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Traditional Symbolism in Crime and Punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George Gibian
George Gibian*
Affiliation:
Smith College, Northampton, Mass
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Extract

It may seem paradoxical to claim that critics have not sufficiently concerned themselves with Dostoevsky's attack against rationalism in Crime and Punishment; yet this aspect of the novel has frequently failed to receive adequate attention, not because it has been overlooked, but because often it has been immediately noticed, perfunctorily mentioned, and then put out of mind as something obvious. Few writers have examined the consequence of the anti-rationalistic tenor of the novel: the extent to which it is paralleled by the structural devices incorporated in the work.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 5 , December 1955 , pp. 979 - 996
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

page 979 note 1 All references to The Possessed (The Devils) and Crime and Punishment are to the trans, by David Magarshack, Penguin Books. Quotations have been checked with the text in Polnoe sobranie sochineniy (St. Petersburg, 1885), Vol. in. and, where necessary, I have taken the liberty of making changes in Magarshack's translation.

page 979 note 2 Trans. J. B. Baillie in Hegel: Selections, ed. J. Lowenberg (New York, 1929), pp. 33,

page 979 note 3 Outstanding among the several writers who have discussed certain aspects of Dostoev-sky's symbolism are Vyacheslav Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life (New York, 1952); L. A. Zander, Dostoevshy (London, 1948); K. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky (Paris, 1947); N. O. Lossky, Dostoevsky i ego khristianskoe miroponimanie (New York, 1953); Romano Guardini, Religiose Gestalten in Dostojewskis Werk (Munich, 1951). Their interests are for the most part theological or limited to only one or two groups of images; they are not concerned with how symbolism contributes to the structure of one particular novel.

page 979 note 4 Trans. Boris Brasol (New York, 1949), I, 417. Gerhard Gesemann, “Das Goldene Zeit-alter: ein Kapitel iiber Dostojewski,” Die Dioskuren (Munchen, 1923), ii, 275–303, and Leonid Grossman, Twrcheslvo Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1928), pp. 112–113 discuss the role played in Dostoevsky's writings by nature in the form of a “garden” or “landscape.”

page 979 note 5 Trans. Constance Garnett (New York, 1943), p. 273.

page 979 note 6 Mochulsky, Dosloevsky, p. 242, makes this point. An elaborate discussion of the symbolism of the sun in the Western Middle Ages is available in H. Flanders Dunbar, Symbolism in Medieval Thought and Its Consummation in the Divine Comedy (New Haven, 1929). Her study serves as an interesting comparison with Dostoevsky's Orthodox use of the sun as one component of Sophia, see below.

page 979 note 7 Gesemann discusses the concept of New Jerusalem in Dostoevsky, with special attention to The Possessed, A Raw Youth, and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

page 979 note 8 The Book of Revelation was one of Dostoevsky's favorite books; he often referred to it in conversation, and was enthusiastic over Maykov's translation of it. Grossman, Tvor-chestvo, p. 163.

page 979 note 9 I. I. Glivenko, Iz arkhiva F. M. Dosloevskogo: Prestuplenic i nakazanie (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931), p. 89.

page 979 note 10 See, e.g., N. S. Trubetzkoy, “Introduction to the History of Old Russian Literature,” Harvard Slavic Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), ii, 95–96.

page 979 note 11 Glivenko, Iz arkhivva, p. 204. There are further references to Christ on pp. 73, 76, and 177.

page 979 note 12 The importance of Mother Earth in Russian thought has been frequently discussed. See esp. R. V. Pletnyov, “Zemlja,” in A. L. Bern. ed. O Dostoevskom: sbornik staiey (Prague, 1929), I, 153–162; Zander, Dostoevsky, pp. 36–65; and Georgy Fedotov, Stikhi dukhovnye (Paris, 1935), passim. My article “Dostoevsky's Use of Russian Folklore,” forthcoming in the Journal of American Folklore, deals with the relationship between folk literature and Dostoevsky's works in general, including the theme of Mother Earth.

page 979 note 13 Zander, p. 52.

page 979 note 14 Zander, p. 62.

page 979 note 15 Zander, pp. 48–49 and 62.

page 979 note 16 “The Stages of Life,” in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York, 1934), pp. 129—130, quoted in Janko Lavrin. Dostoevsky: a Study (New York, 1947), pp. 53–54.

page 979 note 17 A related direct influence which stressed the unconscious was that of C. G. Carus' Psyche, discussed in my article “C. G. Carus' Psyche and Dostoevsky,” forthcoming in the American Slavic and East European Review.

page 979 note 18 Page xvi in 1862 ed. The passage is quoted from Schubert's Geschichte der Seek.