motifs of death and
regeneration, and of loss and return; and the miracle of love associated
quite rightly with Lazarus also figure as central to one of the most
moving and significant parables of the New Testament: “The Parable of
the Prodigal Son”.1 Both the story of Lazarus and “The Parable of the
Prodigal Son” include “journeys”.2 The “journey” for Lazarus is a
temporal one over a period of four days, from death and decay to a
return back to life. The journey of the Prodigal Son is spatial
(geographical) but also temporal and spiritual, for he returns home with
a new understanding, appreciation, and love for Father. We know quite
well how important “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” was for
Dostoevsky personally, since, as Joseph Frank notes (2002: 748;
emphasis added), Dostoevsky on his death bed “requested […] that the
parable of the Prodigal Son be read to [his] children” and that his
children should turn to God “if they should ever commit a crime (a
prestuplenie) […], to trust God as their Father, plead with Him for
forgiveness, and be certain that He would rejoice in their repentance,
just as the father had done on the return of the Prodigal Son”. And, as
the Elder Zosima reminds his “children” in The Brothers Karamazov
(PSS 14: 267), “Don’t forget also the parables of Our Lord, mainly from
the Gospel of Luke (such have I done) [….]”.
1
As Askol’dov has observed, all of Dostoevsky’s novels reprise the “Parable of the
Prodigal Son”. S.A. Askol’dov, “Dostoevskii kak uchitel’ zhizni”, in V.M. Borisov,
A.B. Roginskii and E.L. Novitskaia eds., O Dostoevskom: Tvorchestvo
Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli 1881-1931 godov. Sbornik statei (Moscow: Kniga,
1990), 253. Many thanks to Caryl Emerson and Ksana Blank for bringing
Askol’dov’s essay to my attention. This chapter is based on a paper delivered at the
2000 Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies, in Denver. I would like to thank Caryl Emerson for her helpful and
constructive comments. Bocharov treats the Prodigal Son motif in post-revolutionary
Russian fiction but not in Dostoevsky. A. Bocharov, “Vremia vozvrashcheniia,
bremia vozvrashcheniia”, Oktiabr’ 4 (April 1984): 186-192. Robin Feuer Miller
(Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Journey [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007])
discusses parables in Dostoevsky’s work but refers only in passing to Lazarus in
Crime and Punishment. Tat’iana Kasatkina briefly mentions the Prodigal Son but
does not develop the theme. Tat’iana Kasatkina, “Filosofskie i politicheskie vzgliady
Dostoevskogo”, Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura 8 (1997): 170. I would like to thank
Paul Friedrich for making very helpful comments on this chapter.
2
Brett Cooke has reminded me of similarities between the legend/myth of the
Wandering Jew and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. According to the legend, the
Wandering Jew Ahasuerus refused to let Jesus rest on the way to the Crucifixion. As
a punishment, he was forced to roam the earth until the Second Coming. Gustave
Doré, who illustrated Dante’s Inferno, would also depict the Wandering Jew. For a
brief but thorough summation of the legend, see R. Edelmann, “Ahasuerus, The
Wandering Jew”, Galit Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes, eds., The Wandering Jew:
Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986), 1-10.
Parable of the Prodigal Son 145
The tale of Lazarus and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” are
obviously intended as object lessons for their common audience. Given
their intent, they have stylistic points in common. Like the story of the
raising of Lazarus, “The Parable of The Prodigal Son” is easily
accessible to believers and would-be believers alike. Both works are
designed as oral instructions to be read aloud or recited (and this is
precisely what Sonia, Raskol’nikov’s spiritual guide, does with the
story of Lazarus). Both are sufficiently vivid that we can literally
visualize these tales, which relates them to the “visible” iconic
substructure of Crime and Punishment, as discussed in the third chapter,
on the significance of the iconic image. Finally, both touch equally on
related themes important to believers. The raising of Lazarus addresses
the return to life synonymous with a return to faith. Belief in life after
death central to Christian belief, the role that the community of
believers plays, and their faith in God and in the divinity and majesty of
Christ figure importantly here. Divine power and the Resurrection are a
central focus of “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” as well, linked here
with the infinity of divine love for sinners, and the equality of all sinners
before God. Three central components of Orthodox Christian belief are
represented in both pieces: the power of God and Christ, the miracle of
the life after death, and the limitless magnitude of God’s and of Christ’s
love for all, especially, as far as Dostoevsky was concerned, for all
Russian Orthodox believers. That the Resurrection denotes—by
extension—the presence of the divine links it, therefore, with the all-
encompassing agape of Christ, and with Christian love within the
context of the Christian community. The theme of Resurrection
connects “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” intimately with the tale of
Lazarus. The reader’s—or listener’s—immediate assumption upon
encountering “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” is that it deals with a
return within life to Father who rewards the prodigal materially. But
might both “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” and the tale of Lazarus be
two versions of the same “story”, that story being a return to the Father
following death and resurrection, with the “material rewards” actually
symbolizing and anticipating the heavenly reward of being in the
Divine presence? If this is the case, then “The Parable of the Prodigal
Son” constitutes what is in effect an alternate version or interpretation
of the tale of Lazarus. Most importantly for the present essay, “The
Parable of the Prodigal Son”—like the tale of Lazarus—can be read as a
subtext to Crime and Punishment and the great issues it addresses: faith
in God, in Christ, and the Resurrection; repentance; and Orthodox

communality. And, like Jesus’ own parables, Dostoevsky’s recasting of
the story of Lazarus, as well as of “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”,
represents an attempt to reach his target audience of young men in the
most effective way possible, by appealing to their earliest childhood
exposure to Christian teaching (and Russian tradition). After all, in
Matthew 13:13 and 13:14, Jesus said “Therefore I speak to them with
parables, for seeing they do not see, and hearing do not hear, and they
do not reason (razumeyut [Dostoevsky’s link with Razumikhin?]). And
there is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, who states, ‘by hearing shall
you hear, and not reason, and by your eyes shall you see, and not
perceive’ ”.3
The purpose of a parable is to convey the Truth as the author of
that tale—in this case, Jesus—sees it. Here, that truth is divine truth.
The parable serves to teach and expand the community of believers, and
to convince the listener emotionally rather than rationally. Parables are
readily accessible even to young children and, certainly, to adults,
including the young men Dostoevsky himself was trying to reach with
his novel. Just as they would have recalled icons in church, even the
literate, educated young men of Dostoevsky’s day, drawn though they
were to the latest trends in Western thought, could well remember early
exposure to these tales, whether in church or within the family circle.
Received orally, parables paint dramatic “mind pictures” (Armstrong
1967: 7) very different, for the Russian audience, from the awkward and
wordy tendentiousness of Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be
Done?, the writings of Dmitrii Pisarev, or philosophical tracts—
associated with Utopian Socialism or Utilitarianism—imported from
the West. Moreover, as Robin Feuer Miller has observed (2007: 71), the
Apostle Mark “recognized and underscored the special power of
parable to keep those ‘outside’ from perceiving or understanding”. This
crucial issue of “outsider-insider”, alterity or otherness will be explored
in Chapter Five.
Through the illusion of pictorial solidity, the parable—as
noted above—shares the stage with the icon and, like the icon,
functions through faith to connect the believer and God. Most
significantly for Dostoevsky within the framework of this novel, both
the parable and the icon are intermediaries between his readers and
3
Many thanks to Paul Friedrich for alerting me to this passage.
God and Christ. And, like the icon with its inverse perspective, the
parable draws the reader who is also and most significantly a
“listener” into the tale, or the “picture” in words. Norman Perrin
(1976: 7-8; emphasis in original) states that
These parables were originally oral texts, comparisons made or
stories told by Jesus to small groups of his contemporaries. They
were immediate texts, by which I mean that they were created for
the context in which they were delivered […] But now their original
oral, immediate, and highly personal meaning was necessarily lost.
They were still held to be texts with meaning, but now that meaning
had to be found anew in them as written texts circulating in the
early Christian communities in the Hellenistic world.
The word “parable” is derived from the Greek word parabolē, meaning
‘a placing side by side, comparison, analogy’ (‘beside casting’), with
the implication that two kinds of things are set next to each other to
compare them (Brown 1967: 984). Harold Bloom (2005: 30) notes that
The word “parable” comes through French from the Latin for
“comparison”, thus leading to such meanings as “similitude”,
“proverb”, and “mystical saying”, but it is primarily an imagined
short narrative whose lesson or point is spiritually moral.4
Parables are comparisons, like the parallels we have in the present novel
between characters and biblical archetypes, for instance. Parables were
designed to be “revelatory”, to reveal a truth to the listener. They were
designed as metaphors5 that would present a lesson in such a way that a
listener could relate it to his/her own everyday life. “The Gospels”, adds
Harold Bloom (2005: 12), “were not intended as what we call
biography, but as conversionary inspiration”. This certainly is true of
the parable, intended to teach a specific lesson to the listener or reader.
And it is also arguably true in Crime and Punishment, intended to teach
a crucial lesson to Dostoevsky’s target readers. We may, indeed, read
the novel as a whole as an extended parable (just as Petersburg—and,
by extension, Russia—can be “read” as an enormous iconic graph). And
the very names or designations for characters that Dostoevsky uses in
4
I would like to thank my husband William Tucker for bringing Harold Bloom’s
book to my attention.
5
Jean Zumstein, “Parable”, in Jean-Yves Lacoste, ed., Encyclopedia of Christian
Theology, Volume 3, P-Z (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 1184.
this novel—the Schismatic (Raskol’nikov), the sensible, reasonable

man (Razumikhin), the percentage taker (protsenshchitsa, the
pawnbroker), the woman who has gone astray (Sonia the bludnitsa)—
resonate with the allegorical designations we encounter not only in the
Bible (Job the just man), but also, later, in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress.
Parable in Russian is pritcha, but Dostoevsky knew French
well and would have been familiar with the French term. The very
structure of the parable, echoing the word itself, dovetails with
Dostoevsky’s own practice of juxtaposing worldviews, characters, and
events. This practice extends, of course, to the underlying juxtaposition
central to Crime and Punishment: Russian Orthodox Christianity versus
Western thought and its deleterious impact in contemporary Russian
society. Dostoevsky himself constantly juxtaposes, sets up parallels, in
his fiction, and he does so most strikingly in this novel: the icon and the
anti-icon, the Russian people (narod) and the rebellious young
intellectuals, the spiritual and material realms. Dostoevsky’s parallels
echo the doubling central to the Prodigal Son parable, perhaps inherent
in the human experience generally (certainly in the Russian context).
The religious lesson incorporated within the parable is
expressed through the contemporary reality in which the action is
played out and characters act and express themselves. (We can see this
phenomenon at work not only in the parables of the Gospels, but also in
Dostoevsky’s fiction.) The parable is an extended figure of speech,
notes Brown (1967: 984), “a developed simile in which the story, while
fictitious, is true to life. The latter feature distinguishes a parable from a
fable”. The ability to be “true to life” while expressing a religious
message distinguishes Crime and Punishment from the fiction of its day
(for example, the work of Chernyshevsky or Turgenev), and
demonstrates that this novel, in addition to being a “great iconic image”
is also—as noted above—an extended, expanded parable designed to
change the heart of the target reader. Just like Jesus with his original
parables, so too does Dostoevsky—in the context of Crime and
Punishment—put a particular parable into play. That parable, “The
Parable of the Prodigal Son”, most aptly fits in with needs of
Dostoevsky’s hero Raskol’nikov. And, like the original parables,
Dostoevsky’s recast “Parable of the Prodigal Son” serves to draw
Raskol’nikov into an Orthodox Christian community (sobornost’)
“founded” by Lizaveta and Sonia, but including, by extension, even
Alyona the pawnbroker. The parable underlying the principal text of

this novel anticipates the concentrated parable we encounter in the
epilogue.
The parable demonstrates, as does the icon, the “new Word”
put into play pictorially, in a concrete situation taken from the everyday
life of the listener. It is, like the icon, illustrative. “In the parables, notes
C.W.F. Smith, “Jesus appears as no Eastern sage or objective moralist,
but as the Initiator of God’s new age and the Agent of His purpose. He
is not the kindly advocate of brotherly love, but the revealer of the
dreadful love of God and the awe of the divine mercy”. The parables,
adds C.F.D. Moule, “give us back this arresting and terrifying picture of
the ‘Strong Son of God.’ ”6 The parable conveys a higher, constant,
eternal truth very different from the fashionable but limited assumed
certainty based on a rational apprehension of the larger world. It was the
kind of rationalism ultimately associated, for Dostoevsky, with the
atheism of fashionable disbelief and its disregard of the moral limits on
human behavior related to Orthodox Christianity. He illustrates this
concern in the novel through the medium of Raskol’nikov’s anxious
mother. Fearing and, perhaps, suspecting that her son has forgotten his
Orthodox upbringing, she asks him at the close of her letter whether he
still “prays to God […] as before and whether [he] believes in the
blessings of the Creator and of Our Redeemer? I’m afraid [she adds], in
my heart, lest the latest fashionable disbelief has attended thee” (PSS 6:
34; emphasis added).7
For all of its immediate and superficial allure for rebellious
youth—the very “target readers” Dostoevsky was attempting to bring
back into the “fold”—a novel like Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be
Done? was never able to appeal to an audience in the way that
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment could. The quite simple and
indeed obvious reason why not is because Dostoevsky reached his
readers through the immediacy of pictorial (iconic) and vivid oral
presentation (the Gospels, the oral tradition). Chernyshevsky, arguably,
6
Charles W.F. Smith, The Jesus of the Parables (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1948), 297; C.F.D. Moule, “The parables of Jesus and the Lord of faith”, Religion in
Education, 28 (1964): 60-64. Cited in Edward A. Armstrong, The Gospel Parables
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 11, 197 n. 12.
7
Pul’kheria Raskol’nikova uses the perfective verb form posetilo (“attended”) instead
of the imperfective poseshchalo, implying a sudden visitation from the dangerous
realm of unbelief.
attempted to attract younger readers but could not do so effectively

within the parameters of “rational presentation” that he himself had
established. Nor, not to mention the limits of his talents as a writer of
aesthetic prose, did he draw on traditional belief in presenting a rational
argument. In What Is to Be Done?, Chernyshevsky sought to entice
younger readers who were intrigued by the seductive possibility of
creating an earthly paradise, Russian style. Dostoevsky reminded his
readers in Crime and Punishment (as well as in Notes from
Underground, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov) that
an earthly paradise cannot be realized, and that attempts to create one
backfire disastrously. Hence, Dostoevsky cannily aimed at his readers’
emotional “Achilles’ heels” by recalling early exposure to the Gospels
in general, and the parables in particular, especially this one.8 While
Chernyshevsky certainly appealed to his readers’ sense of
rebelliousness against the established order, Dostoevsky instead
hearkened back to the seeds sown so many years earlier, before their
exposure to rationalism (just as he did with Dmitrii Karamazov’s gift of
nuts in The Brothers Karamazov).
That “The Parable of The Prodigal Son” could figure
significantly for Dostoevsky—particularly in Crime and Punishment
with its Orthodox subtext—is quite natural when we consider that this
parable “has always appealed to the Russian religious mind with its
inherent fascination with kenoticism [which Harold Schefski (1990: 78)
defines as the act of “humbling oneself, modeled on Christ’s own
humbling of Himself through His incarnation in human form] and
monasticism”.9 Kenosis comes from the Greek κenōsis (‘to empty’, ‘to
empty oneself of oneself’) and derives from Paul’s letter in Philippians
2:7. Jesus humbled himself, ‘emptied himself of himself’, by taking on
human form while simultaneously retaining his divinity, even as He
suffered and died, without truly dying, on the cross.10 Kenoticism in the
Russian Orthodox context entails suffering in imitation of Christ, which
can encompass non-resistance to death (perhaps partially realized in the
case of Lizaveta?). Kenoticism, George Fedotov observes, incorporates
8
Thanks to Paul Friedrich for helping me clean up this argument!
9
I would like to thank Harold Schefski for generously sending me an offprint of his
valuable and excellent essay.
10
Emilio Brito, “Kenosis”, in Jean-Yves Lacoste, ed., Encyclopedia of Christian
Theology. Volume 2, G-O (New York and London Routledge, 2005), 853. Many
thanks to Paul Friedrich for his suggestion to expand my definition of kenosis.
“three Christian virtues: poverty, humility, and love, in their complete

unity as one inseparable whole”. Kenoticism is associated with
patience, a virtue Raskol’nikov learns during his slow return to faith
(and after he has “emptied himself of himself”). Moreover, charity
(caritas), realized most vividly in this novel in clothing and cloth
images, is synonymous with the “emptying out” of pride, materialism,
and earthly rank, and is therefore central to kenoticism (Fedotov 1960:
105, 128, 231, 390-395).
Realized as iurodstvo, this act of humbling is of course central
to two characters who play a crucial role in bringing Raskol’nikov back
to the larger Orthodox community: Lizaveta and Sonia. If we define
monasticism in Crime and Punishment as an informal arrangement
defined by sobornost’ or the communality of believers, then
monasticism too plays a role in the relationship between the following
sets of characters: Lizaveta and Sonia, Raskol’nikov and Polen’ka,
Raskol’nikov and Sonia, Sonia and the peasant convicts in the epilogue,
culminating, eventually, between Sonia and Raskol’nikov in the second
part of the epilogue. It is the purpose of the present chapter to explore
the ways Dostoevsky uses “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” as a
subtext to Crime and Punishment, particularly in connection with his
central character, Raskol'nikov, and his relationships with the other
characters, and to determine the significance of “The Parable of the
Prodigal Son” within the larger framework of this novel.
There is the additional issue of Dostoevsky’s own experiences
of separation from the masses of the Russian people, and the ways in
which “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” would have addressed this
issue and thus mattered to him personally. Dostoevsky may well have
viewed himself and his fellow revolutionaries from the Petrashevsky
and the Palm-Durov Circles as “prodigal sons” who had gone astray
from the Russian cultural foundations based on the teachings of the
Orthodox Church. He himself recovered (or attempted to recover) his
“Russianness” when forced to cohabit with Russian serf convicts during
his Siberian imprisonment. His accurate sense that the majority of
convicts hated him as a representative of the despised dvorianstvo (the
nobility), and his overwhelming desire—and need—to reconnect with
the narod (the Russian people) was a motivating element in
Dostoevsky’s post-Siberian fiction. (For a discussion of this issue, see
Frank 1986: 223-224).
So too was his exposure to their intense religious faith. Their

belief served as a confirmation of his childhood memories of the
peasant Marey and reinforced his reawakened view of Russian peasants
as the true repositories of Orthodox Christianity. In the wake of his
Siberian prison experience, Dostoevsky came to identify himself
through a “shared” Christian belief with the peasants rather than the
nobility or the intelligentsia (Frank 1990: 143-144). It was his own,
very personal way of healing the enormous rift—in the wake of Peter
the Great’s reforms—between the Westernized upper classes that had
drifted away from Russian traditions, and the masses of the peasant
population. Dostoevsky’s altered outlook was realized with most vivid
immediacy in Crime and Punishment, later to figure significantly in
Demons and The Brothers Karamazov.11
Nor was Dostoevsky’s excruciatingly sensitive sense of
separation from the Russian people peculiar to him alone. The impact of
Peter’s reforms was quite obviously profound for all classes of the
Russian population. The Westernized, or perhaps more accurately,
semi-Westernized stratum of the nobility—and, in time, the
intelligentsia—in post-Petrine Russia were (eventually) acutely aware
of a painful disconnect from their Russian roots (Frank 1986: 225-226).
Educated members of the nobility tended to view Peter’s reign as a
break in the continuum of Russian culture and history. So did the
clergy, especially given Peter’s subordination of the Orthodox Church
to his state apparatus. Peter’s extension of serfdom coupled with his
partially realized secularization of Russia helped to drive a wedge
between upper and lower classes and inspired the wrath of his peasant
subjects, who responded by caricaturing him as the Anti-Christ (Hubbs
1988: 200-206). By the latter part of the nineteenth century, the
Slavophiles (who looked to traditional native solutions rather than
Western resolutions to Russia’s obvious problems) attempted to bridge
the chasm between the Westernized nobility and the peasantry, with a
desire to return to native roots. Dostoevsky would eventually combine
their cultural patriotism with Orthodox, ethnic, and cultural exclusivity
11
While Lev Tolstoy attempts to reconnect with the peasants through a shared rural
and agricultural inheritance, Orthodoxy stays out of the picture. See, for example,
Levin’s reaping scene from the novel Anna Karenina.
to produce a most unappealing form of Russian Orthodox jingoism.12

“The Parable of the Prodigal Son”, encapsulating a return to one’s
native roots, symbolizes the sort of return envisioned by the Slavophiles
in general and by Dostoevsky—especially coupled with Orthodoxy—in
particular.
In summary form, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” focuses
on the younger of two sons who asks for his share of the inheritance,
leaves home, and squanders his wealth. Lowered to herding pigs and
consuming their leavings, he returns to the love of his father’s
unconditional forgiveness. Here are the themes of materiality versus
poverty and want, rebellion, and separation from the larger
community so pertinent in the Russian setting (particularly for
Dostoevsky).
“The Parable of the Prodigal Son” certainly figures
significantly in Russian literature before its dramatic appearance in
Crime and Punishment. In the seventeenth-century short poetic work
Povest’ o Gore i zlochastii (Misery-Luckless Plight), a youth leaves
home and fails to heed the admonitions of his doting but understandably
concerned parents, loses his fortune, regains it, loses it again along with
his wife, and is pursued by Misery-Luckless Plight. The youth finally
retreats to a monastery to escape Misery, but he takes this step only as
an unavoidable last resort. The desperation of this action marks a
society (like that of late nineteenth-century Russia) on the cusp of
change with the first distinct sense of the impending threat of
Westernization. As is the case with Dostoevsky roughly two centuries
later, the anonymous author of Misery-Luckless Plight relies on vivid
orality through images derived from, on the one hand, the Bible and
biblical language and, on the other, from the Russian oral tradition and
its nature imagery. (The young man in Misery-Luckless Plight, in his
disregard of parental advice and his return to “salvation”, anticipates, in
outline form, Rakol’nikov himself.)
The Prodigal Son theme resurfaces first during the early
nineteenth century, in Aleksandr Pushkin’s ironic treatment of this
subject in his 1830 short story “The Stationmaster”, from the Tales of
Belkin. Kidnapped and seduced by a traveling officer, the
stationmaster’s young daughter Dunya surfaces in St. Petersburg, with
12
For a brief, yet important, summary discussion of this issue, see Steven G. Marks,
How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to
Bolshevism (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2003, 65-66.
the ironic twist that she ends up happily married with three children.
Dunya, overcome with grief and guilt, visits her father’s grave at the
end of the tale. Ivan Turgenev also made use of the Prodigal Son theme
with the characters Arkadii and the “nihilist” Bazarov in his novel
Fathers and Sons. These works share a common thread with each other,
as well as with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Western influence is crystallized in the potent image of St.
Petersburg in “The Stationmaster”, where it stands for overwhelming,
seductive power linked with elevated military rank.13 In Turgenev’s
Fathers and Sons, St. Petersburg looms in sinister fashion on the
horizon and is literally embodied in the character of Bazarov, the
nihilist. Dostoevsky forces his characters into the St. Petersburg
maelstrom of vice and disbelief, coming full circle with Misery-
Luckless Plight in depicting Russian society—symbolized by the
youth—caught between traditional mores and Orthodox belief on one
hand, and the temptations of an increasingly secularized society on the
other. Each of these works shares with “The Parable of the Prodigal
Son” the twin motifs of the journey away from accepted traditions, and
the return to those same traditions at the end, even though the youth
from Misery-Luckless Plight comes back to Orthodoxy with extreme
reluctance. By the time this poem was written the Orthodox Church had
clearly lost the hegemony it had enjoyed earlier. Perhaps this new
attitude toward Orthodoxy, which came to be seen as an aspect of
Russia’s Westernization/modernization in the seventeenth century, is
one reason for the presence of parodic and ironic elements in this work,
as Norman Ingham has so aptly noted.14 In any case, “The Parable of
the Prodigal Son” represents a “journey”, whether literal or symbolic,
13
Pushkin examines the same themes of dominance and (forced) submission that
would later be central to Dostoevsky’s own work.
14
For two particularly valuable treatments of Misery-Luckless Plight, see Norman
Ingham’s essays “Irony in Povest’ o Gore i zlochastii”, Slavic and East European
Journal 24:4 (Winter 1980): 333-349; and “Parody in Povest’ o Gore i zlochastii”,
Slavic and East European Journal 27:2 (Summer 1983): 141-157. I would like to
thank Norman Ingham for graciously bringing both of these important and fine
essays to my attention. For a perceptive discussion of Pushkin’s short story, see J.
Thomas Shaw, “The Stationmaster and the New Testament Parable”, J. Thomas
Shaw, Collected Works (Idyllwild, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1999). See also G.V.
Starostina, “Roman F.M. Dostoevskogo ‘Prestuplenie i nakazanie’ i stat’ia F.I.
Buslaeva ‘Povest’ o Gore i Zlochastii, kak Gore-Zlochastie dovelo molodtsa vo
inocheskii chin”, Russkaia literatura 3 (2004): esp. 145-147, 155-156, 159-160.
away from home and into an alien world, capped by a journey back to
the point of origin. And, because it is a journey, the parable moves
forward temporally as well as spatially, just as we see in its later
Russian expressions: Misery-Luckless Plight, “The Stationmaster”,
Fathers and Sons, and, finally, Crime and Punishment.
The Journey and the Return
In the Gospel according to Luke, the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”

(“Pritcha o bludnom syne”) centers initially on “everyman’s” (the
typical sinner’s) journey away from God and eventual return. The very
word bludnyi (‘prodigal’) recalls the bludnitsa (a woman who has gone
astray) identified with Sonia, and her own involuntary expulsion from
society coupled with her inclusion in sobornost’, the community of
believers (as exemplified by her relationship with Lizaveta). The themes
central to “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” are not only those of the
rejection and abandonment of God in favor of worldly temptations, but
also of the eventual divine forgiveness and acceptance of the prodigal
son, and the concomitant divine acceptance and forgiveness of human
limitations. Both of these latter themes from “The Parable of the
Prodigal Son” also figure importantly in Crime and Punishment.
Raskol’nikov’s initial sense of superiority over the larger community
leads to the murder(s), followed by his eventual inclusion within the
community of believers. So, too, does this parable look back to both the
Old Testament and its variously intense (or even fatal) competitions
between Cain and Abel, and Esau and Jacob, and to the New
Testament, in which the focus has shifted to the absolution and
salvation of sinners,15 instead of the law.16 Nor should we forget that
strife between brothers, whether resulting in the loss of a birthright or
15
Dostoevsky’s personal copy of the New Testament had pencil marks in the margin.
While he singled out some verses in the Gospel of Luke for this treatment, there are
none from Luke Chapter 15, in spite of its evident importance in Crime and
Punishment. Noted in Geir Kjetsaa, Dostoevsky and His New Testament, Oslo:
Solum Forlag A.S. (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, Inc., 1984),
esp. 23-25.
16
This is the same juxtaposition that we encounter in Hilarion’s eleventh-century
“Sermon on Law and Grace”. See Dmitrii Čiževskii, History of Russian Literature
from the Eleventh Century to the End of the Baroque (S’Gravenhage: Mouton, 1962),
36-39.
outright murder, is ultimately a revolt against the father. As E. Isaac-

