Abstract
There is now a substantial body of scholarship on religious symbolism in Crime and Punishment (Prestuplenie i nakazanie; 1866) that shows, among other things, how Raskolnikov’s conversion in the epilogue is prepared for in the novel proper through a deliberate network of biblical, hagiographic and folkloric imagery.1 Studies exist on such subjects as the sacramental quality of the earth, the pattern of the saint’s life (zhitie) in Raskolnikov’s portrayal, references to Elijah the Prophet, and the use of folk legends, tales, and laments.2 Most of the imagery studied has to do with positive forces and suggests that in the world of Crime and Punishment, as in that of The Brothers Karamazov (Brat’ia Karamazovy; 1880) everything ‘lives and has its being only through its feeling of being connected with mysterious other worlds’.3
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Notes
George Gibian, ‘Traditional Symbolism in Crime and Punishment’, in Feodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Jessie Coulson, ed. George Gibian (New York, 1975 ) pp. 519–36.
R. V. Pletniov, ‘Zemlia’, in O Dostoevskom: sbornik statei, ed. A. L. Bem (Prague, 1929 ) I, pp. 153–62.
T.B. Lebedeva, ‘Obraz Raskol’nikova v svete zhitiinykh assotsiatsii’, in Problemy realizma (Vologda, 1976 ) II, pp. 80–100.
T.B. Lebedeva, ‘O nekotorykh motivakh apokrificheskoi literatury v romane F. M. Dostoevskogo Prestuplenie i nakazanie’,in Literaturovedenie: nauchnye doklady XXIX Gertsenskogo chteniia (Leningrad, 1977 ) pp. 25–9.
T.B.Lebedeva, ‘Sotsial’naia utopiia Dostoevskogo i “zemnoi rai” drevnerusskoi literatury’, in Puti russkoi prozy XIX veka (Leningrad, 1976 ) pp. 75–85.
L.M.Lotman, ‘Romany Dostoevskogo i russkaia legenda’, in her book Realizm russkoi literatury 60-kh godov XIX veka (Leningrad, 1974 ) pp. 285–315.
James L. Rice, ‘Raskol’nikov and Tsar Gorokh’ (Slavic and East European Journal, XXV, 3, 1981, pp. 38–53 ).
V. R Vladimirtsev, ‘Zal’ius’ slez’mi goriuchimi’(Russkaia rech’, 1988, no. 1, pp. 119–23 ).
D. Arban, “‘Porog” u Dostoevskogo’, in G. M. Fridlender, ed., Dostoevskii: materialy i issledovaniia ( Leningrad, 1976 ) II, pp. 19–29.
D. K. Zelenin, Ocherki russkoi mifologii: umershie neestestvennoiu smert’iu i rusalki (Petrograd, 1916) pp. 1–40 and elsewhere.
Louis Breger, Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst (New York and London, 1989) p. 46.
E. V. Pomerantseva, Mifologicheskie personazhi v russkom folklore (Moscow, 1975) pp. 87–91 for a discussion of the literary adaptation of the rusalka.
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© 1992 International Council for Soviet and East European Studies, and Derek Offord
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Ivanits, L. (1992). Suicide and Folk Beliefs in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In: Offord, D. (eds) The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22310-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22310-7_10
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