The origins of the novel go back to the time of F.M. Dostoevsky. On October 9, 1859, he wrote to his brother from Tver: “In December I will start a novel ... Do you remember, I told you about one confession-novel, which I wanted to write after all, saying that I still have to go through it myself. The other day I completely decided to write it immediately. All my heart will rely with blood on this novel. I conceived it in hard labor, lying on a bunk, in a difficult moment of sadness and self-degradation ... ”Initially, Dostoevsky conceived to write“ Crime and Punishment ”in the form of Raskolnikov's confession. The writer intended to transfer the entire spiritual experience of hard labor to the pages of the novel. It was here that Dostoevsky first encountered strong personalities, under whose influence a change in his former convictions began.

Dostoevsky nurtured the idea of ​​his new novel for six years. During this time, "The Humiliated and Insulted", "Notes from the House of the Dead" and "Notes from the Underground" were written, the main theme of which was the stories of poor people and their rebellion against existing reality. On June 8, 1865, Dostoevsky proposed to A.A. Kraevsky for "Notes of the Fatherland" his new novel called "The Drunken". But Kraevsky answered the writer with a refusal, which he explained by the fact that the editorial office had no money. On July 2, 1865, in dire need, Dostoevsky was forced to conclude an agreement with the publisher F.T. Stellovsky. For the same money that Kraevsky refused to pay for the novel, Dostoevsky sold Stellovsky the right to publish the complete collected works in three volumes and undertook to write for him a new novel of at least ten sheets by November 1, 1866.

Having received the money, Dostoevsky distributed the debts and at the end of July 1865 went abroad. But the money drama didn't end there. During his five days in Wiesbaden, Dostoevsky lost everything he owned at roulette, including his pocket watch. The consequences were not long in coming. Soon the owners of the hotel in which he was staying ordered not to serve him meals, and after a couple of days they also deprived him of the light. In a tiny room, without food and without light, "in the most painful situation", "burned by some kind of internal fever", the writer began work on the novel "Crime and Punishment", which was destined to become one of the most significant works of world literature.

In September 1865, Dostoevsky decided to offer his new story to the Russian Bulletin magazine. In a letter to the publisher of this magazine, the writer said that the idea of ​​his new work would be "a psychological account of one crime": in terms of instability in concepts, succumbing to some strange, "unfinished" ideas that are in the air, he decided to get out of his bad situation at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular counselor who gives money for interest. The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy, takes Jewish interest, evil and seizes someone else's age, torturing her younger sister in her workers. "She's useless for anywhere", "what does she live for?", "Is she useful to anyone?" and so on - these questions confuse the young man. He decides to kill her, rob her, in order to make his mother who lives in the district happy, to save his sister, who lives in companions with some landowners, from the voluptuous claims of the head of this landowner family - claims that threaten her with death - to complete the course, to go for border and then all my life to be honest, firm and unswerving in fulfilling the "humane duty to humanity" - which, of course, will "ameliorate the crime", if you can only call this act of a deaf, stupid, evil and sick old woman knows why he lives in the world, and which in a month, perhaps, would have died by itself ... "

According to Dostoevsky, in his work there is an allusion to the idea that the imposed legal punishment for a crime frightens the criminal much less than the guardians of the law think, mainly because he himself morally demands this punishment. Dostoevsky set the goal of clearly expressing this idea using the example of a young man - a representative of a new generation. According to the author, materials for the history underlying the Crime and Punishment novel could be found in any newspaper published at that time. Dostoevsky was sure that the plot of his work partly justified modernity.

The plot of the novel "Crime and Punishment" was originally conceived by the writer as a short story of five to six printed sheets. The last plot (the story of the Marmeladov family) eventually entered the story of Raskolnikov's crime and punishment. From the very beginning of its inception, the idea of ​​an "ideological killer" fell into two unequal parts: the first, the crime and its causes, and the second, the main one, the effect of the crime on the soul of the criminal. The idea of ​​a two-part concept was reflected in the title of the work - "Crime and Punishment", and on the peculiarities of its structure: out of six parts of the novel, one is devoted to the crime and five - to the influence of the committed crime on the soul of Raskolnikov.

Dostoevsky worked hard on the plan for his new work in Wiesbaden, and later on a steamer, when he was returning from Copenhagen, where he was staying with one of his Semipalatinsk friends, to Petersburg, and then in Petersburg itself. In the city on the Neva, the story imperceptibly grew into a large novel, and Dostoevsky, when the work was almost ready, burned it and decided to start over. In mid-December 1865, he sent chapters of the new novel to the Russian Bulletin. The first part of Crime and Punishment appeared in the January 1866 issue of the magazine, but work on the novel was in full swing. The writer worked hard and selflessly on his work throughout 1866. The success of the first two parts of the novel inspired and inspired Dostoevsky, and he set to work with even greater zeal.

