The novel "Crime and Punishment" is rightfully considered a masterpiece even among the five great novels of F. M. Dostoevsky. It is, as it were, a kind of epicenter of his work, it contains the seeds of all those ideas that will be developed in more detail in his other works; his other novels are like diverging circles around a stone thrown into the water or like an aura around a diamond - the super-dense text of Crime and Punishment. The super-density of the text is evidenced by the fact that almost all researchers who tried to analyze the spiritual meaning of "Crime and Punishment" switched to page-by-page commenting. Such, for example, is G. Meyer's work, which has already become a classic, Light in the Night (On Crime and Punishment). The Experience of Slow Reading”, and this is, probably, the last work of Fr. Nikolai Epishev "Spiritually Significant Details in the Composition of F. M. Dostoevsky's Novel "Crime and Punishment"". Almost every episode of the novel is subject to several readings, which do not exclude each other, but exist, as it were, at different levels, collectively creating the entire volume of the text space. The text acquires the property of super-density, obviously because, like from a germinal crystal, it grows out of the gospel text, which, by definition, possesses super-density: in the center of Crime and Punishment there is an episode of reading Chapter XI of the Gospel of John about the resurrection of Lazarus. The Gospel text, as it were, forms around itself the text of the novel that is structurally related to itself.

It is characteristic that it is precisely over this episode that serious disagreements arise between Dostoevsky and the editors of Russkiy Vestnik during the publication of the novel. In order to preserve the extensive gospel quotation in the text, Dostoevsky goes to significant alterations on the instructions of the editors, and this was usually almost impossible to achieve from him. In a letter dated July 8, 1866, to N.A. Lyubimov, he pleads: “And now my greatest request is before you: for the sake of Christ, leave everything else as it is now. Everything that you said, I have fulfilled, everything is divided, demarcated and clear. The reading of the Gospel is given a different flavor. In a word, allow me to fully rely on you: take care of my poor work, kind Nikolai Alekseevich!

In addition to the structural qualities acquired by the text formed around the gospel quotation, to which we will return, the gospel quotation also sets the semantic parameters of the novel, determines the main theme - and it turns out to be not quite the one stated in the title: we have a novel about the resurrection, about how the resurrection is performed, about the cases in which it turns out to be impossible. Crime and punishment are only an insignificant part, so to speak, of the initial parameters of the gospel plot, the basis of which is the restoration of the corrupted flesh in a new glory, but this basis of the gospel plot turns out to be almost beyond the boundaries of the plot of the novel, its last, final lines are about it: “But here a new history is already beginning, the history of the gradual renewal of man, the history of his gradual rebirth, his gradual transition from one world to another, acquaintance with a new, hitherto unknown reality”; the whole novel is devoted to the secret that takes place in the cave with Lazarus, who has not yet heard the call of Christ, and then - what happens to him, who has just caught this call. The novel “Crime and Punishment” ends at the moment when “the dead man came out” and Jesus said: “Untie him; let him go, ”and the last words read by Sonya Raskolnikov are no longer about the novel plot, but about the impact that they should have on readers, and it’s not for nothing that these words are highlighted

Dostoyevsky in italics: "Then many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what Jesus had done, believed in Him."

Before us is a novel about what death and corruption are, about how they take possession of a person, about how this process develops in a three-component person in different ways: that is, about different participation in this process or in opposition to it of the flesh, soul and spirit. Before us is a novel about the action of sin in man. The consequence of the first sin committed by the forefathers was the death, corruption and destruction of the flesh, which suffered for the tempted spirit, just as the entire universe as a whole suffered for the person who committed the sin, became struck by the "seed of aphids." And here, in a strange way, we see that the novel “The Drunk Ones”, originally conceived by Dostoevsky, about which it is customary to say that it was not written and gave “Crime and Punishment” a “social background”, is actually written and is identical to “Crime and Punishment” . Only we are not talking about drunkenness as a social phenomenon, not even about drunkenness as one of the sins, but about the drunkenness of sin, corrupting the flesh and clouding the mind: it’s not for nothing that Raskolnikov is repeatedly mistaken for a drunk after committing a crime, and Svidrigailov speaks of prodigal sin as a replacement drunkenness.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, speaking of the Church Sacraments, explains: “The Sacraments are the actions of God, performed within the Church, in which God gives us His grace through the material world in which we are, which we have given into slavery, mutilated, sometimes made so terrible, but which only bears the consequences of human sin - he himself is not sinful. Saint Theodore the Studite, in one of his teachings, says that the universe in which we live, no matter how it lost its way, did not choose the wrong path, but was directed along this path by a person who had broken away from God. And he gives this image: the universe in its savagery is like a horse that gallops, enraged, having lost all concept of where to gallop and what to do, because the rider is drunk ... We are drunk with sin; and the world that we were called to lead to its fullness can no longer find it, because we are drunk - not because the world is sinful or ugly.

Before us is one of the fundamental Christian symbols: a horse and a rider - man and the universe, spirit and flesh - and needless to say that for "Crime and Punishment" this symbol is of paramount importance.

Dreams and visions of Raskolnikov constitute a kind of story of his spiritual life, revealed in the connections of dreams with the episodes of the novel taking place in reality. But in this story itself, a trilogy about body, soul and spirit stands out.

Raskolnikov's first dream is a dream about a horse beaten to death, from which the owner wants to achieve the unbearable and impossible for her, harnessing her to a cart filled with drunken people that she cannot carry. The closest connection between the episodes of the text, where everything is picked up by something, everything is reflected in something, makes it possible to apply a multi-level interpretation to Crime and Punishment, similar to the exegesis of sacred texts. Using the example of the first dream, we will see such an interpretation at all levels (which, of course, does not exclude the possibility of expanding the interpretation at each level). The remaining episodes of the novel will inevitably be interpreted incompletely and selectively.

The first level is social (or historical). The episode with the beating of a horse in Raskolnikov's dream is traditionally considered an allusion to Nekrasov's poem "On the Weather". Moreover, it is assumed that Dostoevsky is in solidarity with Nekrasov in relation to what is happening, that is, in horror, pity, indignation. It turns out that Dostoevsky was amazed by the fact depicted in Nekrasov's poem with tremendous emotional intensity, to such an extent that he considered it necessary to duplicate what Nekrasov said in his novel.

Dostoevsky, of course, saw such scenes in reality, and his conviction is known that reality is deeper than any Shakespeare; if he considered it necessary to “reference” so clearly to a work of art, then, apparently, not because he was amazed at the fact reflected in it, but because he saw the work itself as some new fact of being that really struck him.

This new fact consisted, firstly, in the purpose for which the corresponding facts were chosen from reality and collected by those who had to set their readers in a certain way (this aspect was reflected rather in The Brothers Karamazov, in the Ivanov "collection" and in why she is going to: to “throw her in the face” of God as proof of the imperfection and abomination of the world he created, and to do this in front of his brother Alyosha, whom Ivan needs to “put on his point”; the poem “About the weather” is included by Ivan to the collection; by the way, many of Nekrasov's poems were written in the same manner - as collections of terrifying facts without a gap: "The Forgotten Village", "Village News", etc.); secondly, in the ratio of what is actually happening and perceived by a person who is tuned in a certain way. The “Nekrasov’s” perception of a horse trying to push an unbearable cart (“Nekrasov’s” - in quotation marks, because this is the perception of Nekrasov’s readers, and not the poet himself and not his “narrator” - the position of the latter is expressed in the following lines of the poem: “I was angry - and thought sadly: // “Should I stand up for her? / / In our time, it’s fashionable to sympathize, / / ​​We wouldn’t mind helping you, / / ​​An unrequited victim of the people, / / ​​- Yes, we don’t know how to help ourselves! ”, horses, as if personifying the suffering and misfortune of this world, its injustice and ruthlessness, moreover, the very existence of this horse, weak and downtrodden - all these are the facts of Raskolnikov's dream. The poor Savraska, harnessed to a huge cart, into which a crowd of drunks got into, is only Raskolnikov's idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe state of the world. But what really exists: "... one drunk, who is unknown why and where they were transported at that time along the street in a huge cart drawn by a huge draft horse ...".

The fact that this cart on the first pages of "Crime and Punishment" seemed to have left Raskolnikov's dream was noticed by V. Viktorovich3.

Thus, only the cart, its dimensions, is adequately perceived, but not the load and not the strength of the horse harnessed to this cart. That is, a challenge to God is thrown on the basis of non-existent injustices, for everyone is given a burden according to their strength and no one is given more than he can bear.