Edersheim maintains (1986: 202):
In the biblical narrative we sense the presence of Yahveh (who

takes the place of the father; one forgets that another father,
Adam, even exists). And it is the father—Yahveh—whom Cain
wants to hurt. Of course, this does not preclude that the brother,
the rival, can also be the object of hatred and jealousy. On the
deepest level of consciousness, however, it is the brother […]
who is always a substitute for the loved and feared father.
We can see Raskol’nikov’s own murder of Alyona in this context,

where she is the substitute for the “real” victim he would like to be able
to kill: God.
“The Parable of the Prodigal Son” is but the third story out of a
set of parables found in Luke 15:11-32, which focuses generally on the
themes of loss and restoration that are also central almost two thousand
years later to Crime and Punishment. As recorded in the Gospel of
Luke, Jesus begins this set of parables with two short tales that function
as an introduction to the most important parable in this chapter: “The
Parable of the Prodigal Son”. Each of these short parables also deals
with loss and restoration, here, of material things, property: the lost
sheep and the lost drachma.
Who among you [Jesus asks] possessing a hundred sheep and

having lost one of them, would not leave ninety and nine sheep in
the wilderness and would not go after the lost one till he found it?
And having found it would raise it joyfully on his shoulders? […]
And, having arrived home, he’ll summon his friends and neighbors
and will tell them “rejoice with me, I have found my lost sheep”.
And I say unto you, that thus in the heavens will be the greater joy
for one repentant sinner, than for ninety-nine righteous men who
have no need for repentance (Luke 15:4-7; all biblical references are
from the Russian Gospels).
There is a clear association here between the lost sheep, and the straying
sinner, and a transformation of the sheep from a material possession to a
lost or wandering “child”.
The tale about the woman who loses a silver coin, frets about it,
and then is overjoyed when she recovers it follows the story of the lost
sheep.
Or which woman, possessing ten drachmas, if she loses one

drachma, will not light a candle and will not begin to sweep the
room and to look carefully until she finds it […] And having found
it she will summon her [female] friends and [female] neighbors and
will say: “rejoice with me, I have found the lost drachma”. “Thus, I
say unto you, will be the joy among God’s angels also for one
repentant sinner” (Luke 15:8-10).
The shepherd’s joy at recovering the lost sheep and woman’s joy upon
finding the lost drachma are but earthly manifestations of divine joy
when the sinner, “found” again, has returned to the heavenly fold.
Dostoevsky, himself the author of contemporary parables, well
understood the connection here in the Gospel according to Luke.
Since the loss of an object of great value causes immense pain,
how much greater then is the joy experienced upon recovery. The
shepherd’s happiness when finding the lost or stray sheep reflects to at
least an extent a father’s elation upon the safe return of his son. The
sheep, however beloved, is still property, a material possession. But
these emotions associated with material loss and recovery pale before
the great bereavement experienced when a “child” leaves home to go
into the “wilderness, the darkness”, which follows almost immediately
upon the introductory tales (Luke 15:11-32).
Readers or listeners—Dostoevsky’s target audience—familiar
with this well-known parable would also recall the short preface: “There
approached Him [Jesus] all the tax collectors and the sinners to listen to
Him” (Luke 15:1). From the very beginning, the most significant issues
contemporary to “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” recur in the St.
Petersburg environment of Crime and Punishment. The materialism of
Judean tax collectors resurfaces as the rapacious capitalism of
contemporary St. Petersburg, embodied in Alyona’s and Luzhin’s
predatory greed, the prostitution of women, and the seduction of young
men by Western materialist (atheist) thought. Acquisitiveness is echoed
in the brutality of Mikolka (from the horse nightmare), as well as in the
constant reminders of percentages and money scattered throughout the
novel. Similarly, Jesus addresses a combined audience of money
handlers and sinners, materialists and disbelievers who would seem to
bear an uncanny resemblance to their nineteenth-century Russian
descendants: these were young adherents of Utopian Socialism,
Utilitarianism, and nihilism who were ready to turn their backs on the
Orthodox Church: the very audience that Dostoevsky was trying to
reach. Throughout the Gospels, devotion to material goods, the

acquisition of wealth, and brute power over others are rejected as
limited and sinful. Belief in spiritual as opposed to earthly treasures is
instead revealed as life’s—and eternity’s—great but attainable goal.
Clearly, this would also appear to be Dostoevsky’s central theme in
Crime and Punishment. The underlying lessons contained in this
parable have an uncanny relevance—point by point—for Dostoevsky’s
Russia in the 1860s, with its materialism not only as defined socially or
economically, but also intellectually. Dostoevsky fights against the
“intellectual quantification” characteristic of such home-grown thinkers
as, for example, Pisarev and Chernyshevsky.
The Parable
Following as it does the two earlier introductory examples of the

sheep and the coin, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” is all the more
vivid for Jesus’ brief introductory incidents. Jesus then continues
with the central tale, in which the focus is on the lost son rather than
on the abandoned father, thus marking a distinctive shift from the
brief introductory tales about the lost coin and the wandering sheep:
He said further, a certain man had two sons. And the younger of
them said to his father: “Father”! [otche, the vocative case] Give
me the portion of the inheritance that is due to me. And the
Father divided his inheritance for them. Upon the passage of
several days, the younger son, having gathered everything, went
to a distant country and there squandered his property, living in a
profligate manner. And when he had spent everything, a great
famine began in that country, and he began to be in want.
Penniless, and forced to herd and eat with the swine, the Prodigal Son
has finally had enough and decides to go back home.
“I will arise, I will go to my father and tell him! ‘Father’! [We see
here once again the vocative case of father, otche, linking Father
with the vocative case used with ‘God the Father’, Bozhe, or
Gospodi, ‘Lord’] I have sinned before heaven and before thee. And
I am no longer worthy to be called thy son; take me as one of thy
hired servants” (Luke 15:18-19).
In an argument that parallels Dostoevsky’s own rejection of the socio-

economic arguments as the root cause for Raskol’nikov’s murders,
Edward Armstrong states that the prodigal son’s economic woes are not
in and of themselves calamitous. Dostoevsky himself emphasizes this
issue repeatedly, showing us Polen’ka’s, Sonia’s, and Lizaveta’s piety
in the face of withering poverty, or Razumikhin’s or Nastas’ya’s
unselfish sharing, whether of clothing or food. It is rather the Prodigal
Son’s “unfaithfulness to the standards of conduct in which he had been
brought up” that is tragic (Armstrong 1967: 170; emphasis added). This
“unfaithfulness” is precisely what we encounter in Crime and
Punishment, where Raskol’nikov’s economic situation is not at the
heart of the problem, but his deviation from “the standards of conduct in
which he had been brought up” is the central concern. Distant memories
of these “standards”, recalled in his earliest exposure to the values and
ideals of Orthodox Christianity as recapitulated early on in the horse
nightmare, represent the “home” he will be drawn back to throughout
the course of the novel and will eventually return to at the end, in the
epilogue.
The Prodigal Son sets off for home to throw himself at Father’s
feet, having first rehearsed his speech, so certain is he of punishment
and rejection on Father’s part. So does the sinner despair of God’s
acceptance: “The thread of love between father and son”, asserts
Edward Armstrong (1967: 171), “remained unbroken”, because God’s
love for us endures when, in remorse, we turn to Him. Although the son
does not count on Father's immense sorrow over his departure and
equally great joy at his return, the reader or, more likely, the listener,
has been prepared in advance for these reactions by the parables of the
lost sheep and the silver coin. The listener’s anticipation of Father’s
reaction draws that listener into the parable, much as inverse perspective
does in the icon. Dostoevsky, it seems to me, relies on this same sort of
anticipation, recalled from their own memories of this parable, on the
part of his readers. Just as the son is welcomed home, so will
Raskol’nikov be welcomed back into the Orthodox community of
believers. “And when he was still far away, his father caught sight of
him and took pity upon him; and having run up fell upon his neck and
kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
Father bestows his finest worldly goods on the young man:
the best clothing and a ring. The fatted calf is slain in his honor. The
emphasis here is not really on materiality, however, but rather on
worldly goods as the physical manifestations of Father’s love. Love,
the fundamental gift, comes first, and Father's expression of love is
embodied in his immediate reaction. The motifs of loss and recovery

resonate in all the examples of the parable: the sheep, the silver coin,
the lost son now found again. But they are sensed most poignantly
here, with the homecoming of a child, which functions as a reminder
to Dostoevsky’s target readers that they too, within the larger
community of Russian Orthodox belief, are also the children of God.
The young man has taken a circular journey. The son leaves home,
travels to a foreign land, and finally returns to the safety of his
Father’s love and infinite forgiveness. So does Raskol’nikov.
The inherited model of journey and loss and the joyous
eventual return resurface in Crime and Punishment. As in the parable,
the plot unfolds from the son’s point of view. Here, that son has been
transformed into Raskol’nikov. Raskol’nikov as the son abandoned
“home”, which refers here quite specifically to the Russian Orthodox
Church, including the actual old church he couldn’t reach in his dream.
And, as my students Jonathan Perrodin and Mitchell Yerby have
reminded me, he wastes his inheritance from his parents. He squanders
his wealth, not only a watch and ring, but also—most significantly—his
religious faith. St. Petersburg very specifically functions as the venue of
abandonment. It is full of young men who have abandoned “home”.
The Prodigal Son parable dovetails quite neatly with the patterns
Dostoevsky’s readers would have encountered in the Russian oral tale,
patterns that Vladimir Propp observed in the Morphology of the
Folktale. In the folktale of the Russian oral tradition, the hero abandons
home. He violates an interdiction. The hero “acquires the use of a
magical agent”. For Raskol’nikov, that agent takes two forms:
Svidrigailov is the “false” agent, Sonia (aided by Polen’ka) the true one.
Finally, “the hero returns”.17 And he returns as a heroic figure. The
Prodigal Son, forgiven by Father, is restored to his place in the (human)
family. Raskol’nikov is restored to his own place within the Orthodox
community. The Prodigal Son parable is a bridge between the Gospels
and Russian culture. More specifically, the Prodigal Son parable—
17
Vladimir Propp, Morfologiia skazki (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 40-44, 48-50, 53-54,
56. Also in English translation as Morphology of the Folktale, tr. Laurence Scott,
introduction by Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson; 2nd edition, tr. Louis A. Wagner, new
introduction by Alan Dundes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 26-27, 43,
55-56. We see this return in the novel when Sonia embraces Raskol’nikov in the
wake of his confession. PSS 6: 316.
through parallel structure to the Russian oral tale—can be seen as

specifically Russian within the context of Crime and Punishment.
When we first encounter Raskol’nikov, he is a rebellious young
man drifting through the profligate world of the nineteenth-century
capital city, with its prostitutes, poverty, drunkards, dirty streets, and
dives, the sort of urban decay routinely encountered in Dickens’ novels.
But where Dickens focused primarily on the sociological and economic
blight of the contemporary Western capital city, Dostoevsky instead
added a rebellious student—more precisely, if we consider the early
tavern scene, rebellious students—to the mix, savagely attacking the
very foundation, the Western basis, of post-Petrine Russian life.
Centered in and represented by St. Petersburg, with its emphasis on
commercial enterprises and its complex bureaucracy inherited from the
French model, Peter’s capital was split off from the “real Russia”,
which was itself intimately linked with Orthodoxy. For Dostoevsky,
prodigality denoted immersion in the material world as a philosophy of
life as well as a code of behavior, coupled most significantly with a
concomitant loss of faith in God. Raskol’nikov’s superficial and
temporary rejection of faith—his own “prodigality”—is linked with his
attraction to rational Utopian Socialist or Utilitarian thought, and
nihilism, and his temporary abandonment of Orthodoxy. Prodigality
emerges in Crime and Punishment as a state of mind translated into a
mode of behavior, a way of seeing the world, a turning away from
traditional Orthodox belief in God and in the divinity of Christ. And
that he figures as the Prodigal Son, the bludnyi syn in Russian, links him
intimately with Sonia, the woman who has gone astray (bludnitsa) of
the novel.
Raskol’nikov is at once the representative of a lost generation
of young intellectuals seduced by Utilitarianism, Utopian Socialism,
and nihilism, and the medium for bringing this generation—a
generation of “lost sheep” and “lost coins”—back to the Orthodox fold.
Herding ritually unclean swine symbolizes the Prodigal Son’s great fall.
Just as Dostoevsky capitalizes on his own readers’ primal fears and
prejudices, so does the parable itself also do this, drawing on traditional
Jewish belief that the pig is unclean.18 The intellectual atmosphere of St.
Petersburg, a locus of Utilitarianism imported from the West (as
18
Which we also, as Paul Friedrich has reminded me, find in Islam.
embodied in Luzhin and his “dirty water”) represents something

comparably “unclean” for Dostoevsky.19
Now is the time to return to the tavern scene already touched on
in the Introduction. Significantly, it is of course a student immersed in
the fashionable intellectual currents of the day who suggests that the
pawnbroker could be done away with (PSS 6: 53-55). Students
consisting of young men who had come to St. Petersburg or Moscow
(the “two capitals”) to study would, of course, have been the prime
audience for this novel and would have identified themselves with
Raskol’nikov, as well as with the student in the tavern. To be a student
was to question received “wisdom” or authority. As Joseph Frank
comments (1995: 107): “Radical ideas, identical in their Utilitarian
logic to those expressed [by the student] in the tavern scene [...]
reinforce the innate egoism of Raskol’nikov’s character and [...] turn
him into a hater rather than a lover of his fellow humans”. Dostoevsky
aims to get his readers away from the symbolic “swine” of the novel,
the world of materialists and materialism.
Raskol’nikov’s move from the village of his childhood to the
university in St. Petersburg is also a journey to a “distant land” of
Western rational thought and disbelief. It was a land Dostoevsky
considered divorced from traditional Russian Orthodox values and,
therefore, “ritually unclean”. (Raskol’nikov cannot completely recover
his past until the epilogue, when his return to faith echoes the
homecoming of the Prodigal Son.) Raskol’nikov’s sojourn in St.
Petersburg is life in a vacuum, where no one else exists. No wonder—
especially in the wake of the murders—he fails to connect with his
widowed mother and his sister when they come to Petersburg (Luzhin’s
natural dwelling place) in preparation for Dunya’s wedding. Besides
Raskol’nikov, no other character underscores the emptiness of this
spiritual and emotional desert as strikingly as Svidrigailov, whose
suicide is especially horrifying because it negates the possibility that he
can ever return to the Father. The Russian Orthodox foundation of
Raskol’nikov’s childhood “home” before his “journey” begins comes to
light only in his dream of the horse, shortly before he murders the
pawnbroker and Lizaveta. In his dream, he and his father go by a tavern
on a winding road that leads to the church, which itself is sitting in the
middle of a cemetery. The reader never knows if the church and its
19
The image of the swine figures significantly, of course, in Dostoevsky’s Demons.
environs are really this decrepit, or if this is how they seem within the
context of Raskol’nikov’s nightmare.
In the midst of the graveyard was a stone church with a green

cupola, where he would go twice a year with his father and mother
to Mass, when they held a requiem for his grandmother, who had
died long ago and whom he had never seen [....] He loved this
church and its ancient icons [images], the majority without frames,
and the old priest with his shaking head (PSS 6: 46).
His early reverence is deep and evident, but soon to be tested when he
witnesses Mikolka beating the mare. Dostoevsky seemingly stacks the
deck against Raskol’nikov here, the age and decrepitude of the church
and priest linking Orthodox Christianity with the past and death, not the
future and life (although death as prefiguring the Resurrection plays a
central role here). Raskol’nikov’s eventual repudiation of his childhood
faith recalls the Prodigal Son's own abandonment of his native place.
Because the horse dream ends with Raskol’nikov and his father never
actually getting to the wished-for church, we might see this passage as
an attempted “homecoming” (Luke 15:15) foiled by bloodshed (in this
case, of the old mare). This dream can be read as a truncated
foreshadowing of the larger novel, with Raskol’nikov only truly
arriving at the church outside the main body of the text, in the epilogue.
As part of Raskol’nikov’s journey “home” to the Orthodox Church, the
killer Mikolka of the nightmare becomes transformed into the religious
schismatic Mikolka whom both Raskol’nikov and Porfirii encounter.
The “real” Mikolka’s schismatic belief represents in encapsulated form
the true Russia predating Peter and his reforms, and existing outside
Western notions of time propelled forward.
The issue of Raskol’nikov’s own father surfaces importantly
here. Father is ineffectual at preventing the nag’s murder, telling his
impressionable young son “ ‘Let’s go! Let’s go! […] Let’s go home!
[…] They’re drunk, they’re playing pranks, it’s none of our business,
let’s go!’ says father” (PSS 6:49). His father fails to provide a solution.
He is, as Kasatkina has commented (1994: 83-84), most inadequate in
the context of this crucial scene. To the extent that this or any father can
be identified with God, then God Himself also emerges here as inept, or
uncaring,20 making Raskol’nikov a precursor to Ivan Karamazov in
20
Along these same lines, Kasatkina cites the work of G. Ukrainskii, specifically
“Kto otets Raskol’nikova”. Kasatkina, “Kategoriia prostranstva v vospriiatii lichnosti
their shared desire to “correct” God’s flawed world. Home and what
“home” means link the parable and Raskol’nikov’s dream. Father
attempts to take his son home, but the only “home” where they seem to
function as a family is the church, specifically, the churchyard where
they visit their relatives’ graves. The graveyard itself symbolizes the
central tenets of Christian belief, which itself figures so prominently in
this novel: belief in God and Christ, and resurrection after death. This
tangible sign of God’s love plus a sense of community may be the
reason why Raskol’nikov as a child so “loved this church”. Father’s
“detour” away from their true home (the church) means that his son will
have to put off going home, all the way home, until the epilogue.
Now may be the time to do a little arithmetic as regards dates,
especially since Dostoevsky is careful to reveal Raskol’nikov’s age
from the very introduction to the novel. Since Raskol’nikov is twenty-
three at the time Crime and Punishment is set, in 1865, that means he
was born in 1842. He is seven years old at the time of the horse
nightmare, making the year in which that dream is set 1849, precisely
the year of Dostoevsky’s own arrest for his activities in the
Petrashevsky and Palm-Durov Circles. The dream year coincides with
the dramatic culmination of Dostoevsky’s own experience as a
“Prodigal Son” who flirted with Western thought during the 1840s.
Father can’t ever arrive at the church either. He may perhaps stand for
intellectuals of that period (the 1840s), aware of crushing social
problems but unable to deal with them in any meaningful way. And he
assumes the beating to be “ne nashe delo” (“not our business”) when, in
fact, every misfortune is everyone’s business. This man of the 1840s
surfaces later, in the novel Demons. Here he takes the form of Stepan
Verkhovensky, the “father” to the younger generation, including the
murderous (“lukewarm”) Stavrogin. Just as Dostoevsky would himself
return to the “church”, to the center of Orthodox belief (in Siberia,
among the peasant convicts) so, too, would Raskol’nikov (in the
epilogue). And, just as Joseph Frank (1990: 128-145) has observed
relative to Dostoevsky himself, Russian tradition and eventual
acceptance back into the Russian fold would prove to be the key for
Raskol’nikov.
tragicheskoi miroorientatsii (Raskol’nikov)”, Dostoevskii: materialy i issledovaniia

11 (1994): 83-84.
Having abandoned the ancient faith of his family, Raskol’nikov

takes his fatal 730 steps. He begins with the thirteen steps down from
his room, the ‘devil’s dozen’ (chërtova diuzhina) to the pawnbroker’s
apartment, and descends into murder, the culmination of a prodigal
“faith” in a bogus religion. Both young men must leave home to return.
The prodigal son comes home literally, as if resurrected from the dead.
(Here we see a tie-in with the raising of Lazarus.) Upon his return, the
Prodigal Son acknowledges his guilt toward heaven, an obvious
indicator that this parable refers to all sinners, not just this son:
The son then said to him: “Father! [otche] I have sinned against
heaven and before thee, and I am no longer worthy to be called thy
son”. And Father said to his servants [his rabam, ‘slaves’] “bring
the best clothing and dress him, and put a signet-ring upon his
finger and shoes [obuv’] on his feet. And bring the fatted calf and
slaughter it: let us eat and be merry”. […] “For this, my son was
dead and is alive again, was lost and was found.” And they began to
make merry” (Luke 15:20-24).
The ring Father gives his son in the parable is a link with family,
giving added significance to a ring Raskol’nikov pawned prior to his
“rehearsal” of the murder(s) (PSS 6: 8). And it’s a “magic” ring,
intended for protection.
The underlying identities of the father and son of the parable
are crucial here. If the son is everyman and Father is God, then where
and what is “home” and what does “returning” signify? Since a return
denotes restoration to one’s former state of innocence and belief—
one’s true “home”—coupled with divine forgiveness for past sins, it
can take place anywhere. The son’s desperate request to be forgiven
suggests that leaving home (rejection of God) is a great sin, and
implies strongly that God will forgive any sin, if the sinner repents
and returns to Him. God always denotes home, hence, the Prodigal
Son’s “home” is in the presence of God. So, too, is Raskol’nikov’s.
Raskol’nikov does not go back to his native village, and the
church of his childhood is far away in the past. But he does,
incrementally during the course of Crime and Punishment, return to
God, to the Church. His initial restoration comes not through Sonia, but
through a little girl, as noted in the chapter on the iconic image. He turns
to Sonia’s younger stepsister Polen’ka—more accurately they turn to
each other—following the murders, in the wake of Marmeladov’s
death. What better time than in the wake of a death to contemplate the
related issues that resonate most powerfully for Orthodox believers: the
community of believers, and eternal life. The reader gets a foretaste of
the centrality of children to religious issues in Dostoevsky’s work, a
development reaching its apex in The Brothers Karamazov. “Will you
love me”, Raskol’nikov asks Polen’ka, desperately attempting to
reconnect through her to humanity, specifically, to the Orthodox
community. Through her, he takes his first steps back to his original
childhood innocence.
“Polechka, my name is Rodion; pray for me sometime too: ‘and thy

servant Rodion’, nothing more”. “I’ll pray for you the rest of my
life”, the little girl declared fervently, and she suddenly again began
to laugh, threw herself on him and hugged him tightly again (PSS 6:
146, 147).
To the extent that “homecoming” for the prodigal means inclusion

within the community, Polen’ka opens the door to redemption.
The prodigal Raskol’nikov’s restoration to the Father is
mediated by the pious characters of the novel: Polen’ka, Lizaveta and
Sonia. Living on through her cross, the shirt she repaired for
Raskol’nikov, and Sonia's shared memories, Lizaveta hovers over his
restoration to faith, in spite of (perhaps, because of?) her martyrdom
early on at his hands. Sonia’s crucial role is distilled in the scene where
she reads from Lazarus. Dostoevsky drops a large hint by putting the
bludnitsa (woman gone astray) and bludnyi syn (prodigal son) together
at this point. Lazarus’ return to life from the grave replicates the
Prodigal Son’s return to Father, and Raskol’nikov is the man who was
spiritually dead but brought back to life. While his complete restoration
takes place only later in the epilogue—which is temporally, spatially
and structurally outside the frame of the detective/murder plot that
constitutes the body of the novel—we see his first hesitant steps toward
salvation very early on. Removed from the harried, clock-driven
Western schedule—and the forward movement of time of Western
culture—that marked the hours before the murders (signified by the
pawning of father’s watch) (PSS 6: 9) to a timeless realm on the banks
of the Irtysh River, he is, at last, healed. Raskol’nikov has come full-
circle to the ancient faith of his childhood. Sonia, the medium of his
return, sits at his side.
He didn’t know himself how this happened, but suddenly it was as

though something had seized him and cast him at [Sonia’s] feet. He
wept and embraced her knees. At first she was terribly frightened
and her entire face became numb. She leaped from her place and,
shaking, looked at him. But just then, at that very moment, she
understood everything. Infinite happiness shone in her eyes; she
understood, and for her there was no longer any doubt that he loved
her, loved her infinitely, and that the moment had finally come (PSS
6: 421).
Sonia’s acceptance replicates and reenacts Father’s joyous reaction in

the Parable. Because Sonia represents Sophia and the Mother of God,
her touch is, by extension, the heavenly embrace. A page later,
Dostoevsky returns us to the original scene when Sonia read to
Raskol’nikov from the raising of Lazarus, linking the Gospels
through the adverb “mechanically” with his blows during the first
murder. He has virtually returned “home” to God the Father:
The Gospel lay under his pillow. He took it out mechanically
[mashina’no; he has not quite been won over]. This book had
belonged to her, it was the very one from which she read to him
about the raising of Lazarus. At the beginning of his prison term he
thought that she would torment him with religion, talk about the
Gospel and press books on him. But, to his great astonishment, she
never spoke about this, never even offered the Gospel to him. He
himself requested it from her not long before his illness, and she
silently brought him the book. Until this moment he had never even
opened it. He didn’t open it now, but one thought flashed through
his mind: “Could her beliefs really become my beliefs now? As
least, her feelings, her aspirations”? (PSS 6: 422; emphasis
added).21
This was the copy of the Gospel that Sonia and Lizaveta read
together. Raskol’nikov has become a member of their congregation.
At last cleansed of the infection that beset him throughout the novel
and culminated in his final nightmare in the epilogue (to be discussed
in Chapter Six), Raskol'nikov begins, however tentatively, to return
to the Father.
How does “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” fit in with
Raskol’nikov’s gradual re-conversion to Orthodoxy during the main
action of the novel, capped by an epiphany and complete return to faith
in the epilogue? If the Prodigal Son parable can be read as an object
21
That he takes out the Gospel “mechanically” may also speak to Raskol’nikov’s
previous immersion in Utilitarian philosophy and nihilism, philosophies he never
truly supported and which he will miraculously and definitively reject in the final
scenes of the epilogue.
lesson in conversion, a return to God the Father, then Raskol’nikov’s

own dramatic life change fits in with the general pattern of revelation
that we find elsewhere in Christianity. As Deborah Martinsen has
wisely reminded me, this type of conversion occurs at two crucial points
in the early history of the Christian church: with Paul the Apostle, and
with St. Augustine, their momentous changes of heart serving as
“models of conversion”.22 Paul probably began as a missionary for
Judaism rather than Christianity, and he made his great life change not
from a “life of immorality to one of virtue”, but from Judaism, the
religion of Law, to Christianity, the religion of Grace.23 While on the
road to Damascus, Paul had a vision that could be equated with a
mystical union with God, a vision that “differed qualitatively from all of
his earlier ones”. Paul realized that the Church, as the body of Christ,
must not be persecuted. His newly found necessity “to preach the
Gospels to the gentiles”, W.D. Davies suggests (1999: 689-694),
resulted from this conversion. He sought to expand the boundaries of
Christianity beyond the confines of a Jewish sect to the dimensions of a
major world religion. Like Paul, Raskol’nikov moves from law to grace.
St. Augustine lived during the fourth century. His father was a
wastrel, but his mother was a model of piety. Her remembered prayers
in the form of “vague recollections of Christianity” eventually saved St.
Augustine, in spite of his youthful submission to the “temptations” and
passions of youth. Struck down by illness, Augustine attempted to lose
himself in the intense study of literature, but he strayed into the twin
sins of heresy and pantheism. He finally converted in the wake of a
“violent crisis” recounted in his “Confessions” (de Pressensé 1974: 216-
217). Raskol’nikov appears to partially follow this pattern.
How, then, can we define conversion, and what is its
significance in the context of Crime and Punishment? Conversion
speaks to the relationship between God and humanity. It is central
historically to Judaism, and, with the coming of Christ, to Christianity
as well. According to James Walter (1988: 233-235),
22
Deborah Martinsen’s comments are related to this essay in its original form as a
paper read at the November, 2000, annual conference of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
23
And, of course, Hilarion’s “Sermon on Law and Grace”, noted in the chapter on
clothing, illustrates this shift.
Sinful humanity is alienated from God and is in need of reunion

[…] [C]onversion is primarily God’s work towards humanity,
since it is God who first offers mercy and salvation. In fact, the
call to conversion is itself a gospel, a message of good news […]
[C]onversion requires a response on the part of humanity—a
confession of sinfulness, an openness to receive God’s mercy
and forgiveness in faith, and a joyful desire to love God and
neighbor in word and action.
In other words, conversion is an act of unifying oneself with God

following a separation or alienation, which itself constitutes a sin. Paul’s
vision on the road to Damascus echoes in Raskol’nikov’s dream vision
of the beautiful oasis at the beginning of the novel, recapitulated in his
embrace of Polen’ka, the act of kissing the earth, and the final return in
the epilogue. St. Augustine’s attraction initially to superficial
amusements and then to secular literature is echoed in Raskol’nikov’s
attraction to the latest intellectual currents from the West. The same
intense need for a turning—or a return—to God most evident in the
conversions of Paul the Apostle and St. Augustine can be seen clearly in
the central characters of Crime and Punishment: Raskol’nikov himself,
Lizaveta, Sonia, and even Alyona the pawnbroker. All of these
characters can be considered sinners. Raskol’nikov of course falls into
this category because of his angry rejection of God, his act of despising
his fellow human beings, the murders. Lizaveta is always pregnant,
perhaps as a reminder that humanity, no matter how pure, is imperfect.
Lizaveta will return to Father in heaven; as Sonia declares to
Raskol’nikov in Part IV, Chapter Four:24 “She will behold (uzrit) God”
(PSS 6: 249). Sonia is a prostitute, but against her will. Her one selfish
act in refusing to give her stepmother Katerina Ivanovna collars and
cuffs shows her human limitations. Even Alyona, in spite of her cruel
greed, is linked with the Orthodox community through her belief, as
symbolized by icons and crosses. Following her murder, she can return
to God the Father. All of these characters can and will be redeemed.
Svidrigailov alone falls outside this paradigm, a point that will be dealt
with below.
24
Perhaps Dostoevsky put Sonia’s retelling of the tale of Lazarus in Part IV, Chapter
4 to make it easy for the reader to reference, just as we remember the Bible according
to chapter and verse.
The Older Brother’s Resentment
“The Parable of the Prodigal Son” concerns two brothers. We deal

here not only with the younger son’s departure and eventual return,
but also with the important related issue of the older brother’s jealous
resentment. Perhaps the title and subject of this parable could actually
be applicable to both brothers, not just the younger one. Father's
commands to give his younger son fine clothes and a signet ring and
to slay the fatted calf arouse the seething reaction of his loyal, dutiful
older son, who never disobeyed and never left home at all. It is
significant, however, that the departure from “home” is easily as
much a state of mind as a literal journey. Accordingly, the older
brother’s anger itself represents a “departure”, although not a literal
“geographical” one. In his anger, he disobeys Father:
For his older son was in the field; and returning, when he neared the
house, he heard the singing and rejoicing; And calling one of the
servants, he asked: “What is going on here?” And he said to him:
“thy brother has come, and thy father has killed the fatted calf,
because he received him whole.” He was angry and would not go.
His father went out and summoned him. But he said in answer to
his father: “Lo, I served thee for many years and never transgressed
any of thy commandments; but thou hast never given me even a
kid” (Luke 15:25-30).
This passage figures in several important ways not only for “The
Parable of the Prodigal Son” as a whole, but, of course, for Crime and
Punishment as well. The older brother supposes that rewards—
apparently for him they are always material ones—are given for the
dutiful life well lived, which means that Father’s love translates into
riches. But we never read anywhere in Luke that Father does not love
the older son, whose initial mistake lies in assuming that wealth is the
most important thing, and whose second mistake consists of equating
love with material rewards. His third error is the assumption that “good
behavior” will be rewarded in the physical world with material goods.
He forgets that the true, most important reward is not material at all,
because it is not of this world. Perhaps the son who stayed behind
obediently but complained and expected more favorable treatment from
the Father is himself a prodigal son.25
25
I would like to thank my son, Robert Tucker, for this helpful and astute
observation.
In a comparable situation in Crime and Punishment,

Raskol’nikov assumes that Alyona is a materialist (finding out about her
icon collection only after her murder). Having seen her icon case,
Raskol’nikov should and indeed could have surmised that at least some
of her money was spent on icons, that she was aware that material
wealth should be applied toward salvation. Once Raskol’nikov starts
rooting around in the storage chest she kept under her bed, he uncovers
all sorts of objects, including cloth, and pledges in the form of jewelry
(PSS 6: 64). But he never discovers the roubles he had anticipated
taking in the course of building his “new life”. Dostoevsky reveals their
presence to the reader only well after the murders. Raskol’nikov—and
the target reader—are led into a trap based on withheld information
leading to superficial assumptions. Dostoevsky demonstrates quite
clearly in these miscalculations the extreme limitations not only of
materialism and of rational thought. He clearly underscores the
insignificance of material possessions in the grand scheme of things by
making his most positive characters—Lizaveta and Sonia—virtually
unaware of them. Their relative disregard for possessions, particularly
in the case of Lizaveta, can be seen in her attitude toward clothing.
Far more than material rewards are at stake here, in both the
parable and the novel. The older brother attempts to distinguish between
himself and Father’s other son, to force Father to choose him as the
superior son, to play favorites. That is, by extension, he seeks to stratify
the intrinsic worth of believers and the rewards—or punishments—due
to them on the part of the Father. Raskol’nikov may be seen here as
playing both parts: he is at once the younger son who leaves “home”,
i.e. the Church, and the older, resentful son who chafes at Father’s equal
treatment of both sons and wants to be considered superior. That is, he
wants to be treated as though he actually were superior (in accord with
his own thesis). (And, perhaps, Father does seem to play favorites,
treasuring the returned son—the sinner who strayed—more than the
constant one.) If one has never “strayed”, is he then more worthy? Can
one person be “worth” more than another? How can we accept an
apparently good individual as “perfect” after the divine model? After
all, no one is perfect. If one does not have God in one’s heart, will any
amount of good deeds (quantification) yield salvation? Maybe this
particular argument speaks, at least to an extent, to the condemnation of
Svidrigailov.
If a young man has never acted like an old repulsive

protsenshchitsa (pawnbroker) and charged an exorbitant rate of interest
to the poor, especially students, does he have the right to pass judgment
on her, to kill her? Does she deserve to die as a sub-human “louse”?
Who ultimately makes these decisions about life—the reward of the
here and now—and death, with its unseen but potently present reward
of eternal life? Any discussion of murder is ultimately linked with
materialism. If life is the most precious “material thing”, that one
possesses, then does any one person have the “right” to take it from
another? Is murder the ultimate expression of material and/or economic
rapaciousness? Finally, are not all believers equal in the sight of God,
who extends salvation equally to Alyona, the secretly pious “percentage
taker”—although she herself and the reader are well aware of her sinful
limitations—to Sonia the woman gone astray and, ultimately, to the
murderer himself? Svidrigailov alone, of all the characters in the novel,
is condemned to the hell of suicide with no hope of heaven. That dismal
fate for a man completely outside the Orthodox community surely
functions as an object lesson for Dostoevsky’s impressionable young
“target” readers. Why does Dostoevsky punish Svidrigailov alone,
among all his characters? We don’t see Luzhin suffering beyond his
twisted frustration at losing Dunya. Unlike Luzhin, Svidrigailov is
actually the author of good deeds—such as saving Sonia and her
siblings financially—along with the evil ones: the murders of his wife
Marfa and servant Filip, the suicide of the young drowning victim he
had debauched. I think that the answer has to be found in the extreme
limits of his belief, or rather the absence of any beliefs at all, beyond the
superstitions central to the Russian oral tradition. Once Svidrigailov
declares that eternity, if it exists at all, is a bathhouse with spiders
crawling in the corners, he is doomed. Not even an infinite number of
charitable acts could possibly rescue him from the hof disbelief, or
rather, more to the point, from the hell of the wrong kind of belief.
Sinners can look forward to their eventual salvation, but only if they
will believe in the possibility of its existence in a realm beyond the
scope of the physical world. And this Svidrigailov fails to do.26 This
issue will figure in Chapter Five, on alterity.
26
Thanks to Caryl Emerson for inspiring me to think about Svidrigailov, and the
reasons for his likely damnation.
That Father extends his loving embrace to the older brother in