In the spring of 1866, Dostoevsky planned to leave for Dresden, stay there for three months and finish the novel. But numerous creditors did not allow the writer to travel abroad, and in the summer of 1866 he worked in the village of Lublin near Moscow, with his sister Vera Ivanovna Ivanova. At this time, Dostoevsky was forced to think about another novel, which was promised to Stellovsky at the conclusion of an agreement with him in 1865. In Lublin, Dostoevsky drew up a plan for his new novel, The Gambler, and continued to work on Crime and Punishment. In November and December, the last, sixth, part of the novel and the epilogue were completed, and the Russian Bulletin at the end of 1866 finished the publication of Crime and Punishment. Three notebooks with drafts and notes to the novel have survived, in fact, three handwritten editions of the novel, which characterize the three stages of the author's work. Subsequently, they were all published and allowed us to present the writer's creative laboratory, his hard work on every word.

The Wiesbaden "story", like the second edition, was conceived by the writer in the form of a confession of a criminal, but in the process of work, when the material of the novel "Drunken" was added to the confession and the plan became more complicated, the old form of confession on behalf of the murderer, who actually cut himself off from the world and deepened into his "immobile" idea, became too close for a new psychological content. Dostoevsky preferred a new form - a story on behalf of the author - and burned the original version of the work in 1865.

An important note appeared in the third, final edition: “The story is from oneself, not from him. If it’s a confession, then it’s too extreme, you need to understand everything. So that every moment of the story is clear ... "The draft notebooks of" Crime and Punishment "allow us to trace how long Dostoevsky tried to find an answer to the main question of the novel: why did Raskolnikov decide to murder? The answer to this question was not unambiguous for the author himself. In the original idea of ​​the story, this is a simple idea: to kill one insignificant harmful and rich creature in order to make many beautiful, but poor people happy with his money. In the second edition of the novel, Raskolnikov is depicted as a humanist, burning with the desire to stand up for the “humiliated and insulted”: “I am not the kind of person to allow a bastard to be defenseless weakness. I will intercede. I want to intervene. " But the idea of ​​murder because of love for other people, murder of a person because of love for humanity, is gradually "overgrown" with Raskolnikov's desire for power, but it is not vanity that motivates him yet. He seeks to gain power in order to fully devote himself to serving people, longs to use power only to perform good deeds: “I take power, I get strength — whether money, power — not for bad things. I bring happiness. " But in the course of his work, Dostoevsky penetrated deeper and deeper into the soul of his hero, discovering behind the idea of ​​murder for the sake of love for people, power for the sake of good deeds, the strange and incomprehensible "idea of ​​Napoleon" - the idea of ​​power for the sake of power, dividing humanity into two unequal parts: the majority is "a creature trembling ”and the minority - the“ masters ”, called upon to rule the minority, standing outside the law and having the right, like Napoleon, to transcend the law for the sake of necessary goals. In the third, final version, Dostoevsky expressed the “ripe”, complete “Napoleon's idea”: “Can you love them? Can you suffer for them? Hatred of humanity ... "

Thus, in the creative process, in comprehending the concept of "Crime and Punishment", two opposite ideas collided: the idea of ​​love for people and the idea of ​​contempt for them. Judging by the draft notebooks, Dostoevsky faced a choice: either to leave one of the ideas, or to keep both. But realizing that the disappearance of one of these ideas would impoverish the plot of the novel, Dostoevsky decided to combine both ideas, to depict a person in whom, as Razumikhin says about Raskolnikov in the final text of the novel, “two opposite characters alternately change”. The ending of the novel was also created as a result of strenuous creative efforts. One of the draft notebooks contains the following entry: “The finale of the novel. Raskolnikov is going to shoot himself. " But that was the final only for Napoleon's idea. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, strove to create a finale for the “idea of ​​love”, when Christ saves a repentant sinner: “The vision of Christ. He asks the people for forgiveness. " At the same time, Dostoevsky understood perfectly well that such a person as Raskolnikov, who combined two opposite principles, would not accept either the judgment of his own conscience, or the judgment of the author, or the legal court. Only one court will be authoritative for Raskolnikov - the "high court", the court of Sonechka Marmeladova, the very "humiliated and insulted" Sonechka, in whose name he committed the murder. That is why the following entry appeared in the third, final, edition of the novel: “The idea of ​​the novel. I. Orthodox view, what is Orthodoxy. There is no happiness in comfort; happiness is bought by suffering. This is the law of our planet, but this direct consciousness, felt by the everyday process, is such a great joy that can be paid for by years of suffering. Man is not born to be happy. A person deserves happiness, and always suffering. There is no injustice here, because vital knowledge and consciousness is acquired by experience "for" and "against", which must be dragged on oneself. " In the drafts, the last line of the novel looked like: "Inscrutable are the ways in which the god of man finds." But Dostoevsky ended the novel with other lines, which may serve as an expression of the doubts that tormented the writer.