An analogue of a horse from a dream is Katerina Ivanovna in the novel, falling under the weight of her not real troubles and worries, which are very great, but bearable (especially since God does not take his hand away and when the edge comes, there is always an assistant: Sonya, Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov) , and under the burden of troubles and worries that she romantically imagined for herself, and it is from these troubles, insults and sorrows that exist almost only in her inflamed brain that she eventually dies - like a "driven horse." Katerina Ivanovna will exclaim to herself: “They left the nag! ..” And indeed, she kicks, fighting off the horror of life with her last strength, like a nag from Raskolnikov’s dream, but these blows, hitting the living people around her, are often just as crushing, like the blows of the horses' hooves that crushed Marmeladov's chest (take, for example, her act with Sonya).

In connection with all that has been said, the question arises - to what extent the Russian revolutionary movement (I mean its sincere participants) fought for the liberation of the people from real hardships and to what extent these hardships "dream" noble young hearts - like Raskolnikov the suffering of the unfortunate savraska. It seems that Dostoevsky imagined the answer to this question quite clearly.

The second level is moral. It is revealed when comparing the names of Mikolka from the dream and Nikolai (Mikolai) the dyer. Raskolnikov throws himself at the murderer Mikolka with his fists to punish him. The dyer Nikolka will take upon himself the sin and guilt of the murderer Raskolnikov, defending him with his unexpected “testimony” at the most terrible moment for him from the torture of Porfiry Petrovich and from a forced confession. At this level, Dostoevsky's cherished thought is revealed that everyone is to blame for everyone, that there is only one true attitude towards the sin of one's neighbor - this is to take his sin upon himself, take his crime and guilt upon himself - at least for a while, bear his burden in order to he did not fall in despair from an unbearable burden, but he saw a helping hand and the way of resurrection.

The third level is allegorical. Here the thought of the second level unfolds and is supplemented: not only everyone is to blame for everyone, but everyone is to blame for everyone. Torturer and victim can change places at any moment. In Raskolnikov's dream, young, well-fed, drunk, cheerful people kill a staring horse - in the novel reality, the drunk and exhausted Marmeladov dies under the hooves of young, strong, well-fed, well-groomed horses. Moreover, his death is no less terrible than the death of a horse: “The entire chest was mangled, crumpled and tormented; several ribs on the right side are broken. On the left side, at the very heart, there was an ominous, large, yellowish-black spot, a cruel blow with a hoof<…>crushed was captured in a wheel and dragged, turning, thirty steps along the pavement.

But the fourth level is most important for understanding the meaning of the novel - symbolic, and it is at this level that Raskolnikov's dreams are interconnected in a system. Waking up after a dream about killing a horse, Raskolnikov speaks as if he identifies himself with those who killed, but trembles at the same time as if all the blows that fell on the unfortunate horse hit him.

"God! - he exclaimed, - really, really, really, I will take an ax, start hitting on the head, crush her skull ... I will slide in sticky, warm blood, pick the lock, steal and tremble; hide, all covered in blood ... with an ax ... Lord, really?

He was trembling like a leaf as he said this.

Perhaps the resolution of this contradiction is in the following words of Raskolnikov: “What am I! he continued, raising himself up again and as if in deep amazement, “after all, I knew that I would not be able to bear it, so why have I been torturing myself until now? After all, yesterday, yesterday, when I went to do this ... test, after all, yesterday I completely understood that I could not stand it ... Why am I now? What am I still doubting?

"I tortured myself." He is really both a “horse” and a killer-Mikolka, demanding that the horse harnessed to an unbearable cart “leaps”. This is his spirit, willful and daring, trying to force his nature, his flesh to do what it cannot, what disgusts it, against which it rebels. He will say so: “After all, the mere thought made me sick in reality and threw me into horror ...” Porfiry Petrovich also tells Raskolnikov about this: -s, incognito-that-s, and will lie perfectly, in the most cunning manner; here, it seems, would be a triumph, and enjoy the fruits of your wit, and he clap! Yes, in the most interesting, in the most scandalous place, and he will faint. Let's say it's a sickness, stuffiness also sometimes happens in rooms, but all the same, sir! Still got the idea! He lied incomparably, but he did not manage to calculate on nature. There it is, deceit somewhere!”

It is interesting that this idea - about nature, the flesh, resisting the demonic spirit, in Dostoevsky - and from Pushkin. In the poem “What a night, crackling frost ...” (1827), the hero is a rider on a horse, guardsman, “daring kromeshnik”:

In a hurry, he flies on a date,
Desire boils in his chest.
He says: "My horse is dashing,
My faithful horse! fly arrow!
Hurry, hurry!..” But the zealous horse
Suddenly waved his braided mane
And became. In the darkness between the pillars
On the crossbeam of oak
The corpse swayed. The rider is harsh
Under it was ready to rush,
But the greyhound horse beats under the whip,
Snores and snorts and vomits
Back.

Here, as if in a picture, the inner struggle of a person is unfolded, and it is surprising that it is the spirit that prompts a person to sin, transgress God's law, and the flesh is horrified by the sins of the spirit4. However, the elders often said that the sins of the flesh are safer, because they humble a person, show him his weakness, but spiritual sins are truly terrible and disgusting - precisely because they often allow themselves to be proud of themselves and, therefore, get stuck and get stuck in this quagmire.

It is interesting that with such a meaning of the word “horse, horse”, Amalia Ivanovna’s statement about the deceased Marmeladov is also very nonsensically read: “... your husband is a drunken horse from trampled” (as if the horse was drunk). Here, the soul aspiring to God (remember Marmeladov's confession-sermon at the first meeting with Raskolnikov) perishes, trampled down by the violence of the sinful flesh, unable to resist the sin of drunkenness. Note that, exactly according to the word of the elders, Marmeladov is humble with his sin, and Raskolnikov "walks like a pale angel."

Crime and Punishment unfolds a whole panorama of the various attitudes of the flesh and spirit towards the sin committed. In Marmeladov, the flesh crushes the spirit; in Raskolnikov, the spirit tortures the uncooperative body, forcing it to commit sin - a kind of perversion of asceticism, in which the body is humbled and calmed down by the spirit, like an unbroken, stagnant horse by a skilled rider.

The attitude of the characters towards drunkenness is also characteristic. Marmeladov is devoted to the carnal sin of drunkenness - Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, who are almost never drunk according to the flesh, intoxicated their spirit with the drunkenness of sin. Father Nikolai Epishev noted that when Svidrigailov walks around St. Petersburg in the morning, on the eve of committing suicide, he sees a "dead drunk man" lying face down - an image of his spirit. It is interesting that Raskolnikov also sees a drunk on the way to the office, and he, too, is an image of his spirit: “One drunk was outrageous in the crowd: he kept wanting to dance, but he kept falling to the side. He was surrounded. Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the crowd, looked at the drunk for several minutes, and suddenly burst out laughing shortly and abruptly.

Svidrigailov’s spirit seems to be buried in the depths of the flesh, the hero lives only by it - at the expense of its resources: Arkady Ivanovich himself will tell Raskolnikov upon arrival: “Now I hope for anatomy alone ...” But these “resources” of the flesh, this appearance of life turns out to be only a process decay: after all, decomposition is also a kind of "movement", partly reminiscent of life (see Dostoevsky's story "Bobok" - "A Writer's Diary of 1873"). “In this depravity,” Svidrigailov explains to Raskolnikov, “at least there is something permanent, based even on nature and not subject to fantasy, something that is always a kindled coal in the blood, eternally setting fire, which for a long time, and over the years, can be , not so soon you will flood. Agree yourself, isn't it an occupation of its kind? - What is there to rejoice? Raskolnikov notes. "It's a disease, and a dangerous one." Svidrigailov's flesh becomes a coffin - "scorched", that is, a beautiful, decorated coffin (after all, he is a very beautiful and well-preserved person, although his face resembles a mask), inside which is the abomination of corruption of the soul and spirit. Svidrigailov seems to retreat into the boundaries of his flesh as into a kind of stronghold where God has no access, fenced off from Him by carnal passions. The secret of the possibility of resurrection - in placing the center of his personality outside, in God, in the neighbor, which on the surface looks like a sacrifice (to lay down his soul for his friends), - Lazarus is resurrected because he is a friend of Christ. This secret was once revealed to Svidrigailov, always so collected, in control of himself, when he, almost starting to rave, promises Dunya: “What you believe, I will believe. I'll do everything!" But the center of his personality has long been voluptuousness, defiling his own love; seeing the "divine image" of Dunya (that is, seeing the image of God in Dunya) and being aware of what he sees (see his conversation with Raskolnikov, where he speaks of Dunya as a martyr of the first centuries of Christianity), he becomes inflamed by the sight of the same image, he is plotting the corruption of this image (namely, corruption: Svidrigailov is “accused” of attempting to rape, but he was not going to rape her, he just wanted to convince her to “save her brother voluntarily”), Dunya’s chastity kindles a “ember” in his blood - and there is no salvation.