Luke 15, who also “returns” in his own way from the temporary exile of
bitter umbrage, should not be overlooked. In his jealousy following the
Prodigal Son's homecoming, the older brother doubts Father’s love and
distances himself from Father emotionally. Father demonstrates that his
older son is equally precious to him. The Author of “The Parable of the
Prodigal Son” painstakingly explains that the older brother is also a
“prodigal” along with his younger sibling. Their relationship would
appear to be mended, except that Jesus never presents the older
brother’s final reaction. But He does show the love of the Father
distributed equally to both sons. Like his younger brother, the older son
can also “return” from his journey within the netherworld of jealousy
and doubt, equated here with disbelief in the power and infinite
attraction of divine love. Perhaps, more accurately, the older brother’s
reactions represent human limitations, an inability to understand or
encompass, Father’s (God’s) infinite love for all “brothers”, who all
belong to the community of believers and can all partake of this love.
For the brothers are the human family in microcosm, just as
Dostoevsky’s own characters will be later, in The Brothers Karamazov.
Raskol’nikov himself will come to this realization as he
becomes increasingly aware of being a member of the Russian
Orthodox community. He will be reawakened initially through the
medium of Marmeladov’s sufferings, later through the love and faith of
Polen’ka and especially Sonia. Even the murdered Lizaveta plays a role
in “homecoming”, since she is linked with Raskol’nikov through
clothing in the specific form of the shirt. Only once he has lived among
the peasant convicts in Siberia will Raskol’nikov come to realize that all
men, or, at least, all Orthodox Russians, are his brothers. Dostoevsky’s
definition of brotherhood as an aspect of Orthodox belief not only
erases socio-economic class distinctions, but also undermines, even
destroys, the rational socio-economic argument inherited from Western
thought. Through the medium of religious belief, Dostoevsky destroys
his opponents’ premises from within. Just as Father reminds his older
son that material rewards are only symbolic, so, too, does Dostoevsky
remind the reader that the material world is only a pale reflection of the
eternal realm of God’s love. And the world of appearances, the rational
world, yields to the eternal: “[Father] therefore said unto him: my son!
Thou art always with me, and all that I have is thine. And we must be
merry and rejoice, that this thy brother was dead and come back to life,
was lost and was found” (Luke 15:31-32). Father’s love for both sons
symbolizes God’s universal love, and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”
makes this love both immediate and palpable. Father juxtaposes his love
to the older son's jealousy, which—like Raskol’nikov’s own
arithmetically determined formula—demonstrates the limitations of
human discernment in contrast to the limitless understanding of God.
Authors of the Parable and the present novel demonstrate quite vividly
that human judgment, restricted and flawed though it may be, can be
overcome by human faith in the unrestricted and perfect love of God
and Christ. The power of this love appears to be the central theme of the
Parable, as well as of Crime and Punishment. Both the older brother
and Raskol’nikov miss the very obvious point that material wealth
means nothing, but divine love is everything. They both misidentify the
true nature of wealth, mistakenly measuring it by the human scale of
material possessions rather than by the divine scale of faith and love.
Svidrigailov will make this error a fatal one.
In his anger at the pawnbroker’s stinginess, power, and fabled
wealth—defamed still further when the student in the tavern connects it
with the legendary riches of the Jews (PSS 6: 53)27—Raskol’nikov
recapitulates the older brother’s resentment at Father’s generosity to his
lost son. Father’s equal love for both brothers in Luke is echoed in
God’s love for the pawnbroker, expressed in the crosses worn under her
clothes, as well as by the great icon case of her bedroom (PSS 6: 63)
(discussed more extensively in the third chapter). While the argument
could be made that this icon collection could be linked with Lizaveta
rather than Alyona, Alyona (as noted above) is the sister with the
wherewithal to actually buy these expensive religious treasures. That
she would invest her wealth in icons speaks to her well-concealed but
nevertheless significant piety, as well as to her inclusion within the
Orthodox community.
Raskol’nikov discovers her crosses and personal, enamel
icon—worn on a card hanging from her neck—only in the wake of her
murder.
27
“She’s as rich”, declares the student in the tavern (in close conversation with the
soldier), as a ‘yid’ ” (noted above). Dostoevsky recapitulates this (perpetually!)
negative Jewishness in Svidrigailov’s suicide scene, also noted in the chapter on the
iconic. One assumes that the pawnbroker’s legendary wealth is linked with the real
wealth—itself the stuff of legends—of the famed Rothschild family.
On the cord were two crosses, cypress and copper, and besides that
an enamel image; and together with them hung a small, greasy
chamois leather purse, with a steel clasp. The purse was crammed
full (PSS 6: 64).
Raskol’nikov notices the crosses and icon, but his mind is on the purse,
a microcosm of St. Petersburg materialism. (Money is materialism
distilled, concentrated.) Like the older brother of the Parable, he fails
initially to see beyond the immediate physical world symbolized by
money, the goods it can buy, and the power it denotes.
Dostoevsky’s juxtaposition of the crosses and the religious
medal with the purse filled with money is a masterful assessment of
humanity and human limitations. His characters are suspended (as
though on an iconic ladder!) between transcendent spiritual values and
immersion in the material wealth denoting the limitations of human
(rational) judgment. Their imperfect judgment is reflected particularly
in Russian society in young men’s flirtation with Utilitarianism,
Utopian Socialism, and nihilism. Like everyone else in Crime and
Punishment—including not only Raskol'nikov, but also such positive
openly religious characters as Sonia and Lizaveta—the pawnbroker too
is suspended between heaven (her crosses, enameled image, and icons)
and the literal symbol of her human material limitations (her purse).
Just as Father loves both sons equally in Luke, so, too, does
God appear to extend equal love whenever possible in Crime and
Punishment, even to those characters such as the pawnbroker who
seem, at first glance to the student in the tavern and Raskol’nikov, to be
God’s throwaways. Gradually, through his interactions with Nastas’ya
(who gives him food) Razumikhin (who gives him “shared”, used
clothing) and, especially, Sonia, Raskol’nikov begins to realize the
existence and the extent of this love. He becomes fully aware of the
power of divine love only in the epilogue, when sitting with Sonia on
the riverbank. But he demonstrates at least a partial realization of this
love all the way through the novel, suggesting that this awareness of
divine grace has actually been with him all along, a remembrance from
his earliest childhood in a pious family.
Why do characters engaged in bad behavior in “The Parable of
the Prodigal Son” and in Crime and Punishment seem initially to
prosper on an exterior, physical level? The younger brother from Luke
appears at first glance to gain far more, at least in terms of material
goods, than his older sibling. While Sonia sacrifices herself for want of
money, and Raskol’nikov simmers in his poverty, the pawnbroker

amasses wealth by preying on the disadvantaged. On the surface of
things, Dostoevsky appears to decry the unjust, unequal distribution of
wealth, which is precisely what Jeremy Bentham argues against in his
Principle of utility, or Greatest happiness principle.28 That Utilitarianism
was the rage among the radical Russian thinkers—such as, for example,
Dmitrii Pisarev and Nikolai Chernyshevsky—and their radical student
followers of the 1860s is particularly significant for the present
discussion, since Dostoevsky intended Crime and Punishment (along
with the earlier Notes from Underground and, eventually, the later
Demons) as a rebuttal to their argument. Crime and Punishment was, of
course, an obvious swipe at Chernyshevsky’s own brand of Utopian
Socialism and Utilitarianism, which had blossomed on Russian soil into
“rational egoism” centered on the self, and on the material world of
economic power and distribution. As much as he detested
Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky was even more appalled by the evolution
of “rational egoism” as discussed in the journal The Russian Word. In
this publication, manned eventually by the nihilists, Utilitarianism, says
Joseph Frank (1995: 69), evolved into “a much harsher doctrine that
encouraged an elite ‘cadre’ of superior individuals to step over all
existing moral norms for the sake of advancing the interests of mankind
as a whole”. In keeping with Raskol’nikov’s own “theory”,
Utilitarianism underwent a curious mutation on Russian soil and
eventually was “stood on its head”. Altered from a philosophy of the
greatest good for the greatest number, it came instead to denote a
philosophy of the greatest good for the smallest possible number. This
change is readily apparent in Raskol’nikov’s essay as cited by
PorfiryPetrovich, in which a small number of “superior” individuals—
the “elect”—presumes that it has the exceptional “right” to reign
supreme over all others (PSS 6: 198-201). Dostoevsky’s evocation of
the theme of departure and return (as seen vividly in “The Parable of the
Prodigal Son”) continues his argument against Thomas Buckle, whom
he had blasted two years earlier in Notes from Underground.
Dostoevsky counters Buckle’s assumption that mankind progresses
inexorably toward perfection—a corroboration of the linear time
inherent in scientific and social revolution—with his own paradigm of a
28
For a discussion of the Principle of utility, see James Steintrager. Bentham (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1977), esp. 28-40.
privileged circular time inherent in the concepts of departure and return.

This is the pattern associated with salvation in Luke. In place of the
superman, Dostoevsky instead gives his readers salvation, in the form of
Christ.
Secularized charity is reprehensible in Crime and Punishment.
Svidrigailov, for instance, bestows money on the surviving Marmeladov
children, beginning with Sonia herself, to save them from life on the
streets. But his charity is suspect, because it has been severed from the
religious impulse, from Christ’s love (agape) central to Orthodox
Christianity. In Dostoevsky’s eyes, such charity is always severely
limited. Embodied in Svidrigailov, this disconnect is precisely the major
flaw of Utilitarianism, a philosophy that depends on man alone acting
without God to right the wrongs of the world, especially the economic
inequities dramatized to greatest effect in the population crunch
endemic to the contemporary city. This issue will figure in the
discussion of alterity, in Chapter Five.
What of Svidrigailov? While Dostoevsky allows Raskol’nikov
to “return” to Father incrementally throughout the main body of the
novel, and definitively in the epilogue, no such privilege is vouchsafed
to Svidrigailov. As noted in the introduction, as well as in the chapter on
the iconic, Svidrigailov is doomed. It is important to remember that
suicide in Russian is samoubiistvo, literally, “self-murder”. And
Svidrigailov, as noted in Chapter Three, has caused another suicide, i.e.
“self-murder”. These crimes coupled with his disbelief mark
Svidrigailov as a man with no hope of return. He very much prefigures
Stavrogin in Demons, perhaps a Stavrogin with an ironic sense of
humor. The Jewish fire fighter is important, too, within the context of
the Prodigal Son parable. He witnesses Svidrigailov’s suicide as a
lower-order member of the bureaucratic web. By extension, Peter’s
governmental system and Table of Ranks is identified intimately with
Jewry (“the Yids”), and the Jew as the ultimate foreign entity, the
outsider. But the Jew in his “Achilles” helmet is also identified by
extension with the Wandering Jew of legend, condemned to roam
around the world because of his thoughtless cruelty to Christ before the
Crucifixion. Linked with this figure by his final act, Svidrigailov, too,
can be seen as a sort of “Wandering Jew”. His homelessness(including
a final stay in a hotel)—a symbol of the homelessness that punishes
those separated from the Orthodox community—is underscored
throughout the course of Crime and Punishment.29 Svidrigailov’s

alienation from the Orthodox community reaches a dramatic and
horrific conclusion when Raskol’nikov himself, having kissed the earth
at the Haymarket crossroads, is on his return “journey” back to the
Father.
Conclusion
By incorporating a recast contemporary reading of “The Parable of the

Prodigal Son” into Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky establishes a
hierarchy of the Gospels dominant over secular political, social, and
economic philosophy: Utilitarianism, Utopian Socialism, nihilism, and
“rational egoism”. He re-enacts that parable in the contemporary
Russian setting, with a representative young intellectual functioning as
the Prodigal Son. More to the point, Raskol’nikov is a young man
playing two roles: he is at once the younger “prodigal” son, and the
jealous older brother. Both roles lead to murder. Taking as his model
the overwhelming questions underlying “The Parable of the Prodigal
Son”—can the sinner return to God (ultimately, in heaven, where
Lizaveta will “behold God”), does God love all sinners equally,
regardless of their material circumstances or apparent good behavior,
should we judge one another—Dostoevsky embeds spiritual issues in
the context of contemporary Russian social, political, and philosophical
currents. The universal appeal of this great novel is based, of course, on
its applicability to our contemporary lives and situations. Such was the
powerful basis of its attraction and the intent of its message in
Dostoevsky’s own day. Nor should we forget that Russians, states
Malcolm Jones (2002: 162), tended to view “the criminal as an
‘unfortunate’ rather than as an outcast”, in keeping with “John’s
insistence on the priority of Grace over Law [….]”.
In his tortured journey that begins in a dream from childhood,
descends into murder, and finally reaches the tranquil banks of the
Irtysh River, Raskol’nikov certainly anticipates the moral, even
existential, wanderings of generations of literary and real-life
descendants, be they Russian or Western. But when reading Crime and
Punishment (indeed, all of Dostoevsky's later work) through the filter of
29
As seen also in Stavrogin’s estrangement from Russia, and in Ivan Karamazov’s
abandonment of home while his father is being murdered (more precisely, facilitating
his father’s murder).
Western secularized thought, it is well to remember that he, too, made a

circular journey and had a tradition that he drew on. This tradition was
the Biblical teaching basic to the plot that functions as a parable
throughout.
Chapter Five
The Significance of Alterity or “Otherness”

in Crime and Punishment:
Russian Culture and Western Change
With its bifurcated culture split between native traditions and

Western innovation, Russian society from the late seventeenth
century on—especially following the reign of Peter the Great—was
no stranger to the concept of alterity, or otherness.1 Alterity figures as
an inherent, important element in a divided country that
accommodated cultural and social oppositions uneasily within its
borders. The conflict between indigenous Russian values and foreign
“other” models imported specifically from the West climaxed
dramatically in the nineteenth-century struggle between the
Westernizers and the Slavophiles. The split between these two
factions found ample reflection in the literature of this period. That
literature was a principal venue for attempting to heal the rift between
Russian and Western thought and social practice should come as no
surprise, given the fact that the censorship limited open public
discussion in “thick” journals and the press.
“Russianness”—as opposed to foreignness or otherness—
figures as an essential theme in, for example, the writing of Gogol,
Goncharov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. We encounter this
dichotomy in Nikolai Gogol’s later Petersburg stories. His “Western”
capital takes on an intensely evil coloration directly connected with
Peter the Great and the contemporary Russian bureaucracy with its
1
The notion of alterity follows quite naturally from the binary values of traditional
Russian culture. As Julie Buckler cogently observes, “Even the dramatic cultural
changes in Europeanizing eighteenth-century Russia can be seen as a simple
inversion of the old culture’s binary values, not unlike pagan Russia’s adoption of
Christianity in the tenth century”. Julie A. Buckler, Mapping St. Petersburg
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 12. Dostoevsky’s bifurcation of
contemporary Russians into sinners and the redeemed follows this binary model.
table of ranks, depicted as antithetical to Orthodoxy.2 In Ivan

Goncharov’s Oblomov, nostalgia for the archaic rural environment
and Russian oral tradition ultimately inspires considerably more
sympathy from the reader than any well-intentioned, Western-
influenced attempts at significant forward movement into the modern
age. Clearly more comfortable with Russian traditions than with
Western change, even at the expense of social and economic
progress, Goncharov brings Oblomov and Zakhar vividly to life
while giving us a very sketchy Stolz in the process. For his part, Ivan
Turgenev returns Arkadii back to the time-honored fold of the old-
fashioned Russian family estate in Fathers and Sons but “kills off”
the nihilist Bazarov. Lev Tolstoy focuses on the great agricultural
enterprises of the nobility as the essence of genuine Russian culture,
eyeing Western novelties with disdain, disapproval, and even alarm. 3
Nor, of course, should Dostoevsky himself, given his intense
identification of Russian nationalism with Orthodoxy, be overlooked
in this discussion. For Dostoevsky, the “West” is represented by ideas
realized in anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox Christian social
movements. He focuses on dangerous individual actions that
symbolize social disorder and are realized vividly in his major
fiction.
This cultural rivalry between Russia and the West was not
confined to prose fiction. The seminal thinker Pëtr Yakovlevich
Chaadaev addressed the ongoing conflict between Russia and the
West in his Philosophical Letters (written 1829, published 1836).
While Chaadaev emerged as a firm champion of Western thought and
culture, the same cannot be said for Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen,
whose collections of essays entitled Letters from France and
2
As in the 1835 story “Nevskii Prospect”, where the devil lights the streetlamps at
the end, or of course “The Overcoat”, in which Petrovich is quite obviously
described as and identified with the devil.
3
Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches deal with the gulf between gentry and
serfs. Artists also addressed this issue, as in G.V. Soroka’s painting of the view of
the dam on the Spasskoe Estate, in which the dam serves as a dividing line between
master and serfs. See Priscilla Roosevelt’s Life on the Russian Country Estate: A
Social and Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 219.
Priscilla Roosevelt discusses this subject in detail in Chapter Eight, “The Kingdom
Divided: Lord and Serf”, 218-242. Tolstoy must have been sorely conflicted over
Levin (from Anna Karenina), who spoke good French but avoided city life,
preferring to mow with his peasants.
Alterity or Otherness 183
Germany (1847-1852) and From the Other Shore (1847-1860)

disparaged the Western European bourgeoisie. Always eager to
weigh in on contemporary issues, Dostoevsky took up this theme
himself in his non-fictional memoir Winter Notes on Summer
Impressions (1863), a scathingly negative condemnation of Western
European mores, society and culture.4 That Dostoevsky focused on
great cities like Paris, Cologne and London in this extended sketch is
an important factor in his assessment, since a suspect Western society
as embodied in an urban environment prefigures the deracinated St.
Petersburg society given center stage in his fiction. This censure of
St. Petersburg begins with his earliest published work, takes on
special intensity with Notes from Underground, and climaxes with
four great “murder” novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot,
Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov.5
It is crucial to remember that the issue of Russia versus the
West also breaks down along the lines of social caste, with Russia at
war, so to speak, with itself. Dostoevsky first tackles this issue in
Notes from the Dead House (1861-62). In her ground-breaking essay
(2005: esp. 722), Nancy Ruttenberg discusses the “alterity of the
peasant Other that is unamenable to the reforming efforts of the
liberal elite, the philanthropists, and the sentimentalists” and focuses
on the “blindness of [Dostoevsky’s] alter ego Gorianchikov”.
Furthermore, the small Westernized stratum of Russian society,
including the nobility and the so-called raznochintsy (educated young
men of non-noble origin, frequently the sons of priests or
impoverished noblemen) were an alien class in their own country.
They lived in the midst—perhaps, more accurately, on the fringes—
of the non-Westernized masses of the population: the Russian
peasants. It was the Slavophiles who would attempt to bridge this
social and cultural abyss. Slavophilism was an extended exercise in
Russian self-definition, an effort to determine what Russian culture
and nationalism might betoken in the wake of the intense
4
The theme of Russia versus the West continued to be a hot topic into the twentieth
century. We encounter this conflict, for instance, in Andrei Bely’s novel Petersburg,
as well as after the revolutions of 1917, in, for example, Boris Pilnyak’s (Boris
Andreevich Vogau’s) innovative novel The Naked Year (1921).
5
While not set in St. Petersburg, both Demons and The Brothers Karamazov feature
central characters who spent their formative years in the capital.
Westernization set in motion by Peter the Great.6 Discomfiture and

guilt over the lot of the peasants, who were overwhelmingly serfs
until 1861 and impoverished thereafter, would fuel not only
Slavophile, but also Populist, sympathies for their less-fortunate
fellow citizens.7 So would an irresistible urge to get in touch with
one’s true Russian roots. However, contemporary Russian
nationalism was part of a general European consciousness of
ethnicity. The growth of nationalism that was generally prevalent in
European societies during the nineteenth century functions as an
aspect of the Romantic movement, into the twentieth century and
beyond.
Sometimes this partially-realized identification with the
peasants was tempered by one’s firm sense of belonging to the upper
crust. For instance, whereas aristocratic characters in Tolstoy’s major
fiction—two crucial examples that spring to mind are Pierre
Bezukhov from War and Peace and Nikolai Levin from Anna
Karenina—might in many ways admire the peasants, this admiration
never stood in the way of reaffirming noble status and privileges. As
we shall see below, this notion of self-identification with the nobility
did not hold in the same way for Dostoevsky, who lived in the midst
of (criminal) peasant society during his incarceration in Siberia, and
for whom these same peasants were a crucial factor in his re-
immersion in Orthodoxy and Russian culture (see Frank 1990: esp.
128-162). And, for Dostoevsky, being an outsider would eventually
signify being outside the church. Separation from Christ was a far
more painful and perilous state than mere deracination. (That
Dostoevsky’s social origins were not as nearly as lofty as, for
example, Herzen’s, Turgenev’s, or Tolstoy’s is a significant factor
that should also be borne in mind.8)
6
For a brief yet valuable discussion of Slavophilism, see Abbott Gleason,
“Slavophilism”, Victor Terras, ed., Handbook of Russian Literature (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985), 423-425.
7
Hugh Seton-Watson treats the Populists in The Decline of Imperial Russia: 1855-
1914 (New York: Praeger, 1952), esp. 139-143.
8
For a thorough discussion of Dostoevsky’s family background, see Joseph Frank,
Dostoevsky: the Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1976), particularly “Part I: Moscow”, 3-66. Dostoevsky’s mother came from the
merchant class. His father became a military doctor following graduation from a
theological seminary. Frank, Dostoevsky: Seeds, 8-11.
Awareness of this enormous gulf between classes inevitably

led to attempts to bridge it. Tolstoy depicts his young countess
Natasha Rostova from War and Peace—who holds the same rank as
her creator—as at once a Westernized aristocrat and a “real Russian”.
When Natasha breaks into a Russian dance, she does it as well as any
enserfed peasant girl reared back in the village.9 Aleksandr Pushkin’s
heroine Tat’iana Larina from Eugene Onegin is, like her creator, at
home in both worlds at once. She functions equally well in the “real”
Russia of the country estate, symbolized by her close relationship
with her old nurse, and in the Western cultural orbit signified by a
youthful attraction to foreign literature (although her heart still
belongs, as she tells Onegin at the close of Chapter Eight, to her old
“nest” in the depths of the country). Tat’iana writes to Onegin in
French (a letter the narrator handily “translates” into Russian) and
chats with the Spanish ambassador also (we assume) in French, the
traditional language of diplomacy. But at the same time she reveals
the indigenous Russian side of her nature when she tells fortunes
using wax, spends the night in the bathhouse, and revels in winter
like a true Russian. Pushkin was unique among major Russian writers
in his comfortable amalgamation of native and Western cultural and
social models. But in the wake of the importation of intensely secular
and by extension socially and politically revolutionary ideas—most
particularly Utilitarianism and Utopian Socialism—the age of
accommodation was over. These ideas would eventually be put into
action, to disastrous effect, in the following century. It was this
seemingly inescapable Westernization that made a disapproving
Tolstoy extremely uneasy, and earned Dostoevsky’s scornful
repudiation.
Doubling and Alterity: The Insider versus the Outsider
Alterity or “otherness” was realized not only thematically, but also

formally. It appeared in the plot structure, the pairing of characters, or
in what is in effect a doubling of literary devices within a given work.
For example, Pushkin explored structurally the tensions between
opposites—in terms of characters, form, and plot—in such works as
9
Orlando Figes discusses this intriguing phenomenon in his aptly titled Natasha’s
Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt
and Company, 2002), xxv-xxix.
Eugene Onegin, his Little Tragedies, specifically Mozart and Salieri

and The Stone Guest, and in “The Bronze Horseman”. In each case,
an “outsider” protagonist is juxtaposed to an authority figure.10
Alterity plays a significant role in Pushkin’s prose as well as his
verse. In all the stories of his masterful collection The Tales of Belkin,
Pushkin realizes alterity structurally in the contrast between the
dénouement that the reader is fooled into anticipating, and the actual,
eventual, outcome. Typically, Pushkin plays on this contrast to ironic
effect (as he does with, for example, Vladimir Lensky’s anticipated
poetic “destiny” versus his far more probable prosaic fate in Eugene
Onegin).
The doubling of characters is an important related
phenomenon. Aleksei Alekseevich Perovsky (who published under
the penname of Anton Pogorelsky) enriched structural alterity with
the use of literal doubled characters. His novel The Double, or My
Evenings in Little Russia (1828) featured an extended “conversation”
between the narrator and his double (in effect, creating double
narrators). Influenced by the great German Romantic E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s Serapion Brothers (Berry 1985: 337),11 Perovsky was an
early Russian explorer of doubling inherited from the West. But
Perovsky was neither the last nor the most significant Russian writer
to incorporate doubling, through the use of characters, into his prose.
His immediate literary descendant, the master prosaist Nikolai Gogol,
repeatedly used double characters from his first published work on.
Unlike Perovsky, who depicts a balanced set of doubles, Gogol (and,
in his wake, later, Dostoevsky) stratifies his doubles into
dominant/submissive, and victorious/unsuccessful pairs. This pattern
recurs from Gogol’s earliest stories, with the submissive/unsuccessful
doubles shoved into the role of outsiders and will be encountered
later, in Dostoevsky’s work.
10
Of course, the pairing of opposites figured quite naturally in Pushkin’s verse, where
it was incorporated into the metric scheme (as well as in other aspects of his poetry,
such as rhyme). See, for instance, my “The Plot Rhyme Scheme of Pushkin’s Eugene
Onegin, New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1999): 35-49. For a discussion of authority
as embodied, in Pushkin’s work, in the statue, see the classic by Roman Jakobson,
Pushkin and his Sculptural Myth, trans. from the Czech and edited by John Burbank
(The Hague: Mouton, 1975).
11
Thomas E. Berry, “Perovsky, Aleksei Alekseevich”, Victor Terras, ed., Handbook
of Russian Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 337.
Sometimes Gogol’s outsider dies, perhaps seeking revenge

even from beyond the grave. The early story “Viy” (in his 1835
Mirgorod collection) features a witch who takes two forms as the
story evolves. She is introduced as an old hag who turns into a young
beauty; she perishes from her wild “ride” with Khoma Brut. The
witch doubles not only herself, but also the carelessly irreligious
Khoma. As a corpse laid out in a neglected (deconsecrated?) church,
she summons the monster Viy to avenge her death. We encounter a
comparable pattern of posthumous revenge in “The Overcoat”. The
“twins” Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky (who curiously anticipate Lewis
Carroll’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee from Alice in Wonderland)
play only a minor role in Gogol’s 1836 dramatic masterpiece The
Inspector General. But the sham “inspector general” Khlestakov
arguably doubles his real counterpart, who appears as a force of
judgment at the end of the play. In Gogol’s bizarre 1836 tale “The
Nose”, the very nose of the central character Kovalev disappears in
the wake of what is literally an exceptionally close shave. He
resurfaces as a separate “person”, an official outranking “his” former
“host”. In due time, the nose will be recaptured and returned to “his”
previous and “proper” state, losing independence as well as elevated
status in the process. Gogol transforms him from a winner or insider
into a loser or outsider, with Kovalev the eventual victor.
Given this legacy, Dostoevsky was no stranger to doubling or
to the split between insider/outsider characters (just as he was no
stranger to the tensions between Russia and the West that figured so
importantly in contemporary prose). He successfully melded the
medium and the message. Nor did he necessarily confine doubling
solely to his characters. In the short novel Poor Folk (1846), his very
first published work of original fiction, Dostoevsky realized doubling
through the belated genre of the epistolary novel, incorporating a dual
or doubled set of competing and mismatched narrators. Dostoevsky
would explore doubling throughout the course of his career. Poor
Folk was followed by the aptly titled novella The Double (1846). The
protagonist Golyadkin is forced to share the fictional stage with his
cloned double. “Golyadkin Junior” takes over “Senior’s” identity and
life, and “Golyadkin Senior” is finally packed off to the madhouse (a
doubled alternative to “normal” society). In “White Nights” (1848),
the hapless protagonist, another of Dostoevsky’s outsiders, gingerly
courts a young girl. He loses her to her true love, his attractive,
sophisticated and successful “double”. This young man whisks her

away at the end, just as the narrator anticipates his success at the
expense of Nastenka’s heartbreak. Doubling—including situational
doubling—figures importantly in the 1848 story “A Christmas Tree
and a Wedding”. The dual title incorporates the dual/doubled
religious images inherent in the rites central to both Christmas and
the marriage ceremony.12 The narrator, in many ways the most
powerful figure in the story,13 alters the course of the action although
not, alas, its final outcome,14 when he suddenly bursts into view with
audible laughter from behind the plants. He serves as a double of a
“child outsider”, the governess’ little son who suffers so much grief
at the hands of the other children, and most of all from Julian
Mastakovich. But the narrator also functions as Julian Mastakovich’s
double in an abortive attempt to control or alter the action, and the
outcome. Dostoevsky’s doubling of characters will be realized to
great dramatic effect in his later fiction, specifically, for our
purposes, in Crime and Punishment.15 He realized vividly—in the
form of his characters and events—the enormous cultural divide
between traditional Russian culture on one hand, and the dangerous
“otherness” of borrowed Western culture on the other.
Gogol resolves doubling through reunification in “The
Nose”, where we see replication from Kovalev’s, not the nose’s,
point of view. This situation is reversed in Dostoevsky, for whom
there is no comparably successful resolution in his early fiction.
Makar Devushkin from Poor Folk is arguably a “double” in the sense
that he is one of two narrators duplicating point of view as well as
being the powerless double of Mr. Bykov. He loses Varvara to his
rival Bykov by the end of the novella.16 Golyadkin from The Double
12
The rites are not properly observed in either segment of the story, making the
profanation of religion in this work a precursor to the comparable treatment of faith
in Dostoevsky’s later fiction.
13
As Jerzy Kolodziej has astutely noted to me.
14
That outcome is, of course, the wedding between Julian Mastakovich and the
young heiress, only eleven in the “Christmas Tree” segment of the story.
15
This doubling is intimately related to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony
particularly as it relates to Dostoevsky’s fiction. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Problemy
poètiki Dostoevskogo (München: C. Hanser, 1971). In English: Problems of
Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. R.W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973).
16
Given that her name means “foreigner” in Greek, Varvara can also be considered
an outsider.
is an ultimate outsider, pushed out of society into the asylum as

punishment for attempting to hold onto his identity. When characters
are doubled in Dostoevsky’s fiction, one prevails while the other one
loses, but the focus of the narration is on the loser.
The state of being an outsider, an “other”, is clearly
involuntary here. Dostoevsky is obviously not the first Russian writer
to explore the outsider. The so-called “superfluous man” realized as
Chatsky in Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov’s drama Woe from Wit
(1823-1824) was an early representative of this type. Pushkin’s
Eugene Onegin, Germann from Pushkin’s short story “The Queen of
Spades”, Pechorin in Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov’s A Hero of Our
Time (1840), and such Turgenev protagonists as Rudin (from the
1856 novel Rudin) and Bazarov in Fathers and Sons continued and
expanded on this tradition.17
Superfluous heroes can arguably be regarded as variants on
double characters, with the superfluous man almost always
juxtaposed to a successful rival in the plot, and in society. For
example, Chatsky’s double is the toady Molchalin. Onegin’s is
Tat’iana’s husband, the general and, ironically, Lensky. For Pechorin,
the “double” is his principal rival Grushnitsky (whom he kills in a
duel, which itself functions as a doubling construct). In the case of
Raskol’nikov, a resentfully superfluous outsider, the “insider”, a
superficially empowered double, is realized in Svidrigailaov, Alyona
and Luzhin. Eventually Raskol’nikov will become aware that the true
insider in the Orthodox Christian and Russian contexts is Sonia. In
the context of the present essay, Sonia heals the wound caused by the
reforms of Peter the Great, a wound leading to societal and cultural
doubling, and one Raskol’nikov embodies and personifies until his
eventual reunification with the Orthodox Church and the Russian
people.
Devushkin and Golyadkin are both marginalized as outsiders;
Varvara (through Bykov) and Golyadkin Junior are incorporated into
society as insiders. With Notes from the Dead House and Notes from
Underground, Dostoevsky actively attempted for the first time to add
17
For a brief discussion of the superfluous man in nineteenth-century Russian
literature, see Joseph Frank’s Through the Russian Prism: Essays on Literature and
Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 217-218. See also Hugh
McLean’s “Superfluous Man”, in Victor Terras, ed., Handbook of Russian Literature
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 454-455.
Orthodox Christianity to this mix. The censors’ misguided reactions

to his efforts led, Joseph Frank has noted (1986: 213-231, 294, and
esp. 220-221) to a bitterly frustrated outburst to his brother Mikhail.
In Crime and Punishment, all the necessary ingredients have been
brought together in a definitive manner: insider/outsider, superfluous
man/integrated member of society, successful double/failed double,
redemption of the sinner/damnation.
The present chapter is not designed as a repeat exercise in
what has already been covered, and covered so effectively, by other
readers of Dostoevsky’s works.18 It is, rather, my intention, while
recognizing that the doubling of characters is crucial in Crime and
Punishment, to explore the general greater significance of alterity,
and to analyze doubling as an aspect of alterity. This chapter will
focus on alterity—especially but not solely as embodied in
Raskol’nikov—as but one facet of the larger argument presented in
my title and expanded in the introduction. To whit: Raskol’nikov in
particular is quite obviously suspended between the two worlds of
Western rational thought and Russian Orthodox belief. He functions
as a representative, an exemplar, of contemporary society.
Dostoevsky’s resolution of this inherent and central conflict is
realized not only in oral elements, in the incorporation of religious
symbolism in clothing, in the iconic scenes or in the significance of
“The Parable of the Prodigal Son”, but also in the built-in duality
inherent in the concept of alterity.
Initially, and, perhaps to an extent, superficially,
Raskol’nikov is presented as a typical follower of rational thought
who views Russianness and Orthodoxy as “foreign” or “other”.19
18
Laura A. Curtis treats this issue in “Raskolnikov’s Sexuality”, Harold Bloom, ed.,
Bloom’s Major Literary Characters: Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov (Philadelphia:
Chelsea House Publishers, 2004), esp. 140; see also Frank Friedeberg Seeley, “The
Two Faces of Svidrigailov”, Harold Bloom, ed., Bloom’s Major Literary Characters:
Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, 81-86.
19
In his brief yet interesting commentary on Crime and Punishment, V.I Mel’nik
suggests that Raskol’nikov is the double of Napoleon. V.I. Mel’nik, “K teme:
Raskol’nikov i Napoleon: (‘Prestuplenie i nakazanie’)”, Dostoevskii: materialy i
issledovania, 6 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1985): 230-231. Stephen Hutchings contends that
nineteenth-century fiction deals with issues of typicality, uniqueness, and identity,
and that realism has a “cult of the typical”. Stephen C. Hutchings, Russian
Modernism: The Transfiguration of the Everyday (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 18-19.
Dostoevsky considered this orientation misguided, and dangerous. As