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", Like all the works of Dostoevsky, is full of ideas" hovering in the air ", facts drawn from reality itself. The author wanted to "search through all the questions in this novel."

But the topic of the future work did not immediately become clear, the writer did not immediately stop at a certain plot. On June 8, 1865, Dostoevsky wrote to the editor of the magazine “ Domestic notes"A. A. Kraevsky:" My novel is called "Drunken" and will be in connection with the current question of drunkenness. Not only the question is sorted out, but all its ramifications are presented, mainly the pictures of families, the upbringing of children in this environment, and so on. and so on. There will be at least twenty sheets, but maybe more. "

Fedor Dostoevsky. Portrait by V. Perov, 1872

However, after some time, the idea of ​​the work, the central hero of which was, obviously, Marmeladov, began to interest the writer less, since he had the idea to write a story about a representative of the younger generation. Dostoevsky sought to portray in the new work modern youth with its broad public interests, noisy disputes over burning ethical and political issues, with its materialistic and atheistic views, which he characterizes as "moral instability." In the first half of September 1865, Dostoevsky informs the editor of the Russkiy Vestnik MN Katkov that he has been working on a five-six-page story for two months, which he plans to finish in two weeks or a month. This letter sets out not only the main storyline, but also the ideological concept of the work. A draft of this letter is in one of those notebooks containing the rough drafts of Crime and Punishment.

“The idea of ​​a story cannot ... contradict your magazine in anything; on the contrary, Dostoevsky informs Katkov. “This is a psychological record of one crime. The action is modern this year. A young man, expelled from university students, a philistine by birth and living in extreme poverty, out of frivolity, out of shakiness in concepts, succumbing to some strange "unfinished" ideas that are floating in the air, decided to get out of his bad situation at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular counselor who gives money for interest. The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy, takes interest rates from women, is angry and seizes someone else's age, torturing her younger sister in her workers. "She's not good for anywhere", "what does she live for?", "Is she useful to anyone?" etc. - These questions confuse the young man. He decides to kill her, rob her in order to make his mother who lives in the district happy, to save his sister, who lives in companions with some landowners, from the voluptuous claims of the head of this landlord family - claims that threaten her with death, to complete the course, go abroad and then all my life to be honest, firm, unswerving in the fulfillment of the "humane duty to humanity", which will, of course, "make amends for the crime."

Crime and Punishment. Feature Film 1969 Episode 1

But after the murder, Dostoevsky writes, “the entire psychological process of crime unfolds. Unsolved questions rise up before the killer, unsuspecting and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's righteousness, the earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up compelled to convey to yourself. Compelled, though to perish in hard labor, but to join the people again; the feeling of being disconnected and disconnected from humanity, which he felt immediately after committing the crime, tortured him. The law of truth and human nature took their toll ... The criminal himself decides to accept the torment in order to atone for his deed ...

In addition, my story hints at the idea that the imposed legal punishment for a crime is much less intimidating the criminal than the legislators think, in part because he himself his morally demands».

Dostoevsky in this letter emphasizes that under the influence of materialistic and atheistic views (this is what he had in mind when he spoke of "strange" unfinished "ideas that are in the air") Raskolnikov came to a crime. But at the same time, the author points here to extreme poverty, the hopelessness of the hero's position. In the early draft notes, there is also the idea that the difficult living conditions of NB pushed Raskolnikov to the crime. Let's see why I did it, how I decided, there is an evil spirit. NB (and this is where the analysis of the whole case, anger, poverty begins) the way out of necessity, and it turns out that he did it logically. "

Crime and Punishment. Feature Film 1969 Episode 2

Dostoevsky is enthusiastically working on the story, hoping that it will be "the best" that he wrote. By the end of November 1865, when much had already been written, Dostoevsky felt that the work had to be structured differently, and he destroyed the manuscript. “I burned everything ... I didn’t like it myself,” he wrote on February 18, 1866 to Baron A. Ye. Wrangel. - The new form, the new plan carried me away, and I started all over again. I work day and night, and yet I work little ”(ibid., P. 430). The "new plan" is, obviously, the final plan of the novel, in which not only the theme of Marmeladov (the alleged novel "The Drunken") and the theme of Raskolnikov (the story of a "theoretical crime") are intertwined, but also Svidrigailov and especially Porfiry Petrovich, which is not mentioned at all in the earliest notebooks.