But the most surprising, perhaps, happens to Sonya. In this case, the body seems to be sacrificed, pawned for the spirit and soul, given as a sacrifice to sin, at the same time becoming the last dam in its path, the body seems to be mechanically damaged, leaving the soul pure and chaste. And from the story of Lazarus, we know that corrupted flesh is not yet an obstacle to the resurrection.

If Raskolnikov's first dream is symbolically read as a dream about the violence of his spirit over the flesh, which is forced to commit a crime, then the second dream of this "trilogy" (which, quite possibly, is not a dream at all, but a waking vision) is read as a torture of his soul immediately after the crime. The body is filled with the spirit half to death, to the point of fainting, to the soon-setting unconsciousness - that is, to the temporary exodus of the soul, and the phrase preceding the dream is characteristic: “Undressing and trembling all over, like a driven horse, he lay down on the sofa, pulled on his overcoat and immediately forgotten ... "The soul is the mistress of the body, the one that Raskolnikov, who ceased to engage in his daily affairs, busy only with the games of his spirit, long and hopelessly owed, with a message about which, in fact, the novel begins:" He owed the mistress all around and was afraid with meet her. It's not that he was so cowardly and downtrodden, quite the contrary; but for some time he had been in an irritable and tense state, resembling hypochondria. He was so deep in himself and retired from everyone that he was afraid of even any meeting, not only a meeting with the hostess.<…>He completely stopped his urgent business and did not want to deal with it.<…>However, this time the fear of meeting with his creditors even struck him.<…>“What business do I want to encroach on and at the same time what trifles I am afraid of!” he thought with a strange smile. But it is Raskolnikov’s “creditor” who will have to pay for what the body, urged on by the spirit, did - and from this point of view, filing a loan letter for collection and calling the debtor to the office immediately after the crime was not accidental: “He woke up in full twilight from a terrible cry. God, what a cry! He had never heard or seen such unnatural sounds, such howls, screams, gnashings, tears, beatings and curses. He could not imagine such atrocity, such frenzy<…>And then, to his greatest amazement, he suddenly heard the voice of his mistress. She howled, squealed and lamented, hastily, hurriedly, letting out words so that it was impossible to make out, begging for something - of course, that they would stop beating her, because they beat her mercilessly on the stairs. The voice of the one who was beating became so terrible from anger and fury that it was only hoarse, but still the one who was beating also said something like that, and also quickly, unintelligibly, hurrying and choking. In essence, we have before us a description of what the soul undergoes, stopped at the airy ordeals, symbolized by the ladder - the souls separated from the body ascend it in order to appear before God. Raskolnikov’s mother will speak about this staircase, extremely subtly and accurately feeling the spiritual situation of everything that happens: “But here is this staircase<…>What a terrible staircase! Each floor (a platform after a flight of stairs: a flight is a space that one flies through without difficulty) is a special ordeal dedicated to a certain sin, and in the system of the novel the correspondence of the “floors” of sin and torture is strictly observed: on the fourth floor there is the apartment of Raskolnikov’s mistress, on the fourth floor - the apartment of Alena Ivanovna, who was killed by him.

In accordance with the description of the ordeals of St. Theodora6, the sin of murder is tortured at the fourteenth ordeal; at the fourth ordeal, the sins of gluttony are tortured - including the sin of drunkenness, which in the novel, as already mentioned, is a collective designation for all sins that intoxicate people with the drunkenness of sin; at the same time, gluttony is the main sin of Praskovya Pavlovna Zarnitsyna herself, about whom Razumikhin says: “Here it draws in; here is the end of the world, an anchor, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three-fish foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, fat kulebyaks, an evening samovar, quiet sighs and warm katsaveykas, heated couches, - well, that’s exactly how you died, but at the same time you are alive, both benefits at once! It is also interesting that on the fifth ordeal (Raskolnikov lives on the fifth floor) the sin of laziness is tortured: “There are numbered all the days and hours spent in laziness, in carelessness about serving God; there despondency is tortured, the abandonment of church and cell prayers, out of laziness, out of neglect and coldness towards God; parasites are tortured there, eating other people's labors and not wanting to work themselves ... "7, - and here is what Raskolnikov tells Sonya:" Oh, how I hated this kennel! But still, he didn’t want to get out of it, and he didn’t even want to eat, he was lying all the time. Nastasya will bring - we will sing, if she does not bring - the day will pass; I didn't ask out of malice! There is no fire at night, I am lying in the dark, but I don’t want to earn money for candles. I had to study, I sold the books; and on my table, on notes and notebooks, on my finger and now there is dust, ”and he lives by the labors of his mother and sister.

Here is what St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, says about the moment of stopping at the ordeals, in a word on the exodus of the soul: “Days of anger, sorrow, need and embarrassment, days of darkness and gloom! twilight". - T. K.) The holy Angels of God leave her, they are kidnapped by murins - demons. They begin to beat her without mercy, and bring her down to the ground; having dissolved the earth, they plunge the soul, bound by unresolved bonds, into a dark and gloomy country, into the underworld, the prisons and dungeons of hell<…>into a dark and gloomy land, into a land of eternal darkness, where there is neither light nor life for people, but eternal sickness and endless sorrow, and unceasing weeping, and unceasing gnashing of teeth, and unsleeping sighs. There is an incessant “alas! Alas!" there they call - and there is no one to help; there they cry out - and no one delivers. There is no opportunity to tell the disaster there; there is no way to express the sickness there, to which the souls cast down there and imprisoned there are subjected. Every human mouth is exhausted to explain the fear and trembling that surrounds the prisoners of hell: there are no human lips that can express their anguish and cry: they groan incessantly and forever, but no one has mercy on them; let out deep sighs, but no one hears; weep, but no one delivers; they cry and fight, but no one shows mercy.

It is characteristic that Raskolnikov, without a moment's hesitation, connects the beating of the hostess with his crime: “But why, why, and how is this possible!” he repeated, seriously thinking that he was completely mad. But no, he hears too clearly! .. But, therefore, they will come to him now, if so, “because ... it’s true, all this is from the same ... because of yesterday ... Lord!”

Ilya Petrovich Gunpowder appears to Raskolnikov as the torturer - the first who suspected him of a crime, the one to whom he decides to go with a confession, deliberately choosing the most shameful option: “In his imagination, at that moment, the figure of Ilya Petrovich Gunpowder flashed. - Is it really to him? Can't you go to someone else? Is it possible to visit Nikodim Fomich? Turn now and go to the warden himself at the apartment? At least it will cost at home ... No, no! To gunpowder, to gunpowder! To drink, so drink all at once ... ”And in the empty office, from where everyone had already left, it was Gunpowder that met him. The episode of vision and the episode of recognition are connected not only by the actor, but also by Raskolnikov's reaction. Vision: “Suddenly Raskolnikov trembled like a leaf: he recognized this voice; it was the voice of Ilya Petrovich. Confession: "Ahh! You can’t hear it with a sound, you can’t see it with a look, but the Russian spirit ... how is it in a fairy tale ... I forgot! M-mae p-reading! a familiar voice suddenly yelled. Raskolnikov trembled. Before him stood Gunpowder ... "

In the process of torture, Raskolnikov’s soul descends into the icy regions of hell: “Fear, like ice, overlaid his soul, tortured him, stiffened him ...” Dante testifies that the souls punished for betrayal fall into this icy region - the place of their torment - even before body death:

Here, in Tolomei, this is how it is,
What is often the soul, before it struck
Their Atropos9 are already flying to the bottom.
And to make you feel even better
Remove the glass canopy from my eyes
Know that, as soon as the betrayal has committed,
How I, the soul, immediately moves in
She has a demon in her body, and he remains in it,
Until the time for the flesh has expired.
The soul rolls down to the bottom of the well.

("Hell", 33, 124-133.)

Despite the fact that, apparently, Raskolnikov's sin is different, however, he himself feels it as a betrayal of God, which, in essence, is every sin. This is clearly seen at the moment when he wants to pray, summoned to the office by a summons the next day after the murder: “Yes, when did this happen? I have nothing to do with the police myself! And why just today? he thought in agonizing bewilderment. “God, hurry up!” He was about to fall on his knees to pray, but he even laughed himself - not at prayer, but at himself.