Joseph Frank has so aptly observed (1990: 132), “Crime and
Punishment […] arose from Dostoevsky’s efforts to dramatize the
moral dangers that he sensed lurking in the ideology of Russian
Nihilism—dangers not so much for society as a whole, though these
certainly existed and were important—but those dangers primarily
threatening the young Nihilists themselves”. Of all the perils
threatening Raskol’nikov in particular and his contemporaries—the
target readers—in general, perhaps the most potent was isolation
from native Russian traditions. During the course of the novel,
Raskol’nikov will come around. He will very gradually begin to view
Russian culture as ‘his own’ (svoi, rodnoi) and Western rationalism
as ‘other’ (chuzhoi). But he will not make this change definitively
until the epilogue. At the end, Russian culture specifically as
embodied in Orthodoxy will be on the “inside”, intrinsic, for
Raskol’nikov, with Western influences extrinsic, relegated to the
“outside”. Raskol’nikov’s “re-education” will consist in convincing
him emotionally instead of rationally to shift his orientation. The
reader will see this transformation unfold as Raskol’nikov
contemplates his murder of Alyona and commits his crimes. His
metamorphosis will continue when—through the good offices of
Polen’ka and Sonia—he eventually returns to the Orthodox Church
remembered from his early childhood, the period before he was seven
(the age of Raskol’nikov as the boy in his horse-beating dream). Most
significantly for the thesis of my larger study, the target reader, lured
into identifying himself with Raskol’nikov, would have undergone a
comparable shift in his own world-view. Re-orienting the target
reader—along with Raskol’nikov—away from Western rationalism
and back to Russian Orthodoxy is arguably, in light of the themes
presented in my earlier chapters, Dostoevsky’s central purpose in
writing and publishing Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky’s iconic
structures, his exploitation of the oral tradition, his clothing and cloth
symbolism, and his interpolation of the Prodigal Son parable taken
from the Gospels are all employed toward this end.
Initially, Dostoevsky’s outsiders are loners involuntarily
excluded from the superficial togetherness of the larger St. Petersburg
society (excluding in the present context the Orthodox community).
This pattern figures in the second part of Notes from Underground.
Unlike the superfluous man’s elective exclusion from the socio-
political system (embodied in the bureaucratic web), these outsider

characters don’t have enough social or economic clout to assert
themselves in any meaningful way. They are confined to a peripheral
position and barred from the centers of social and economic power.
But they occupy center stage in the narrator’s focus and the plot,
itself a reversal that amounts to “bringing the outside in”. Makar
Devushkin in Poor Folk—following Gogol’s model of Akakii
Akakievich from “The Overcoat”—is the first of these outsiders. But
he is not the last. Golyadkin from The Double repeats this pattern. So
does the narrator in Notes from Underground, acting out his
frustration in Part Two but commenting on it caustically in Part
One.20 Much later, Stavrogin will deliberately play this role in
Demons. The outsider evolves from the hapless loser in Poor Folk,
The Double, and “White Nights” to the bitterly resentful outsider-
narrator in Notes from Underground. He will seek redress for being
an outsider by attempting to wrest power from the center.21
Eventually, his rebellious actions will take the form of murder.
Dostoevsky has his characters repeatedly kill to compensate for their
outsider status. We can see this method at work not only in Crime
and Punishment, The Idiot, and Demons, but also realized to great
dramatic effect in The Brothers Karamazov. Who, after all, is more of
an outsider in a family setting, even in such a monstrously
dysfunctional family, than the one illegitimate son, Smerdiakov, who
kills his father?
In Crime and Punishment, the outsider—realized vividly in
Raskol’nikov—has been involuntarily excluded from economic and
social control. But he made a conscious choice to separate himself
voluntarily from the Russian community and the Orthodox Church,
identified with traditional values and opposed to Western cultural
influences. Dostoevsky relates outsider/insider status directly to the
twin issues of Western culture and thought versus Russian
Christianity. Characters who are outsiders by virtue of having been
20
For an excellent discussion of Notes from Underground, see James P. Scanlan,
Dostoevsky the Thinker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), esp. Chapter Two,
“The Case Against Rational Egoism”, 57-80. See also Carol Flath’s incisive
breakthrough essay “Fear of Faith: The Hidden Religious Message of Notes
fromUnderground,” Slavic and East European Journal 37:4 (Winter 1993): 510-529.
21
Or, in the case of Pechorin, he will try to manipulate the outcome, sometimes with
striking if horrifying success.
excluded from insider status within a Western-modeled society can

find refuge and solace as insiders in a Russian one. Indeed, as a close
reading of the novel makes quite clear, “insider” status outside the
Orthodox Church, in Westernized St. Petersburg, is no status at all.
The only true, valid place for a Russian to be an insider is within the
larger support system of Orthodoxy. Dostoevsky completely blows
up the equivocal lessons of the seventeenth—century masterpiece
Misery-Luckless Plight here, not to mention the more immediately
dangerous message incorporated into Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be
Done? For Dostoevsky, the church is the only valid goal, the only
true “inside”.
And Dostoevsky rather handily divides his characters
between the Russian and the Western, making it easier for the reader
to initially identify “otherness” with the state of being an outsider
who is, ultimately, separated from the Orthodox community.22 The
target reader finds himself in a comparable position. He is an outsider
by virtue of nihilist “belief” and his attraction to foreign social
thought, specifically Utilitarianism and Utopian Socialism. For this
reader, Russian Orthodoxy is “other”. Dostoevsky will work hard to
bring that reader around emotionally, by redefining Orthodoxy and
Russian traditional belief as central, and Western thought as “other”.
Of course, the existence of the outsider presupposes the
parallel existence of the insider, the person who has power over
others by virtue of political status or money. Power is the central
issue here. What constitutes power, and who has it? In a model
inherited from Pushkin, who depicted the powerful in Eugene
Onegin, “The Bronze Horseman”, and The Stone Guest (1830),
Dostoevsky populates his fiction with authoritative figures who lord
it over those less fortunate in the context of a Westernized social
22
As Tatyana Buzina comments, “otherness” plays out in the split between the
nobility, the dvoriane, and the peasants. Buzina addresses the “ ‘deepest abyss’ that
separates the narod (the folk) from the upper class of society. Here, social relations
fit into the most ancient and most important opposition in the human psyche: the
opposition of ‘self’ and the ‘other’. For the narod, the upper classes, the dvoriane,
are the quintessential ‘other’: they are the ‘other’ not only in terms of social standing,
education, and other privileges accorded by their noble birth, but also in terms of the
most fundamental categories of existence […] They are the ‘other’, while the
peasants are ‘self’ [….]”. Tatyana Buzina, Dostoevsky and Social and Metaphysical
Freedom, Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures 22 (Lewiston: The Edwin
Mellen Press: 2003), 195.
environment. In Crime and Punishment, Alyona the pawnbroker and

Luzhin briefly fill this role in the realm of material interests and
wealth. So does Svidrigailov, who in a rather convoluted way is more
closely tied in with dominance and sexuality. But, as the novel
progresses, we come to see that the socially and economically
downtrodden Sonia is the one who emerges with the real power. So,
too, even from beyond the grave, is Lizaveta. (More to the point,
since Lizaveta will “behold God” (PSS 6: 249), she has been
transformed into the “insider’s insider” within the context of the
novel.) Dostoevsky proceeds to redefine what constitutes “real”
power over the course of his career, even beginning—although in
somewhat veiled form—with his very earliest writing. He
deliberately reverses the relative positions of the insider and the
outsider. More significantly, he engages our sympathies for
Raskol’nikov to a sufficient extent for us to recast what inside and
outside, position and power denote. “Power” as defined in the
Westernized context of contemporary Russian society—centralized
or crystallized in St. Petersburg—shifts in Dostoevsky’s hands. In
Crime and Punishment, he draws post-Petrine Russia back to the
cultural and religious models of an earlier day. Dostoevsky recasts
power (for his target readers) as a facet of Russian Orthodox belief,
and Russian tradition. That’s why, over the course of the novel, Sonia
emerges as powerful. Dostoevsky’s readers witness her impressively
growing strength that is always realized most vividly as it relates
either to religious teachings or iconic structures. Like no Russian
writer before or since, Dostoevsky addresses all facets of the “Great
Divide” in Russian cultural life: the rift between Russian tradition
and modernization, between the Orthodox and the profane, the
inherent division embodied in double characters. All of these aspects
of Russia’s schism are realized, embodied, in Raskol’nikov.
On occasion, Dostoevsky very deliberately throws the reader
off course, causing him to reconsider an earlier judgment made on the
basis of partial or skewed information. Thus it is that we are
introduced to Raskol’nikov as a typical young intellectual, a former
law student flirting with murdering Alyona while still tenuously
connected with his Orthodox past through childhood memories. Ex-
students seem to spend their ample spare time engaged in this kind of
planning, although Razumikhin, of course, is a student characterized
instead by healthy common sense. And Razumikhin is always
engaged. Razumikhin’s actions destroy Raskol’nikov’s theories.

Dostoevsky stresses Raskol’nikov’s disengagement from the
surrounding St. Petersburg populace. He is alone in the midst of the
crowds, completely cut off from his milieu:
The unbearable stench of the beer halls, which were especially

numerous in this part of the city, and the drunks who came
across his path every few minutes, even though it was still
working hours, completed the disgusting and sad coloring of the
picture. A sense of the deepest loathing flashed for an instant on
the fine features of the young man (PSS 6: 6).
Raskol’nikov quite obviously identifies the so-called “lower

classes” with the excessive consumption of alcohol in public places,
and we identify with his perceptions. Perhaps public drunkenness is
repugnant to him because it signifies a loss of (rational) control.
Raskol’nikov negatively assesses the drunken masses as those who,
in marked distinction from himself, are beneath the “privileged few”
entitled to commit murder. It is, therefore, ironic as well as
significant that he overhears a student and an officer discussing the
efficacy of murdering the old pawnbroker in a beer hall, of all places,
hardly the place for the “elect” to cogitate on overthrowing the
existing order one victim at a time. Marmeladov’s drunken self-
lacerations figure importantly, as well, in the same context.
Marmeladov’s drinking has forced him into a sorry economic state
and an unenviable family situation. His fate replicates in the urban
setting of St. Petersburg the down-and-out lot of the meanest peasant
combined with the ironic resentment of a low-ranking official
determined to self-destruct.
He was a man already past fifty, stocky and of average height,

with graying hair and a large bald spot, with the jaundiced, even
greenish swollen look that comes from constant drinking, and
with puffy eyelids, from behind which sparkled, like little
chinks, animated reddish little eyes (PSS 6: 12).
Marmeladov as an individual gives a face to the drunken crowds of

the street. As one who is similarly in the position of being an
outsider, he succeeds in pulling Raskol’nikov into this scene, i.e. into
the novel or, more to the point, into Dostoevsky’s abortive novel The
Drunkards. Just as he did with his inverse perspective (as noted in the
chapter on the iconic and anti-iconic), Dostoevsky forces

Raskol’nikov to interact with another character. Two outsiders have
been temporarily brought together, in the process constituting an
alliance against a crassly (poshlyi) threatening urban environment.
The generalized drunkenness of the streets has now become
Marmeladov’s own specific drunkenness, an exercise in self-
destruction and self-loathing that will refigure and replicate
Raskol’nikov’s comparable rebellion.
Marmeladov’s sorry state inspires Raskol’nkov’s
sympathetic response, which significantly takes the form of thoughts
and actions, not speech:
Raskol’nikov had been wanting to leave for a long time; he

himself had been thinking of helping him [Marmeladov].
Marmeladov turned out to be a lot more unsteady on his feet than
in his discourse, and he leaned heavily on the young man. There
were still about two- to three-hundred steps to go. Confusion and
fear overcame the drunken man more and more the closer they
got to home (PSS 6: 21; emphasis added).
Raskol’nikov takes his initial steps back from the loneliness of being
an outsider when able to connect sympathetically with someone else
in a comparably low situation. Marmeladov is a Raskol’nikov grown
old, with his bitterness and resentment turned inward to devastating
effect. Were Raskol’nikov never to commit the murder(s) and
undergo suffering, we could eventually see him in a comparably low
situation. Marmeladov’s self-inflicted problems link him with his
young companion and inspire a degree of sympathy, as evidenced by
Raskol’nikov’s assistance. Sympathy prefigures the caritas and
agape exemplified by both Sonia and Lizaveta. Together,
Raskol’nikov and Marmeladov constitute a miniature community that
anticipates the microcosmic Orthodox community consisting of Sonia
and Lizaveta, and including, by extension, Alyona the pawnbroker.
Alyona appears to be an economically empowered insider, but she
emerges after the murders as a Christian insider instead. Her true
power comes from her crosses and icons, signifying her inclusion
within the Orthodox community as an insider, the only status that
counts. This realization takes a long time to reach Raskol’nikov, who
at first assumes Alyona to be an ultimate outsider in the form of a
blood-sucking insect: “ ‘I only killed a louse, Sonia, useless
[Dostoevsky’s swipe at Utilitarian philosophy], repulsive, noxious’,

Raskol’nikov said”. Her response: “This louse is a human being”!
(PSS 6: 320) Razumikhin’s suggested translation project—of course,
from German!—is all the more interesting in the present context,
since it ironically anticipates the remark: “Well, how would you like
to translate the second page of ‘Is a Woman a Human Being’? (PSS
6: 88) Dostoevsky transforms a (Chernyshevsky’s?) socio-economic
issue into a religious/ethical one.
Marmeladov plays the very important role of introducing
Sonia as a prostitute to Raskol’nikov and the reader. (Nor should we
forget that, in terms of self-abasement, Marmeladov too figures as a
variant of the prostitute.) Through her father, Raskol’nikov and the
reader learn that this prostitution is accidental. In other words, Sonia
has been forced to be a despised outsider who has taken up
prostitution involuntarily. When we first glimpse her, it is quite
evident that her father’s uncontrolled drinking binges have led to her
lowered status. Prostitution, or the state of being a kept woman, is
Dostoevsky’s way of forcing a woman into the position of
involuntary outsider. The kept woman or prostitute plays an
important role throughout his work.
Sonia’s forced prostitution not only brought her out into the
street, but also into the greater network of Orthodoxy, which Lizaveta
personifies. By extension, Marmeladov’s drinking has led not only to
Sonia’s public humiliation (linked with her iurodstvo), but also to her
inclusion with Lizaveta in sobornost’: the Orthodox community. Her
stepmother’s verbal abuse played a comparable role: “You live with
us, you female parasite [like a louse?], you eat and drink, and use our
heat […]” “Oh my, Katerina Ivanovna, do you really want me to go
and do that”? (PSS 6: 17; emphasis added). Sonia’s weak social
position makes her a victim when Luzhin—bearing false witness
against her—accuses her of pocketing one hundred roubles following
his false “charitable gift” of ten roubles “bestowed” earlier (PSS 6:
301-304). Her superficial weakness, expressed in a general shakiness
when she begins to recount the story of Lazarus to Raskol’nikov,
reflects her kenoticism. Before she begins, Raskol’nikov misreads her
and her situation:
“There are three roads for her”, he thought, “to throw herself into
a canal, to find herself in a madhouse, or…or, finally, to throw
herself into depravity, stupefying her mind and petrifying her

heart” (PSS 6: 247).
But he misreads the message of Orthodox Christianity inherent in the

teachings of Christ: There is ONE road. Sonia recognizes and
embodies this crucial realization. Raskol’nikov’s assessment of Sonia
as a madwoman—an outsider ultimately if improbably following
Golyadkin’s example—is enormously wide of the mark:
“Is she really in her right mind? Is it really possible to speak the
way she does? Is it really possible to sit on the brink of ruination,
into which she’s already being drawn, and to give up, and to
close her ears when she’s warned of the danger? What’s she
waiting for, a miracle? And that’s probably the case. Aren’t these
signs of madness? […] She’s a holy fool [iurodivaia], a holy
fool”, he repeated to himself (PSS 6: 2 48).
But of course, she isn’t mad at all. It’s society that’s out of kilter,
particularly a society that has forgotten its Christian and indigenous
Russian roots.23 She becomes the insider and Westernized society the
outsider, precisely the central issue Dostoevsky presents to the target
reader. This realignment is dramatized in concentrated form in the
epilogue. Raskol’nikov himself will slowly come to this very
realization as the novel progresses. He will appreciate this epiphany
most intensely in the presence of and under the influence of Sonia. It
is she who functions as the representative voice of the Orthodox
Church within the parameters of the novel.
As Sonia picked up the Gospels, “[h]er hands were shaking,
her voice was not up to the task”. But she gains strength as the
recitation picks up momentum: “Her voice became as resonant as
metal [like Alyona’s enameled image, or a bell?]; triumph and joy
sounded in it and strengthened it” (PSS 6: 251).24 Since Sonia’s room
has already been described as a cross or church and the scene defined
as iconic, Dostoevsky has transformed her from the societal outsider
into an ultimate insider, within the limitless expanse of Russian
23
There is a comparable situation in the classic film The Queen of Hearts, about the
inhabitants—chief among them the character played by the great actor Alan Bates—
from an “insane” asylum in France. They emerge from the asylum as the last vestiges
of sanity amid the chaotic madness of World War I.
24
Leonid Karasev discusses the religious significance of metal in Crime and
Punishment in “Kak byl ustroen ‘Zaklad’ Raskol’nikova”, Dostoevskii i mirovaia
kul’tura 2 (1994): 42-50.
Orthodox belief. Earlier, she shared this vast sacred space with
Lizaveta. Now Raskol’nikov has been brought in—as a reluctant
insider—through the inverse perspective of the icon and the power of
the oral message of the Gospels.
Sonia’s spiritual strength directs Raskol’nikov once more,
when she tells him to kiss the crossroad at the Haymarket to start to
atone for the murders. She is now in control.
“Well, what should I do [chto teper’ delat’] now, tell me”! he

asked, suddenly raising his head and, with a face hideously
[bezobrazno, ‘imagelessly’] distorted by despair looking at her.
“What is to be done”! [Chto delat’, an exact and apt citation of
Chernyshevsky’s title] she exclaimed, jumping up from her
place, and her eyes, previously filled with tears, suddenly began
to flash. “Get up” (she seized him by the shoulder; he got up a
little, looking at her almost in amazement). “Go [using the
familiar ‘you’] right now, this very minute, stand at the
crossroad, bow down, first kiss the earth that you [ty] have
defiled, and then bow to the whole world, to all four sides, and
say to all, aloud, ‘I have killed’ ”! (PSS 6: 322; emphasis added).
Their positions are reversed from an earlier “chto delat’” (‘what is to

be done’) (PSS 6: 252-253), when a helpless Sonia asked, and
Raskol’nikov responded with his destructive creed:
“Just what, just what is to be done”? Sonia repeated, hysterically

weeping and wringing her hands. “What is to be done? You have
to break as necessary, once and for all [recapitulating his image-
shattering actions]. Freedom and power, but the main thing is
power over all trembling creatures and over the whole ant heap!
There’s your goal! Remember this! That’s all, and take the
suffering on yourself! What? Don’t you understand? You’ll
understand afterwards…”.
“Chto delat’” waves a red flag in the ongoing fight between

Dostoevsky and Chernyshevsky. In Chernyshevsky’s Utopian
Socialist world, “what is to be done”? means setting up a sewing co-
operative, establshing a phalanstery, the foundation for what would
eventually become a “perfect secular society”. While secular
perfection may seem to work for Chernyshevsky, it is an
unimaginable combination in Dostoevsky’s world. But “chto delat’”
(what really is to be done?) for Sonia—and, of course, for
Dostoevsky himself—is to surrender oneself to belief in Christ and
the Resurrection, symbolized here by kissing the “cross” of the

crossroads, the Russian earth. Re-immersion in Russian Orthodoxy is
“what is to be done”. Dostoevsky’s ironic reference to
Chernyshevsky’s title would certainly not have been lost on the
contemporary reader, especially the target reader who devoured all
important publications touching on the issues of the day. By pointing
out “what is to be done”, Dostoevsky is also—by extension—letting
his readers know “what is not to be done”. It is Chernyshevsky’s
solution that must not be done. In his ongoing struggle with
Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky fires the last and most effective shot.
And he does so by turning Chernyshevsky’s argument back on itself,
letting his enemy hang himself on his own petard.
The crossroads, already touched on in Chapter Three, is
Sonia’s “realm” in its resemblance not only to the cross but, by
extension, to the church. Sonia as Sophia is at her most powerful in
the context of Russian Orthodoxy. She will eventually assist a
wavering Raskol’nikov as he re-enters (through inverse perspective)
into this same world of believers. Although he fights her efforts and
her message, he is gradually won over in spite of the “infection” of
his nihilism and flirtation with Utilitarianism. Raskol’nikov’s
recognition that she—along with Lizaveta—is a true “insider” in the
Orthodox community (sobornost’) enables him to finally and
definitively shed his own outsider status in the epilogue. He cannot
do so until he learns to accept his inclusion within the larger Russian
community that he had earlier rejected under the influence of
Western thought. In other words, he must reach the point where he,
too, like the murdered Lizaveta, would eventually hope to be in the
presence of God. He will arrive at that realization only in the
epilogue, but he will behold traces of the shining image from afar,
dating from his very first redemptive dream about cool water in the
oasis. And, along with Raskol’nikov, the target reader as an outsider,
a rebel, will also return to the “insider’s” inclusive position within the
Orthodox community. Dostoevsky connects Russian culture with
Christian belief and eventual salvation, an equation he will return to
in his last major work of fiction, The Brothers Karamazov.
The Ultimate Outsider: The Svidrigailov Issue
Raskol’nikov is an “outsider” who will eventually be brought into the

inside—signified by the Orthodox Church—through the good works
of Sonia and, by extension, Lizaveta, Razumikhin, and Porfiry
Petrovich. Even Alyona will play a role in his reintegration. So will
Raskol’nikov’s fellow convicts in Siberia. Only one character, of
course, will remain a permanent outsider—banished—throughout the
course of the novel. That character is Svidrigailov.
Why does Dostoevsky spare Luzhin, a swinish, sexually
predatory fop who, by bearing false witness against Sonia, breaks one
of the Ten Commandments. Luzhin can certainly breathe a sigh of
relief as he simply evaporates from the novel. However bitterly
disappointed over having lost his prize, Dunya, he does not seem to
be much the worse for wear. Luzhin may get off lightly simply
because he is not a real threat, in spite of his banal comment about
not sharing clothing with one’s neighbor. However negative and
limited Luzhin is, he would hardly tempt Dostoevsky’s readers to
follow his clichéd views and cruelly crass behavior.
Svidrigailov is another matter. Luzhin may have unappealing
substance, as aptly denoted by his “puddle” name, but it is substance
nonetheless. Svidrigailov is empty, devoid of any belief, even the
kind of limited personal philosophy that drives Luzhin. Luzhin is not
an enticement to the young nihilist of Raskol’nikov’s generation, but
Svidrigailov is. He represents a most dangerous temptation, in fact,
the most dangerous temptation of all, to the vulnerable target reader.
Svidrigailov embodies disbelief. Dostoevsky does not allow
Svidrigailov to escape, nor can he. Indeed, if we push the concept of
nihilism to its limits, as denoting belief in nothing, in fact, the
“presence” of nothingness, then it is Svidrigailov who most vividly
represents nihilism. The far more dangerous Svidrigailov literally
embodies nihilism, in a way that Raskol’nikov and Luzhin never
could.
The formal pattern inherent in double characters figures here
too. If Raskol’nikov and Svidrigailov are, arguably, paired, then we
may assume that Dostoevsky adheres to the accepted paradigm for
doubles. One of the pair has to emerge in the end as the insider, with
the other relegated to the role of outsider, and condemned. This
pattern characterizes Dostoevsky’s work beginning with his very first
publications—as noted above—from Poor Folk and The Double to

Crime and Punishment, culminating, of course, in The Brothers
Karamazov. Once Raskol’nikov takes his first steps toward achieving
a return to the Orthodox community, it follows that Svidrigailov has
to be the loser. Svidrigailov’s damnation allows Raskol’nikov to be
saved. However tenuous his ties to the Church may have been,
Raskol’nikov never severs this connection. Sonia plays a crucial role
in his reentry. His definitive return to belief at the close of the novel
allows Raskol’nikov, as a participant in sobornost’, to look forward
to his eventual resurrection symbolized not only by the story of
Lazarus, but also by “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. Like
Lizaveta and, of course, Sonia, he will “behold” God after physical
death.
Svidrigailov can never achieve salvation. His fate is sealed
when he suggests that the afterlife is only a sooty bathhouse with
spiders crawling on the walls (a construct already treated in Chapter
Three, where it repels the reader in anti-iconic fashion). This
bathhouse is his true, inner self, his limited domain. It will resurface
not only in asides about his wife Marfa Petrovna, who died in the
bathhouse, but also in Svidrigailov’s dreams connected with water.
These dreams include one about the young suicide who drowned
herself, and the nightmare about the wet little girl transformed into a
whore. And the reader frequently encounters Svidrigailov in the
tavern, with its “wetness” counterpoised to the baptismal water of the
church.25
While the redeemed will behold the light of God,
Svidrigailov will “see darkness”. He is surrounded by darkness. That
is, he will see nothing at all, the ultimate horror of the void. 26 His
mask-like face denotes by extension this physical vacuum that
symbolizes in its turn spiritual emptiness. Behind his mask-like
25
While Marmeladov is drunk and getting drunker in a tavern when first introduced
to the reader, Dostoevsky does not put him into a comparable role or position.
Dostoevsky spares him because Marmeladov never loses his religious faith (as
evidenced in Polen’ka’s later testimony) and indeed imparts Orthodox teachings to
the young (he functions here as the opposite of Svidrigailov, whose actions strip
them of belief).
26
I am reminded here of the terrifying void always implicitly present even in Gogol’s
most superficially amusing stories. In “The Nose”, for instance, the disappearance of
Kovalev’s nose leaves a flat place, i.e. a void. And the void always signifies the
terrifying absence of God, in a word: hell.
face—lurks nothing. So the mask too is a double construct, the false

face hiding the true one, apparent physicality concealing a void. His
superficial physical brightness uneasily obscures an inky darkness
that, by extension, signifies the great outer darkness of hell. His hair
and beard are light-colored, and his color is fresh, but Svidrigailov’s
inner self is utterly “lightless”. As noted in Chapter Two,
Svidrigailov’s attire is not only new and stylish—denoting the power
of sexual predation—but also light-colored (a sartorial mask). Once
again, as in the case of Svidrigailov’s mask-like face, a surface
brightness uneasily covers up an intrinsic darkness. Clothing and
mask uneasily conceal the void.
Svidrigailov’s darkness is necessary so that the reader can
behold in contrast Raskol’nikov’s return to the light (as symbolized
by the icon). Against the contrasting gloom of Svidrigailov,
Raskol’nikov sees the light signifying the Resurrection, and the
presence of God. Raskol’nikov’s early dream of the sparkling, light-
infused water, the vision of water in the epilogue, and presence of
Sonia in between these scenes (and intimately connected with the
second one) all betoken the light. And Dostoevsky must let
Raskol’nikov be saved. Were he to perish, to go the way of
Svidrigailov, Dostoevsky could not possibly lead his young target
readers back to the embrace of Orthodox belief. These readers, who
are induced to identify and link themselves with Raskol’nikov, may
well return to the Russian roots of Orthodoxy and re-identification
with the real Russian people: the Orthodox peasants. Svidrigailov
falls off the iconic ladder so that Raskol’nikov may continue his
ascent, and the reader will ascend with him.
Why does Dostoevsky damn Svidrigailov in spite of good
deeds? Svidrigailov, after all, provides money for his fiancée. More
significantly in the context of the larger issues in the novel, he makes
sure that Sonia has financial security, and that her stepbrother and
stepsisters have no economic worries. After all, Sonia had been
especially concerned that Polen’ka would be forced into prostitution
because of intense poverty, particularly following the deaths of her
mother and stepfather. Superficially, this appears to be a question of
economics:
“Sof’ia Semyonovna, I may be leaving for America”, said

