Early work of Dostoevsky: characteristics, works. The inconsistency of Dostoevsky's personality: the artistic world

Dostoevsky's work is very difficult to briefly describe. After all, this writer made a real revolution in literature, making it the subject of knowledge of the human soul, all its secret nooks and intricacies.

The main themes in Dostoevsky's works

The main theme of all the writer’s works was the fate of man, namely the fate of his soul, his path to God, and knowledge of the Truth.

Already in the first of his published works - in the story “Poor People”, the writer talks about the tragic fate of his heroes - a middle-aged petty official and a girl with whom he is in love, but cannot marry her because of his poverty. This story makes the reader think about how difficult it is for a person with a living soul to survive in a cold world where injustice reigns.

In his other novels he describes the fates of no less unhappy people, however, in them there is already a place for the light of Christ’s truth, which gives hope to both the heroes themselves and the readers, consoling them. In addition, the work of the great writer contains several more main themes.

Let's briefly list these topics:

the fate of a small and unhappy person;

man's path to knowledge of God;
a story of apostasy;
using the theme of hero doubles;
the fate of a woman from a poor environment;
the purpose of Russia in the history of mankind.

Results of Dostoevsky's creativity

Dostoevsky's work briefly allows us to understand how great the writer's influence was on the worldview of his contemporaries. Dostoevsky from an ordinary author, published in thick magazines, turned into a symbol of the era, expressing the search of a certain number of intelligent people for their path in the world and understanding of Russia’s place in world history and culture.

The writer forced many of his contemporaries to abandon the ideas of nihilism and revolutionary rebellion. In many ways, he foresaw the ruthless flames of general unrest that engulfed our country 40 years after his death. Therefore, the role of Dostoevsky in Russian literature is very great.

Let us try to briefly summarize his work in each of his great stories and novels.

1. “Poor people” - the fate of a small and useless person, a continuation of the thoughts expressed in Gogol’s “The Overcoat”.

2. “Humiliated and Offended” - continuation of the theme of poor people.

3. “Crime and Punishment” is a story about the spiritual death and resurrection of one human soul, which went through all the trials and found the meaning of existence in faith and hope.

4. “” - a story about a wonderful man who could not withstand the blows of fate.

5. “Demons” - criticism of the ideas of nihilism, which lead their bearers to spiritual death.

6. “Teenager” - a story about the mental struggles and growing up of a young man.

7. “” is the central work of Dostoevsky’s work, in which he talks about the history of one family.

Years of life: October 30 (November 11), 1821, Moscow - January 28 (February 9), 1881, St. Petersburg, buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra

F.M.D. (further just D., because I’m too lazy to write in full) enriched Russian realism with great artistic discoveries, philosophical and psychological depth. His work fell at a turning point in the national socio-historical process and was the embodiment of the most intense spiritual, religious, moral and aesthetic quests of the Russian intelligentsia.

D. entered literature, having received the blessing of the “furious Vissarion” - the critic Belinsky, and at the end of his creativity, recognized as great during his lifetime, he bowed his head to the authority of Pushkin. The title of his first work, “Poor People,” predetermined the democratic pathos of his entire work. The depiction of special conditions and the crisis of human existence was subsequently picked up by existentialist writers.

1) D.'s creativity in the 1840s. Having retired after graduating from the St. Petersburg Engineering School, D. began working enthusiastically on his first novel in the spring of 1944. "Poor people." The manuscript came to Nekrasov and Belinsky, the latter admired and compared D. with Gogol. Belinsky directly predicted a great future for Dostoevsky. The first critics rightly noticed the genetic connection of “Poor People” with Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” bearing in mind both the image of the main character of the semi-impoverished official Makar Devushkin, which went back to Gogol’s heroes, and the wide influence of Gogol’s poetics on Dostoevsky. In depicting the inhabitants of the “St. Petersburg corners”, in portraying a whole gallery of social types, Dostoevsky relied on the traditions of the natural school, but he himself emphasized that the influence of Pushkin’s “The Station Agent” was also reflected in the novel. The theme of the “little man” and his tragedy found new twists in Dostoevsky, allowing already in the first novel to reveal the most important features of the writer’s creative style: focus on the inner world of the hero combined with an analysis of his social fate, the ability to convey the elusive nuances of the state of the characters, the principle of confessional self-disclosure characters (it is no coincidence that the form of “novel in letters” was chosen).