Dostoevsky initially intended to keep the story on behalf of the hero, to give a diary, confession or Raskolnikov's memories of the murder he committed. In notebooks there are fragments in which the narration is conducted in the first person - either in the form of a confession or in the form of a diary. Drafts of Crime and Punishment also have first-person passages with first-person corrections to third. The writer was embarrassed that "confession in other paragraphs would be unchaste and difficult to imagine what it was written for," and he abandoned this form. “The story is from myself, not from him. If confession, then too much to the last extreme, it is necessary to understand everything. So that every moment of the story is clear. " "You need to assume the author is a creature omniscient and infallible making everyone look like one of the members of the new generation. "

The novel "Crime and Punishment" was first published in the magazine "Russian Bulletin" for 1866 (January, February, April, June, July, August, November and December).

In 1867, the first separate edition was published: “Crime and Punishment. A novel in six parts with an epilogue by FM Dostoevsky. Revised edition ”. Numerous stylistic corrections and abbreviations were made in it (for example, Luzhin's monologue at the commemoration was significantly shortened, a whole page of Raskolnikov's reasoning about the reasons that prompted Luzhin to slander Sonya was thrown out). But this correction did not change either the ideological content of the novel or the main content of the images.

In 1870, the novel without additional corrections was included in volume IV of Dostoevsky's Collected Works. In 1877, the last lifetime edition of the novel was published with minor stylistic corrections and abbreviations.

The manuscript of the novel has not reached us in full. The Russian State Library contains small fragments of the manuscript "Crime and Punishment", among them there are both early and late versions, the text of which is close to the final edition.

Dostoevsky's notebooks are kept in TsGALI. Three of them contain notes about the idea and construction of "Crime and Punishment", sketches of individual scenes, monologues and lines of characters. Partially these materials were published by I. I. Glivenko in the magazine "Krasny Archive", 1924, vol. VII, and then completely in 1931 in a separate book: "From the archive of F. M. Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment". Unpublished materials ". The earliest records date from the second half of 1865, the latest, including an auto-commentary on the novel, to the beginning of 1866, that is, at the time the novel was printed.

FM Dostoevsky nurtured the idea of ​​the novel “Crime and Punishment” for six years: in October 1859 he wrote to his brother: “In December I will begin a novel. Do you remember, I told you about one confession - a novel that I wanted to write after all, saying that I still have to go through it myself. The other day I completely decided to write it immediately. All my heart will rely with blood on this novel. I conceived it in hard labor, lying on a bunk, in a difficult moment. "- judging by the writer's letters and notebooks, we are talking about the ideas of" Crime and Punishment "-

The novel originally existed in the form of Raskolnikov's confession. In Dostoevsky's rough notebooks one can find the following entry: “Aleko killed. The awareness that he himself is not worthy of his ideal, which torments his soul. Here is the crime and punishment ”(we are talking about Pushkin's“ Gypsies ”).

The final plan is formed as a result of the great upheavals that Dostoevsky went through, and this plan combined two originally different creative ideas.

After the death of his brother, Dostoevsky finds himself in terrible material need. The threat of a debt prison hangs over him. All year Fyodor Mikhailovich was forced to turn to St. Petersburg

Usurers, interest holders and other creditors.

In July 1865, he offered the editor of Otechestvennye zapiski, AA Kraevsky, a new work: “My novel is called“ Drunken ”and will be in connection with the current question of drunkenness. Not only the question is sorted out, but all its ramifications are presented, mainly the pictures of families, the upbringing of children in this environment, and so on. and so on. ”. Due to financial difficulties, Kraevsky did not accept the proposed novel, and Dostoevsky went abroad to concentrate on creative work away from creditors, but there, too, history repeats itself: in Wiesbaden, Dostoevsky loses everything at roulette, right down to his pocket watch.