Svidrigailov, “and since we’re probably seeing each other for the
last time, I came to make some arrangements […] As regards
your sisters and brother, they have really been provided for, and
the money that’s due to them, given by me for each of them, has
been signed over to reliable hands […] Here are three five-
percent bonds worth all together three thousand. You take these
for yourself, just for yourself, and let this be just between us so
that no one even knows about it, whatever you may hear there”
(PSS 6: 384).
The charity bestowed by other characters is identified with caritas

and, by extension, agape, but Svidrigailov gets no such consideration
or “charity” from the author. In view of his economic kindness and
his generosity, why not? The Kapernaumov children may at least
partially provide the key. Upon Svidrigailov’s arrival at Sonia’s, the
children immediately run away in horror (PSS 6: 384). They
instinctively recognize evil when they encounter it. Dostoevsky, it
seems to me, wants to elicit a comparably instinctive reaction in his
readers. These same readers, after all, would typically have been
exposed to the same scary stories that his nurse recounted to a
terrified Oblomov, the common fare of Russian childhood. And the
instinctive reaction is the one that counts.
The answer to Dostoevsky’s condemnation of Svidrigailov
must lie in the underlying material dimensions of his “good deeds”.
Although extending charity as a literal, physical entity while
incapable of offering love in the Christian sense, Svidrigailov appears
to be an extension of Lebeziatnikov. But Svidrigailov represents a
dangerous threat, not a silly parody, and Lebeziatnikov’s heart is in
the right place (an example of Dostoevsky’s complexity). Quite
simply, Svidrigailov can’t love or be loved because, as a non-
believer, he is excluded from the Christian community united by
agape. The reader who approaches this novel from the vantage point
of the twenty-first century Western world must always bear in mind
that belief, not deeds, is central. More to the point, good deeds follow
directly from (Orthodox) Christian belief. A philosophy that is not
belief-based is like a building constructed on sand or, more precisely,
over an abyss (of hell?). Dostoevsky uses Svidrigailov to act out the
spiritually empty charity inherent in Utopian Socialism, charity
devoid of any Christian coloration. Svidrigailov’s “mask” of
generosity uneasily covers a spiritual void. There is no Resurrection
for Svidrigailov, no heaven, no God. And, in light of these great
absences, he is soulless in the midst of his void. Svidrigailov is
empty, more to the point, an empty vessel. Unlike Raskol’nikov, who
retains a kernel of belief in the light in spite of having been led astray
by fashionably nihilistic thought, Svidrigailov lacks any moral
foundation.
Perhaps now is the time to examine Svidrigailov’s and his
wife Marfa Petrovna’s odd and intricate marriage arrangement. Upon
Svidrigailov’s initial physical appearance in the novel, he regales the
just-awakened Raskol’nikov with this bizarre bit of family history.
Raskol’nikov has just emerged from a nightmare featuring the
murdered pawnbroker. She hides her face and cannot be killed,
displaying a horrifying parody of “immortality”. Svidrigailov’s
materialization at the very end of Part Three, fleshed out at the
beginning of Part IV, effectively splits him in two, between two
sections of the novel. Dostoevsky realizes structurally Svidrigailov’s
inherent and perilous duality and bezobraznost’ (‘imagelessness’,
‘ugliness’), already embodied in his mask-like face.
Marfa Petrovna “bought” Svidrigailov. That is, she paid off
his debts and in effect “bought him out for thirty thousand silver
roubles”. In return, he had to agree to follow a particular code of
conduct, an “oral contract”. Svidrigailov had to obey Marfa
Petrovna’s “Commandments”. First of all, he could never leave her
and had to remain her husband. He could never absent himself
without her permission. He was never to keep a permanent mistress.
He could cast eyes at the servant girls, but only with her confidential
knowledge. In other words, Marfa Petrovna could be a voyeur. One
particularly interesting tenet of this code, as regards Dunya, was that
he was not “allowed” to fall in love with a young woman from his
own class. If he did so—and we see that he did—he was to tell Marfa
Petrovna all about it. But nowhere did they agree that he was not to
kill her. She dies under suspiciously mysterious circumstances in the
bathhouse, Svidrigailov’s “realm” (noted above) (PSS 6: 215). The
superficially minor detail of Marfa Petrovna’s “code” figures
importantly in two arenas. First of all, it can be read as a parody of
the Great Code of behavior, of what is allowed or prohibited. That
code is, of course, the Ten Commandments, the set of divine laws
that Svidrigailov does not follow. His most grievous offense is, of
course, a refusal—or even an inherent inability—to follow the first
commandment, to believe in God (unless he has shrunk and
transformed God into a kind of spider living in a bathhouse). From
the standpoint of alterity, Svidrigailov has reversed “inside” and
“outside”, God and the devil(s), with a malformed heaven turned into
hell.
While the Ten Commandments seem to constitute an alien
code for Svidrigailov, Marfa Petrovna’s commandments are direct
and simple to understand. He must heed her or risk losing economic
support. But Svidrigailov disobeys her by falling in love with Dunya.
Dostoevsky’s careful contemporary reader, especially the one versed
in French literature, would easily have recognized this code. It is the
one underlying Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos’
notorious eighteenth-century work Les liaisons dangereuses
(Dangerous Acquaintances).27 The married couple featured in
Laclos’ epistolary novel—where they are equally empowered as
double narrators—relish their sexually freewheeling life style by
indulging in virtually every kind of sordid undertaking. Debauching
an innocent virgin is one amusement. They certainly give
themselves—and each other—free rein to ruin the lives of others. The
part of the code specifically important for the present discussion is
one especially crucial stipulation: neither is “allowed” to fall in love.
Svidrigailov’s sham marriage to Marfa Petrovna recapitulates
the sexual, superficial intimacy, and social depravity that figure in
Laclos’ novel. These are the very models of behavior that
Dostoevsky associated with the West—specifically, France—in
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. Combined with his a-Christian
charity and his links with the evil forces encountered in the oral
tradition, his marriage definitively marks Svidrigailov as a character
beyond the reach of salvation. And Dostoevsky, touching on
(ostensibly) charitable, social and economic issues, executes him in
the wake of this general condemnation. Each of these concerns
resonates in two dimensions, the Orthodox and the profane.
Svidrigailov always, inevitably, opts for the worldly, profane facet
over the Orthodox one, whether the immediate concern is charity or
the sanctity of marriage, one of the sacraments of the church. More
importantly, he deliberately skates on the physical surface and stops
short at penetrating into the deeper significance so readily perceptible
to a believer such as, for example, Sonia. His careless disregard of
27
A.D. Nuttall connects Svidrigailov’s eavesdropping on Raskol’nikov’s confession
to Sonia with, among other works, Les liaisons dangereuses, but he does not address
the basic premise of Laclos’ novel. See Nuttall’s Crime and Punishment: Murder as
Philosophic Experiment (Sussex: Sussex University Press, 1978), 57.
the ritual central to the Orthodox Church masks a comparable

disregard of God, and a casual attitude toward the most important
component of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord thy God”. No
other character in this novel deliberately ignores or attempts to
undermine God so casually. In the double world inherent in the
concept of alterity, Svidrigailov is the ultimate outsider.
Conclusion
Alterity or otherness is realized most significantly and vividly in

Crime and Punishment in the varied fates meted out to the central
characters. The juxtaposition of the physically visible world and the
spiritual, unseen spiritual realm also figures in this context, as does
the duality inherent in the oral tradition. Dostoevsky suspends all of
his characters on the great iconic ladder central to the novel, with
each theoretically having equal access to heaven. There is no
question, of course, about Lizaveta or Sonia. We learn quite early on
that Lizaveta will attain paradise. Definitively identified with St.
Sophia, Sonia radiates holiness in spite of her inevitable human
limitations. Razumikhin, who displays caritas in the form of used
clothing, can be numbered among the elect.
That leaves three other important characters who must
stumble on to their final destinies. Alyona, a secret believer living in
the midst of icons, “wears” the church in the form of her crosses. She
will be saved, in spite of her formidably negative exterior and her
obsessive immersion in the material world, symbolized by her scraps
of cloth and her money. Raskol’nikov’s intense belief retained from
earliest childhood will be rekindled in Sonia’s presence.
Foreshadowing to Ivan Karamazov, Raskol’nikov is not so much a
disbeliever as a believer who tries to force God into a finite box.
Svidrigailov is in thrall to superstition, as evidenced by his belief in
the ghosts of his murder victims. Indeed, his vision of the drowned
girl may be seen as a final ghostly visitation. Alterity thus emerges, in
the end, as the “otherness” of the unseen world apprehended not by
literal physical perception, but by belief.
Dostoevsky recognizes and exploits the deep human need to
search for and attempt to find absolutes to believe in. Cognizant that
young Russians tended to falsely recognize those absolute in
borrowed Western values, he takes great pains to undermine the
dominance enjoyed by these Western philosophies based on what he

regarded as a misuse of empirical evidence in the domain of the
human personality. Instead, he proposes to his readers, more to the
point, he reminds his readers, that the great spiritual mysteries can
and must be recognized emotionally, through faith. The sacred is
inclusive, the profane divisive.28 In his hands, nihilism,
Utilitarianism, and Utopian Socialism lose their status as “insiders”
and are relegated instead to the “outside”, surrendering to faith in the
Russian God and Christ. To be inside means salvation, but to be
outside denotes damnation.29 Raskol’nikov will be saved, and
Svidrigailov, an object lesson for the target reader, will plummet into
the pit. Raskol’nikov’s horrified reaction to Svidrigailov, however
hypnotically compelling Svidrigailov’s attraction, is painted as a
typical response for a young man of the 1860s. In other words, the
audience Dostoevsky needs to reach would be similarly terrified by
Svidrigailov. Dostoevsky will bring that reader around definitively
only at the very end of the novel. The nature of Raskol’nikov’s return
to God, as spelled out in compelling detail, will be the subject of the
final chapter, examining the epilogue. It was precisely here that
Dostoevsky attempted to definitively heal the great rift between
young Russian intellectuals, seduced by Western thought, and the
Russian people.
28
As Michael Holquist comments in “The Tyranny of Difference: Gogol and the
Sacred”, in Gennady Barabtarlo, ed., Cold Fusion: Aspects of the German Cultural
Presence in Russia (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 89. Many thanks to my
colleague Judith Ricker for her gift of this important book. Mircea Eliade discusses
the important of sacred space, that “makes it possible to obtain a fixed point and
hence to acquire orientation in the chaos of homogeneity” versus the “profane
experience”, which “maintains the […]relativity of space”. Mircea Eliade, The
Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), 23.
29
We can see elements of carnival, with its reversal of hegemony/hierarchy (as
described by Bakhtin) at work here as well.
Chapter Six
The Epilogue Reconsidered
As Dostoevsky’s readers well know, the principal text of Crime and

Punishment ends with Raskol’nikov kissing the earth at the
Haymarket and then, as Sonia closely watches him, going into the
police station and confessing. But Raskol’nikov does not, of course,
leave the “stage” of the novel at this point, with his kiss and civil
confession leading to a trial. Dostoevsky then follows him to Siberia
and through the initial period of his prison sentence. The final
episodes take place in the epilogue—the actual conclusion to the
novel—consisting of two concluding chapters tacked on to the rest of
the text. Differing significantly in its sketchy summation of the
action, its brief concluding information about most of the characters,
and the expansion of time over the space of a few pages (opposed to
the novel’s “vortex” [“novel time”] time dramatically compressed,
yet extending over hundreds of pages), the epilogue seems at first
glance to be an odd addendum detracting from the principal thrust of
this work, rather than reinforcing it.
This epilogue jars the reader, just like Natasha Rostova’s
matronly domesticity at the conclusion of Lev Tolstoy’s War and
Peace. This Natasha seems unpleasant and out of place, alien to the
image of Natasha we had earlier grown to love, within the greater
context of this work, as the feminine essence of Russia. But an
altered Natasha serves Tolstoy’s purposes at the end. Perhaps, in her
new incarnation, she reminds the reader of the passage of time
inherent in Tolstoy’s roman fleuve, as well as of changes in Russian
society during the decade immediately preceding the Decembrist
Revolt of 1825. And, at first consideration, the later Raskol’nikov
who falls to his knees during the final pages of the epilogue, with his
abrupt change of heart that the reader has actually been anticipating
throughout the novel,1 seems like Natasha to be a polar opposite of

what he was before: the angry young man we initially encountered on
the very first page of the novel. Might we then conclude that for
Dostoevsky—as with Tolstoy—jarring the reader is what it’s all
about. How else can a writer, particularly a Russian writer, argue
convincingly to persuade or dissuade readers about the most
important issues in contemporary Russian life?
But, like all epilogues, the one in Crime and Punishment
serves a definite purpose in relation to the plot—and to the novel as a
whole—that the reader has encountered up to this point. For one
thing, the epilogue—most notably Chapter One in the epilogue—
sums up the action of the novel and reveals the fates of the principal
characters, excepting, significantly, Svidrigailov and Raskol’nikov. It
seems that Dostoevsky wanted to make a “clean sweep” before
getting down to business in the second chapter. Dostoevsky seems to
be making sure that all previous loose ends have been tied together
by the end of Chapter One so he can set the stage for Raskol’nikov’s
final, definitive conversion in Chapter Two. Thus, we learn that
Dunya and Razumikhin have gotten married and plan to relocate to
Siberia so they can assist Raskol’nikov and Sonia once Razumikhin
has finished his studies at the university. Raskol’nikov’s mother, who
crumbled under the terrific stress of her son’s terrible fate, which she
seems to have divined, loses her mind and dies. Sonia recapitulates
the selfless actions of the Decembrist wives and follows
Raskol’nikov to Siberia. Each character achieves a degree of closure
appropriate to his or her anticipated destiny as previously
encountered within the larger context of the novel. (Perhaps
Svidrigailov commits suicide earlier because his moral bankruptcy
will not allow him to survive until the epilogue. Then, too,
Dostoevsky has Svidrigailov end his life following the intense drama
of a stormy night and the horrors of his nightmares, with this
particular death impacting the target reader on a “gut” level.) We
1
For a discussion of this “kairotric moment, a point of conversion located outside the
ordinary human experience of temporality”, see Frank Kermode, The Sense of an
Ending (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 46-54; cited in Kate Holland,
“Novelizing Religious Experience: The Generic Landscape of The Brothers
Karamazov”, Slavic Review 66:1 (2007): 73. The present chapter is based on an
essay read at the XIIIth Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society,
Budapest, Hungary, 3-8 July, 2007.
Epilogue 211
anticipate the decline and death of Raskol’nikov’s mother, given the

tremendous grief that her only son has caused her, and his willingness
to “step over” both mother and sister. We have known for some time
that Dunya and Razumikhin would eventually marry, although their
wedding would be subdued and even solemn because of the
overwhelming sorrow attendant upon Raskol’nikov’s crime, trial, and
impending imprisonment in Siberia. We have always anticipated
Sonia’s role in Raskol’nikov’s final change of heart leading to his
return to his Russian roots.
The tone of the first part of the epilogue is terse and dry, as
befits a summation. It almost seems as though Dostoevsky created in
miniature a brief conclusion that he could actually have expanded on,
but chose instead to present in compressed form. We are left with the
“essence” of the novelistic conclusion as a formal construct as it had
previously evolved in the West. It is a component that is Russian by
adoption. But a Western form, however Russified it may be, would
not do for the present context. Dostoevsky needed a form inherently
associated with Russian culture to bring his point home. This topic
will be expanded upon below.
The epilogue—most importantly, as we will see below—does
not simply summarize earlier events and inform the reader of
characters’ final fates. Pul’kheria Aleksandrovna falls ill and dies as a
direct result of Raskol’nikov’s crimes, arrest and trial. She becomes
his third “victim” in a series of three. The first chapter of the epilogue
recapitulates the novel as a whole, with Raskol’nikov heartlessly
taking yet another life—his own mother’s—and pitted against the
larger society during his trial. And, just as in the main text, he
dangles from the great iconic ladder, resentfully and rebelliously
refusing to rejoin the Orthodox community until after his “germ”
nightmare leading to a definitive change of heart, in prison.
Raskol’nikov’s (civic) trial takes place in Chapter One of the
epilogue, but his real “trial” comes to pass only upon his arrival in
Siberia and life among convicts, in Chapter Two. The second chapter
of the epilogue must function as the appropriate arena for saving
Raskol’nikov, and it must be set as far from Westernized St.
Petersburg as possible.2 University study, rebellious behavior fueled
2
Richard Freeborn makes this same point in The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in
the Russian Novel from ‘Eugene Onegin’ to ‘War and Peace’ (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973), 204.
by exposure to Western Utilitarianism and Utopian Socialism,

appalling crowding and vice: all these are factors associated with the
modern Western city and its culture, and are embodied in and
symbolized by St. Petersburg. So is the civic trial with all the latest
theories of crime, which the narrator treats with undisguised sarcasm.
Rational methods of investigating and articulating Raskol’nikov’s
motives and actions—if we, of course, except Porfiry Petrovich’s
adaptations of these methods—clearly failed to impress Dostoevsky.
(Porfiry quite obviously wanted to save Raskol’nikov, not simply to
bring a criminal to justice.) And these rational methods are intimately
linked with St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky has to get Raskol’nikov away
from St. Petersburg to redeem him, reversing in the process
Raskol’nikov’s illusion of superiority to the Russian masses.
Therefore, the summation seems quite obviously not to have
been Dostoevsky’s only motive for adding on an epilogue, when he
might well have concluded the novel with Rakol’nikov’s confession
in the police station in the chapter just prior to the epilogue. Even
though the epilogue is a handy arena for summarizing previous
events and providing the reader with a final glimpse into the lives of
his characters, Dostoevsky instead could have chosen to move the
trial to the body of the novel. He could have summed up everyone’s
fate in a final chapter. But he chose not to do so. That he didn’t
should alert us to the special significance of the epilogue as a
capstone to Crime and Punishment, particularly when we also
consider that he added on the epilogue in the final version of the
novel, not before.
An epilogue provides an author with one last chance to make
his point, to reach his target reader. And this is especially true for
Dostoevsky in the present context. The word epilogue comes directly
from the Greek epilogos, the peroration or winding up of a speech, of
the logos, the word. For Christians, the word logos recalls obvious
and significant associations with Christ, the embodiment of the Word.
Beyond summarizing previous events and giving the novel a sense of
finality, the principal thrust of this epilogue is synonymous by
definition with salvation. The very word “epilogue” serves to
demonstrate, lexically, that Raskol’nikov has been redeemed. It is
fitting that Raskol’nikov is saved in the “Word” conclusion to the
novel. He is saved not with a “civic” confession before the police, but
with a change of heart—and faith—that betoken true redemption. By
Epilogue 213
extension, Raskol’nikov’s salvation shows the contemporary reader

his own way to redemption. This reader—the contemporary young
intelligent—had almost certainly not committed a comparable crime,
or even any crime at all. But he no doubt had toyed with dangerous
rational thought, specifically, with Utilitarianism and Utopian
Socialism, both running counter to Russian Orthodoxy and traditions.
By this point in his reading, the target reader must surely recognize
the danger of rationalism carried to its inevitable conclusion. Drawn
back to Orthodox roots by the iconic images linked with Razumikhin,
Polen’ka, and, most especially, Sonia, terrified by Svidrigailov’s
horrific end, the reader is ready to be saved—and to return to the
Orthodox community—along with Raskol’nikov. Dostoevsky can
best accomplish this mission in the second part of the epilogue. But,
most significantly, the split between the two chapters, the “rational”
Chapter One and the “non- or anti-rational” Chapter Two, reflects
and encapsulates the split between the rational and transcendent
realms that are “at daggers drawn” throughout the novel.3 More to
the point, the split in the epilogue mirrors the split in Raskol’nikov
himself, torn between Western rationalism and Orthodox faith. We as
readers are left with a sense of “warring” genres, “warring” texts: the
Western realist novel form, and the Russian one, centered on the
redemption of the sinner, an issue to be explored below. 4
Dostoevsky knits the two chapters of the epilogue together by
starting with one word, “Siberia”, and with the great river—the
Irtysh—where Raskol’nikov will have his definitive “epiphany” later,
in Chapter Two. Dostoevsky foreshadows to Raskol’nikov’s change
of heart, central to Chapter Two of the epilogue, at the very
3
As a related issue, Gary Rosenshield comments on Dostoevsky’s negative
association of the Western-style jury trial with “Western rationalism, formalism, and
legalism and the impersonal and bureaucratic institutions they engender” in “The
Imprisonment of the Law: Dostoevskii and the Kroneberg Case, Slavic and East
European Journal 36:4 (1992): 415-429. Cited in Susanne Fusso, Discovering
Sexuality in Dostoevsky (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 83, 188 n.
7.
4
For a valuable discussion of genre bifurcation as it applies to Dostoevsky,
specifically, to The Brothers Karamazov, see Kate Holland, “Novelizing Religious
Experience”, 63-81.
beginning of Chapter One.5 He will lead his readers back to this river
later, in the epilogue. But his introductory paragraph reinforces
orality, with its basic linkage to the Russian narod, the folk, central to
important figures in the epilogue: Raskol’nikov’s fellow convicts.
Orality links this scene with traditional Russian culture, separate from
and alien to philosophical currents imported from the West.
Siberia. On the bank of a wide, empty [pustynnoi] river there

stands a city, one of the administrative centers of Russia; in the
city is a fortress, in the fortress a prison. In the prison Rodion
Raskol’nikov, penal exile of the second category, has been
imprisoned for nine months. Almost a year and a half has passed
since his crime (PSS 6: 410).
We might consider the presence here of two “epilogues” instead of

one, an initial epilogue that concludes the plot, and a second
epilogue, culminating in Raskol’nikov’s epiphany. That Dostoevsky
integrates the two parts through the very first paragraph of Chapter
One suggests that the epilogue functions at once as a unified text and
as a bifurcated one, with fate and inevitable outcomes central to both
parts. This split reflects the juncture between the larger text and the
epilogue itself, as well as the larger chasm between Russia and the
West central to the novel. The epilogue can be regarded as at once a
continuation of and a break in the text. Dostoevsky incorporates the
epilogue of the Western novel into Chapter One—with the significant
exception of his introductory words—and a specifically Russian
(Orthodox) form into Chapter Two. His sarcastic tone in Chapter
One, particularly when summarizing Raskol’nikov’s trial, serves to
remind the reader of the limitations of Western secular culture within
the Russian context. The authorities show no real understanding of
Raskol’nikov, his general psychological state, and his underlying
motives.
[I]t was concluded that the crime itself could not have been
committed other than in a state of some temporary insanity, that
is, under the sick monomania of murder and robbery, without
any future goal or calculation for gain. This, by the way,
coincided with the latest fashionable theory of temporary
5
But we have an initial foreshadowing way back in Chapter One of the novel, when
Raskol’nikov decides to renounce his “accursed” plans for murder and sees the Neva
gleaming in the rays of the setting sun (PSS 6: 50).
Epilogue 215
insanity, which one so often attempts to apply to other criminals

in our own time (PSS 6: 411; emphasis added).
The “latest fashionable theory” refers, of course, not only to

“temporary insanity”, but also, most significantly, to the Western
philosophical currents—principally Utilitarianism and Utopian
Socialism—that Raskol’nikov himself had acted out in committing
Alyona’s murder.
Dostoevsky’s sarcasm is in jarring contrast to the tone of the
introductory paragraph. Dostoevsky didn’t—and, so it seems within
the framework of the present discussion, couldn’t—“save”
Raskol’nikov within the context of Western prose, closely identified
in this brisk summary of the trial with the latest Western secular
intellectual fads. Like economic rationales, fashionable psychological
theories fail to address the underlying religious foundation so crucial
to Dostoevsky. He turned instead to a form ultimately linked with
Russian Orthodoxy to do so. That form is the parable, the logical
Russian Orthodox choice in the present context. In Chapter One of
the epilogue, the narrator employs a Western conclusion to
recapitulate Raskol’nikov’s trial, but the reader knows full well that
Raskol’nikov isn’t ready to give in at this point. He isn’t redeemed
because he refuses to surrender. He refuses to surrender because
redemption is impossible within the context of Western culture
(which we see in Chapter One of the epilogue). This by definition
includes the Western novel form that Dostoevsky inherited and
employed throughout (although interweaving this text with Russian
culture, traditional [oral] as well as Orthodox). Raskol’nikov can only
be saved when returned to the traditional Russian Orthodox
framework of Chapter Two, where he—and the reader—can leave
Western secular culture behind. And so it is that in Chapter Two
Raskol’nikov plays out yet again, just as he did in the body of the
novel, the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”. But in the epilogue he
reenacts that parable in concentrated, i.e., “parable” form. Parables
are short. Dostoevsky made his final point in the shortest possible
space, in part, perhaps, for dramatic intensity, and also because this
short form fits in with the brief biblical tale already so familiar to his
readers. For, like Raskol’nikov himself, these young men, whatever
their current dabbling in stylish cultural and intellectual trends might
entail, would have had an intimate familiarity with biblical parables,
as well as other facets of Orthodox belief and practice, from their
earliest childhoods.6 After all, the parables—like the Bible as a

whole, or the Russian oral tradition—were an inherent component of
every contemporary Russian’s cultural inheritance.
I have already noted that the epilogue “appears to
demonstrate” Raskol’nikov’s return to faith and “seems to be” a brief
history of his redemption, because not all readers were convinced
either that Raskol’nikov was in fact redeemed, or that the epilogue
was an appropriate or even a necessary conclusion to the novel. As
Konstantin Mochulsky, for one, disapprovingly commented, “The
novel ends with a vague anticipation of the hero’s ‘renewal’. It is
promised, but it is not shown. We know Raskolnikov too well to
believe this ‘pious lie’ ” (1971: 312; emphasis added). Nor was
Mochulsky alone in his negative assessment. In his valuable essay on
the validity of the epilogue in Crime and Punishment, David Matual
(2004: 105-106) cites the negative comments of such illustrious
critics as Lev Shestov, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Viktor Shklovsky (the
latter quite improbably insisting that Raskol’nikov hadn’t really
committed a crime after all).
The epilogue does indeed appear problematic at first glance.
Raskol’nikov’s eventual embrace of Orthodox Christianity seems
initially to be insufficiently motivated, most notably when we
consider his previous stubborn refusal to acknowledge his guilt in
committing the murders (particularly Alyona’s). This issue of
Raskol’nikov’s redemption versus non-redemption appears to be
critics’ principal sticking point. Mochulsky’s disparaging—and
moreover puzzled—reaction exemplifies the trouble critics
historically have had in accepting Raskol’nikov’s wholehearted
embrace of Orthodoxy, his love for Sonia, and his return to the
Russian roots he left behind when he arrived in St. Petersburg as a
student.7 Perhaps Raskol’nikov’s abrupt change seems improbable
precisely because it is so illogical, so out of keeping with rational
thought. Raskol’nikov cannot be redeemed in any “rational” way,
6
It is well to bear in mind that two of the most important contemporary figures,
Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobroliubov, were the sons of priests.
7
And St. Petersburg of course encapsulates Peter the Great and his reforms that
effectively split Russia into two: the educated, Westernized, upper classes on one
hand, and the non-Westernized masses of the population on the other. Clint Walker
treats this issue further in “Psyche and Soma: Metaphors of Transformation and the
Petrine Cultural Legacy from Dostoevsky to Platonov”, unpublished manuscript, esp.
19-25.
Epilogue 217
however, because redemption is based on faith, and faith moves

beyond and outside of logic. The crucial point here is that rational
thought is insufficient specifically because of the limitations of the
human mind and thought processes, as opposed to the infinitude of
God. One can tap into that infinitude only through a leap of faith,
never through logic. In the end, Raskol’nikov, too, must follow this
path, and must leave Western thought—as well as Western form—
behind.
After all, the reader remembers Raskol’nikov some sixteen
years earlier in the horse dream. As a child of seven, he loved his
little family church, Orthodox ritual, and the old priest8 (if we accept
the premise that the dream recalled a “real” incident). We should also
bear in mind that the murder of the old horse shattered
Raskol’nikov’s innocent whole-hearted acceptance of God as well as
his belief in the inherent goodness of God’s world and in life after
death, dating back to the time when the Raskol’nikov family would
gather in the cemetery. Perhaps equally significant, the killing of the
old horse—which drove a wedge between Raskol’nikov and the
father unable to prevent this tragedy—destroyed the child’s sense of
living in a coherent world, a paradise of childhood/familial innocence
and harmony.
Just as the monstrous peasants of the nightmare foreshadow
to the violent convicts whom Sonia alone can reach in the epilogue,
so, too, does the broken family come back together in the epilogue,
although in a new form consisting of Raskol’nikov and Sonia. The
horse nightmare and the second chapter of the epilogue function
together here as the opening and closing frames of the novel, the
destructive introduction, and the reconstructive, redemptive,
conclusion. The rebellious former student who murders in the name
of theory superficially kills for material reasons, which is logical
when we consider that his personal philosophy is the culmination of
Utilitarianism and Utopian Socialism (materialism). He may seem
light-years away from the innocent child who rebels against God’s
imperfect world in the dream, but the two are actually one. Their
unity is restored in the second part of the epilogue, when he again
becomes “God’s child”.
8
Arguably, the old priest is linked with the old nag, and both anticipate the old
pawnbroker.
Bakhtin’s principal objection to the epilogue is another

matter entirely from the views of other negative critics, focused as it
is on structure rather than on Raskol’nikov’s psychological and
religious rebirth. Bakhtin strongly disapproved of the form of the
epilogue, which represented “an irritating authorial intrusion, and
hence a violation of the novel’s aesthetic integrity”.9 Dostoevsky’s
conclusion to the novel in the guise of a “monophonic” epilogue,
most notably Chapter Two—given its privileged position as the
concluding, ultimate chapter—undermined Bakhtin’s central
theoretical concept of Dostoevsky as a “polyphonic” novelist.
“Irritating”, indeed. Dostoevsky had “stubbornly refused” to be
compartmentalized. His “monophonic” voice in the epilogue, already
present in Chapter One of this concluding section but developed even
more vividly and extensively in Chapter Two, goes against Bakhtin’s
argument that Dostoevsky does not privilege one “voice” over
another in his work. This “monophonic” voice, however, has actually
been present all along throughout the novel. The author “intruded”
from the very beginning, however complex and subtle his voice was
in previous chapters. The monophonic voice was “camouflaged” in
the framework of the novel form that Dostoevsky inherited from such
Western masters as Balzac and Dickens, but its presence could
certainly be sensed in iconic images and horrific scenes from the
Russian oral tradition.
Bakhtin has a point only when we assume that the main body
of Crime and Punishment, with its competing voices and arguments,
privileges no single point of view. So it seems, at least on the surface
of things. Dostoevsky makes a very strong case for the opposition. He
has to. The opposition had been making a powerful case for itself,
and it is a case dangerous for Russia’s future. This opposition was
articulate and skilled in rational argument. An empowered opposition
made for a far more dramatic presentation, one that would appeal
9
M.M. Bakhtin, Problemy poètiki Dostoevskogo. 3rd ed. (Moscow:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1972), 155. Cited in David Matual, “In Defense of the
Epilogue of Crime and Punishment”, Harold Bloom, ed., Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004): 106. As Caryl Emerson
comments that “[…] Bakhtin has almost nothing to say about the centrally important,
affirmative, ‘godly’ dialogue situations—if they happen to be wordless. Among these
Crucial scenes are Rakolnikov and Sonia on the banks of the Siberian River in the
epilogue of Crime and Punishment [….]”. Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years
of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 132.
Epilogue 219
most vividly to the target reader (besotted with rationalism) whom