Subsequently, some of the heroes of “Poor People” will find their continuation in D.’s major works. The motif of the “powers of this world” will become pervasive. The landowner Bykov, the moneylender Markov, the boss Devushkin are not written as full-fledged characters, but they personify different faces of social oppression and psychological superiority. Belinsky called Poor People the first attempt at a social novel in Russia.

Having entered Belinsky’s circle (where he met I. S. Turgenev, V. F. Odoevsky, I. I. Panaev), Dostoevsky, according to his later admission, “passionately accepted all the teachings” of the critic, including his socialist ideas. At the end of 1845, at an evening with Belinsky, he read chapters of the story "Double"(1846), in which he first gave deep analysis of split consciousness, foreshadowing his great novels. The story, which initially interested Belinsky, ultimately disappointed him, and soon there was a cooling in Dostoevsky’s relationship with the critic, as well as with his entire entourage, including Nekrasov and Turgenev, who ridiculed Dostoevsky’s morbid suspiciousness. Belinsky advocated for the depiction of prosaic reality, which does not stand out in any way from everyday life. The critic struggled with the unartistic remnants of romanticism, its epigones.

Petrashevtsy. In 1846, Dostoevsky became close to the circle of the Beketov brothers (among the participants were A. N. Pleshcheev, A. N. and V. N. Maykov, D. V. Grigorovich), in which not only literary but also social problems were discussed. In the spring of 1847, Dostoevsky began to attend the “Fridays” of M. V. Petrashevsky, and in the winter of 1848-49 - the circle of the poet S. F. Durov, which also consisted mainly of Petrashevsky members. At the meetings, which were political in nature, the problems of peasant liberation, court reform and censorship were discussed, treatises by French socialists and articles by A.I. Herzen were read. Dostoevsky, however, had some doubts: according to the memoirs of A.P. Milyukov, he “read social writers, but was critical of them.” On the morning of April 23, 1849, along with other Petrashevites, the writer was arrested and imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

2) Hard labor. After 8 months spent in the fortress, where Dostoevsky behaved courageously and even wrote the story “The Little Hero” (published in 1857), he was found guilty “of intent to overthrow... the state order” and was initially sentenced to death, which was later changed to the scaffold, after “terrible, immensely terrible minutes of waiting for death,” 4 years of hard labor with deprivation of “all rights of fortune” and subsequent surrender as a soldier. He served hard labor in the Omsk fortress, among criminals (“it was unspeakable, endless suffering... every minute weighed down like a stone on my soul”). Experienced emotional turmoil, melancholy and loneliness, “judgment of oneself,” “a strict revision of one’s previous life,” a complex range of feelings from despair to faith in the imminent fulfillment of a high calling - all this spiritual experience of the prison years became the biographical basis "Notes from the House of the Dead"(1860-62), a tragic confessional book that amazed contemporaries with the courage and fortitude of the writer. A separate theme of the Notes was the deep class gap between the nobleman and the common people. Immediately after his release, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother about the “folk types” brought from Siberia and his knowledge of “black, wretched life” - an experience that “would fill volumes.” “Notes” reflects the revolution in the writer’s consciousness that emerged during penal servitude, which he later characterized as “a return to the folk root, to the recognition of the Russian soul, to the recognition of the folk spirit.” Dostoevsky clearly understood the utopianism of revolutionary ideas, with which he later sharply polemicized.

1850s Siberian creativity. From January 1854, Dostoevsky served as a private in Semipalatinsk, in 1855 he was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and in 1856 to ensign. The following year, his nobility and the right to publish were returned to him. At the same time, he married M.D. Isaeva, who took an active part in his fate even before marriage. Dostoevsky wrote stories in Siberia "Uncle's Dream" And "The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants"(both published in 1859). The central character of the latter, Foma Fomich Opiskin, an insignificant hanger-on with the pretensions of a tyrant, a hypocrite, a hypocrite, a manic self-lover and a sophisticated sadist, as a psychological type became an important discovery that foreshadowed many heroes of mature creativity. The stories also outline the main features of Dostoevsky’s famous tragedies: theatricalization of the action, scandalous and, at the same time, tragic development of events, a complicated psychological picture.

