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Raskolnikov’s City and the Napoleonic Plan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Adele Lindenmeyr
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Extract

Dostoevsky, having lived in the area of central Petersburg around Sennaia Ploshchad' (Haymarket) for several years, was well acquainted with the problems (prevalent in this section) created by the rapid, unplanned growth of the city. In a little-noted passage in Crime and Punishment which recounts Raskolnikov’s thoughts just before the murder (part 1, chapter 6), Dostoevsky connects these urban changes to Raskolnikov’s thoughts and subsequent actions. Raskolnikov imagines a reconstruction of Petersburg aimed especially at the improvement of the wretched, crowded Sennaia area. This passage reveals important facets of the character of Raskolnikov and of the thematics of the novel. The city has two forms, both of which have a powerful psychological influence on Raskolnikov: his motive and rationale for the murder draw support from both the squalor of Sennaia Ploshchad' and the model of Napoleon III’s reconstructed Paris. For Dostoevsky, however, the reality of Sennaia undermines the rational, utilitarian schemes of Napoleon and Raskolnikov and, by extension, Raskolnikov’s whole intellectual rationale for the murder.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 37 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1976

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References

1. Twenty-four of the thirty-five novels, stories, and sketches listed in the index to the 1956 Soviet edition of his works are set in Petersburg. Fanger, Donald, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism (Chicago, 1967), p. 291, n. 3Google Scholar.

2. For example, see Fanger; Antsiferov, N. P., Pctcrburg Dostocvskogo (Petersburg, 1923)Google Scholar; Grossman, L, “Gorod i liudi Prestupleniia i nakazaniia ,” in Prestuplenie i nakazanie (Moscow, 1935)Google Scholar; Sarukhanian, E., Dostoevskii v Peterburge (Leningrad, 1970)Google Scholar.

3. Fanger, p. 134.

4. Dostoevskii, F. M., Polnoe sobranie khudozhestvennykh proizvedenii v trinadtsati tomakh (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926-30), 11: 109 Google Scholar.

5. Quoted in Antsiferov, p. 20.

6. See Zelnik, Reginald E., Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855-1870 (Stanford, 1971)Google Scholar. “

7. See Grossman, “Gorod i liudi”; and Fanger.

8. Akademiia nauk SSSR, Institut istorii, Ochcrki istorii Lcningrada, vol. 2 (Moscow- Leningrad, 1957), p. 147.Google Scholar

9. Zelnik, p. 242.

10. Ocherki istorii Leningrada, p. 826.

11. Sarukhanian, p. 164.

12. Quoted in Sarukhanian, p. 165.

13. Zelnik, p. 58.

14. Another part of Petersburg, the Petersburg Side, is also portrayed through the consciousness of a character—Svidrigailov (see Antsiferov, p. 67).

15. Dostoevskii, F. M., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad, 1973), 6: 6 Google Scholar. All further quotations from Crime and Punishment are from this edition.

16. See Grossman, L., Dostoevskii (Moscow, 1965), p. 31 Google Scholar.

17. Editors’ note in Dostoevskii, F. M., Prcstuplcnie i nakacanie (Moscow, 1970 Google Scholar, “Literaturnye pamiatniki” edition, eds. L. D. Opul'skaia and G. F. Kogan), p. 741, and in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Leningrad, 1973), 7: 333. I am indebted to Professor Nathan Rosen for this reference and also for the reference in footnote 30.

18. Sarukhanian, p. 167.

19. Pinkney, David H., Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (Princeton, 1972), pp. 33–34 Google Scholar.

20. Ibid., p. 24.

21. Ibid., p. 104 and chapter 4, passim.

22. Ibid., p. 221.

23. Fanger, p. 188. Fanger points out one of the calligraphic exercises in Dostoevsky's notebooks to Crime and Punishment: the carefully traced names of Napoleon and Julius Caesar.

24. Quoted in Fanger, pp. 188-89.

25. For detailed discussion of Dostoevsky's journalism and pochvennichestvo see Nechaeva, V. S., Zhurnal M. M. i F. M. Dostoevskikh “Vremia,” 1861-1863 (Moscow, 1972)Google Scholar and Ellen Bell|Chances, “The Ideology of Pochvennichestvo in Dostoevsky's Journals Vremia and Epokha” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1972).

26. “Politicheskoe obozrenie,” Vremia, May 1862, p. 6.

27. Letter 172, Paris, August 28, 1863, in Dolinin, A. S., ed., F. M. Dostoevskii: Pis'ma, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), p. 321 Google Scholar.

28. Letter 174, Paris, September 1, 1863, ibid., p. 323.

29. Dostoevskii, F. M., Polnoc sobranie sochincnii (Leningrad, 1973), 5: 93–94 Google Scholar.

30. An indication that Dostoevsky knew Napoleon Ill's introduction and used it as a source for Raskolnikov's theory can be found in the third notebook for Crime and Punishment: “Porfirii. NB. Tell me, is the article in ‘Vedomosti’ yours? Did you study it, or write it [ili uchit'sia, ili pisat'] ?” Dostoevskii, F. M., Prcstuplenic i nakasanie (Moscow, 1970), p. 577 Google Scholar. The editors comment that both the Sankt-Peterburgskic vedomosti and the Moskovskic vedomosti printed Napoleon Ill's introduction to History of Julius Caesar, ibid., p. 795.

31. Sennaia plays a role in another of Raskolnikov's short-lived awakenings. The day before the murder he had gone to Vasilevskii and Petrovskii Islands, where he fell asleep and dreamed of peasants killing a mare. He awoke to renounce his plan for the murder, praying “Lord, show me the way, and I will renounce this accursed … dream of mine” (p. SO). But perversely he takes an indirect route home, by way of Sennaia Ploshchad', instead of by the “very shortest and direct way,” the “most advantageous to him” (p. 50). At Sennaia he gets information from Lizaveta giving him the opportunity to commit the crime.