Dostoevsky wanted so desperately to reach. It was precisely in order
to counter the power of rationalism, and the rational argument, that
Dostoevsky let Sonia appeal to Raskol’nikov through belief instead
of logic, and empowered Polen’ka to take a first, crucial, step in his
redemption. (Dostoevsky’s purpose in grafting the murder novel onto
the novel about a drunkard and his family may well have been, at
least in part, to provide Raskol’nikov with a “family” united in
Christian belief, one that recalled his own family from early
childhood). The church constitutes a family.10
In much the same vein, Dostoevsky makes Svidrigailov
terrifying in a way that resonates with the Russian oral tradition. His
detachment from moral and societal norms terrifies on a most
fundamental level, and itself undermines the power and the limits of
rational thought in the context of nineteenth-century Russian society.
Dostoevsky did not try to counter his opponents’ rationalism with his
own logic. He blasted the very notion that logic and rational thought
could enable his fellow Russians—especially young Russian men—
to arrive at any sort of higher truth.11 And he did this with particular
force in Chapter Two of the epilogue, using the parable in
concentrated form to make his point.12
As concerns form, the first chapter of the epilogue arguably
fits in with the European prose tradition of briefly summarizing the
action in a final, tacked-on, chapter.13 However, the form of the
second chapter in the epilogue represents a significant departure from
the configuration of the novel as it had evolved—and as Dostoevsky
himself had developed it—by the time he published Crime and
Punishment. If Chapter One of the epilogue for the most part
summarizes the contemporary European novel within the Russian
10
As in the episode cited above, in Chapter Three, when Marmeladov and Polen’ka
are intimately linked through the Gospels.
11
We see echoes here of the same technique that Dostoevsky used two years earlier
in Notes from Underground.
12
That the epilogue does not appear in earlier drafts of Crime and Punishment
suggests that Dostoevsky apparently added it later, when he had already conceived
the novel in its final form. Perhaps we can conclude from this that Dostoevsky gave
the epilogue a privileged place as the ideal venue for Raskol’nikov’s redemption.
13
This kind of summation is certainly alien to, for example, Aleksandr Pushkin, who
concluded his novel in verse Eugene Onegin by leaving the scene along with
Tat’iana.
context of Dostoevsky’s day, then Chapter Two instead introduces a

genre that seems to be unrelated to the contemporary European form
of the novel. Dostoevsky’s apparent reasons for making this change,
a drastic and dramatic formal shift, may well be linked with his
attempts to make a final “pitch” to his intended readers.14
Significantly, readers who balked at the epilogue seemed to
have no problem in accepting Raskol’nikov’s charitable or loving
acts in the body of the novel (some coming to light only in the
epilogue) prior to his act of kissing the earth at the Haymarket. These
include his quite evident love for Polen’ka and his contributions to
the Marmeladov family. One would have to conclude that the form of
the second part of the epilogue—as Bakhtin noted—might well be the
more relevant sticking point here, rather than the content.
Significantly, the main body of the text and the epilogue are more
alike than different. For example, both George Gibian (1989: 526-
543) and David Matual (2004: 112) quite firmly defend the epilogue
on the grounds that Dostoevsky recapitulates here the motifs and
images introduced earlier in the novel. The epilogue is, it seems to
me, significant not merely because it is tied in with the body of the
novel, but precisely because it appears to be radically different in
form—although that form is subtly incorporated into the novel as a
whole—from the earlier chapters. The epilogue differs at least on the
surface of things not only from the body of the novel, but also from
most of the “Western”, “modern” Russian prose fiction that preceded
Crime and Punishment. This epilogue, for example, certainly marks a
radical departure from the contemporary prose practice of such works
as Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be
Done?.
Quite obviously, and importantly, Dostoevsky was far too
consummate a craftsman to conclude with a carelessly added on and
15
With her typically incisive analysis, Deborah Martinsen maintains that
“Dostoevsky suggests that readers see Raskolnikov’s unfeeling coldness as a defense
against his feelings of touchiness and hypochondria (symptoms of narcissistic self-
absorption and shame-sensitivity). Raskolnikov’s complex psychological profile
complicates reader response: we sympathize with his altruistic, moral self, manifest
in his dreams and spontaneous acts [which we see in the body of the text and hear
about in the epilogue], and respond uneasily to both warring factions of his egoistic
self—his irrational self, manifest in his emotional vulnerability, and his rational self,
which defends the emotional self through grandiose ratiocination”. Deborah
Martinsen, “Shame and Punishment”, Dostoevsky Studies, New Series V (2001): 57.
Epilogue 221
insufficiently motivated conclusion following Raskol’nikov’s

confession. Since Dostoevsky seems to have chosen a different form
for the second chapter of the epilogue, then he must have had a valid,
indeed, a significant reason for having done so. The purpose of this
present, final chapter is (to attempt) to determine precisely how the
epilogue deviates in form and technique from Dostoevsky’s earlier
chapters, and why.
Perhaps we should return to the introductory paragraph of the
epilogue, already cited above. Dostoevsky recapitulates the formula
already familiar to his contemporary readers from the oral tradition,
with the series of places strongly recalling—as noted above—
comparable repetitions from Russian skazki or folk tales. The specific
tale that comes to mind, with its series of enclosed spaces, is of
course the famous “Kashchei Bessmertnyi” (“Kashchei the
Deathless”), a tale that Dostoevsky’s readers would have known well
from childhood. (And childhood is specifically identified in this
novel not only with innocence, but also with Russianness, a link
readily apparent in Raskol’nikov’s horse dream. Perhaps any
suggestion of Kashchei is tied in with larger themes of death and
resurrection.) Kashchei of course is eventually done away with when
his “death” is found, but Dostoevsky has importantly referred back to
his central themes of redemption, death and resurrection, already
presented earlier in the body of his novel (and linked with the tale of
Lazarus, which is itself a variant on the “Parable of the Prodigal
Son”, since both Lazarus and the Prodigal Son “return” to the father).
What Dostoevsky has subtly accomplished at the very beginning of
his epilogue (before even proceeding to Raskol’nikov’s later
salvation when he falls at Sonia’s feet) is his stylistic linkage of
redemption with orality, the realm of traditional Russian culture.
Raskol’nikov’s redemption will be specifically and inherently
Russian, which means that we cannot anticipate his salvation within
the Western format of the novel as inherited from such masters as
Balzac and Dickens. Dostoevsky in effect leaves this form behind as
he brings Raskol’nikov to salvation in the second chapter of the
epilogue.
Siberia itself is the arena where this reconnection with Sonia
and with the “real” Russian people has to take place for the very
evident and crucial reason that Siberia is at the opposite pole from the
Western capital. Only the prison environment in Siberia provides
Dostoevsky with the societal pressure cooker in which he can

immerse his wayward principal character. Raskol’nikov does not
undergo a literal baptism in Siberia, but he does experience a
“baptism under fire” when shoved into the middle of a community of
violent convicts, just like the ones who surrounded Dostoevsky
himself approximately fifteen years earlier. And Siberia, in a bitterly
cold, snowy sort of way, corresponds within the Russian context to
the desert environment that played a crucial role as a setting for early
Christian saints, who retreated from urban centers to the wilderness in
their quests for salvation. Dostoevsky never actually uses the word
“desert”, but the adjective pustynnoi is directly related to pustynia (a
desert area, a wilderness), a connection that would not have been lost
on contemporary Russian readers. Indeed, Dostoevsky introduces the
desert as a symbol for Orthodox Christianity with Raskol’nikov’s
dream early in the novel. In the desert dream (PSS 6: 56), which
figured in Chapter One of the present study, Dostoevsky intimately
connected water with salvation. That same link, of course, plays a
crucial role in the epilogue. Here, the nomads living in tents seem to
have “descended” directly from the time of Abraham to
contemporary Siberia (PSS 6: 421). These two timeless desert visions
are “bookends” for the main body of the novel, with the desert dream
foreshadowing not only to the nomads in tents, but to Raskol’nikov’s
future redemption. (And we recall here Revelations 6:10 (Otkrovenie
in Russian, related to an opening up), when “time shall be no more”.
Dostoevsky juxtaposes “eternal” time to the “vortex” time that marks
the bulk of this—and other—Dostoevsky novels.) The nomads in turn
backshadow to the beatific prior dream, reminding the reader that
Dostoevsky had intended early on to save Raskol’nikov. And, since
references to Abraham are, by extension, actually references to the
Book of John with its promise of salvation,15 we can see that
Dostoevsky anticipated Raskol’nikov’s redemption at the very
beginning, even before the murders. Raskol’nikov may be said to
have committed the murders “by necessity”, precisely so that
Dostoevsky could redeem him. And Dostoevsky counts on his
readers to remember that important symbol of water from the earlier
15
For a valuable discussion of the links between the reference to Abraham and the
Book of John, see Donald Fiene’s valuable “Raskolnikov and Abraham: A Further
Contribution to a Defense of the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment”, International
Dostoevsky Society Bulletin 9 (November 1979): 32-35.
Epilogue 223
dream when they see Raskol’nikov sitting next to the River Irtysh
(part of an iconic frame?) in the epilogue, watching the nomads in the
distance. The timelessness of this scene—noted in previous chapters
of the present study—contrasts starkly to Raskol’nikov’s obsession
with time and his inability to keep track of it at the beginning of the
novel, (before he has even committed the murders).16
As with Tat’iana’s pre-name day nightmare in Pushkin’s
Eugene Onegin (with monsters anticipating the name-day guests),
Raskol’nikov’s final, prison dream is linked at least superficially with
the masses of convicts who surround him and echo the guests at
Marmeladov’s wake (and, more distantly, the creatures of Tat’iana’s
nightmare). But Dostoevsky pulls an important switch, in keeping
with his employment of reversals in the form of alterity or
“otherness” in the novel. Alterity figures most importantly in the
Russian/Western dichotomy. Raskol’nikov initially, with great
enthusiasm, accepts Western thought and moral values as ‘his own’
(svoi) and gives short shrift to Russian traditional, particularly,
Orthodox culture, relegated to the realm of ‘other’, ‘alien’ (chuzhoi).
The peasant convicts who have no use for Raskol’nikov fall under
this latter rubric. Because they make their initial appearance as an
undifferentiated mass and are frightening and negative at first glance,
the convicts seem to be germ-like themselves. But these Orthodox,
intensely Russian believers cannot really be the germs of the dream.
The germs are instead linked with the rational ideas that have spread
in Russia to a dangerous extent, with the caveat that the germs have
actually proliferated, not from Asia, as in the dream, but from the
West.17 Raskol’nikov himself, a would-be Westerner now in Asian
exile, would seem to embody the germs within his own person. Quite
naturally, his dream takes place at the end of Lent (the Great Fast),
and Holy Week. Dostoevsky’s earlier references to the raising of
Lazarus—references most notably associated with Sonia—are
recapitulated at this point.
16
We encounter the same association of Siberian space with freedom in Notes from
the Dead House. PSS 4: 163.
17
In his 1862 essay entitled “Two Camps of Theoreticians”, Dostoevsky spoke of a
“potential for a cure from the national ‘sickness’ (bolezn’) or ‘plague’ (iazva)”, the
latter term figuring significantly in the epilogue. Clint B. Walker, “Psyche and Soma:
Metaphors of Transformation”, 42 n.79.
He dreamed [emu grezilos’, dreaming being passive in Russian,

with Raskol’nikov in a passive position, acted upon] in his
illness, that the entire world had been condemned to be a victim
to some terrible, unheard of and formerly unseen infection,
which came from the depths of Asia into Europe. Everyone had
to perish, except for a few, a very few, chosen ones. Some kind
of new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that had
lodged themselves in people’s bodies. But these creatures were
spirits, gifted with mind and will. People who had absorbed them
into themselves immediately became frenzied and insane. But
never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and
unwaveringly possessed of the truth, as did these infected ones.
Never had they so unwaveringly considered their judgments,
their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs
(PSS 6: 419).
This pairing of East and West recalls other juxtapositions

encountered earlier in the novel: innocence and violence (the horse
dream, the murder of Lizaveta, Sonia’s prostitution), life and death
(Raskol’nikov’s confession versus Svidrigailov’s suicide),
orality/Orthodox symbolism versus Western rational intellectual
currents. Dostoevsky linked the rational thought defining Utopian
Socialism and Utilitarianism with disease (on the Russian body? Tiny
infected brains?), just as he made Raskol’nikov’s immersion in
rational thought the root cause of his illness early in the novel. Most
importantly, the “microscopic creatures” of the dream echo
Svidrigailov’s earlier waking nightmare of eternity as a spider-
infested bathhouse. Raskol’nikov is imprisoned within the confines
of his limited rational world, just as he was earlier confined to a
coffin-like room. His nightmare encapsulates the hell of unbelief—
which Svidrigailov lived in—and is a logical extension of the
Western rationalist philosophies Dostoevsky feared and despised.
Dostoevsky was an ardent believer, Joseph Frank notes (1995: 254-
255), in the Resurrection of Christ and the afterlife. He let his
opponents destroy themselves with their own weapons, while himself
adhering to belief in the Resurrection. As Lawrence Krauss has
cogently observed (2005),
It seems that humans are hard-wired to yearn for new realms well
beyond the reach of our senses into which we can escape, if only
with our minds. It is possible that we need to rely on such
possibilities or the world of our experience would become
intolerable.
Epilogue 225
For Dostoevsky, rationalism represents that limit. Dostoevsky treated

rationalism negatively all the way through, but only now is it
specifically designated as an infection threatening to take over the
world (which means the “Russian” world for Dostoevsky). It seems
particularly fitting that Raskol’nikov—who personifies the
contemporary Russian amalgam of Western thought with a yearning
toward Orthodox belief—should be the one “seeing” this dream.18
Raskol’nikov undergoes kenosis in his dream, an emptying out of
dangerous rationalism. His dilemma symbolizes the marriage of
opposites central to the novel. This opposition of rationalism versus
belief is realized in the physical images carefully distributed
throughout. Only now, in the epilogue, does belief finally,
definitively, prevail.
Perhaps now is the time to recall the image of the crossroads,
a physical distillation of opposites joined together, and one that
incorporates both positive and negative religious symbolism. Sonia
ordered Raskol’nikov to “go to the crossroads, bow before the
people, kiss the earth, because you have sinned before it, and say it
out loud to the whole world: ‘I am a murderer’ ” (PSS 6: 405). The
crossroads is clearly a symbol of redemption, linked through the
iconic imagery of the novel with the cross and the Orthodox Church,
as well as with the ancient church that figured initially in the horse
nightmare. But the crossroads is also associated with the supernatural,
the world of evil spirits and evil spirits, and a venue for spells and
divination (Ryan 1999: 40, 54). It was, Mark Kidel comments (2005:
20), a “point of decision and transition that many cultures recognize
as a dangerous place”. Sonia in essence ordered Raskol’nikov not
only to kiss the earth, and a “cross”, but also the very juncture that
joins two different realms together. Her command underscores the
power of the Orthodox faith to produce a miracle: to bring rational
thought as personified by Raskol’nikov back to the world of non-
rational belief and to redeem a construct identified with evil.
Raskol’nikov has not truly made peace with his own
situation, just as Dostoevsky himself has not yet brought about a
conclusive resolution by this point, when Raskol’nikov kisses the
earth. The continued conflict between the rational and non-rational
18
While Svidrigailov’s dreams are linked specifically with death, Raskol’nikov’s
disease dream is sufficiently open-ended to allow for escape from the “Asian”
infection.
worlds is realized in the infectious organisms that resurface in his

belated dream. This dream symbolizes—and encapsulates—the
conflicts lying at the heart of the novel. Only in the wake of the
dream, with its overtones of death related to Lazarus, can
Raskol’nikov, through Sonia’s love, be restored to the faith of his
childhood. Reconciliation encompasses Raskol’nikov’s surrender not
only to Sonia and the larger issues she represents, but also his
inclusion within the community of the convicts. Inherently Russian,
the convicts have never angrily denied their belief in God as
Raskol’nikov has. Dostoevsky introduces them as men who assume
that Raskol’nikov—on the basis of social class alone—is an
unbeliever. They hate him for his superior rank, compared with their
own:
The convicts disliked [ne liubili, literally, didn’t love him,

excluding him from an Orthodox community bound together by
love] him and avoided him. They even came in time to hate
him—why? He didn’t know. They despised him, laughed at him,
laughed at his crime, they, who were far more criminal than
he.—“You’re a master”, they said to him—“it wasn’t for you to
kill with an axe; that’s not a master’s way”. And, most damning
of all: “You’re an atheist! You don’t believe in God”!—they
yelled at him. “You should be killed” (PSS 6: 418-419).
The convicts’ disgust backshadows to Raskol’nikov’s terrified

reaction following the murders when an unknown meshchanin (man
from the lower-middle class, an artisan) seeks him out and calls him a
‘murderer’ (ubivets) (PSS 6: 208-210). Dostoevsky conflates atheism
with murder, and he links the People (narod) with sobornost’
(Russian Orthodox communality). The People take the place of
judges in the civil trial and are aware of Raskol’nikov’s real “crime”.
Their hatred does not extend to their beloved Sonia: “ ‘Little mother
[matushka, linked by extension with the Mother of God], Sof’ia
Semyonovna, you’re our mother, tender, sickly’! these coarse,
branded convicts would say to this skinny little creature” (PSS 6:
419). If the convicts recapitulate the cruel peasants of Raskol’nikov’s
horse nightmare, then Sonia alone brings them from violence back to
love in a way that neither Raskol’nikov’s father (who, as a
representative of the 1840s, proved ineffectual) nor Raskol’nikov
himself (who killed victims of his own) ever could.
Epilogue 227
Raskol’nikov’s final dream, his illness, and his sufferings at

the hands of the convicts all tie in with the parable. Raskol’nikov
almost certainly plays out in concentrated form the story of Lazarus
that Sonia had read to him earlier. But the “Parable of the Prodigal
Son” also, as noted in Chapter Four, figures importantly here.
Arguably, the Prodigal Son’s exile equals Lazarus’ four days in the
tomb. Raskol’nikov has been an exile from the very beginning,
separated from the Russian people (realized as convicts), with their
intense religious faith. Dostoevsky paints this state of exile
dramatically in the epilogue. (Sonia, on the other hand, is one of
“their own” people, and the object of their intense respect.) Exile
equals death and, in each case—whether Lazarus or the Prodigal
Son—the sufferer must be brought back to the Father. So, too, must
Raskol’nikov, “entombed” in his disbelief and “exiled” in St.
Petersburg.
In the wake of his illness and germ nightmare, both timed to
coincide with the Lenten period (preceding the glory of the
Resurrection), Raskol’nikov at last experiences his epiphany in
Sonia’s presence. He throws himself at her feet, recapitulating his act
of kissing her foot just before she read to him from the book of
Lazarus in Part IV, Chapter Four. In this earlier scene,
He kept pacing back and forth, silently, and not looking at her.
Finally he came up to her; his eyes flashed. He seized her by the
shoulders with both hands and looked directly into her crying
face. His gaze was dry, inflamed [desert-like, but also linked
with the flame of St. Sophia], sharp, his lips were quivering
violently. Suddenly he rapidly bent down and, having fallen to
the floor, kissed her foot (PSS 6: 246).
In the parallel recapitulation of this scene in the epilogue,

Raskol’nikov again throws himself down at her feet on impulse.
He didn’t even know himself how this had happened, but it was
as though something had suddenly seized him and had thrown
him at her feet. He wept [in contrast to his dry gaze] and
embraced her knees. At the first moment she was terribly
frightened, and her entire face became numb. She leaped up from
her place and, shuddering, looked at him. But at once, at that
exact moment, she understood everything (PSS 6: 421).
The abruptness of his action is entirely in keeping with the

conversion scene, the shift that Robin Feuer Miller (2007: 152,
emphasis in original) terms “moment of crisis, in which the process
of conversion may seem so rapid as to be instantaneous [….]”.19
Raskol’nikov’s rapid physical descent from a standing position to the
floor recalls the sudden shifts earlier in the novel: the abrupt collapse
of both murder victims, Katerina Ivanovna’s fall in the street,
Svidrigailov’s anticipated collapse—which we never see but know
will happen—in the wake of his suicide. All of these characters cross
a vertical threshold (as opposed to a horizontal one), thus reinforcing
the flattened and inclusive perspective associated with the iconic
image and ladder (with its possibilities for damnation as well as
salvation). Through inverse perspective, the reader is pulled into the
Orthodox community along with the hero. Raskol’nikov’s descent as
he kisses or embraces Sonia’s feet anticipates both the Lazarus tale
and the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”. He must descend in order to
rise, reborn as part of the Orthodox Christian community. His fall and
rise play out in the contemporary Russian context Christ’s own
Crucifixion and Resurrection. Raskol’nikov had earlier rejected this
community in the wake of the horse dream, but he has found it once
again.
Sonia’s clothing during this scene reflects the biblical
imagery scattered throughout the novel—and presented in
concentrated form in the epilogue—that informs Crime and
Punishment. Sonia was wearing a “poor, old burnoose and a green
shawl” (PSS 6: 421).20 The setting for this scene, near the bank of the
Irtysh, recalls the seemingly infinite space Raskol’nikov—and far
earlier, Dostoevsky himself—gazed into. Space and expanses are
crucial here, strongly identified with freedom.21 In this iconic scene,
19
She is following here the model of William James, who speaks of “lysis”. William
James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, intro.
Reinhold Niebuhr (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 156. Lysis, continues Miller
(2007: 152), “is composed of subliminal material”.
20
Kasatkina has noted the religious significance of Sonia’s outer garments (cited
above in my Chapter Two). See T.A. Kasatkina, “Ob odnom svoistve èpilogov”,
Part One, Dostoevskii i mirovaia literature 5 (Moscow: 1995): 21. My thanks to
Alexandra Kostina for generously sending me a copy of this essay.
21
For a discussion of the link between space and freedom, see Dmitri Likhachev’s
“Notes on the Essence of Russianness”, tr. Peter Tempest, Soviet Literature 2
(1981):129. See also James West, “The Romantic Landscape in Early Nineteenth-
Epilogue 229
Dostoevsky, crucially, definitively, links infinite space and freedom

intimately with Orthodox belief. Only through religious faith can
Raskol’nikov, Dostoevsky’s young “everyman”, attain true freedom.
Dostoevsky has stripped away all the (apparently) extraneous
elements of the earlier chapters. Gone is the large cast of characters
populating the hundreds of pages that led to this crucial episode. Just
as they were alone during the reading of Lazarus (except for
Svidrigailov, eavesdropping behind the door!), so are Raskol’nikov
and Sonia really alone now, too. More precisely, they are together in
the presence of God. Through the medium of Sonia’s burnoose and
her green shawl (a color associated with the Mother of God)
(Kasatkina 1995: 21), coupled with the distant nomads and their
tents, Dostoevsky recreates a biblical construct in contemporary
Russia: an iconic scene. Nor should we forget that the icon erases the
passage of time. Icons, observes Holland Cotter (2005): 31), “ […]
aren’t just records of the past; they’re live events in a constant
present, déja vu in reverse […] The gulf between heaven and earth
dissolves”.
Conclusion
In a prison deep in the Siberian wilderness, Raskol’nikov has finally

come back to his Russian roots and Orthodoxy, the faith of the
Russian people (the narod). His reconciliation with Russian culture—
above all, a culture steeped in Orthodoxy—turns the clock back to
childhood. The little boy who rebelled against an “unjust” God was
also furious at the Russian people (in the form of the peasant Mikolka
and the woman mindlessly cracking nuts as the poor horse was
killed). Perhaps he was angry at the specifically “Russian” God who
had allowed such a horrific act. Raskol’nikov’s final scene with Sonia
brings him full circle to his Russian roots, and he achieves a sense of
unity with his own traditions through a miracle: “He didn’t even
know himself how this had happened [….]” (PSS 6: 421).
Not until we have reached the epilogue does Raskol’nikov
finally attain the great miracle he envisioned only fleetingly during
the earlier chapters. For our purposes in the present discussion, that
Century Russian Art and Literature”, in Roger Anderson and Paul Debreczeny, eds.,
Russian Narrative and Visual Art: Varieties of Seeing (Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 1994), 28-29.
miracle can be defined—given the religious undercurrent vital to

Crime and Punishment—as a sense of unity with God and man (a
sense of unity with, of course, his fellow Russians). This was a
feeling that Raskol’nikov lost during his flirtation with nihilism,
Utopian Socialism, and Utilitarianism, Western philosophical
currents associated with secularism and an atomized society. Through
Polen’ka, Razumikhin, Nastas’ya and Porfiry Petrovich,
Raskol’nikov comes back incrementally to the Russian tradition. But
it is Sonia who plays the most important role in Raskol’nikov’s
return. Sonia had earlier recounted to Raskol’nikov Lazarus’ return to
life—so similar to the return of the Prodigal Son to the Father—thus
showing him through the Word the road to salvation. In the epilogue,
she literally becomes instrumental in playing out the Lazarus story
with Raskol’nikov, and she shows him the way to Father that
recapitulates and resolves the Prodigal Son parable. No wonder
Dostoevsky dresses Sonia in a burnoose! The two of them—
Raskol’nikov and Sonia—are plucked from contemporary Russia and
sent through a “time warp” back to the biblical past. More to the
point, the biblical past is brought up to the Russian present, and the
two are conflated. What was present earlier only as text (in the form
of the tale of Lazarus that she read in St. Petersburg, as well as in the
interpolated “Parable of the Prodigal Son”) becomes contemporary
reality played out on the actual “stage” of the novel’s final pages. The
Bible is embedded in Russian culture. Dostoevsky has in effect
recreated the Gospels in Russian dress, making them crucially
relevant for the contemporary Russian social and philosophical crises
that so concerned him. Dostoevsky resolves Raskol’nikov’s “schism”
in form as well as content. And, along with his hero (and through the
good offices of his heroine), the target reader, too, can hopefully
achieve his own return to Russian religious and traditional culture,
and salvation.
Conclusion
From the very beginning, Dostoevsky was always incredibly

sensitive to the spirit of his time. When he embarked on his literary
career, it was as Gogol’s heir and interlocutor. Dostoevsky made his
literary debut with the impoverished yet spunky poor clerk Makar
Devushkin in the short novel Poor Folk. Between Poor Folk and
Crime and Punishment approximately twenty years later,
Dostoevsky’s life changed drastically. Arrest, an abortive execution,
and his subsequent imprisonment and exile in Siberia swept him
away from the main currents of Russian intellectual life. The St.
Petersburg he returned to in 1859 was an intellectual and social
pressure cooker profoundly different from the city he had left as a
young rebel opposing serfdom. As a microcosm of a huge empire, St.
Petersburg simmered with the most significant issues of the day. In
particular, squabbles between radical reformers and social/political
conservatives predominated, and engaged the attention of
contemporary writers and critics, including Turgenev,
Chernyshevsky, and, of course, Dostoevsky himself. Dostoevsky was
particularly concerned with and outraged by current Western trends,
as well as by young Russians who had ventured into the dangerous
waters of the Utilitarian, Utopian Socialist, and nihilist seas. Alarmed
by the threat of atheism that he strongly associated with these foreign
(Western) movements (looking ultimately back to Peter the Great)
and well aware that these intellectual trends had the potential to
drastically undermine Russian Orthodox Christianity and traditions—
together the very essence of “Russianness” and Russian national
culture—Dostoevsky counterattacked through his prose fiction.
Thus it was that Dostoevsky devoted two of his most
important and enduring works of the 1860s—Notes from
Underground and Crime and Punishment—to undermining the
appeal of his rivals. More to the point, he knocked the props out from
under his opponents, blowing up their arguments, as James Scanlan
has so ably demonstrated (2002: 57-80), from within. In Crime and
Punishment, Dostoevsky in essence carried on from where he had left
off in Notes from Underground, published just two years previously

in 1864. He dramatized the complex and convoluted monologue of
the first part of Notes from Underground to great effect in Crime and
Punishment, with the seething resentment and anti-social behavior of
the second part evolving into the most anti-social act of all: murder.
While Dostoevsky arguably in particular addressed his rivals
and their philosophy of “Rational Egoism” (Scanlan 2002: 57-59) in
Notes from Underground, his intended audience appears to have
shifted by the time he wrote Crime and Punishment approximately
two years later. Now he aimed his considerable verbal arsenal at the
young readers/thinkers who were particularly attracted to the
contemporary intellectual fray. In a masterful attack designed to
dissuade these young intellectuals from the dangerous moral
bankruptcy he considered inherent in fashionable (Western) thought,
Dostoevsky reminded his readers—more to the point, his target
audience of young men—of their Russian cultural heritage. And he
reminded them emotionally, not through rational argument. His
emotional case resonates with traditional Russian Orthodox culture
and the oral tradition, pitted against the rational arguments emanating
from the West. This duality (inherent in Russian culture as an
important component of the Russian oral tradition, as noted in
Chapter One) underlies the novel. And, as Richard Peace reminds us
(1990: 53), “[…] from the outset Dostoevskii’s analytical genius is
based on a concept fundamental to all his writing—duality”. Thus it
is that Russian Orthodoxy acquires tremendous appeal and powerful
inclusive scope as a faith centered on forgiveness, acceptance,
community and hope. Moreover, Orthodoxy incorporates duality at
the very heart of Christian doctrine. Dualism is inherent in the very
nature of Christ, combining the divine with the human. Orthodoxy
resonates with the binary nature of Russian culture in general. In
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky dramatizes this nexus between
Russia and religion, in the process marking Orthodox Christianity as
inherently Russian in nature.
In a parallel development, traditional beliefs—linked, for
instance, with the wood goblin (leshii) and water sprite (rusalka)—
brought young Russian men back to the (scary) oral tales that their
mothers or nannies would have regaled them with. Both Orthodoxy
and the oral tradition had a deep-seated appeal intimately linked with
earliest childhood. Dostoevsky well understood that children are
Conclusion 233
vulnerable to religious, cultural, and familial traditions, and he took