In September 1865, addressing the publisher MN Katkov to the Russian Bulletin magazine, Dostoevsky described the novel's intention as follows: “This is a psychological account of one crime. The action is modern this year. A young man, expelled from university students, a philistine by birth and living in extreme poverty, out of frivolity, out of shakiness in concepts, succumbing to some strange, “unfinished” ideas that are floating in the air, decided to get out of his bad situation at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular counselor who gives money for interest. in order to make her mother, who lives in the district, happy, to save her sister, who lives in companions with some landowners, from the voluptuous claims of the head of this landlord family - claims that threaten her with death, to finish the course, go abroad and then be honest, firm all my life , unswerving in the fulfillment of a “humane duty to humanity”, which will, of course, “ameliorate the crime”, if you can only call this act a crime against an old deaf, stupid, evil and sick woman who herself does not know why she lives in the world and who in a month, perhaps, she would have died of herself.

He spends almost a month before the final disaster. There is no suspicion of him and cannot be. This is where the entire psychological process of crime unfolds. Unsolved questions rise up before the killer, unsuspecting and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's truth, the earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up being forced to convey to himself. Compelled, though to die in hard labor, but to join people again, the feeling of openness and separation from humanity, which he felt immediately after the crime was committed, tortured him. The law of truth and human nature took their toll. The offender himself decides to accept the torment in order to atone for his cause. "

Katkov immediately sends the author an advance. FM Dostoevsky has been working on the novel all autumn, but at the end of November he burns all the drafts: “. much has been written and ready; I burned everything. a new form, a new plan carried me away, and I started over again. "

In February 1866, Dostoevsky informs his friend AE Wrangel: “About two weeks ago, the first part of my novel was published in the January book of the Russian Bulletin. It's called Crime and Punishment. I've already heard many rave reviews. There are bold and new things there. ”

In the fall of 1866, when Crime and Punishment is almost ready, Dostoevsky starts again: under a contract with the publisher Stellovsky, he was supposed to present a new novel by November 1 (we are already talking about The Gambler), and in case of non-fulfillment of the contract, the publisher will receive the right for 9 years "for free and as it pleases" to publish everything that will be written by Dostoevsky.

By the beginning of October Dostoevsky had not yet begun writing The Gambler, and his friends advise him to turn to the help of shorthand, which at that time was just beginning to enter life. The young stenographer Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, invited by Dostoevsky, was the best student of the St. Petersburg courses of stenography, she was distinguished by her outstanding intelligence, strong character and deep interest in literature. The Gambler was completed on time and handed over to the publisher, and Snitkina soon becomes the wife and assistant of the writer. In November and December 1866, Dostoevsky dictated to Anna Grigorievna the last, sixth part and the epilogue "Crime and Punishment", which were published in the December issue of the magazine "Russian Bulletin", and in March 1867 the novel was published as a separate edition.

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Dostoevsky's novel was literally suffered by the author and excites the minds of readers to this day. The history of the creation of the novel "Crime and Punishment" is not easy, it is very interesting. The writer put his whole soul into this novel, which still haunts many thinking and thinking people.

The birth of an idea

The idea of ​​writing a novel originated with Dostoevsky at a time when the writer was in hard labor in Omsk. Despite the hard physical work and ill health, the writer continued to observe the life around him, the people, whose characters in the conditions of imprisonment were revealed from completely unexpected sides. And here, in hard labor, seriously ill, he decided to write a novel about crime and punishment. However, hard hard labor and a serious illness made it impossible to start writing it.

"My whole heart will rely with blood on this novel",

This is how Dostoevsky imagined the work on the work, calling it a confession novel. However, the author was able to start writing it much later. Between the idea and its embodiment, "Notes from the Underground", "Humiliated and Insulted", "Notes from a Dead House" were born. Many themes from these works, the problems of society described in them, found their place in "Crime and Punishment".

Between dream and reality

After returning from Omsk, Dostoevsky's financial situation leaves much to be desired, worsening every day. And writing a huge problem-psychological novel took time.

Trying to earn at least a little money, the writer suggested that the editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine publish a short novel, Drunken. The author wanted to draw public attention to drunkenness. The plot was supposed to be connected with the Marmeladov family. The head of the family, a former official who was dismissed from the service, is drinking too much, and the whole family suffers.

However, the editor insisted on other conditions: Dostoevsky sold all the rights to publish his complete works for a meager fee. In accordance with the requirements of the editorial board, the author begins to write a novel, which must be submitted as soon as possible. So almost all of a sudden, the writer began working on the novel Crime and Punishment.

