The city on the Neva, along with all its majestic and sinister history, has always been in the center of attention of Russian writers.
Petra's creation
According to the plan of its founder Peter the Great, St. Petersburg called from the swamp of swamps was to become a stronghold of sovereign glory. Contrary to the ancient Russian tradition of building cities on high ground, it was really built in a swampy lowland at the cost of the lives of many nameless builders, exhausted by dampness, cold, swamp miasms and hard work. The expression that the city "stands on the bones" of its builders can be understood literally. At the same time, the meaning and mission of the second capital, its magnificent architecture and impudent mysterious spirit made Petersburg a truly “marvelous city”, which made its contemporaries and descendants admire themselves. It is no coincidence that today we have the opportunity to enjoy the many-faceted "portraits" of this amazing city in the works of the greatest artists of the word, and we mention such idioms as Petersburg of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Akhmatova, Blok.
Twin city
Shrouded in mystery, sheltered on its straight, foggy prospectuses the surreal Mayor Nose of Kovalev and the afterlife of the unfortunate Akaki Akakievich, the city itself seems like a ghost, ready to melt along with the fog. St. Petersburg in the works of Dostoevsky, as well as in Gogol's fantastic stories, appears as a strange "obsessive dream", a dream that will disappear the very moment that he "suddenly wakes up to whom everyone is dreaming" (the novel "The Teenager"). Often, the Granite city in the works of writers is an almost animated creature that can influence the fate of people. He becomes the culprit of the broken hopes of poor Eugene in the Pushkin poem “The Bronze Horseman”, and the desperate threat of the sufferer “Alas for you!” Thrown towards the statue is addressed to the entire offending city. St. Petersburg in the works of Dostoevsky is not only a character, but also a kind of double of the heroes, strangely refracting their thoughts, experiences, fantasies and the future. This topic originated on the pages of the Petersburg Chronicle, in which the young publicist Fyodor Dostoyevsky anxiously sees traits of morbid morosity slipping in the inner appearance of his beloved city.
Petersburg in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment
This work is a real textbook of human science in that part, which relates to the experience of acute mental crises, understanding of extremely dangerous ideas. Raskolnikov’s moral experiment is that he believes that a good person who wants to make humanity happy is allowed to sacrifice life — not his own, but someone else’s, even if, in his opinion, the most worthless. The hero checks his theory, and it becomes obvious to him that he is not a winner, but a victim: “he killed himself” and not “the old woman”. In part, the instigator of the murder is Petersburg. It is difficult to suspect Dostoyevsky of hatred for this city, but here the writer mercilessly exposes the atmosphere of a cruel, stinking, drunk urban monster, strangling Raskolnikov and imposing on him the idea that only the strongest survives.
Accessory city
The author expertly intertwines the image of city landscapes, street scenes and interiors. Dostoevsky’s Petersburg is logically written into the storyline, and its details are the finest touches in characterizing the characters and developing the idea of the work. How does this happen?
City landscapes
The first description of St. Petersburg by Dostoevsky we meet immediately - in the 1st chapter of the first part. The heat, stuffiness, stench, and the drunkards constantly falling in the way painfully respond to Raskolnikov’s upset nerves. In the first chapter of the second part, the same picture is repeated with horrific details - the stench, stuffiness, heat, people scurrying past, and again the young man experiences difficult moments. The tightness and stuffiness of urban slums is also the spiritual atmosphere of almost the entire novel. Only now is it spoken of the sun, which is unbearably hurt eyes. The motive of the sun will then find metaphorical completeness, but for now its bright light torments Raskolnikov, who is confused in his idea.
Magnificent panorama
In the second part of the novel, in chapter 2, Raskolnikov frantically searches for a place to hide the values taken from the old woman. And here he suddenly freezes from a breathtaking panorama - clean air, a blue river and the domes of the temple reflected in it . Does this captivate the hero? No, he never understood, could not decipher for himself this "magnificent picture", from which "inexplicable cold" and "dumb and deaf spirit" blew upon him.
"Drunk" Petersburg
Dostoevsky’s crime and punishment of the hero he created occupied, of course, not only as an acute psychological detective story. The path from the moral impasse to the light is spatially carried out as an exit from the narrow dusty city into the expanse of the “sun-drenched vast steppe”, where “there was freedom” - not only physical, but freedom from ideas and delusions that infect the soul. In the meantime, in the 6th chapter of the second part of the novel, we see evening Petersburg through the eyes of Dostoevsky, a humanist piercingly stinging at the deserted urban poor. A tattered ragged man rolls across the street here, a crowd of women “with black eyes” drives the crowd, and this time Raskolnikov inhales this languishing air in some kind of painful ecstasy.
Judge City
In the 5th chapter of the fifth part of the novel, Petersburg is shown by the edge, from the window of Raskolnikov's closet. The evening hour of the setting sun awakens in the young man "deadly anguish," which tormentes him with a foreboding of eternity curled into a tiny point - eternity "on the arshin of space." And this is the verdict that the logic of events makes to the Raskolnikovsky theory. Dostoevsky’s Petersburg at this moment appears not only as an accomplice in the crime, but also as a judge.
Storm
In the 6th chapter of the sixth part, a terrible thunderstorm breaks in a stuffy and gloomy evening, in which lightnings sparkle without interruption, and the rain “gushed like a waterfall”, ruthlessly lashing the earth. This is the evening on the eve of the suicide of Svidrigailov, a man who has brought the principle of "love yourself" to the extreme point and ruined yourself with this. The storm continues with a restlessly noisy, and then howling wind. In the cold mist, an alarm sounds, warning of a possible flood. Sounds remind Svidrigailov of the once seen suicide girl in a coffin strewn with flowers. All this seems to push him to suicide. Morning greets the hero with a thick milky-white fog covering the city, consciousness, spiritual emptiness and pain.