The hostess, Raskolnikov, turns out to be as if a prisoner from now on in her apartment, the door of which was previously open: only through the crack her black eyes look at her sister and Raskolnikov's mother. Zosimov, who spent the night in the master's living room, "did not deign to see the hostess."

Raskolnikov's third dream - about how he again kills and cannot kill the old woman - is a dream about an impostor spirit (it has been repeatedly noted that this is an allusion to the dream of Grigory Otrepyev - "Boris Godunov" by A. S. Pushkin). The spirit that has killed the body, betrayed the soul to shame, the spirit that has usurped the right to “decide who will live and who will die,” turns out to be incapable of exercising this right: the flesh can kill the flesh, but when the spirit meets the spirit, the rapist suffers crushing ridicule10. He, like a drunk on Raskolnikov's way to the office, wants to "dance", but collapses on his side. Connected with this impotence of the impostor spirit is the taboo in the novel of all words relating to crime. Olga Meyerson11 draws our attention to the fact that the hero who is able to kill is unable to pronounce: he always speaks allegorically (“thinking about ... King Pea”) or using accented (italicized) demonstrative pronouns (“Am I capable of this? is this serious?”; that house, that old woman, etc.). This circumstance is what Raskolnikov has in mind when he says that he stepped over with only "one foot." He did not destroy the value system, he only violated it. The solution to the riddle that the moon, looking out the window, asks Raskolnikov in a dream, is that everything that the spirit does, he does only on himself, on his soul and body: then, confessing to the murder of Sonya, Raskolnikov will very accurately say that he himself killed, not the old woman, but the devil killed the old woman. But the dream at the same time promises mercy to the "imposter" if he returns to his place in the body of the people, descends into the crowd waiting for him on the stairs, which is partly realized when he in the crowd looks at the drunken dance and laughs at it.

Raskolnikov's vision on the eve of the murder, a daydream about the Egyptian desert - about the stay of his soul before the crime in a place ontologically inherent in him, in a place famous for the monasticism of the first centuries of Christianity. The fact that Raskolnikov is a monk, an ascetic, an ascetic will be repeatedly said - including by Lieutenant Gunpowder at the moment before Raskolnikov's confession of a crime: “You can say all these beauties of life - nihil est, ascetic, monk, hermit! .. "On the eve of Raskolnikov's final perversion of his vocation, he is, as it were, reminded of what kind of land he is a resident:"<…>he is somewhere in Africa, in Egypt, in some kind of oasis. The caravan is resting, the camels lie quietly; palm trees grow all around; everyone is having lunch. He still drinks water, straight from the stream, which immediately, at the side, flows and murmurs. And it’s so cool, and such wonderful, wonderful blue water, cold, runs over multi-colored stones and along such clean sand with golden sparkles ... ” This dream corresponds to the moment of his awakening after the murder, testifying to how the society of his soul has changed: “He was lying on the sofa on his back, still dumbfounded from recent oblivion. Terrible, desperate cries from the street came sharply to him, which, however, he listened to every night under his window, at three o'clock. They just woke him up now. "A! drunken people are coming out of the taverns, he thought, it's three o'clock, and suddenly he jumped up, as if someone had torn him off the sofa. - How! It's already three o'clock!" He sat down on the sofa - and then he remembered everything! Suddenly, in an instant, he remembered everything! He heard drunks every night, but for the first time the thought of his similarity with them comes to him: “If someone came in,” Raskolnikov argues, “what would he think? That I'm drunk, but ... ”Instead of silence, beauty, a decorous dinner, clean water - desperate cries, disgrace, dirt and drunkenness. Each soul has been given a wonderful place to live, each soul can leave it or destroy it, corrupt it. It is not for nothing that in Raskolnikov's daydream an allusion to the "Three Palms" by M. Lermontov is read.

In Crime and Punishment there is another character whose dreams form an equally distinct story about the state of his soul, spirit and body: this is Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov. Svidrigailov is not at all a "double" of Raskolnikov, as has long been considered. Before us, in essence, are two parallel stories in which very many formal moments coincide - and yet they are polar opposite stories: one about a person who committed a crime before our eyes and was saved, the other about a person who, before our eyes, did not commit the intended crime (corruption of Dunya) - and died.

At the first level of interpretation, from the point of view of the nature of his attitude to the world, Svidrigailov is described as an ironist. For all types of world relations, enthusiasm is characteristic as an important, constantly present sign, since any attitude to the world presupposes the isolation of a person from the world, their opposition, disharmony. Enthusiasm is the strength of a person's striving for a harmonious state. Irony is opposed to all other types of attitude to the world on the basis of the lack of enthusiasm in it.

Irony puts any value in doubt, in the limit - denies any value. Irony can be defined as a person's reaction not even to the world itself, but to a different type of attitude towards the world. Irony manifests itself in many ways, but there are two significantly different modifications of it:

1) when it faces some kind of value system, which it destroys, but at the same time there still remains a different system of values ​​that is not subject to destruction; this is, so to speak, "official" irony, used for its own purposes by some other type of attitude to the world;

2) when irony broke out into a bad infinity, destroying all possible value systems up to the value of the personality of its bearer, when it is denied, all value is depreciated - and becomes a toy in the hands of the ironist, a toy that he plays with for the time being with more or less interest. Note that it is not the fact of the existence of a value that is being denied, but the actual value of a value.

It is cynicism that prepares a qualitative change in irony when it enters a place where no values ​​are protected from it. The ironist here sees and knows all the values, but does not recognize their values ​​- he destroys the values, each thesis finds an antithesis, but the synthesis never occurs. The ironist breaks out into an empty infinity (which may turn out to be very limited), where he has nothing to cling to, where he has no way. In Dostoevsky, it is the ironists who have ghosts, and they themselves are often perceived by others as ghosts. For the ironist, there is only one way out - the destruction of his personality, the departure into non-existence and the denial of eternal life for his personality. So, Stavrogin (“Demons”) and Svidrigailov commit suicide, but Stavrogin also has a dream of a “golden age”, associated with the destruction, dissolution of the individual in the harmony of the universe.

From what has been said, it is clear that the indistinguishability of good and evil, the blurring of the boundaries between them, which is often considered an attribute of cynicism, is one of the properties of an ironist. He has only a head, "theoretical" knowledge of what is good and what is bad, but he does not hate evil, does not despise it, is not offended by it. The cynic still has an emotional criterion for such a distinction, this criterion is his own "I"; what is good for me is good, what is bad for me is bad. Moreover, this emotional criterion is so strong that the "head" knowledge, the distinction may at times be completely absent or shifted in accordance with the emotional criterion. (This could be called "naive cynicism.")

The "I" of a cynic can have a fairly wide capacity - the "I" includes close and beloved people, for example. Hence the coldness of the cynic is also largely a myth. He will fiercely hate everything that threatens the well-being of his "I", and just as fiercely love that which gives him pleasure. Dostoyevsky's classic cynic is Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov). Coldness is also a property of an ironist, because for him there is not a single moral value (not even the value of his own “I”) that would evoke any strong emotions. Irony is the most unemotional type of attitude to the world.

In "Crime and Punishment" such qualities of Svidrigailov as coldness, inability to strong hatred are repeatedly noted: "I also did not like to argue and did not get excited - also a bad sign." All these are really bad signs of “bad irony” that has gone beyond the limits of any value system - and there is nothing to get excited, and there is nothing to argue, there are no values, everything is acceptable. He does not condemn anything, the killer for him is only an object for study, which is why it is interesting that the killer. Svidrigailov is a very "foldable" person, because the personality as a value has been lost for the ironist, which means that the corresponding emotional reactions in its defense have also been lost. Even too foldable, as Raskolnikov notes. Svidrigailov replies: “Because he wasn’t offended by the rudeness of your questions? So what? Yes ... why be offended? As asked, he answered ... "Svidrigailov is not offended by rudeness, insults aimed at his personality, he speaks abstractly and calls on the interlocutor to a logical and calm consideration of the case, and not at all to "order", not to "respect for the personality of the interlocutor" . And in general, "as asked, so answered ..."

V. Kirpotin, it seems, was the first to note12 that neither the readers nor the characters of the novel know for sure anything bad about Svidrigailov. However, both readers and characters stubbornly expect something terrible from him. “... And what cowards are all here about their own opinion, Rodion Romanovich,” says Svidrigailov. He is not afraid to have "his own opinion", because he is afraid of his own opinion, who perceives as an essential value the assessment of his personality by others. Everyone feels that for him there is nothing obligatory, indisputable, impregnable, and they expect everything from him the most terrible and, having settled on this, do not believe in anything good coming from him, in everything they look for other reasons and impure goals. “You, however, have attached the children of Katerina Ivanovna. However ... however, you had your own reasons for this ... I now understand everything, ”says Raskolnikov. However, Svidrigailov teases Raskolnikov on purpose.