Start

Dostoevsky suffered from a player's illness - he could not help but play. And, having received a fee from the magazine, the writer, having corrected his affairs a little, again succumbed to the temptation of gambling. In Wiesbaden, he had nothing to pay for the table and light in the hotel. Thanks only to the kindness of the owners of the hotel, Dostoevsky did not stay on the street.

To get the money, it was necessary to finish the novel on time, so I had to hurry. The writer decided to tell a story about how a poor student decided to kill and rob an old woman. The plot was supposed to be a story about one crime.

The author was always interested in the psychology of his heroes, but here it was extremely important to study and describe the psychological state of a person who took another's life, it was important to reveal the "process of crime" itself. The writer had almost finished the novel, when he suddenly destroyed the manuscript for a completely incomprehensible reason.

Psychology of creativity

However, the novel had to be handed over to the editor by agreement. And the hurried work began again. The first part of the magazine "Russian Bulletin" was published already in 1866. The term of writing the novel was coming to an end, and Dostoevsky's plan was only gaining more and more completeness. The student's story is closely intertwined with the story of the drunkard Marmeladov and his family.

The writer was in danger of creative bondage. To avoid it, the author is distracted from Crime and Punishment for 21 days and literally in three weeks writes a new novel, The Gambler, takes it to the publishing house.

Then he again continues to write a drawn-out novel about a crime. He studies crime chronicles and becomes convinced of the relevance of the chosen topic. He ends the novel in Lublin, where he lives at this time with his sister on the estate. The novel was completely finished and was published at the end of 1866.

Diary of work on the novel

It is impossible to study the history of writing a novel without studying the writer's drafts. Sketches and rough notes help to understand how much effort, work, soul and heart, how many thoughts and ideas the author put into his novel. They show how the concept of the work changed, how the range of tasks expanded, how the entire architecture of the composition of the novel was built.

The writer almost completely changed the form of the narrative in order to understand the behavior and character of Raskolnikov as detailed and thoroughly as possible, to understand the motives of his actions and deeds. In the final version (third), the narration is already conducted from the third person.

So the hero begins to live his life, and completely independently of the will of the author, does not obey him. Reading workbooks, it becomes clear how long and painfully Dostoevsky himself is trying to figure out the motives that pushed the hero to the crime, but the author almost failed.

And the writer creates a hero in which "two opposite characters alternately change." It is clearly seen how in Rodion two extremes, two principles are simultaneously present and fight with each other: contempt for people and love for them.

Therefore, it was very difficult for the author to write the ending of the novel. At first Dostoevsky wanted to end with how the hero turned to God. However, the final version ends quite differently. And this prompts the reader to think, and even after the last page of the novel has been turned.

"Crime and Punishment", the history of the creation of which lasted almost 7 years, is one of the most famous novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky both in Russia and abroad. In this creation, the classic of Russian literature, as never before, revealed his talent as a psychologist and connoisseur of human souls. What prompted Dostoevsky to write a work about a murderer, and after all, this topic is not characteristic of the literature of that time?

Fyodor Dostoevsky - master of the psychological novel

The writer was born on November 11, 1821 in the city of Moscow. His father, Mikhail Andreevich, was a nobleman, court counselor, and his mother, Maria Fedorovna, came from a merchant family.

There was everything in the life of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky: loud fame and poverty, dark days in the Peter and Paul Fortress and years of hard labor, addiction to gambling and conversion to the Christian faith. Even during the life of the writer, such an epithet as "genius" was applied to his work.

Dostoevsky died at the age of 59 from pulmonary emphysema. He left behind a huge legacy - novels, poems, diaries, letters, etc. In Russian literature, Fyodor Mikhailovich is given the place of the chief psychologist and connoisseur of human souls. Some literary critics (for example, Maxim Gorky), especially of the Soviet period, called Dostoevsky an "evil genius" because they believed that the writer defended "incorrect" political views in his works - conservative and even monarchist at some point in his life. However, one can argue with this: Dostoevsky's novels are not political, but they are always deeply psychological, their goal is to show the human soul and life itself as it is. And the work "Crime and Punishment" is the most striking confirmation of this.

The history of the creation of the novel "Crime and Punishment"

Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1850 was sent to hard labor in Omsk. "Crime and Punishment", the history of the creation of which began there, was first published in 1866, and before that the writer had to go through not the best days in his life.

In 1854, the writer was freed. Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to his brother in 1859 that the idea of ​​a certain confession novel came to him when he was lying on a dirty bunk back in the 50s and was experiencing the most difficult moments in his life. But he was in no hurry to start this work, because he was not even sure that he would survive.