Thunderstorm sounds the antithesis of the heat and stuffiness of St. Petersburg, outlines the inevitable turn in the worldview of the protagonist, cleverly destroying the actual evidence, but unable to hide the mental catastrophe caused by the murder. The change of weather that Petersburg Dostoevsky experiences in the novel works brilliantly for this idea. “Crime and Punishment” is a work that strikes with the depth and accuracy of using the psychological detail. It is not by chance that Raskolnikov brings down the ax of the ax on the head of the mortgagor, thereby directing the point on himself. He kind of splits himself, experiencing collapse and spiritual death.
Street scenes
In the first chapter of the first part, on a cramped street of Petersburg slums, a remarkable scene takes place: when Raskolnikov is thoughtful, he suddenly notes with a heart-rending cry of a drunk in a huge cart drawn by a draft horse. Petersburg F.M.Dostoevsky is not indifferent to the spiritual pathology that the hero is experiencing. The city is closely watching and loudly revealing, teasing and provoking. In the 2nd chapter of the second part, the city physically affects the hero. Raskolnikov tightly whipped the driver with a whip, and immediately after that some merchant gave him the two-maned alms. This wonderful city scene symbolically anticipates the whole subsequent history of Raskolnikov, who was still “immature” before humbly accepting alms.
Do you like street singing?
In the 6th chapter of the second part of the novel, Rodion loiters through the streets where poverty lives and crowded drinking establishments, and becomes a witness to the unpretentious performance of organ-grinders. He is drawn into the midst of the people, he talks to everyone, listens, observes, absorbing these moments of life with some dashing and hopeless greed, as before death. He already anticipates the denouement and desires it, but still pretends to himself and plays with others, risky opening the veil of his secret. The same chapter ends with a wild scene: a drunk woman rushes from a bridge into a river in front of Raskolnikov. And here already for the hero St. Petersburg becomes a conspirator and provocateur. Dostoevsky is briefly described by critics as an incomparable master of arranging fateful "accidents." Indeed, how subtly the writer manages to emphasize a change in the mood and thoughts of the hero who accidentally ran into this woman, who met her eyes with her sore gaze!
Ruin City
The idea of an accomplice in crime and a destroyer reappears in the fifth chapter of the fifth part, where the author paints a scene of Katerina Ivanovna's madness. On the street of the soulless city, Marmeladov was once crushed, Sonya is engaged in prostitution, the girl who Raskolnikov saw on the boulevard is experiencing a fall. Svidrigailov will commit suicide on the streets of the city, and now, from hopelessness and despair, Katerina Ivanovna goes crazy. And the stone pavement eagerly absorbs her gushing throat.
Home & Interiors
In the first chapter of the first part, Raskolnikov trembles and fades to the house of the percussionist, who he sees as "enormous," ugly towering and stepping on a small man. The human anthill of the apartment building horrifies the hero. Today, guides demonstrate to tourists this house on the Griboedov Canal, it is part of the culture of St. Petersburg.
In the chapter of the second part of the first, Raskolnikov finds himself in a tavern and, among drunken cries and incoherent chatter, listens to Marmeladov's piercing confession. These are the details that strengthen the hero in his sinister determination to test his theory. Raskolnikov’s closet, described in the 3rd chapter of the first part of the novel, resembles either a cabinet or a coffin. Once Dostoevsky mentions its resemblance to a sea cabin. All this eloquently testifies to the internal state of Raskolnikov, squeezed by poverty, unsatisfied pride and his monstrous theory, which robs him of balance and peace.
In the 2nd chapter of the first part and the 7th chapter of the second, the author presents the “passage room” of the Marmeladovs, where the life of an impoverished family constantly appears before the eyes of a curious public, and there is nothing to say about solitude and peace. Alien glances, bursts of laughter, thick waves of tobacco smoke - the atmosphere in which life passes and overtakes the death of the Marmeladov spouses.
In the fourth chapter of the fourth part we see Sonya’s dwelling in the old green color of Kapernaumov’s house (is the biblical harmony coincidental?). This building is also a attraction for fans of the books of Fyodor Mikhailovich, to this day it is called "a house with an obtuse angle." Here, as elsewhere in the novel, a narrow and dark staircase leads to Sonya’s room, and the room itself resembles a barn in the shape of an irregular quadrangle with an “extremely low ceiling”. An ugly room-cutting wall with three windows overlooked a ditch. The ugliness and wretchedness that catches your eye paradoxically enhances the emotional characterization of a heroine with a rare inner wealth.
The third chapter of the sixth part of the novel presents a scene of Svidrigailov's confession to Raskolnikov in a tavern near Sennaya. This square in the year before last served as a “frontal place”, in addition, there was a huge “bustling” open-air market. And it is precisely there that Dostoevsky continually leads his heroes out, remaining, despite the thick of the people, still in terrifying loneliness with their sick thoughts and feelings. The open windows of the tavern, however, are an anticipation of the public remorse of the hero, who failed in his anti-human selfish beliefs.
Finally
Touching the famous novel, we were convinced that St. Petersburg of Dostoevsky is a full-fledged participant in the plot and ideological content of the work. The same can be said of the other works of Fyodor Mikhailovich. It remains to add that the writer, according to the apt remark of the literary critic Yuri Lotman, at the beginning of his work sees in this city a concentrated image of all of Russia. In the final works, the dominance of a soulless state treasury, captivating the sovereign northern capital, is seen by him as the embodiment of fears and illnesses of the whole great country.