For an ironist, everything is unsteady, everything is wrong, everything is in doubt - it is characteristic that this was reflected even in the structure of the image: everything that we know about Svidrigailov, especially from third parties, is in one way or another in doubt or directly challenged by other heroes. (For example, an explanation of the reasons for the suicide of Philip's servant.) Svidrigailov, an ironist who has gone into a bad infinity, is making his last attempts to cling to at least something real, extremely tangible. “I only hope for anatomy,” he says. From this point of view, his answer to Raskolnikov to the accusation of debauchery is interesting: “In this debauchery, at least there is something permanent, based even on nature and not subject to fantasy.” This is an attempt to find something indisputable, at least at the physiological level. Maybe that’s why Svidrigailov doesn’t drink (“I’m not good when I’m drunk” - one can say that drinking is unnecessary for him - he’s already drunk, “drunk without wine” - this is how the enamored Razumikhin will say about himself in the novel), - after all, wine awakens fantasies, increases the fragility and indistinctness of the world, from which Svidrigailov so wants to escape. This unsteadiness, “fantasy” is also reflected in the structure of the image - Svidrigailov is not only ghosts, and, as it has been repeatedly noted, extremely “everyday” ghosts, which noticeably blurs the boundaries of the real world (Svidrigailov tries to justify this logically: “Ghosts are, so to speak, shreds and fragments of other worlds, their beginning. A healthy person, of course, does not need to see them, because a healthy person is the most earthly person, and therefore, he must live one local life, for completeness and order. , the normal earthly order in the body is slightly disturbed, and immediately the possibility of another world begins to affect ... "). The ironist, who has gone out into the evil infinity of irony, should exactly see ghosts, for he, having destroyed all absolute values, thereby violated the “earthly order”. However, we repeat, Svidrigailov not only sees ghosts, he not only in his nightmare stubbornly does not distinguish between the boundaries of sleep and reality, but he himself appears as a ghost (to Raskolnikov, and possibly Sonya on his last night - it’s not for nothing that Kapernaumov’s children ran away in an undescribed horror).

We will not dwell on Svidrigailov's complaints of boredom and "decisive lack of specialty" - this is also the "generic" quality of the ironist. We only note that the cynic always has something to do: "I" - the god is very demanding.

V. Kirpotin, in full accordance with the tradition of works on Crime and Punishment (especially of the Soviet period), claims that Svidrigailov does not understand Raskolnikov. This is wrong. Svidrigailov, on the contrary, sees very well and in every way emphasizes the value contradiction into which the moral and ideological premises of Raskolnikov came. Indicative in this sense is the episode when Svidrigailov tells Raskolnikov a joke about a girl at a "dance party". The story is sustained clearly in cynical pathos, without the slightest indignation at the baseness of what is happening, on the contrary, with admiration for this abomination, with the possibility, deliberately left, of an ambiguous interpretation of one's own role in this matter. However, it is not elementary morality that is trampled here, and Svidrigailov does not get pleasure from voluptuous reminiscences. He enjoys the absurdity of what is happening, forcing him to rebel against immorality - the killer, forcing himself to condemn himself for the cynicism of the perception of a person who has crossed the last line. This is the delight of the ironist, who brings both ideas to the point of absurdity by combining them in one object. He will later bring these ideas together in one statement: "... we are convinced that you can’t eavesdrop at the door, and old women can be peeled with whatever you please ...". Here both morality and cynicism act only as objects of the game of the ironist. It is interesting that Raskolnikov understands and interprets this pleasure quite correctly: “You shouldn’t feel pleasure ... unless for a shabby libertine to talk about such adventures, meaning some monstrous intention of the same kind, is not pleasure, yes even under such circumstances, and to such a person as I ... "Svidrigailov replies:" Well, if so ... then you yourself are a decent cynic. The material, at least, contains a huge one. You can be aware of a lot, a lot ... ”So, Svidrigailov considers the material for a “cynic” to be precisely the ability to be aware of a lot. Thus, statements like: “The irony of Svidrigailov gradually mortifies consciousness and feelings are completely unjustified. According to Dostoevsky, the death of consciousness entails the death of the body, being the end of existence. For the work cited, such statements are all the more strange because there is also a definition of irony given by Kierkegaard: “Irony is an abnormal, exaggerated development, which, like the development of the liver in Strasbourg geese, ends up killing the individual”14. It is clear that the cause of death is not the death of consciousness, but just its exaggerated, hypertrophied development. Consciousness kills an overly conscious individual, because it decomposes the emotional sphere, deprives a person of any kind of support in this world. That is why Svidrigailov, who is afraid and does not want to die, seeks protection in "anatomy" - the last thing that is still able to somehow affect the emotional sphere being killed, to give at least some kind of guideline, to arouse a distinct sense of reality.

Irony kills the ironist, and she does not need any assistants for this. However, with consistent non-distinguishing between the categories of "ironic" and "cynic", such assistants are stubbornly sought by researchers. The assertion has become almost commonplace that Svidrigailov commits suicide because (or, at best, and because too) that he retreats before the “spiritual and spiritual strength of Dunechka”, that “Svidrigailov, the true embodiment of the “no barriers” thesis, suddenly encounters a barrier in oneself and in another. In addition, the most serious and real argument on which the interpretation of Svidrigailov as a cynic and voluptuous is based is his plan of violence against Dunya. These two points are closely related. The accusation of intentional violence is also supported by the drafts for Crime and Punishment (see passages cited by Kirpotin)16. As a result of the analysis of the drafts, Kirpotin concludes that the man eventually defeated the beast in Svidrigailov, “it turned out that under the shaggy animal skin of Svidrigailov, a yearning heart was beating, thirsting for love”17. Here the figure of Svidrigailov, as in some other places of research, is greatly simplified. The error, apparently, lies in the very approach to the material - draft notes are used to reveal the character, as if supplementing the text of the novel. At the same time, an extremely important circumstance is overlooked: for some reason, the quoted passages were not included in the text. Let's try to read the scene of "violence" as it is given in the final text.

First of all, we note that the word "violence" in the affirmative form is pronounced by Dunya, who assumed such intentions of Svidrigailov and even seized a pistol for this case. Svidrigailov, as he himself emphasizes, uses this word only as an assumption, responding to Dunin's remark and immediately stipulating that "violence is an abomination." However, his own explanation testifies against Svidrigailov, testifies, it must be admitted, overwhelmingly: “You just said “violence”, Avdotya Romanovna. If violence, then you can judge for yourself that I took action. Sofya Semyonovna is not at home; the Kapernaumovs are far away, five locked rooms. Finally, I am at least twice as strong as you, and, besides, I have nothing to fear, because you can’t complain later: you wouldn’t really want to betray your brother, would you? And no one will believe you: well, why on earth did the girl go alone to a lonely man's apartment? So, even if you donate your brother, you won’t prove anything here either: violence is very difficult to prove, Avdotya Romanovna.” Well, of course, how could it not be violence, and even if we recall a similar description of the solitude of the room at the very beginning of the episode and the deception regarding Sofya Semyonovna. In the light of this perception, the next paragraph reads like a cynical mockery: “- As you wish, but note that I am speaking only as an assumption. In my personal opinion, you are absolutely right: violence is an abomination. I only spoke to the fact that there will be absolutely nothing left on your conscience, even if... even if you wanted to save your brother voluntarily, as I suggest to you. You simply, therefore, obeyed the circumstances, well, force, finally, if it’s impossible without this word. Think about it; the fate of your brother and your mother is in your hands. I'll be your slave... all my life... I'll be waiting here... For her, there was no longer the slightest doubt about his unshakable determination. In addition, she knew him ... "We only note for now that for Dunya there was no doubt that Svidrigailov decided on violence, because "she knew him." A careful reading leaves no doubt that violence is out of the question. Dunya for Svidrigailov is the last clue, the last hope to save himself from the evil infinity of irony, from inevitable self-destruction. The last hope for the goal, for faith. After all, when Svidrigailov answers her question: “How can you save him?” - then in a breaking voice, confused words: “Everything depends on you, on you, on you alone ...” - this, of course, is not only about the salvation of Raskolnikov, but first of all and most of all about his own, Svidrigailov, salvation, which is now only in it alone: ​​“I also love you ... I love you endlessly. Give me the edge of your dress to kiss, give, give! I can't hear it making noise. Tell me: do that and I will do it! I'll do everything. I will do the impossible! Don't look, don't look at me like that! Do you know that you are killing me ... ”There is far from only voluptuousness, and not primarily it. Here the cold ironist, who planned his "voyage" with a grin, suddenly became madly convinced that there was still a possibility of life for himself. Even in his delirium, he understands how impossible it is for him what he promises Dunya: to believe in what she believes, but will do the impossible - this is his salvation. Not passionately desired pleasure, but the insane hope of resurrection is taken from him by Dunya, who saw nothing here but an explosion of voluptuousness. Another thing is that, as was said above, this hope is fundamentally damaged by voluptuousness.