And so, in 1865, Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich, in dire need of money, signs an agreement with one publisher, under which he undertakes to submit a new novel by November 1866. Having received the fee, the writer improved his affairs, but his addiction to roulette played a cruel joke on him: he lost all the remaining money in Wiesbaden, the hotel owners did not evict him, but they stopped feeding and even turned off the light in the room. It was in these conditions that Dostoevsky began Crime and Punishment.

The history of the creation of the novel was nearing completion: the deadlines were running out - the author worked in a hotel, on a steamer, on his way home to St. Petersburg. He practically finished the novel, and then ... he took and burned the manuscript.

Dostoevsky began his work anew, and while the first two parts of the work were being published and the whole of Petersburg was being read by them, he at an accelerated pace created the remaining three, including the epilogue.

"Crime and Punishment" - the theme of the novel is clearly visible already in the title of the work.

The main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, decides to murder and rob an old usurer. On the one hand, the young man justifies his action by the fact that he and his family are in need. Rodion feels responsible for the fate of loved ones, but in order to help his sister and mother with at least something, he needs a large amount of money. On the other hand, murder remains an immoral and sinful act.

Rodion successfully commits the intended crime. But in the second part of the novel, he is faced with a problem more serious than poverty - his conscience begins to torment him. He becomes nervous, it seems to him that everyone around him knows about his act. As a result, Rodion begins to get seriously ill. After recovering, the young man seriously thinks about surrendering to the authorities. But acquaintance with Sonya Marmeladova, as well as the arrival of his mother and sister in the city, for a while, make him abandon this venture.

Three suitors are claiming for the hand of Rodion's sister, Dunya, at once: court councilor Pyotr Luzhin, landowner Svidrigailov and Rodion's friend Razumikhin. Rodion and Razumikhin manage to upset the planned wedding of Dunya and Luzhin, but the latter leaves angry and thinks about

Rodion Raskolnikov becomes more and more attached to Sonya Marmeladova - the daughter of his late friend. They talk with the girl about life, spend time together.

But a black cloud hangs over Rodion - there were witnesses who confirmed at the police station that recently Raskolnikov often went to the murdered usurer. The young man is still being released from the police station, but he remains the main suspect.

The most important events of the novel "Crime and Punishment" in chapters fall on the 5th part of the work and the epilogue.

The offended Luzhin tries to frame Sonya Marmeladova, passing her off as a thief and thereby quarreling with Raskolnikov. However, his plan fails, but Rodion does not stand up and confesses to Sonya that he had committed murder.

An outsider takes the blame for Raskolnikov's crime, but the investigator is sure that it was Rodion who committed the crime, so he visits the young man and tries to convince him to confess again.

At this time, Svidrigailov is trying to get Dunya's location by force, a frightened girl shoots him with a revolver. When the weapon misfires, and Dunya convinces the landowner that she does not love him, Svidrigailov lets the girl go. Having donated 15 thousand to Sonya Marmeladova and 3 thousand to the Raskolnikov family, the landowner commits suicide.

Rodion confesses to the murder of the usurer and receives 8 years of hard labor in Siberia. Sonya goes into exile after him. The former life for the former student is over, but thanks to the girl's love, he feels like a new stage in his destiny begins.

The image of Rodion Raskolnikov

In the novel "Crime and Punishment", the characterization of Rodion Raskolnikov and the assessment of his actions by the author himself is ambiguous.

The young man is handsome, smart enough, one might say, ambitious. But the life situation in which he found himself, or rather the social situation, does not allow him not only to realize his talents, but even to finish his studies at the university, to find a decent job. His sister is about to "sell herself" to an unloved person (to marry Luzhin for the sake of his fortune). Raskolnikov's mother is in poverty, and her beloved girl is forced to engage in prostitution. And Rodion does not see any way to help them and himself, except to get a large amount of money. But the idea of ​​instant enrichment can only be realized with the help of robbery (in this case, it also entailed murder).

According to morality, Raskolnikov had no right to take the life of another person, and reasoning that the old woman did not have long to live anyway, or that she had no right to "Jew" on the grief of other people is not an excuse and not a reason for murder. But Raskolnikov, although he is tormented by his act, considers himself innocent to the last: he explains his actions by the fact that at that moment he thought only about how to help loved ones.

Sonya Marmeladova

In the novel "Crime and Punishment", the description of Sonya's image is as contradictory as that of Raskolnikov: the reader immediately recognizes them

Sonya is kind and, in a sense, selfless, this is evident from her actions in relation to other people. The girl reads the "Gospel", but at the same time is a prostitute. A devout prostitute - what could be more paradoxical?