full advantage of this vulnerability. Perhaps Polen’ka and
Raskol’nikov have a privileged relationship to remind the reader that
children play a significant role in the novel. At the same time,
Dostoevsky made rational arguments in the novel variously
unappealing—in the person of Luzhin—or somewhat ridiculous in
the person of Lebezyatnikov, whom he treated far more gently.
Dostoevsky’s contrasts and juxtapositions are basic to Crime
and Punishment, and his opposition of orality to the written text is
one such opposition. The written text is intimately linked with
contemporary Western thought. Dostoevsky is himself forced to
employ a written text to undermine the texts he is fighting against,
but he incorporates orality even within the framework of his written,
recorded prose. The written text is the very literature—in the larger
sense—that Raskol’nikov would undoubtedly have been exposed to
not only during his abortive university career, but also in his private
reading and his perusal of the latest serial publications. A young man
intensely interested in, and knowledgeable about, the daily papers
would surely have included in his reading any current journals he
could get his hands on. But Dostoevsky never lets us forget
Raskol’nikov’s immersion in orality, linked with traditional Russian
oral culture and Orthodoxy. Even when speech takes place “off-
stage”, we can imagine Raskol’nikov hearing it. Polen’ka’s projected
prayer for him is one brief yet crucial example of such an utterance.
In the hands of Dostoevsky, Raskol’nikov and the target reader are
re-educated in orality, weaned away from the written text.
What of the duality of materialism versus spirituality?
Dostoevsky addresses this issue with particular cogency in his
clothing images, where clothing distills in the everyday,
contemporary world of St. Petersburg the materialism that plays such
a central role in individual lives, as well as in the larger society. The
clothing that represents rapacity for Svidrigailov and sexual predation
combined with economic greed for Luzhin transcends the physical
realm when associated with Lizaveta and Razumikhin. Razumikhin’s
gift of used clothing embodies a dramatic, early attempt to bring his
friend Raskol’nikov back from dangerous isolation from the larger
community to the shared charity basic to (Orthodox) Christianity.
Through clothing, Dostoevsky transforms Western materialism into
Russian spirituality. In the epilogue, where Dostoevsky strips away
the accretions of the Western novel form, clothing loses its (Western)
economic associations and retains only its biblical symbolism. Thus
does Sonia’s green shawl—paired with a burnoose—function as a
striking reminder of her links to the Gospels and her identification
with the Mother of God. Through biblical language and a third-
person narrator who penetrates Raskol’nikov’s thoughts alone,
Dostoevsky emphasizes verbal inverse perspective (as noted in
Chapter Three). This verbal inverse perspective anticipates and is
intimately related to traditional Russian religious literature—
specifically, the redemption of the sinner—addressed in Chapter Six.
And, as we recall from Chapter Three, the visual realm of the icon
finds a verbal correspondence in biblical references and in verbal
inverse perspective, through narration.
Dostoevsky’s juxtaposition of sacred and profane constructs
is realized most strikingly in the architecture of St. Petersburg. Here,
the urban environment is superficially Western in design, but, at its
heart, this capital retains the underlying iconic structures and
inclusive perspective inherent to Russian Orthodox Christianity. The
real Russia, lying just beneath the Western veneer, waits to be
rediscovered. In keeping with Dostoevsky’s dualities, the iconic and
anti-iconic are paired. Hence, for instance, Svidrigailov, who
embodies the demonic in the novel, eavesdrops outside Sonia’s
cruciform room, a symbol of the cross and, by extension, of the
church. The church and the bathhouse can both be found in the sordid
St. Petersburg cityscape. The saint or Mother Earth and the devil or
the wood demon—Sonia and Svidrigailov—co-exist uneasily within
St. Petersburg’s confines, as traces of Russian popular religion
surface to comfort or terrify Raskol’nikov and the reader. The iconic
attains its fullest realization in the epilogue, where the bathhouse has
been definitively transformed into the Irtysh River (synonymous with
the Jordan River of the Gospels). Dostoevsky uses the inclusive
perspective of the iconic to draw the reader visually into the final
encounter between Sonia and Raskol’nikov. When he embraces her
knees, falling at her feet in the process, his dramatic physical gesture
pulls the reader into this (iconic) picture, just as it did in the much
earlier scene when she read the Lazarus story to him. Raskol’nikov
crosses the “threshold” of the iconic frame and draws the target
reader with him. His action partially erases the connection between
prestuplenie (transgression, stepping across) and being a prestupnik
Conclusion 235
(a transgressor, he who steps across a barrier). Raskol’nikov’s

surrender in the epilogue is the climactic act he had been attempting
to enact throughout the novel, an act that was previously abortive (as
in the Lazarus scene) but has now become definitive.
What of “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”? By its very
nature and in accordance with its definition, a parable is a bifurcated
text that contrasts one character—or one action or set of actions—to
another. This particular parable is an important subtext for
understanding Crime and Punishment because it crystallizes themes
that lie at the heart of the novel: disobedience and disregard of God’s
laws, separation from home and community, a painful return, and
eventual reintegration into the religious community coupled with
God’s forgiveness. The Prodigal Son’s departure from home is
realized, in Dostoevsky’s Russia of the 1860s, in Raskol’nikov’s
abandonment of his “home”, where home is synonymous with the
Orthodox Church and father is God the Father. The homecoming of
the parable is, of course, a return to God, but in the Russian context
of the novel it marks a return to and reunification with Russia and
“Russianness”, identified with Russian Orthodox Christianity. Most
significantly for the present examination, the “Parable of the Prodigal
Son”, especially as it incorporates divine forgiveness with the
equality of all “children” before the “Father”, definitively overturns
Utilitarianism, with its dangerous and suspect doctrine of “the
greatest good for the greatest number”. The profane “creed” of “the
greatest good for the greatest number” cannot co-exist with belief in
an all-forgiving Father. Nor, by extension, can Utilitarianism take the
place of religious faith in which everyone is equal in the sight of the
Father. Utopian Socialism, leading to the human usurpation of divine
wisdom and power, emerges as severely limited in the context of this
parable. The perfection of a divine paradise, realized as the lesson of
the parable, cannot be replicated on earth. As Joseph Frank observes,
“For Dostoevsky, it was only in the afterlife of immortality that a
perfect accomplishment of the Christian ideal of love could be
realized [….]”.1 If we accept—more to the point, if Dostoevsky’s
1
Joseph Frank cites Dostoevsky himself on this matter. In a letter written to the
family of his brother-in-law Dr. A.P. Ivanov, who had died suddenly, Dostoevsky
cautioned them to “[…] not give way to despair…Look, you believe in a future life,
just as all of you do, none of you has been infected by the rotten and stupid atheism
target readers accept—the underlying principles of this parable, then

they cannot make continued accommodation with fashionable,
contemporary Western thought. The “Parable of the Prodigal Son”,
like Crime and Punishment, transcends the circumscribed material
world and shows us the beauty of divine love and acceptance.
It has been my view throughout that Dostoevsky wrote Crime
and Punishment with an eye to bringing educated (young) readers
back to their Russian Orthodox roots. Because these readers had
become estranged from their native culture, including their religion,
they were easy prey for trendy intellectual movements. We encounter
this same estrangement in Eugene Onegin, where an amused Pushkin
shows us Tat’iana’s family eating Russian food at her name-day
party, while Onegin indulges in foreign victuals. Tolstoy ironically
combines French-speaking Russians and a looming Napoleonic
invasion, in War and Peace.
But the stakes are markedly higher for Dostoevsky. In Crime
and Punishment, the ultimate and inevitable culmination of
dangerous exposure to Western thought is murder. Why murder?
Separation from God makes murder inevitable in contemporary,
secularized Russia. Dostoevsky’s principal task is to turn his readers
around by one hundred and eighty degrees. Readers who regarded
Russian culture, including of course Orthodox Christianity, as
hopelessly limited and even alien had to be returned to the safety net
of the Russian fold. Young Russians’ flirtation with the West and
Western culture had made them strangers in their own land, rendering
their own culture “foreign”. Western philosophical movements,
which had acquired a dangerously high level of influence among
Russia’s youth, had to be discredited. The traditional pairing of
characters—a successful insider contrasted to a resentful and defeated
outsider—realized on the personal level this uneasy coexistence of
two different cultures. Dostoevsky exploited inherited notions of
doubling (seen earlier in Pushkin and Gogol, as well as his own
work), and of the received wisdom of “success” and “failure”, to
reverse the contemporary paradigm of acceptance and rejection.
Following such biblical dicta as “the last shall be first”, “the meek
will inherit the earth”, and “it is easier for a camel to pass through the
[….]”. Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1995), 254; emphasis added.
Conclusion 237
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven”, Dostoevsky

extolled the spiritual over the material in the persons of Lizaveta and
Sonia. In the process, he succeeded in completely smashing the
material arguments of his enemies—particularly of his nemesis the
despised Chernyshevsky—who had brought incompletely digested
contemporary Western thought to stiffly-realized “life” in What Is To
Be Done?.
By the time Dostoevsky reached the epilogue, his task was
virtually complete. Raskol’nikov has not been completely won over
to spiritual rebirth when we first encounter him in the epilogue. His
“germ” dream incorporates striking yet repulsive images of Western
ideas realized as dangerous bacteria. These bacteria also represent the
distillation of the material world, as well as of materialist
philosophies. Their necessarily microscopic size forces Raskol’nikov
as well as the (target) reader to see how petty and limited materialism
is, and how small human “power” becomes when seen against the
immense backdrop of God’s infinitude. Dostoevsky suggests this
infinitude in the great space of the ultimate scene in the novel, where
the nomads can barely be seen in the distance, and their song is borne
to Raskol’nikov across the Siberian plains, synonymous with the
biblical desert. He incorporates this limitless space into a shortened
text, fusing setting and text through the medium of inclusive
perspective into a verbal icon, visually realized. It is a fitting and
enormously powerful conclusion to one of the greatest novels in
world literature.
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Index
Africa, 49 Abominations (Whore of
agape, 71, 73, 79, 83, 87-89, 114, Babylon), 74, 82, 88
128, 145, 176, 196, 204, 208n. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 45
29 backshadowing, 51n. 39, 62, 133
Ahasuerus, 144n. 2. See also Baedeker, 76n. 22
Wandering Jew Baehr, Stephen, 6, 67n. 1, 71n. 14,
Akhsharumov, Nikolai Dmitrievich, 87n. 37, 89n. 40
24 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 17n. 25, 38n. 20,
Aksakov, Ivan, 9, 12, 15,139 99n. 21, 107n. 33, 184n. 15,
Alberti, Leon Battista, 106 204n. 29, 210, 212, 212n. 9
Alexander, A.B.D., 72 Balzac, Honoré de, 17, 21n. 26, 26,
Alighieri, Dante, 61, 144, 144n. 2; 40, 40n. 26, 41, 42, 49n. 42, 60,
Inferno, 61, 144 65n. 5, 81n. 28, 89, 92, 93, 96,
alterity, 5, 27, 59, 146, 172, 177, 181- 102n. 26, 212, 215; Un début
208, 223. See also otherness dans la vie, 53n. 42; Le Père
anarchism, anarchist, 10, 15 Goriot, 44n. 26; Bianchon, 44n.
Anderson, Roger, 102n. 18, 118n. 41, 26; Rastignac, 44n. 26
229n. 21 baptism, baptismal, 50, 51, 60, 83, 84,
Anichkov, E.V., 54n. 43 133, 135, 138, 202, 216, 222
Anti-Christ, 152 Barsht, Konstantin, 95n. 5
anti-iconic, 27, 42, 115, 129, 136-139, Bates, Alan, 198n. 23
196, 202, 234 bathhouse(s), 48, 49, 55-58, 60, 61,
anti-liberalism, politics of, 85n. 33 62, 63, 108, 127, 135, 136, 140-
anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism, 139n. 67, 141, 172, 185, 202, 205, 224,
140n. 67 234
Antonovich, Maksim Alekseevich, bathhouse demon, 56
10, 13 believers, Orthodox, 33, 41, 113, 114,
Antsiferov, N.P., 21, 23n. 32 124, 127, 136, 141, 145, 146,
Arenberg, Nancy, 7 151, 155, 157, 159, 166, 171,
Armstrong, Edward A., 149n. 6, 159- 172, 173, 200, 223
161 Belknap, Robert, 8, 13n. 9, 25n. 35,
Ascension at Konetsgore, 112n. 34 26, 31, 70, 70n. 10, 93n. 1, 131n.
Askol’dov, Sergei, 126, 144n. 1 57
atheism, atheist(s), 10, 19, 20n. 24- Belov, S.V., 37n. 14, 17, 21, 38, 46
26, 127, 149, 226, 231, 235n. 1 Bely, Andrei (Boris Bugaev), 64, 98,
Avenarius, Vasilii Petrovich, 24n. 33 183n. 4; Petersburg, 64, 98,
183n. 4
Baba Yaga, 46n. 28, 59 Bentham, Jeremy, 12, 176
Babel, Isaac, 55n. 45;; Red Cavalry, Bethea, David, 102
55n. 45; “My First Goose”, 55n. Bible, 25n. 35, 63n. 53, 68, 70n. 10,
45 71, 105, 122, 123, 148, 153,
Babylon (the Great). Mother of 169;Abel, 125, 155; Abraham,
Harlots and Earthly 41, 51, 222; Cain, 125, 155-156;
Esau, 155; Jacob, 51, 105, 155; Candido, Joseph, 6, 67n. 1, 73n. 17
Joseph, 51, 68; Ten Cap of Monomakh, 70n. 8
Commandments, 125, 201, 205, Capernaum, 120
206, 207; New Testament, 70n. Caravaggio, Michelangelo merisi da,
10, 71, 72, 78, 81, 87, 122, 143, 52n. 40; The Conversion of Saint
154n. 14, 155, 155n. 15; Paul, 52n. 40; The Supper at
Corinthians, 72; Colossians, 72; Emmaus, 52n. 40
Hebrews, 72; Luke, 71, 77n. 25, Carey, Benedict, 77n. 24
79, 144, 155-159, 163, 165, 170, caritas, 64, 71, 71n. 12, 79, 80, 84,
173-175, 177; Mark, 77n. 25, 85, 87, 88, 122, 130, 151, 196,
146; Matthew, 71, 71n. 14, 72, 204, 207. See also charity
74, 77n. 25, 79, 79n. 27, 89, carnival, 208n. 29
114n. 36, 118, 146; Paul, 52n. Carroll, Lewis (Charles Litwidge
40, 112, 150, 168, 169; Peter, Dodgson), 187; Alice in
68, 70n. 10, 72, 92; Epistle of Wonderland, 187; Tweedledum
Peter, 70n. 10; Revelations, 22n. and Tweedledee, 187
29, 48n. 33, 72, 74, 78, 82, 222; Carter, Stephen K., 17n. 17
Romans, 72; Thessalonians, 72 Catholicism, 31
Bidney, Martin, 43, 43n. 23 celestial ladder, 105
Blank, Ksana, 7, 144n. 1 Chaadaev, Pëtr Yakovlevich, 182;
The Blood of the Lamb, 72, 78, 83 Philosophical Letters, 182
Bloom, Harold, 5, 6, 67n. 1, 147, Chamberlain, Lesley, 12n. 5
147n. 4 Chamberlain, Michael, 43n. 24
bludnitsa (“a woman who has gone charity, 22, 69n. 8, 71n. 11, 71n. 12,
astray”), 46, 123, 123n. 49, 143, 71-76, 78, 82-85, 88, 88n. 38,
148, 155, 161, 166 89n. 40, 91, 151, 177, 204, 206,
Bocharov, A., 144n. 1 233. See also caritas
Bograd, Ganna, 106, 108, 118 Chekhov, Anton, 32n. 7, 60; “At
Borden, Richard, 101n. 15 Home”, 32n. 7; Vishnëvyi sad
Brazilia, 96 (The Cherry Orchard), 60
Brower, Daniel R., 11n. 2 Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, 12n. 5, 13,
Brown, Malcolm, 34 13n. 8, 13n. 9, 14, 15, 16, 25,
Brumfield, William, 12n. 5, 119 79n. 26, 84, 85n. 33, 87, 146,
Brunelleschi, Filippo, 106n. 24 148, 149, 150, 158, 176, 193,
Büchner, Ludwig, 24 197, 199, 200, 216n. 6, 220, 231,
Buckle, Thomas, 176 237; What Is To Be Done?, 13,
Buckler, Julie A., 30n. 4, 181n. 1 15, 16, 84-85, 85n. 33, 146, 149,
Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasievich, 9, 150, 193, 199, 200, 220, 237;
47n. 31, 104n. 21; The Master Rakhmetov, 16
and Margarita, 9, 104n. 21 Christ, 10, 23, 25, 29, 31, 32, 45, 49,
Bunyan, John, 138n. 65, 148; A 67, 70, 72, 73, 74, 77n. 25, 78,
Pilgrim’s Progress, 138n. 65, 79, 80, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89n. 40,
148 99, 103, 103n. 20, 115, 116, 118,
Buzina, Tatyana, 193n. 22 119, 125, 126, 128, 131, 138,
Byzantium, 119 138n. 65, 145, 146, 147, 150,
161, 164, 168, 174, 177, 184,
Calvary, 73 198, 199, 208, 212, 224, 228,
Campion, Larry, 68 232; Passion of Christ, 88; The
Index 275
Sermon on the Mount, 74 Crucifixion, 119, 125, 144n. 2, 177,

Christian(ity), 23, 27, 32, 32n. 6, 47, 228
48, 54n. 43, 56, 62, 69n. 7, 71n.
12, 84, 103n. 19, 105, 114, 115, La Dame aux Camélias (Alexandre
119, 126, 127, 134, 141, 148, Dumas), 137
149, 152, 159, 163, 168, 177, Darden, William, 30n. 3, 45
181n. 1, 190, 192, 198, 216, 222, Davies, W.D., 168
231-236 Decembrist(s), Decembrist Revolt,
Christian love. See also agape 209
Christiansen, Hope, 7, 69n. 5, 90n. Delft, 21n. 26
42, 106n. 25, 106n. 26 demonic, 56, 57, 59, 137, 141, 234,
Chronographia of Johannes of 63n. 53
Malala, 73n. 17 demons, 53, 127, 135, 141
church, 20n. 31, 23, 32, 33, 34, 37, Den’ (Day), 139
42, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, Dennery, Gustave, 39n. 17
70n. 10, 89n. 41, 96, 97, 101n. “The Descent of the Mother of God
15, 112, 112n. 34, 114, 115, 118, into Hell”, 116. See also “The
118n. 40, 119, 121-123, 127, Visitation to the Torments by the
134, 138, 140, 141, 146, 151, Mother of God”
152, 154, 157, 160, 162-165, devil(s), devilish, 53, 55, 56, 58n. 50,
168, 171, 184, 187, 189, 191- 59, 61, 62, 63, 97, 98, 99, 105,
193, 198, 200-202, 206, 207, 105n. 23, 108, 135, 140. 165,
217, 219, 225, 234-235. See also 182n. 2, 206, 234
Orthodox Church Dickens, Charles, 21, 21n. 26, 29, 61,
cloth, clothes, clothing, 20n. 31, 23, 64, 68, 69, 69n. 6, 81, 81n. 28,
32-34, 37, 42, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 93, 93n. 1, 95, 96, 161, 218, 221;
61, 62, 63, 67-92, 96, 97, 101n. Miss Havisham, 69; The Old
15, 112, 112n. 34, 114, 115, 118, Curiosity Shop, 81; Little Nell,
118n. 40, 119, 121-123, 127, 81
134, 138, 140, 141, 146, 151, Dobroliubov, Nikolai, 13n. 9, 216n. 6
152, 154, 157, 160, 162-165, Doré, Gustave, 144n. 2, 216n. 6
168, 171, 184, 187, 189, 191- Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich,
193, 198, 200-202, 206, 207, 5-7, 9-27, 29-65, 67-92, 93-141,
217, 219, 225, 234, 235 143-179, 181-208, 209-230,
The Contemporary (Sovremennik), 10 231-237; The Brothers
Cooke, Brett, 7, 78n. 23, 144n. 2 Karamazov, 29n. 1, 34n. 9, 50,
Cooke, Olga, 7, 81n. 28 52, 57, 60, 76n. 22, 82, 88, 98,
Cotter, Holland, 98-99n. 11, 228 111, 115, 140, 144, 150, 152,
Cour, Anne, 6, 59n. 52 166, 173, 183, 183n. 5, 192, 200,
Cox, Gary, 12n. 5, 11 202, 213n. 4; Alyosha
cross(es), 42, 56, 82, 88, 91, 101, 106, Karamazov, 35n. 11, 60, 82,
118, 118n. 42, 119, 121, 123, 115, 116; Dmitrii Karamazov,
127, 129, 141, 150, 166, 169, 150; Fyodor Karamazov, 91;
174, 175, 196, 198, 200, 207, Ivan Karamazov, 57, 76n. 22,
225, 228, 234, 82, 135, 163, 207, 178n. 29;
Cross, F.L., 47, 72 Smerdiakov, 50, 140, 192;
crossroads, 99, 106, 123, 127, 127n. Stinking Lizaveta, 88; Zosima,
52, 141, 178, 199, 200, 225 52, 144; “A Christmas Tree and
a Wedding”, 34n. 9, 188, 188n. 90n. 43, 91, 169, 197, 203, 228;
14; Julian Mastakovich, 188, Polen’ka Marmeladova, 44, 87,
188n. 14; Crime and 101, 107, 112-117, 121, 122,
Punishment, 5, 7, 10-12, 13-16, 128, 137, 151, 159, 160, 165,
18, 18n. 17, 21n. 25, 22, 22n. 28, 166, 169, 173, 191, 202n. 25,
24, 25, 30-33, 34n. 9, 35, 37, 43, 203, 213, 219, 219n. 10, 220,
45n. 27, 48, 52, 53n. 41, 64, 65, 230, 233; Sonia Marmeladova,
67, 68n. 3, 69-71, 73, 85n. 33, 15n. 2, 18, 21, 36, 39, 41, 42,
87, 91-95, 98-101, 102n. 18, 42n. 20, 44-47, 51, 52, 57, 59,
107, 108, 111n. 33, 115, 119n. 60, 67n. 1, 72, 73, 74, 80-92, 94,
43, 124, 128, 129, 131, 140, 143, 101-103, 107, 108, 110, 112,
144n. 1, 145, 147-161, 164, 165, 113, 115-119, 120-123, 127,
168-178, 181, 183, 188, 190- 128, 133, 134, 137, 141, 143,
192, 194, 198n. 24, 202, 207, 145, 148, 151, 155, 159-161,
209, 210, 212, 216, 218-220, 165-167, 169, 169n. 24, 171-
228, 230-233, 235, 236; Alyona 173, 175, 177, 189, 191, 194,
Ivanovna, 39, 74, 88n. 39, 95, 196-204, 206, 206n. 27, 207,
111, 112, 118, 124, 131, 131n. 209-211, 213, 216, 217-219,
56, 133, 141, 149, 156, 170, 171, 221, 223-230, 234, 237;
174, 189, 191, 194, 196, 201. Mikolka, 36, 53, 54, 55, 58, 129,
See also Pawnbroker; Filip, 84n. 130, 130n. 54, 157, 163, 229;
32, 172; Kapernaumov, 59, 120, Nastas’ya, 36, 48n. 33, 49, 73,
204; Klopstock, 85, 86; 76, 77, 134, 159, 175, 230;
Lebeziatnikov, 204; Lizaveta, Pawnbroker, 12n. 5, 35, 39, 44,
37, 51, 52, 53, 71-74, 76, 77, 79- 45n. 27, 53, 53n. 41, 53n. 42, 74,
81, 83n. 30, 84, 84n. 32, 87-91, 77, 79, 84, 88, 89, 90n. 44, 91,
111, 113, 114n. 36, 119, 121n. 94, 105, 111, 113, 118, 119, 132,
48, 122, 130, 133-135, 148, 150, 133, 140n. 67, 141, 148, 149,
151, 155, 159, 162, 166, 167, 162, 165, 169, 170, 172, 174-
169, 171, 173-175, 178, 194, 176, 194-196, 205, 217n. 8. See
196, 197, 199-202, 207, 224, also Alyona Ivanovna; Porfiry
233, 237; Pëtr Petrovich Luzhin, Petrovich, 19, 34n. 9, 58, 76,
12n. 5, 14n. 7, 15n. 12, 18, 18n. 111, 130n. 54, 176, 201, 212,
19, 21, 22n. 27, 49-51, 55, 58, 230; Rodion Raskol’nikov, 5,
62, 63, 71, 71n. 14, 74, 78, 79, 12n. 5, 13n. 7, 13n. 9, 15-24, 26,
79n. 26, 80, 82, 84-86, 89, 91, 27, 31-38, 40-46, 48-65, 71-82,
92, 92n. 47, 94, 123, 124, 139n. 83n. 30, 84-89, 90n. 43, 91, 92,
56, 157, 162, 172, 189, 194, 197, 94, 94n. 3, 94n. 4, 99-103, 105-
201, 233; Marmeladov family, 134, 136, 137, 140, 140n. 67,
35, 38, 40, 58, 62, 81, 84, 87, 143, 145, 148, 149, 151, 155,
112, 177, 180, 220; Semyon 156, 158-169, 171, 173-178,
Marmeladov, 35, 35n. 12, 38, 189-192, 194-205, 206n. 27,
58n. 49, 81, 90n. 43, 91, 94, 207-219, 221-230, 233, 234,
103, 112, 165, 173, 195, 196, 235, 237; Avdotia
197, 202n. 25, 219n. 10, 203, Raskol’nikova (Dunya,
223; Katerina Ivanovna Raskol’nikov’s sister), 18-19,
Marmeladova, 38, 39, 39n. 16, 19n. 21, 21, 40, 41, 50, 50n. 42,
40, 46n. 28, 80, 81, 86, 87, 90, 58, 62, 78, 80, 81, 86, 117, 153,
Index 277
154, 162, 172, 201, 205, 206, Poor Folk, 65, 187, 188, 192,
210, 211; Pul’kheria 202, 231; Bykov, 188-189;
Raskol’nikova (Raskol’nikov’s Makar Devushkin, 188, 192,
mother), 19, 21, 30, 31, 50, 80, 231; Varvara Dobroselova, 188-
86, 87, 106, 117, 149, 149n. 7, 189; “White Nights”, 188, 192;
162, 163, 210, 211; Dmitrii Winter Notes on Summer
Petrovich Razumikhin, 15, 18, Impressions, 14n. 9, 39, 183,
41, 44, 72, 75, 79, 80, 84, 85, 94, 206
107, 111, 114, 120, 121, 123, double characters, 186, 189, 194, 201
139n. 66, 146, 148, 159, 175, dream(s), 48-51, 53, 53n. 41, 55,
194, 195, 197, 201, 207, 210, 87n. 36, 129, 132, 134n. 61, 202,
211, 213, 230, 233; Arkadii 220n. 15, 225n. 18
Svidrigailov, 12n. 5, 18, 21, 22n. Duke of Marlborough, 38, 39n. 16
27, 36, 38, 38n. 15, 39, 40, 40n. Dunning, Chester, 63n. 54
18, 42, 44n. 25, 48, 49, 54, 55- dvoeverie (dual belief), 26, 54n. 43,
64, 65, 72, 74, 80, 82-84, 89, 91, 59n. 52, 125
92, 92n. 47, 94, 101, 103n. 20,
105, 107, 108, 112n. 35, 115, Egypt, 49n. 51, 103n. 19
119, 122, 127, 132n. 59, 134- Eliade, Mircea, 208n. 28
141, 160, 162, 169, 171, 172, Elijah the Prophet, 58, 58n. 49, 59n.
172n. 26, 174, 174n. 27, 177, 51
178, 190n. 18, 194, 201-207, Eliseev, G.Z., 13n. 9
208, 210, 213, 219, 224, 225n. Elliott, Shanti, 102, 103, 133
18, 228, 229, 233, 234; Marfa Emerson, Caryl, 7, 21n. 25, 36n. 13,
Svidrigailova, 63n. 53, 84n. 32, 42n. 20, 50, 50n. 38, 58n. 50,
172, 202, 205, 206; Zosimov, 63n. 54, 70n. 8, 99n. 12, 120n.
41, 44, 79; Demons, 11, 15, 24, 45, 144n. 1, 172n. 26, 218n. 9
34n. 9, 98, 126, 139, 140, 150, Engels, Donald, 6, 71n. 12
152, 162n. 19, 164, 176, 177, epilogue, 6, 27, 29, 32, 36, 41-43, 51,
183, 184n. 5, 192; Nikolai 52, 55, 58, 65, 67n. 1, 80, 81, 85,
Stavrogin, 126, 140, 164, 177, 101, 112, 123n. 50, 127, 128,
178n. 29, 192; Mar’ya 130, 132, 141, 149, 151, 159,
Timofeevna Stavrogina, 126; 162-164, 166, 167, 167n. 21,
The Diary of a Writer, 25, 139; 169, 175, 177, 191, 198, 200,
Marey, 42, 152; The Double, 203, 208, 209-230, 233-235, 237
186, 187, 188, 190n. 19, 192, epistemology, 85n. 33
202, 207; Golyadkin, 187-189, eros, 88, 89n. 40
192, 198; Golyadkin Junior, 187, Eucharist, 124, 130n. 55
189; The Drunks, 87; Epoch, 23; Everts, Janet Myer, 48
The Idiot, 15n. 12, 150, 183,
192; The Notebooks for Crime False Dmitrii, 62
and Punishment, 19n. 20, 58n. Fanger, Donald, 93, 94, 99
50; Notes from the Dead House, feather, flaming, 72, 115, 115n. 37,
57n. 48, 131n. 56, 183, 223n. 16; 117, 117n. 39
Notes from Underground, 12, Fedotov, G.P., 150
15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 29, 65, 88, Fiene, Donald, 222n. 15
150, 176, 183, 189, 191, 192, Figes, Orlando, 185n. 9
192n. 20, 219n. 11, 231, 232; Fitzgerald, Gene, 38n. 15
Flath, Carol, 192n. 20 Oblomov, 26n. 39, 58, 64n. 55,