“Svidrigailov got up and came to his senses (he came to his senses from his madness, his hope. - T.K.). A malicious and mocking smile slowly squeezed out on his still trembling lips. Anger and mockery, above all, at himself - he believed it! Dunya imagines violence, she rushes into a corner, shields herself with a table, Svidrigailov does not move. However, by the end of the last of the two paragraphs quoted above, the smile still leaves him. The speech again becomes confused, intermittent - as when there was hope: “I will be your slave ... all my life ... I will wait here ...” So, hope has returned, and even after such a cynical and mocking monologue at first glance? In this case, Svidrigailov is not only cynical, but also stupid, blinded by his own baseness and assumes nothing else in anyone, and the researchers are right who believe that Svidrigailov is dying because he did not recognize any barriers and suddenly stumbled upon a barrier in himself, and in another, he retreated before the moral strength of Dunya, after which there was nothing left but to die. Or even better: “As far as Dunya is sincere in her chastity, Svidrigailov is so sincere in his conviction that there is no such thing in nature. Therefore, love for Dunya turns out to be disastrous for him, because there is no reciprocity and cannot be.

Let us recall, however, how Svidrigailov says about Dunya to Raskolnikov: “Avdotya Romanovna is terribly chaste, unheard of and unseen. (Note to yourself, I tell you this about your sister as a fact. She is chaste, maybe to the point of illness, despite all her broad mind, and this will harm her.) "That is, as a fact, he recognizes chastity, but does not see its value . Svidrigailov believes that Dunya "did not always look at him with disgust", that he scared her away with his voluptuousness. Svidrigailov wants to give Duna the opportunity to “defeat” her chastity, which he considers the only obstacle, convincing her that she is “not guilty”, thereby giving her the opportunity to decide on such a difficult step for her because of her “painful” chastity. He would act psychologically correctly if all his premises were true and Dunya would love him (even if unconsciously). That is why hope is rekindled. With all the rudeness of the analogy, this is almost the same tactic as when seducing the "virtuous lady": resisted so much that I probably would never have received anything if I myself had not been so vicious ... ”He sits down to wait, giving Dunya the opportunity to voluntarily“ submit to force ”. But Dunya suddenly grabs a revolver. The last hope collapsed - and the "evil grin" appears again. What happens next is often described as "an exciting moral duel". This, apparently, is not an entirely accurate definition, because Svidrigailov simply drives a woman who is already in hysterics into a rage - it seems, with the sole purpose of getting a bullet in the forehead. Everything that follows, if read with an open mind, is much more like a deliberate suicide than an attempted rape. “Dunya raised the revolver and, deathly pale, with a whitened, trembling lower lip, with big black eyes sparkling like fire, looked at him, making up her mind, measuring and waiting for the first movement on his part. Never before had he seen her so beautiful. The fire that flashed from her eyes at the moment when she raised the revolver seemed to burn him, and his heart sank with pain. He took a step and a shot rang out. It was not voluptuousness that flared up in his heart when he saw her so beautiful - “his heart sank with pain,” because there was no longer hope for the love of this beloved woman; he sees it, as he sees it, and that she is only waiting for his movement in order to shoot. He is doing this movement - what should he expect now?

Svidrigailov does not show "male nobility" in a duel when he gives the opportunity to shoot again and again - he makes his death almost inevitable. The following episode is indicative in this regard: “Well, well ... in three steps and it is impossible not to kill. Well, you won’t kill ... then ... - His eyes sparkled, and he stepped two more steps. It seems that the warning is final, but ... “Dunechka fired, misfire! - Loaded incorrectly. Nothing! You still have a capsule in there. Fix it, I'll wait." “He stood two paces in front of her, waited, and looked at her with wild determination, an inflamed, passionate look.” With determination to die - after all, it gives you the opportunity to kill for sure, and even spurs on your own: “Well, you won’t kill ... then ...” We also note that the idea that “he would rather die than let her go” again belongs to Dunya. But Dunya dropped the revolver. "- Dropped it! - Svidrigailov said with surprise and took a deep breath. Something, as it were, suddenly left his heart, and perhaps not only the burden of mortal fear; Yes, he hardly felt it at that moment. It was a deliverance from another, more mournful and gloomy feeling, which he himself could not in all his strength define. Apparently, the same thing that squeezed the heart has departed - pity for Dunya: yes, she could have killed now, but she herself would not have endured it later. Why, he considered her a martyr, but she saves her honor at the cost of someone else's life. But also surprise - yes, Svidrigailov, with vicious but calm despair, was fully prepared for death at the hands of his beloved woman when he realized that he was mistaken that Dunya did not love him at all. With his suicide, he emphatically ends Dunya's unfinished business: he takes the pistol she left behind and shoots at the right temple - where the scratch from Dunya's shot is. But it was hard to get a bullet in the forehead instead of the expected salvation. From complete hopelessness, mournful and gloomy, he gets rid of with surprise when Dunya refuses to buy his salvation at the cost of his life. And maybe, for a moment, hope revived. “He wanted to say something, but only his lips were twisted, but he could not pronounce it.” As we remember, at the moments when hope arises, his speech becomes confused, intermittent, now only his lips are twisted, he cannot utter a word at all. "- Let me go! Dunya said pleadingly. Svidrigailov shuddered: it was you that was somehow not spoken as much as before. Now Dunya, just as at the beginning of the conversation Svidrigailov, addresses him like a human, with the hope of a human answer. Now both of them, shocked by the previous scene, finally hear each other, speak to each other not in accordance with their established opinions, but as if comprehending everything anew. This is the situation when “last questions are raised and resolved”. Svidrigailov also asks questions, for him the last: to live or not. "So you don't like it? he asked quietly. Dunya shook her head negatively. - And ... you can't? .. Never? he whispered desperately. - Never! Dunya whispered. So, the last question is solved. Next come the lines, usually interpreted as the last struggle between man and beast, in which man wins, or the immoral Svidrigailov retreats before Dunya's moral purity: “A moment of terrible dumb struggle passed in Svidrigailov's soul. He looked at her with an indescribable look. The highlighted epithets are hardly suitable for depicting a voluptuary retreating before a pure girl. Let us recall that the fate of Svidrigailov has just been decided, he must agree in his soul to accept the final verdict, to completely abandon his last hope. Now refuse, because the last clue has already been used: “- And ... you can’t? .. Never? he whispered desperately. “Never!” Is it possible to reconcile your soul with a death sentence in an instant without a terrible struggle? And with his gaze he also begged, and already said goodbye to her, with hope, with life; Yes, you never know what else was in this inexpressible look, but not voluptuousness - for him Dostoevsky has the most expressive epithets. Svidrigailov hurries Dunya. This, if we slightly simplify the usual reasoning, means that he is afraid to change his mind. Again there is an image of a rapist who comes to his senses for a moment. “Hurry! Hurry! repeated Svidrigailov, still not turning round. But in this “quickly”, apparently, some kind of terrible note sounded. Dunya understood her…” But again, Dunya understood her, and she, as has already been shown, understands everything quite enough, let’s say, “tendentiously.” In the author's text, on the contrary, there is an indication of the ambiguity of the note: “it is visible”, “some kind of”. Yes, “Dunya surrendered, but Svidrigailov did not accept the sacrifice”20. He did not need a sacrifice, but mercy. Svidrigailov has already said goodbye to everything - with amazing force he said goodbye, not allowing himself any more pleas, no persuasion, no threats, leaving himself no hope. But his strength is leaving him. After all, when he turned from the window, "a strange smile twisted his face, a pathetic, sad, weak smile, a smile of despair." Yes, besides, perhaps the thought flashed to avenge his offense, also, we note, a weak thought. He had no time for violence, he might have killed her on the spot if she had hesitated. He had many reasons to rush Dunya: the "voyage" became inevitable, and he is now looking for spiritual emptiness and spiritual loneliness. Thus, without retreating before Dunya, without “realizing that there are obstacles for him,” not because of cynicism that failed, Svidrigailov kills himself. Irony itself kills ironic. Dunya is not the cause of death, but the last opportunity to live, the possibility of at least something else in life: feelings, aspirations, goals. When hope is not justified, death already fully comes into its own. There is no struggle here between the beast and man, and it is not even such an occasion to shake Svidrigailov's type of attitude towards the world. It is not for nothing that he, having already decided on suicide, immediately reduces the whole scene ironically: Katya, at his request, sings how some "scoundrel and tyrant began to kiss Katya." Another limit was set for him. His two night visions are extremely interesting precisely because they give a clear indication of which pillars Svidrigailov reached and which he could not step over; where for the ironist there was still an absolute. The first vision - a fourteen-year-old drowned woman in a coffin - is accompanied by an aesthetic, but not a moral perception: flowers, a wonderful house, a wonderful day. “... A broken heart ... offended by an insult that horrified and surprised this young, childish consciousness, flooding her angelically pure soul with undeserved shame and tearing out the last cry of despair, not heard, but brazenly scolded in the dark night, in the darkness, in the cold, in the damp thaw, when the wind howled ... "- this is not yet terrible for him. But the second vision is aesthetically perceived as ugly and suddenly causes a valuable reaction in Svidrigailov: “There was something infinitely ugly and insulting in this laughter, in these eyes, in all this abomination in the face of a child. "How! five year old! - Svidrigailov whispered in real horror, - this is ... what is this? At this moment, the value of chastity suddenly revives for him.