However, Sonya is engaged in this trade not because she has a craving for debauchery - this is the only way for an uneducated attractive girl to earn a living, and not only for herself, but also for her large family: her stepmother Katerina Ivanovna and her three stepbrothers and sisters. As a result, Sonya is the only one who went to Siberia after Rodion to support him in difficult times.

Such paradoxical images are the basis of Dostoevsky's realism, because in the real world things cannot be only black or only white, like people. Therefore, a girl with a pure soul in certain life circumstances can engage in such a dirty trade, and a young man of noble spirit can decide to kill.

Arkady Svidrigailov

Arkady Svidrigailov is another character in the novel (a 50-year-old landowner) who literally duplicates Raskolnikov in many aspects. This is not an accident, but a technique chosen by the author. What is its essence?

"Crime and Punishment" is filled with dual images, perhaps to show that many people have equally positive and negative traits, can walk on the same paths in life, but they always choose the outcome of their lives.

Arkady Svidrigailov is a widower. Even with his wife alive, he harassed Raskolnikov's sister, who was in their service. When his wife - Marfa Petrovna - died, the landowner came to ask for the hand of Avdotya Raskolnikova.

Svidrigailov has many sins behind his shoulders: he is suspected of murder, violence and debauchery. But this does not prevent a man from becoming the only person who took care of the family of the late Marmeladov, not only in a financial sense, but even placed the children in an orphanage after the death of their mother. Svidrigailov in a barbaric way tries to win over Dunya, but at the same time he is deeply wounded by the girl's dislike and he commits suicide, leaving Raskolnikov's sister an impressive amount as an inheritance. Nobility and cruelty in this man are combined in their bizarre patterns, as in Raskolnikov.

P.P. Luzhin in the system of images of the novel

Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin ("Crime and Punishment") is another "double" of Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov, before committing a crime, compares himself to Napoleon, and so Luzhin is the Napoleon of his time in its purest form: unprincipled, caring only about himself, striving to amass capital at any cost. Perhaps that is why Raskolnikov hates a successful fellow: after all, Rodion himself believed that for the sake of his own prosperity he had the right to kill a man whose fate seemed less important to him.

Luzhin (Crime and Punishment) is very straightforward, like a character, caricatured and devoid of the inconsistency inherent in Dostoevsky's heroes. It can be assumed that the writer deliberately made Peter just like that, so that he became a clear embodiment of the bourgeois permissiveness that played such a cruel joke with Raskolnikov himself.

Publications of the novel abroad

"Crime and Punishment", the history of which took more than 6 years, was highly appreciated by foreign publications. In 1866, several chapters from the novel were translated into French and published in the Courrier russe.

In Germany, the work was published under the name "Raskolnikov" and by 1895 its published circulation was 2 times more than any other work of Dostoevsky.

At the beginning of the XX century. the novel Crime and Punishment has been translated into Polish, Czech, Italian, Serbian, Catalan, Lithuanian, etc.

Adaptation of the novel

The heroes of the novel "Crime and Punishment" are so colorful and interesting that they have taken on the adaptation of the novel more than once both in Russia and abroad. The first film, Crime and Punishment, appeared in Russia back in 1909 (directed by Vasily Goncharov). This was followed by film adaptations in 1911, 1913, 1915.

In 1917 the world saw a picture of the American director Lawrence McGill, in 1923 the film "Raskolnikov" was released by the German director Robert Wienet.

After that, about 14 more adaptations were filmed in different countries. Of the Russian works, the most recent was the 2007 multi-part film "Crime and Punishment" (directed by Dmitry Svetozarov).

Romance in popular culture

In movies, Dostoevsky's novel often flashes in the hands of the heroes serving imprisonment: in the movie The Incredible Adventures of Wallace and Gromit: A Haircut "Zero", TV-c / c "She-Wolf", "Desperate Housewives", etc.

In the computer game Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, in one of the episodes, the book with the title of Dostoevsky's novel is clearly visible in Sherlock Holmes's hands, and in GTA IV Crime and Punishment is the name of one of the missions.

Raskolnikov House in St. Petersburg

There is an assumption that Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich settled his hero in a house that actually exists in St. Petersburg. The researchers made such conclusions, since Dostoevsky mentions in the novel: he is in the "S-m" lane, next to the "K-m" bridge. At Stolyarny Pereulok-5, there really is a house that could well serve as a prototype for the novel. Today this building is one of the most visited tourist spots in St. Petersburg.