Flaubert, Gustave, 90n. 42 104n. 22, 182; Il’ya Oblomov,
Florensky, Pavel, 89n. 41, 101n. 14, 26n. 39, 64n. 55, 182, 204;
103n. 23, 118n. 40 Pshenitsina, 26; Zakhar, 182
folk belief, 30, 32, 95, 136, 140 Gospel(s), 25-26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 46,
Fomichev, Sergei, 36n. 13 60, 69, 70, 70n. 8, 71, 71n. 12,
foreshadowing, 37, 51, 51n. 39, 53, 73, 76, 79, 89, 102, 120, 123,
55, 59, 120, 134, 163, 207, 214n. 139, 141, 143, 147-150, 156,
5, 222 158, 160, 167, 168, 178, 191,
Forster, E.M., 95; Howards End, 95 198, 199, 219n. 10, 230, 234
fountains, 17, 49 Gospel according to John, 46
Fourier, Charles, 86, 86n. 36 Griboedov, Aleksandr Sergeevich,
Frank, Joseph, 13n. 8, 24, 25n. 36, 70, 189; Woe from Wit, 189;
144, 164, 176, 184n. 8, 189n. 17, Chatsky, 189; Molchalin, 189
190, 191, 224, 235, 235n. 1 Grigorovich, Dmitrii Vasil’evich,
Freeborn, Richard, 11n. 3, 12n. 5, 24n. 33; “A School for
16n. 14, 22n. 27, 49n. 35, 211n. Hospitality”, 24n. 33
2 Gronicka, André von, 117n. 39
Friedberg, Maurice, 29n. 1 Grossman, Leonid, 70n. 10
Friedrich, Paul, 7, 31, 50, 53, 144n. 2, Gus, M.S., 13n. 9
144n. 1, 150n. 8
Fukushima, Tatsuya, 7 Hmilton, George Heard, 73n. 18,
Fusso, Susanne, 12n. 5 102n. 16, 112n. 34, 119n. 43
Haney, Jack, 60
Gay, Peter, 12n. 5 Haymarket, 36, 122, 124, 129, 178,
Gibian, George, 220 199, 209, 220
Gleason, Abbott, 184n. 6 Heine, Heinrich, 39n. 17
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 120n. hell, 41, 57n. 48, 61, 105, 105n. 23,
46; Faust, 120n. 46 108, 115, 116, 125, 127, 135,
Gogol, Nikolai, 21n. 26, 30n. 4, 39n. 140, 143, 172, 202, 204, 206,
16, 61, 98, 98n. 10, 99, 104, 105, 206n. 26, 224
181, 186, 187, 188, 192, 202n. Herzen, Aleksandr, 182, 184; From
26, 231, 236; Dead Souls, 39n. the Other Shore, 183; Letters
16; The Inspector General, 187, from France and Germany, 182-
188; Bobchinsky and 183
Dobchinsky, 187; Ivan Hilarion, 83n. 30, 155n. 16, 168n. 23;
Khlestakov, 187; Mirgorod, 187; “Sermon on Law and Grace”,
“Nevsky Prospect”, 98, 99; “The 83n. 30, 155n. 16, 168n. 23
Nose”, 98, 187, 188, 202n. 26; Hobbes, Thomas, 12n. 5; Leviathon,
Kovalev, 187, 188, 202n. 26; 12n. 5
“The Overcoat”, 61, 98, 99, 105, Hoffmann, E.T.A., 62, 186; The
182n. 2, 187, 192; Akakii Serapion Brothers, 186
Akakievich, 192; Holquist, Michael, 70n. 10, 208n. 28
Petrovich,182n. 2, 72, 128, 176; holy fool, 70n. 8, 88n. 38, 198. See
“The Portrait”, 99; “Viy”, 187; also iurodivaia
Khoma Brut, 187 Holy Week, 223
Goncharov, Ivan, 26n. 39, 58, 64n. Homer, 68; The Odyssey, 68;
55, 104n. 22, 181, 182; Penelope, 68, 68n. 2
Index 279
Hood, Thomas, 68, 68n. 3, 71, 86; Johnson, Leslie, 63n. 53, 121n. 48
“The Song of the Shirt”, 68, 68n. Jones, John, 67n. 1, 77n. 25, 91n. 46
3, 71, 86 Jones, Malcolm, 20n. 24, 31, 48, 178
horse nightmare, 35, 36, 37, 43, 53n. Judaism, 48, 168
41, 115, 124, 157, 159, 164, 217, Juhl, Beth, 7, 67n. 1
225, 226 jury trial, 213n. 3
Hubbs, Joanna, 136
Hughes, Robert, 109 Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich, 97;
Hugo, Victor, 53n. 42, 64, 69; Memoirs on Ancient and Modern
“Melancholia”, 53n. 42; Les Russia, 97
Misérables, 53n. 42 Karasev, Leonid, 25, 132n. 58, 198n.
Hutchings, Stephen, 14n. 10, 55, 57, 24
102n. 17, 106, 112n. 34, 115, Karriker, Alexandra Heidi, 7, 73n. 18
126n. 51, 190n. 19 Kasatkina, T.A., 80, 81, 90n. 41, 67n.
Hutchinson, John, 15 1, 117n. 39, 144n. 1, 163, 163n.
20, 228n. 20
icon(s), iconic, 7, 14, 27, 31, 35, 35n. “Kashchei Bessmertnyi” (“Kashchei
11, 36, 42, 47, 52, 53n. 41, 56, the Deathless”), 221
75, 80, 88, 94-141, 165, 171, Katkov, Mikhail Nikifovovich, 15,
174, 174n. 27, 175, 177, 190, 18n. 18, 19
191, 194, 196, 198, 199, 202, kenosis, kenotic humility, kenoticism
203, 207, 211, 213, 218, 223, 88, 150, 150n. 10, 225
225, 228, 229, 234 Kidel, Mark, 225
icon, Byzantine, 103n. 23 Kievo-Bratsk icon, 128
icon lamp, 111, 112, 116, 138 Kirill of Turov, 83n. 30; “Sermon on
iconoclasm, 129n. 53, 131n. 57 the First Sunday After Easter”,
imagery, biblical, 42, 49, 228 83n. 30
imagery, religious, 26, 95 Klioutchkine, Konstantine, 16n. 14
Ingham, Norman, 7, 23, 32n. 8, 154n. Kliushnikov, Viktor Petrovich, 24n.
14 33
intelligentsia, 13, 13n. 9, 22, 23, 24, Knapp, Liza, 48n. 33, 50n. 37, 79n.
26, 31, 37, 54, 152 27, 84n. 31
Isaac-Edersheim, E., 156 Kolodziej, Jerzy, 188n. 13
Isaakii the Anchorite, 88n. 38 Kostina, Alexandra, 7, 228n. 20
iurodivaia, iurodivyi, iurodstvo, 80, Kostroma, 105n. 23
198. See also holy fool Krauss, Lawrence, 224
Ivanits, Linda, 56, 58, 127, 136, 140 Krestovskii, Vsevolod Vladimirovich,
Ivanov, A.P., 235n. 1 24n. 33
Kuryluk, Ewa, 69n. 7, 73n. 17, 135n.
Jakobson, Roman, 186n. 19 63
James, William, 228n. 19
Jesus, 35n. 12, 46, 47, 72, 103, 144n. Laclos, Choderlos de, 206, 206n. 27;
1, 146-150, 156-158, 173 Les liaisons dangereuses
Jew, Jews, Jewish, 138-140, 174. See (Dangerous Acquaintances),
also Yid(s) 206, 206n. 26
Johae, Antony, 119n. 43 ladder, iconic, 75, 101n. 14, 103-108,
John Chrysostom, 71n. 11 111, 116, 119, 124, 135, 141,
Johnson, Emily, 23n. 32 175
ladder to heaven, 51 134, 135, 135n. 63, 137, 139,

Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, 59n. 140, 141, 202, 203, 204, 205
52 materialism, 11n. 3, 18n. 19, 20n. 24,
Lazarus, 34n. 9, 45-47, 52, 57, 104, 38, 39, 50, 55, 63, 69, 79n. 26,
107n. 27, 120-122, 127, 143- 83, 85, 85n. 33, 128, 139n. 66,
146, 165-167, 169n. 24, 197, 151, 157, 158, 162, 171, 172,
202, 221, 223, 226-230, 234, 175, 217, 233, 237
235 Matthews, Caitlín, 72n. 15, 117n. 39
Lemoine, A.P., 39n. 17 Matual, David, 34n. 9, 216, 220
Lennox-Boyd, Mark, 106n. 24 Maxim the Greek, 63n. 54
Lent (the Great Fast), 223, 227 McDuff, David, 35n. 12
Leo III, Emperor, 129n. 53 McReynolds, Susan, 20
Lermontov, Mikhail Iur’ievich, 39, Mel’nik, V.I., 190n. 19
39n. 16; “Dream”, 39, 189; A meshchanin (man from the lower-
Hero of Our Time, 189; middle class, artisan), 226
Grushnitsky, 189; Pechorin, 189, Meyer, Priscilla, 7, 44n. 25, 44n. 26,
192n. 21 45, 53n. 42
leshii, 53, 59, 60, 136, 140, 232. See The Mice Burying the Cat, 97
also wood demon Midzhiferdzhian, T.V., 16
Leskov, Nikolai Semenovich, 24n. Mikhailov, M.L., 68n. 3
33; At Daggers Drawn, 24n. 33; Mikhniukevich, V.A., 42n. 24
No Way Out, 24n. 33 Mill, John Stuart, 12
Levin, Eve, 54n. 43 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 74n. 19;
Levine, Daniel, 7 “The Harp Weaver”, 74n. 19
Liapunov, Vladimir, 7, 37n. 14 Miller, Robin Feuer, 15n. 12, 16n. 13,
life after death, 52, 56, 145, 217 20, 144n. 1, 146, 228n. 19
literature, British, 69 Minaev, D.D., 68n. 3
literature, French, 69, 69n. 5, 74n. 19, Misery-Luckless Plight, 153, 154,
70, 206 154n. 14, 155, 193
literature, Russian, 18n. 18, 30, 87, Mochulsky, Konstantin, 216
97, 98, 144n. 1, 153, 189n. 17, Moirai, 68
220 Mokosh’, cult of, 125, 126
“The Little Farmstead”, 85 Moleschott, Jacob, 24
London, 21, 93, 93n. 1, 96, 183 Monastery of St. Ipaty, 105n. 23
Lotman, Iurii, 18, 30n. 4 monasticism, 150-151
Lotman, Lidiia, 63n. 54 Morson, Gary Saul, 12n. 5, 51, 51n.
lysis , 228n. 19 39, 99, 139n. 67
Moscow, 22, 96, 162
‘Macbeth effect’, 77n. 24 Moser, Charles, 9, 18n. 18
magic, 48, 57, 61, 102n. 17, 134, 141, Mother Damp Earth (Mat’ syra-
160, 166 zemlia), 125, 126
Maguire, Robert A., 7, 97n. 9 Mother of God, 35n. 11, 71, 80, 89,
“Marlborough”, 38, 38n. 16, 39, 39n. 90n. 41, 111, 113-116, 118, 125-
16 128, 134n. 62, 137, 139, 167,
Marmeladov, Yuri I., 59n. 51 226, 229, 232
Martinsen, Deborah, 7, 15n. 12, 100n. Mother of God Hodigitria, 116
13, 116, 168, 168n. 22, 220n. 15 Mother of God of Tenderness of
mask(s), 40n. 18, 62, 63, 117, 129, Kuben, 115
Index 281
Moule, C.F.D., 149 36, 38, 41, 43, 46-48, 51, 52, 55-
Murav, Harriett, 71n. 12, 121, 121n. 57, 63, 64, 69n. 7, 70, 71n. 11,
48, 130n. 55 72, 73, 73n. 17, 75, 80, 83-87,
murder(s), 12-15, 17, 21, 22, 22n. 29, 88n. 39, 91, 95-107, 110-115,
24, 26, 36, 37, 43-45, 47-50, 53, 118-120, 124, 125, 128, 133,
53n. 41, 60-62, 64, 68, 74-79, 134, 136, 138-141, 145, 146,
81, 82n. 29, 84, 86-89, 91, 103, 148-154, 157, 159-164, 166,
105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 167, 169, 172-174, 177, 178,
112n. 34, 115, 119, 121-126, 182, 184, 189-194, 196-204,
129, 130-134, 136, 143, 155, 206, 207, 211, 213-217, 222-
156, 158, 162, 163, 165-167, 226, 228-229, 231-236
169, 171, 172, 174, 177, 178, otherness, 27, 146, 181-208. See also
178n. 29, 183, 191, 192, 195, alterity
196, 199, 207, 214-217, 219, outsider, 146, 177, 184-198, 200,
222-224, 226, 228, 232, 236 201-207, 236
myth, 46n. 28, 144n. 2
Palm-Durov Circle, 151, 164
Napoleon, 190n. 19, 236 Paperno, Irina, 14n. 10, 85n. 33
Napoleon III, 17; The History of parable, 27, 100, 143-179, 191, 215,
Julius Caesar, 17 216, 219, 227, 235, 236;
Nekrasov, Nikolai, 53n. 42; About the defined, 147-148
Weather, 53n. 42 “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”,
Neuhäuser, Rudolf, 18 27, 143-179, 190, 191, 202, 215,
Nicholas I, 97 221, 228, 230, 235, 236
Nihilism, nihilist(s), 9, 10, 11, 11n. 2, Paraskeva Pjatnica, 126
13, 13n. 8, 15, 19, 22-27, 54, 64, Paris, 21, 68, 93, 96, 183
74, 87, 90, 94, 107, 108, 110, Passage, Charles, 38n. 15, 86n. 34
115, 126, 127, 154, 157, 161, Peace, Richard, 232
167n. 21, 175, 176, 178, 182, Peers, Glenn, 127
191, 193, 200, 201, 205, 208, Peppard, Victor, 34n. 10, 45
230, 231 Perovsky, Aleksei Alekseevich, 186.
Novgorod, 98n. 11, 118 See also Anton Pogorelsky; The
Nuttall, A.D., 206n. 27 Double, or My Evenings in Little
Russia, 186;
O’Donoghue, Jacqueline Perrodin, Jonathan, 22n. 29, 77n. 25,
Zubeck,111n. 33 131n. 57, 160
Old Believer, 130n. 54 perspective, iconic, 101, 108-114,
Ong, Walter, 33, 47 123; perspective, inclusive, 106,
oral culture, orality, oral tradition, 6, 111, 114, 116, 121, 128, 228,
26-27, 29-65, 91n. 44, 95, 96, 234, 237; perspective, inverse,
100, 102, 105, 118, 128, 135, 147; perspective, realistic, 110;
139, 140, 145-147, 149, 153, perspective, reverse, 110n. 33
160, 161, 172, 182, 190, 191, Perun, thunder god, 57, 58, 58n. 49
199, 205, 206, 207, 214-216, Pesmen, Dale, 56, 56n. 57
218, 219, 221, 224, 232, 233 Peter the Great, 9, 14n. 9, 30, 38n. 15,
Orthodox Church, Orthodoxy 50, 58, 86, 75n. 21, 96, 126, 152,
(Russian), 6, 10, 11, 14, 21-27, 181, 184, 189, 216n.7, 231
30-31, 32n. 6, 33-34, 35n. 12, Petrashevsky Circle, 11
Pharaoh, 51 Daughter, 69n. 8; Grinev, 69n.

physiological sketch, 67 8, 71n. 14; Pugachev, 69n. 8;
Pike, Burton, 94, 98 Eugene Onegin, 23n. 30, 48, 93,
Pilnyak, Boris, 183n. 4; The Naked 93n. 2, 185, 186, 193, 219n. 13,
Year, 183n. 4 223, 236; Tat’iana Larina, 23n.
Piranesi, Giovanni Batista, 104n. 21 30, 185, 189, 219n. 13, 223, 236;
Pisarev, Dmitrii Ivanovich, 10, 13, Vladimir Lensky, 186, 189;
13n. 9, 25, 25n. 36, 54, 107, Eugene Onegin, 23n. 30, 185,
146, 158, 176 189; Little Tragedies, 186;
Pisemsky, Aleksei Feofilaktovich, Mozart and Salieri, 186; The
24n. 33; In the Whirlpool, 24n. Stone Guest, 186, 193; “The
33; Troubled Seas, 24n. 33 Queen of Spades”, 98, 189;
pochva (“soil”), 55, 56, 126 Germann, 189; The Tales of
pochvennichestvo, defined, 55, 126 Belkin, 153, 186; “The
Pogorelsky, Anton, 186. See also Stationmaster”, 153, 154, 154n.
Aleksei Alekseevich Perovsky 14, 155
Poland, 126n. 51
Polansky, Vicki, 7, 101n. 15 The Queen of Hearts, 198n. 23
polunoshnik (“midnight demon”), 59
Ponomareva, G.B., 55n. 46, 94n. 3 radical intelligentsia, 23, 24
popular belief, 26, 48n. 32, 54, 56, Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich,
104, 127, 140 25, 26n. 38; Journey from
Populist(s), 184, 184n. 6 Petersburg to Moscow, 25
Positivism, 11 Rational Egoism, 12, 12n. 5, 15n. 12,
Principle of utility, 176, 176n. 28 176, 178, 232
Prodigal Son, 5, 144, 144nn. 1, 2, 148, rationalist philosophies, Western, 224
151, 153-155, 158-167, 170, reader, implied reader, target reader,
173, 177, 178, 191, 222, 227, 15-27, 29, 33, 34, 39, 39n. 16,
230, 235. See also “The Parable 41, 44, 46, 50, 55-65, 69, 78, 80,
of the Prodigal Son” 83n. 30, 88n. 39, 89n. 40, 93-96,
Propp, Vladimir, 42, 160 99-102, 104, 105, 107-111,
prose fiction, 14, 140, 182, 220, 231 112n. 34, 115, 117-121, 123-
prose tradition, European, 219 125, 128, 129, 130n. 55, 131,
prostitute(s), 36, 37, 40, 47, 74, 74n. 134-137, 139-141, 145-150, 157,
19, 82, 83, 87, 88, 91n. 44, 103n. 159-162, 166, 169n. 24, 171,
19, 117, 124, 161, 169, 197 172, 173, 177, 182, 186, 190,
Proud, Linda, 109n. 30 191, 193, 194, 197, 198, 200-
Providence, 69n. 48 204, 206, 208-209, 211-217,
puddle(s), 50, 55, 58, 62, 124, 125, 219-222, 228, 230, 232-234,
131, 201 236, 237
Pushkin, Aleksandr, 16n. 15, 23n. 30, Reeve, F.D., 49n. 35
44n. 26, 48, 60, 69n. 8, 70n. 8, Remizov, Alexei, 126n. 51
93, 93n. 2, 98, 153, 154nn. 13, Resurrection, 31, 47, 52n. 40, 83,
14, 185, 186, 186n. 10, 189, 193, 119, 122, 127, 138n. 55, 145,
219n. 13, 223, 236; Boris 146, 163, 164, 200, 202, 203,
Godunov, 60, 70n. 8, 98; “The 204, 221, 224, 227, 228
Bronze Horseman”, 16n. 15, 60, Riasanovsky, Nicholas, 14n. 9, 75n.
186, 193; The Captain’s 21
Index 283
Rice, James L., 7, 32n. 6, 38n. 15, 90n. 41, 112, 115, 115n. 37, 117,
45n. 27 117n. 39, 118, 118n. 40, 120,
Ricker, Judith, 7, 208n. 28 122, 167, 200, 207, 227
Rodriguez, Joseph, 42n. 22, 63n. 53 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri comte de,
Roginskii, A.B., 140 86, 86n. 36
roman fleuve, 209 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail
Roosevelt, Priscilla, 182n. 3 Evgrafovich, 10
Rosenshield, Gary, 19n. 21, 213n. 3 salvation, 43, 47, 52, 57, 60, 61, 83,
Rothschild, 174n. 27 83n. 30, 84, 85, 89n. 40, 100,
Rozanov, V.V., 18n. 18, 139n. 67 104, 108, 141, 153, 155, 166,
Rubins, Maria, 111 169, 171, 172, 177, 200, 202,
Rublev, Andrei, 73n. 18 206, 208, 212, 213, 221, 222,
rusalka, rusalki, 136, 137, 232 228, 230
Russia, Medieval, 95, 96 Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, 17
Russia, wooden, 96 Satan, satanic, 61, 63, 63n. 54, 134,
Russian traditional culture, 6, 21n. 25, 137
23n. 30, 26, 29-65, 75, 86, 87n. Scanlan, James, 15n. 12, 192n. 20,
36, 94n. 4, 95, 97, 103n. 15, 104, 231
125, 126, 128, 133, 141, 146, Schefski, Harold, 150, 150n. 9
151, 152, 160, 161, 172, 181n. 1, schism, schismatic, 11, 22, 23, 33,
182, 188, 191, 193, 194, 198, 130n. 54, 148, 163, 194, 230
200, 211, 213-216, 218, 219, Schnieper, Annemarie, 73n. 18
221, 223, 229-234, 236 Schubert, Franz, 39n. 17
The Russian Messenger, 15 Second Coming, 144n. 2
Russian nationalism, 184 serfdom, 25, 26n. 38, 152, 231
The Russian Word, 10 Seton-Watson, Hugh, 184n. 7
Ruttenberg, Nancy, 183 seven, 63n. 53, 72, 104
Ryan, W.F., 48n. 32, 63, 63n. 53, seven deadly sins, 72, 81
134, 136, 139 Shakespeare, William, 68, 70, 70n. 9;
King Duncan, 77n. 24; King
St. Augustine, 168, 169 Lear, 68, 70n. 9; Macbeth, 68,
St. Clement at Una, 112n. 34 77n. 24
St. Il’ya, 57, 58 Shaw, J. Thomas, 49n. 36, 53n. 41,
St. John Climacus, 104, 104n. 21 132, 134n. 61, 154n. 14
St. Mary of Egypt, 103n. 19 Sherman, Sandra, 7, 67n. 1
St. Nilus of Sinai, 101 shirt, shirt image, 71, 73, 76, 77n. 23,
St. Petersburg, 6, 15, 16, 17, 19n. 23, 79, 85, 89, 166, 173
21, 22, 22n. 27, 23n. 32, 30n.4, Shklovsky, Viktor, 216
31, 34-38, 40, 42, 43, 48-50, 55, Siberia, Siberian, 6, 30, 30n. 3, 43,
57, 59-64, 74, 75n. 21, 76, 76n. 67n. 1, 86, 127, 130, 136, 141,
22, 82, 89, 93, 93n. 2, 94, 94n. 4, 151, 152, 164, 173, 184, 201,
96-101, 103, 106, 112, 124, 125, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 218n. 9,
134, 138, 141, 147, 153, 154, 221, 222, 223n. 16, 229, 231,
157, 160, 161, 162, 175, 181, 237
183, 183n. 5, 191, 193-195, 211, sideshadowing, 51n. 39
212, 216, 216n. 7, 227, 230, 231, Simons, Lael, 120n. 44
233, 234 singing, song, 26, 33, 34-42, 45n. 27,
St. Sophia, 52, 72, 72n. 15, 89n. 41, 51, 62, 68, 128, 170, 237
skazki (folk tales), 221 Boyarina Morozova, 104, 124

skomorokhi, 36, 63, 63n. 54
Slattery, Dennis, 72n. 16 Table of Ranks, 35, 38n. 15, 177, 182
Slattery, Patrick, 33, 47 Tempest, Snejana, 104n. 22
Slavophile(s), Slavophilism, 9, 13n. Terras, Victor, 103
6, 14n. 9, 152, 153, 181, 183, Thompson, Diane Oenning, 35n. 11,
184, 184n. 6 91n. 45
Smith, Charles W.F., 149 Thompson, Ewa, 70n. 8, 74n. 20, 75,
Smith, Grahame, 69n. 7 88n. 38
Snodgrass, W.D., 54n. 44 thunder, thunderstorms, 57, 58, 58n.
sobornost’, 33, 80, 84, 127, 148, 151, 49, 59n. 51, 126
155, 197, 200, 202, 226 Time of Troubles (the smuta), 62
social utopianism,11n. 3 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich, 32-33,
socialism, socialists, 10, 13, 15, 31, 24n. 33, 152n. 11, 181, 182,
44n. 25; socialism, atheistic, 31 182n. 3, 184, 185, 209, 210, 236;
Sophia, Heavenly Wisdom, 52, 72, Anna Karenina 32-33, 152n. 11,
72n. 15, 89-90n. 41, 112, 115, 182n. 3, 184; Nikolai Levin,
115n. 37, 117, 117n. 39, 118, 152n. 11, 182n. 3, 184; An
118n. 40, 120, 122, 167, 200, Infected Family 24n. 33; War
207, 227 and Peace, 184, 185, 209, 236;
sorcerer(s), 61, 62, 97 Pierre Bezukhov, 184; Natasha
Soroka, G.V., 182n. 3 Rostova, 185, 209, 210
spirits, 53, 56, 134, 140, 224, 225 Trediakovsky, Vasily Kirillovich, 97;
staircase(s), 99, 103, 103-104n. 21, “Praise to the Izhorsk Land, and
105, 107, 108, 112n. 34, 116, to the Reigning City of St.
127, 128, 132, 141 Petersburg”, 97
Stations of the Cross, 35n. 12 Trinity Week, 136
Stavrou, Theofanis George, 11n. 3, Trubetskoi, Evgenii, 117n. 39
23n. 31 Tsar Gorokh, 45, 45n. 27
Steintrager, James, 176n. 28 Tucker, Robert, 6, 170n. 25
Stendhal (Henri-marie Beyle), 106n. Tucker, William, 6, 43n. 24, 67n. 1,
25 105n. 23, 106n. 24, 147n. 4
Sternstein, Malynne, 7, 10n. 1, 23n. Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 9, 13, 16,
30, 29n. 1 25, 26, 26nn. 37, 38, 63, 148,
Sternstein, Nongpoth, 6 154, 181, 182, 182n. 3, 184, 189,
“The Stitcher”, 68 220, 231; Fathers and Sons, 9,
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 26 15, 16, 26n. 37, 154, 155, 182,
Stuckey, Rachel, 93 189, 220; Bazarov, 16, 154, 182,
Sue, Eugène, 668-69, 86n. 35, 82; Les 189; Arkadii Kirsanov, 154, 182;
Mystères de Paris, 68-69, 86n. “Mumu”, 26; Rudin, 189;
35 Rudin, 189; A Sportsman’s
suicide, 40, 40n. 18, 55, 57, 59, 61, Sketches, 25, 26n. 37, 182n. 3;
83, 127, 129, 135-140, 162, 172, “Bezhin Meadow”, 25, 63; “The
174n. 27, 177, 202, 210, 224, Singers”, 26
228 Tyutchev, Fyodor Ivanovich, 29n. 2
superfluous man, 189-191
superman, 54, 177 Ukrainskii, G., 163n. 20
Surikov, Vasily, 104, 124; The Uspenskij, B.A., 97n. 8, 110, 120n.
Index 285
47, 125, 133, 135 Weitzmann, Kurt, 105n. 23

Utilitarian(ism), Utilitarians, 11-12, West, James, 110n. 33
85n. 33, 146, 167n. 21, 176, 178, Western Europe(an), 31, 43, 64, 67,
185, 193, 208, 212, 213, 215, 69, 70, 85n. 33, 86, 128, 140,
217, 224, 230, 231, 235 141, 166, 181, 183-185, 188,
Utopian Socialism, Utopian 192, 193, 204, 207, 208, 211,
Socialist(s), 11-13, 15, 19, 22, 214, 215, 217, 231, 234, 236;
24, 54, 64, 70, 86, 87, 90, 94, Western European thought, 32,
110, 115, 146, 157, 161, 175, 38, 41, 76, 84, 86n. 36, 146, 148,
176, 178, 185, 193, 199, 204, 162-164, 173, 179, 181, 182,
208, 212, 213, 215, 217, 224, 190, 191, 193, 200, 208, 212,
230, 231, 235 213, 213n. 3, 215, 217, 223, 224,
225, 230, 233, 236, 237;
Vermeer, Jan Flette, 21n. 26 Western materialist intellectual
Veronica, 71n. 14, 73, 73n. 17, 77, currents, 39, 50, 69, 157, 233
79, 102n. 15 Westernizers, 181
“The Visitation to the Torments by Wilkie, Brian, 6, 67n. 1
the Mother of God”, 116. See Williams, Raymond, 94, 96n. 7
also “The Descent of the Mother wizard, koldun, 56, 63n. 53
of God into Hell” wood demon, 59, 234. See also leshii
Vogt, Karl, 24 Wood, Antony, 63n. 54
The Word, 47, 102, 122, 212, 230
Wagner, Adolph, 24 World War I, 198n. 23
Walker, Clint, 7, 10n. 1, 12n. 5, 13n. Wulff, Oskar, 110n. 33
6, 16, 16n. 15, 21n. 25, 30n. 5,
103n. 19, 216n. 7 Yerby, Mitchell, 160
Wandering Jew, 144n. 2, 177. See Yid(s), 88n. 39, 139n. 66, 140n. 67,
also Ahasuerus 174n. 27, 177. See also Jew(s),
Warner, Elizabeth, 59 Jewish
Washington, DC 96 Yovino-Young, Marjorie, 46n. 30
water, 23n. 32, 42, 48-61, 84, 106, Yusupov Gardens, 49n. 35
124, 125, 126, 135, 136, 138,
162, 200, 202, 203, 222, 231, Zenkovsky, Serge A., 116n. 38
232; water, baptismal, 23n. 32, Zguta, Russell, 63n. 54
50, 50n. 38, 135, 138, 202; Zola, Émile, 69n. 5
water, dead, 51; water, living, Zundelovich, Ia.O., 19
48n. 33, 49n. 51

(Janet G. Tucker) Profane Challenge and Orthodox R (BookFi)

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Profane Challenge

and Orthodox Response

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008

Anne, Bill, Sri, Rob

Chapter One. The Significance of Orality and the Oral 29

Chapter Two. The Religious Symbolism of Cloth and 67

Chapter Three. Iconic Images in Crime and Punishment: 93

Chapter Four. “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” in 143

Chapter Five. The Significance of Alterity or “Otherness” 181

Chapter Six. The Epilogue Reconsidered 209

The present study, Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in

always remember that Dostoevsky was a writer of his own time, as

readers. In addition, I’m most grateful for Malynne Sternstein’s kind

expertise of the late John Harrison. As always, Ann and Conrad

I have tended to render Russian names in a form most readily

(“Dostoevsky’s dead”, said the citizeness, but

Russia during the 1860s was a country in flux, passionately consumed

reforms.1 All of these factors should be considered when we read

1864-65, during the precise period when Dostoevsky was formulating

blended French Utopian Socialism and its doctrine of a perfectible

as a precursor/substitute for Heaven. Like nihilism, Utopian

Dostoevsky—couched their arguments as prose fiction should alert us

Institute, 1990), 123-124. As Nicholas Riasanovsky suggests, “Dostoevskii and also

Dostoevsky’s Target/Implied Reader: Self-Identification with the

Written in 1865 and published first in serial form in 1866 in Mikhail

themselves at the time of writing.13 A youthful Bazarov dominates

The despotism of theory over life is the worst of all forms of

The newspapers of the day record the same problems that

notebooks”.20 In the “person” of the narrator, however, we still have

aware of the seductive appeal of Western thought.24 As Susan

At the beginning of July, during an extraordinarily hot time,

it really was scorching in mid-July during the summer of 1865, when

Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Cambridge MA: Harvard

untenable opposites. Rodion, as Norman Ingham has noted to me,

ideas of change, radical transformation, and even, if necessary,

was to persuade Dostoevsky’s readers among the radical

If “love” denotes the central feature of Russian Orthodoxy and

an especially marked impact on Russian youth (Moser 1964: 30),34

As a believer, Dostoevsky would have been firmly committed to

as well, including for example “The Singers” (with song as social

The Significance of Orality and the Oral Tradition:

Having caused/enabled his readers to identify with a killer,

“doubling result-sequence” of the Russian oral tradition (Yovino-

Crime and Punishment). It is genetic, innate. More to the point, it is

capable of seeing Western European Christian socialism not

Most importantly, Dostoevsky always found pure joy in Christ.

The Power of Oral Discourse

Since oral usage, not written, constitutes the basis of language,

Written texts all have to be related somehow, directly or

And Patrick Slattery (1994-1998: 19; emphasis added) suggests:

Dostoevsky’s novel [Crime and Punishment] reveals the limits of

Dostoevsky relies on the orality inherent in the Gospels to dispel the

and Dostoevsky immediately exposes him to orality. The evening light

corruption vividly in the following scene: the slaughter of the old

“A song, brothers”!—shouts someone from the cart, and everyone

This song forms a negative counterpart to the later epilogue singing—

“Do you like street singing?” […] “I like it”, Raskol’nikov

brutal capital. Poverty appears to be the obvious, superficial cause of

frame that concludes with Mikhail Iur’evich Lermontov’s 1841 poem

with aristocratic desperation, both of which are symptomatic of St.

[Raskol’nikov] found [Svidrigailov] in a very small back room

The very first singer Raskol’nikov encountered retained a memory of

with a final degradation of Russian popular and religious culture, and