Yes, everything is possible and nothing is scary, there are no “valuable” values ​​- you can even demolish a desecrated child, but a five-year-old slut, desecration, debasement of a child’s soul - the hero will not demolish yet, then some unshakable values ​​\u200b\u200bare suddenly discovered, and it turns out to be , are still concerned about the issues of “citizen and person”. And perhaps Svidrigailov's hope for Dunya was not in vain: there was still a clue in him, he could still live.

With the transition to the allegorical level of interpretation of Svidrigailov's last dream, however, this possibility is already much more unsteady. Here it seems to the hero what he wanted to do with Dunya's soul, corrupting it, depriving it of chastity, and corrupting is always the corrupting of a child, childish, innocent in a person, no matter how old the real victim is (you can only corrupt what whole - that is, not damaged, innocent, what is left inside under the adult skin from the delicate children's "core"). Rape in connection with Svidrigailov's two dreams is worse than murder, since it leads to the victim's suicide - a mortal sin, after which repentance is no longer possible, but corruption is incomparably more monstrous than rape, because it makes a person a living corpse, continuing the baton of corruption: “Here, without hiding at all, they open both eyes: they look around him with a fiery and shameless look, they call him, they laugh ... "Rape, Dostoevsky claims, is not as monstrous as seduction, precisely because violence is an external influence on the soul and body of a person, insult and scolding, but not distortion and corruption. Violence makes a person a victim. Corruption makes him a partner in sin. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28).

There is even less hope for the hero at the symbolic level of interpretation. But here the analysis must begin at least from the moment Svidrigailov was given room for the night. "The ragged man, having cast a glance at Svidrigailov, shook himself and immediately led him to a distant room, stuffy and cramped, somewhere at the very end of the corridor, in the corner, under the stairs." Svidrigailov is under the stairs, that is, he does not have to go through the path of air ordeals. On this occasion, it is necessary to cite what was reported at the ordeals of St. Theodora by the Angels: “Also, know that only those enlightened by the holy Christian Faith and baptized by holy Baptism ascend and are subjected to torture in it. They do not come here... all alien to God: they, while still alive in body, are already dead and buried in hell in soul. When they die, immediately, without any trial, the demons take them as part of their own, and bring them down into the abyss of Gehenna. Indeed, Svidrigailov seems to live in the world before the Coming of Christ, in the world of corrupted flesh. The world of Svidrigailov is like a parallel pagan world that existed in full force for another five centuries after the Coming of Christ, with its sacraments, oracles and initiations, with its wisdom and often - even after the official adoption of Christianity - with its own state; it still exists, incessantly intensifying over the past three centuries. But these first five centuries of the Christian Faith are, as it were, the latent temporal (and existential) plan of the novel; under the drunken, tavern-like evidence of “the most deliberate city on earth”, the imperishable outlines of true reality emerge: Dunya is a martyr of the third century or a hermitage of the fourth, Raskolnikov is an ascetic of the Egyptian desert, he is redeemed, and he needs to commit a new crime in order to die, that’s why he says that he killed himself, and not the old woman, but, as the Lord says to Martha: “... he who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live ...” (John 11, 25); Sonya is a resident of Capernaum, the city where Christ and his disciples took refuge during His three-year sermon, where the home of the first-called apostles Peter and Andrew was; Svidrigailov is also an inhabitant of Capernaum, but he is one of those about whom Christ spoke, reproaching the cities, “in which His powers were most manifested, because they did not repent: Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! for if in Tire and Sidon the powers manifested in you were manifested, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes; But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tire and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, ascended to heaven, you will fall down to hell; for if the powers shown in thee had been manifest in Sodom, it would have remained to this day; But I tell you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you” (Matt. 11:20-24). Svidrigailov - like a noble pagan of those times, "beneficial", as Sonya would say about him - but did not notice, did not want to see and accept the Savior - he did not commit a crime before our eyes and did many good deeds, but he is dead, for "the Savior of the world called dead all people contemporary with His stay on earth, who did not pay attention to His all-holy teaching, which is necessary for salvation, the only one necessary for the true life of man: leave the dead, bury your dead, He said to His follower, who asked permission to leave the Lord for a while and from attention to His holy teaching, for the burial of his deceased parent. The Lord called dead those living according to the flesh, who were truly dead, as dead in soul.

Having come to Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov mentions Cleopatra at the very beginning of the conversation, in connection with the reading of the Egyptian Nights. Analyzing Egyptian Nights, Dostoevsky describes the world before the Savior's arrival in this way: Cleopatra is a representative of that society under which its foundations have long been shaken. All faith is already lost; hope seems like one useless deceit; the thought grows dim and disappears: the divine fire has left it; society has become corrupted and in cold despair it anticipates the abyss before it and is ready to fall into it. Life goes breathless without an aim. There is nothing in the future; one must demand everything from the present, one must fill life with one vital thing. Everything goes into the body, everything rushes into bodily debauchery, and in order to replenish the missing higher spiritual impressions, it irritates its nerves, its body with everything that can only excite sensitivity. The most monstrous deviations gradually become ordinary. Even the sense of self-preservation disappears. Cleopatra is a representative of this society. She is bored now; but this boredom visits her often. Something monstrous, abnormal, malevolent could still awaken her soul. She needs a strong impression now. She had already known all the secrets of love and pleasure, and before her, the Marquis de Sade, perhaps, would have seemed like a child. Depravity hardens the soul, and in her soul there has long been something capable of feeling the gloomy, painful and accursed joy of the poisoner Branvelier at the sight of her victims. But this soul is strong, it will not be possible to break it soon; it has a lot of strong and malicious irony. And now this irony stirred in her now. It is obvious that Svidrigailov is a resident of this world.

Svidrigailov dies next to a fire tower (a distant resemblance to a pagan temple) and a Jewish firefighter in a copper helmet - a dwindling image of the greatest warrior of the pagan world - Achilles (and with what irony - truly Svidrigailov's - Dostoevsky allows here to see this non-Christian quality of the world around Svidrigailov, presenting the image of a Jew and a Hellene at the same time, while in Christianity there is neither a Hellene nor a Jew): he seems to know nothing about the greatest Warrior of the new time, the new era, about the One Who, in fact, made time new, directing life in straight lines paths, breaking the circles of eternal return, destroying the isolation of the mocking eternity of the bath with spiders in all corners, about the One who conquered death itself. The death of Svidrigailov in the presence of the witness Achilles is compared with the resurrection of Raskolnikov in the mind of the land "where the centuries of Abraham and his flocks have not yet passed."

By the way, Svidrigailov receives a number under the stairs in a hotel specially chosen by him, the name of which is “something like Adrianople”. Adrianople - the new quarters of Athens, built in 128 AD. e. Hadrian, Roman emperor (reigned 117-138 CE), pagan, initiate and even hierophant of Eleusis24.

Here, in one night, Svidrigailov sees his "trilogy" about the body, soul and spirit.

