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Crime and Myth: The Archetypal Pattern of Rebirth in Three Novels of Dostoevsky

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Alexandra F. Rudicina
Alexandra F. Rudicina*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

The focal dimension of Dostoevsky's creative effort in his later period is his compelling esthetic and metaphysical concern with ultimate violence, particularly in its doctrinaire or ideological aspect. The act of murder is seen as a “crime of reason,” an outgrowth of modern man's autarkic intellect. It is this “crime of reason” in accordance with his metaphysical esthetics that Dostoevsky constitutes as the transgression but also a potential felix culpa leading through suffering and expiation to ultimate rebirth. Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov each present an individuated version of this archetypal scheme. Raskolnikov emerges at the end of Crime and Punishment on the threshold of “a new life.” In The Possessed, Stavrogin's potentially “positive” performance perverts itself into “a quest for damnation.” Dmitri Karamazov undergoes spiritual regeneration even though falling short of complete redemption. In thus restating the timeless relevance of the archetypal pattern of rebirth through sin and expiation, Dostoevsky brings a mythical perspective to his vision of the Russia of his time.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 87 , Issue 5 , October 1972 , pp. 1065 - 1074
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972

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References

1 See Ernest J. Simmons, Dostoevsky: The Making of a Novelist (New York: Knopf, 1962), pp. 155–56; Martin Kanes, Zola's La Bête humaine: A Study in Literary Creation,“ Univ. of California Publications in Modern Philology, No. 68 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1962), pp. 31–33 ; and Albert Camus, VHomme révolté (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), Introd., pp. 13, 17.

2 Vyacheslav Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky, trans. Norman Cameron, ed. S. Konovalov (New York: Noonday, 1960), pp. 15–17; D. A. Traversi, “Dostoevsky,” Criterion, 16 (1937), rpt. in Dostoevsky : A Collection of Critical Essays, Twentieth Century Views, ed. René Wellek (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 160–62.

3 Irving Howe, “Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation,” Politics and the Novel (New York: Horizon Press, 1957), rpt. in Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, pp. 56–57.

4 Allen Tate, “Our Cousin, Mr. Poe,” Collected Essays (Denver, Colo.: Swallow, 1959), rpt. in Modern Literary Criticism: an Anthology, ed. Irving Howe (New York: Grove, 1961), p. 263.

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6 Nicholas Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, trans. Donald Att-water (Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1964), p. 68.

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8 Crime and Punishment, The Coulson Translation, ed. George Gibian (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 2 (Pt. i,Ch. i). Subsequent references are to this edition and are placed in the text, except when stated otherwise.

9 Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. Elinor Hewitt (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1969), p. 304.

10 See also Paul Evdokimov, Dostoievsky et le problème du mal (Valence: Imprimeries Réunies, 1942), p. 135.

11 Yanko Lavrin, Dostoevsky: A Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 80.

12 F. M. Dostoevskij, Prestuplenie i nakazanie: Roman v “sesti castjax s epilogom. Polnoe sobranie sočinenij (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Xudožestvennoj Literatury, 1956), v, 285; my translation.

13 Magic in the Web (Lexington : Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1956), p. 159. Quoted and commented upon by Honor Matthews in The Primal Curse: The Myth of Cain and Abel (New York: Schocken, 1967), pp. 46–47.

14 (Paris: Plon, 1963), p. 73.

15 See Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, p. 99.

16 See Berdyaev, p. 77.

17 Crime and Punishment, Epilogue, Ch. ii, pp. 526–27. See also Evodokimov, Dostoievsky et le problème du mal, p. 25.

18 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, N. J. : Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 147; see also A. L. Flekser (Volynskij), kniga velikogo gneva: Kriticeskia stat'i‘—zametki‘—polemika, 2nd ed. (S. Petersburg: Izdanie, 1904), pp. 47, 50–52, 126–27.

19 Le Christianisme de Dostoïevski (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1939), p. 53.

20 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew, A Signet Classic (New York : New American Library, 1962), pp. 416–31 (Pt. ii, Ch. ix). Subsequent citations are to this edition.

21 Dostoievsky (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1946), p. 82. “Sinning our way to Jesus” is Powys's paraphrase of D. H. Lawrence.

22 See Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans. Michael A. Minihan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 462–63, 466–67; see also Ralph Matlaw, The Brothers Karamazov: Novelistic Technique (The Hague: Mouton, 1957), pp. 20–21.

23 See Blackmur “In the Birdcage: Notes on The Possessed of Dostoevsky,” The Hudson Review, 1 (1948), rpt. as “The Possessed: In the Birdcage,” in Eleven Essays in the European Novel, p. 184. See also Vyacheslav Ivanov, Dostoevsky: Freedom and the Tragic Life, p. 63.

24 See Ivanov, Dostoevsky: Freedom and the Tragic Life, pp. 64–65.

25 Irving Howe, “Dostoevsky: The Politics of Salvation,” pp. 56, 69–70.

26 See Blackmur, p. 182. See also Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, p. 443; Flekser (Volynskij), Kniga velikogo gneva, pp. 121–24; Eyjokimov, Dostoievsky et le problème du mal, pp. 370–71.

27 Julius Meier-Graeffe, Dostoevsky: The Man and His Works, trans. Herbert H. Marks (New York: Harcourt, 1938), pp. 222–23. See also Evdokimov, Dostoïevsky et le problème du mal, p. 372.

28 “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” in Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 103, from the Standard Ed. of Collected Psychological Works, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), xxi, 177–94.

29 Blackmur, “The Brothers Karamazov,” in Eleven Essays in the European Novel. Cf. Matlaw, The Brothers Karamazov: Novelistic Technique, pp. 22–23. See also Evdokimov, Dostoievsky et le problème du mal, p. 15.

30 The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett, Introd. Marc Slonim (New York: Random, 1950), p. 709, (Bk. ix, Ch. iii). Subsequent citations are to this edition. See Ivanov, Dostoevsky: Freedom and the Tragic Life, p. 84.

31 See Freud, “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” pp. 103, 107–08. Cf. also Theodor Reik, Myth and Guilt: The Crime and Punishment of Mankind (New York: Braziller, 1961), Pts. i and ii, pp. 3–128, 411–12. See also Matlaw, p. 22.

32 “Tragic World of the Karamazovs,” in Tragic Themes in Western Literature, ed. Cleanth Brooks (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1960), p. 113.

33 A. L. Flekser (Volynskij), Carstvo Karamazovyx . (S. Petersburg: Tipografia M. M. Stasyulevicha, 1901), pp. 80–82.

34 Flekser, pp. 14–22.

35 See Sewall, “Tragic World of the Karamazovs,” pp. 114–16. See also Ralph Harper, The Seventh Solitude: Metaphysical Homelessness in Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky; z and Nietzsche (Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), p. 56.

36 Crime and Punishment, p. 502. See George Gibian, “Traditional Symbolism in ‘Crime and Punishment,‘ ” PMLA, 70 (1955), rpt. in Feodor Dostoevski: Crime and Punishment, ed. George Gibian (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 586.

37 Reinhart Lauth, Die Philosophie Dostoevskis in Systematisher Darstellung (München: R. Piper, 1950), pp. 389–90.

38 Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, p. 613. See Evdokimov, Dostoievsky et le problème du mal, pp. 189–90; Flekser, Carstuo Karamazovyx, pp. 105–06; Losskii, Dostoevskij i ego Xristianskoe miroponimanie (New York: Izdatel'stvo imeni Čekhova, 1953), pp. 250–51.

39 Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism (New York: Knopf, 1961), p. 307.