In the room where he stayed for the night, "somewhere in the corner a mouse was scratching, and the whole room smelled of mice." In the first nightmare, he feels that a mouse has crawled under his covers, zigzagging across the bed and over his body. The mouse is “a chthonic (underground, underworld. - T. K.) symbol, meaning the forces of darkness, incessant movement, senseless excitement, turmoil. In Christianity, it symbolizes the devil, the devourer. The mouse is depicted as gnawing at the root of the Tree of Life. It is interesting to link several key concepts for understanding this scene in one brief statement by Svidrigailov: “Fu, damn it, it’s almost a mouse! - he thought, - I left the veal on the table ... "O. Nikolai Epishev noted that Svidrigailov is served veal like a prodigal son, whom the Father meets by slaughtering a "well-fed calf." But Arkady Ivanovich will once again leave what is offered to him without attention - he will not touch the veal, the offering will be sacrificed to mice and flies (demons were also often depicted in the form of flies, “among the Phoenicians, Beelzebub is the lord of flies, the power of destruction and decay”26). The mouse runs into Svidrigailov, attracted by meat, mortified and butchered flesh, as if he himself were already only dead flesh. Interesting in this sense is the last thing Svidrigailov will do in this room before he leaves it to commit suicide: “Awakened flies clung to an untouched portion of veal, which was right there on the table. He looked at them for a long time and finally with his free right hand began to catch one fly. For a long time he was exhausted in his efforts, but he could not catch. Finally, catching himself in this interesting occupation, he woke up, shuddered, got up and resolutely walked out of the room. He was outside in a minute." Before us is like a corpse, mechanically performing an exclusively muscular movement, in no way connected with either feeling or reason. (It is characteristic that Raskolnikov seems to think of the same fly exclusively in spiritual terms - as a witness and accuser: “The fly flew, she saw”; it is also characteristic that Raskolnikov’s thoughts are said in the novel that they sweep, sting, fly - like the same flies). Thus, the flesh of Svidrigailov, as it were, has already been sacrificed to corruption and decay - for having become the killer of the soul.

This is the second dream-vision of Svidrigailov: a dream about an insulted and abused suicide girl - his soul, insulted and abused by the excesses of his flesh (a suicide is a drowned woman, a victim of that flood that will attack Svidrigailov in the next vision; a fair blonde, like Svidrigailov , she died on the eve of Trinity Day, without waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit on her).

This vision smoothly turns into the following: “Svidrigailov woke up” into the next vision, and this is not accidental, because in place of his dead soul, his spirit took the soul-devil, the soul-debauchee - Svidrigailov again, as it were, with a soul, but this is a demon that has taken possession of place of the soul. It was no coincidence that he woke up as if on the same “dark night, in the dark, in the cold, in a damp thaw, when the wind howled”, in which his soul was ruined: “Svidrigailov woke up, got out of bed and stepped to the window. He groped for the latch and opened the window. The wind rushed furiously into his cramped closet and, as if with frosty hoarfrost, covered his face and chest covered with one shirt. Is it in the middle of July? And the flood in St. Petersburg - in mid-July?

The girl found by Svidrigailov is wet, as if emerging from the waters of a flood that once hid humanity corrupted in sins: the main of these sins were pride and voluptuousness. She babbles about a broken cup. The bowl is an ancient symbol of integrity, the integrity of the universe. A broken cup - the universe, collapsed by angelic sin, collapsed by human sin, lost integrity, lost chastity. The ancient demoness is found and warmed on his bed by Svidrigailov, who has devastated the house of his soul. And when he sees whom he nursed, then in horror he tries to destroy her: “Ah, cursed!” - Svidrigailov cried in horror, raising his hand over her ... But at the same moment he woke up. He woke up in order to destroy the demoness in reality - destroying himself. The first thing he does when he wakes up is to put on still damp clothes (the same half-dry as those of a five-year-old whore), check the revolver and write a suicide note. His story is complete.

And Raskolnikov will still have an apocalyptic dream about an epidemic of spiritual imposture, about how all of humanity became antichrists (who came instead of Christ, Who is the Way, Truth and Life: “everyone thought that the truth was in him alone, and suffered, looking at others , beat his chest, wept and wringed his arms, "and Dostoevsky all the time dreamed that "if all are Christs," that is, not about usurpation, but about the acquisition of divine dignity by all mankind through the reunification of all with Christ at the head) . This dream finally prepares him for the resurrection. God runs after Raskolnikov throughout the whole novel - as his father runs after him in his dream about a horse, as the Shepherd goes to collect a lost sheep, “pea-bearing” - that is, stolen by mountains, where she perched above the abyss, on “a yard of space” 27 - to "Update your packs image, decayed by passions." In the epilogue, the image of God, desecrated and split by him in himself, is restored in the hero, and if Svidrigailov finds in himself, on the eve of his death, a juvenile debauchee, then in Raskolnikov’s soul, as a sign of Eternal Life, the Infant Christ, previously supplanted by the “impostor” spirit, reigns.
_____________
Notes

1 Dostoevsky F. M. Full. coll. op. in 30 vols. T. 28. Book. 2. L., 1985. P. 164. Here and below, the italics in quotations are mine, the emphasis in bold type belongs to the cited author.

2 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Conversations about faith and the Church. M., 1991. S. 121.

3 See his article "The Nameless Heroes of Dostoevsky" in the journal "Literary Studies". 1982. No. 1.

4 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes in this regard: “We are talking about the sins of the flesh; and so often, so easily, we reproach our flesh for all weaknesses, forgetting the word of one of the fathers of the early centuries, who says: what we call the sins of the flesh are the sins that the human spirit commits on human flesh; the flesh is the sacrifice. Here is a simple example that can be taken very far. A person is thirsty, his flesh asks for moisture, water - only our imagination suggests that it is tastier to drink tea or beer. The flesh is exhausted, it asks for food; but only our imagination turns us in the direction of delicacy or greed ... Thus, the flesh always asks for what is natural, simple and healthy; human imagination, soulfulness directs it and chooses something else ”(Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Decree. Op. P. 121-122).

5 The fact that in this dream we are talking about the torment of Raskolnikov's soul, as well as the fact that women in Dostoevsky's works often turn out to be, as it were, the souls of men connected with them in one way or another, has been repeatedly noted in the literature about Dostoevsky's work.

7 Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. A word about death. M., 1991. S. 153.

8 Cit. Quoted from: Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. Decree. op. pp. 101-102.

9 In ancient Greek mythology, one of the moiras is the goddess of fate, the one that cuts the thread of life.

10 It is said about the ordeal of pride that there arrogant spirits contemptuously torture pride, vanity, self-conceit, magnification, failure to render proper honor to parents, spiritual and civil authorities, disobedience to them and disobedience. (see: Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, op. cit. p. 154).

11 Meerson Olga, Dostoevsky's Taboos. Dresden-München, 1998. p. 53-80.

12 See: Kirpotin V. Ya. Disappointment and downfall of Rodion Raskolnikov (A book about Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment"). M., 1986.

13 Midzhiferdzhyan T. V. Raskolnikov - Svidrigailov - Porfiry Petrovich: a duel of consciousnesses / / Dostoevsky. Materials and research. Issue. 7. L., 1987.

14 Op. Quoted from: Gaidenko P.P. The tragedy of aestheticism. M., 1970. S. 139.

15 Tyunkin K. Revolt of Rodion Raskolnikov // Dostoevsky F. M. Crime and punishment. L., 1974. S. 26.

16 Kirpotin V. Ya. Decree. op. pp. 219-222.

17 Ibid. S. 222.

18 Tyunkin K. Decree. op. S. 26.

19 Midzhiferdzhyan T. V. Decree. op. S. 73.

20 Kirpotin V. Ya. Decree. op. S. 221.

21 Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. Decree. op. S. 155.

22 Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. Decree. op. pp. 115-116.

23 Dostoevsky F. M. Decree. ed. T. 19. S. 135-136.

24 See: Dieter Lauenstein. Eleusinian mysteries. M., 1996. S. 47.

25 Cooper J. Encyclopedia of Symbols. M., 1995. S. 212.

26 Ibid.

27 For the first time, an indication of a space a yard wide appears in the novel when Raskolnikov finds a stone under which he will hide the loot: "where the whole distance was a yard wide, he noticed a large unhewn stone." It then repeatedly appears in Raskolnikov's thoughts and dreams as "eternity on a yardstick of space." It is said, “Where your treasure is, there your soul will be”, and now Raskolnikov’s soul is placed on a yard of space along with the stolen “treasure”.

28 For how this happens, see the article "About one property of the epilogues of the five great novels of Dostoevsky" in my book "Characterology of Dostoevsky". M., 1996.