3) D.’s creativity in the 1860s. "Rebirth of Beliefs" On the pages of the magazine "Time", trying to strengthen his reputation, Dostoevsky published his novel "Humiliated and Offended", the very name of which was perceived by critics of the 19th century. as a symbol of the writer’s entire creativity and even more broadly - as a symbol of the “truly humanistic” pathos of Russian literature (N. A. Dobrolyubov in the article “Downtrodden People”). Saturated with autobiographical allusions and addressed to the main motives of creativity of the 1840s, the novel was written in a new manner, close to later works: it weakens the social aspect of the tragedy of the “humiliated” and deepens the psychological analysis. The abundance of melodramatic effects and exceptional situations, the intensity of mystery, and the chaotic composition prompted critics of different generations to rate the novel low. However, in the following works, Dostoevsky managed to raise the same features of poetics to tragic heights: external failure prepared the ups and downs of the coming years, in particular, the story soon published in “Epoch” "Notes from the Underground", which V.V. Rozanov considered “the cornerstone in Dostoevsky’s literary activity”; the confession of an underground paradoxist, a man of tragically torn consciousness, his disputes with an imaginary opponent, as well as the moral victory of the heroine opposing the painful individualism of the “anti-hero” - all this was developed in subsequent novels, only after the appearance of which the story received high praise and deep interpretation in criticism.

The beginning of the 1860s was the time of D.’s formation as an Orthodox thinker, a “soiler”, nurturing the idea of Russian identity and pan-humanity. Exactly 1860-1864. D. will call it a time of “rebirth of beliefs.”

"Soilism" D. moved to St. Petersburg and, together with his brother Mikhail, began publishing "Time" magazines, then "Epoch", combining enormous editorial work with authorship: he wrote journalistic and literary critical articles, polemical notes, and works of art. With the close participation of N. N. Strakhov and A. A. Grigoriev, in the course of polemics with both radical and protective journalism, “soil” ideas developed on the pages of both magazines, genetically related to Slavophilism, but permeated with the pathos of reconciliation of Westerners and Slavophiles, the search for a national version of development and an optimal combination of the principles of “civilization” and nationality - a synthesis that grew out of the “all-responsiveness”, “all-humanity” of the Russian people, their ability to take a “conciliatory look at what is foreign”. Dostoevsky's articles, especially “Winter notes about summer impressions”(1863), written in the wake of the first trip abroad in 1862 (Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, England), represent a critique of Western European institutions and a passionately expressed belief in the special calling of Russia, in the possibility of transforming Russian society on fraternal Christian principles: “the Russian idea ... will be a synthesis of all those ideas that ... Europe is developing in its individual nationalities.”

4) 1860s Frontier of life and creativity D. In 1863, Dostoevsky made a second trip abroad, where he met A.P. Suslova (the writer’s passion in the 1860s); their complex relationship, as well as a gambling roulette game in Baden-Baden, provided material for the novel "Player"(1866). In 1864, Dostoevsky's wife died and, although they were not happy in their marriage, he took the loss hard. Following her, her brother Mikhail suddenly died. Dostoevsky assumed all the debts for the publication of the Epoch magazine, but soon stopped it due to a drop in subscriptions and entered into an unfavorable agreement for the publication of his collected works, obliging himself to write a new novel by a certain date. He visited abroad again; he spent the summer of 1866 in Moscow and at a dacha near Moscow, all this time working on a novel "Crime and Punishment", intended for the magazine “Russian Messenger” by M. N. Katkov (later all of his most significant novels were published in this magazine). At the same time, Dostoevsky had to work on his second novel (“The Player”), which he dictated to the stenographer A. G. Snitkina, who not only helped the writer, but also psychologically supported him in a difficult situation. After the end of the novel (winter 1867), Dostoevsky married her and, according to the memoirs of N. N. Strakhov, “the new marriage soon gave him the full family happiness that he so desired.”

Crime and Punishment. The writer had been nurturing the basic ideas of the novel for a long time, perhaps in the vaguest form, since hard labor. Work on it was carried out with enthusiasm and elation, despite the material need. Genetically related to the unrealized idea of “The Drunken Ones,” Dostoevsky’s new novel summed up the work of the 1840-50s, continuing the central themes of those years. Social motives received in him a deep philosophical resonance, inseparable from the moral drama of Raskolnikov, the “theoretician murderer,” the modern Napoleon, who, according to the writer, “ends up being forced to denounce himself... ... so that even if you die in hard labor, you will join the people again...” The collapse of Raskolnikov’s individualistic idea, his attempts to become the “lord of fate”, to rise above the “trembling creature” and at the same time make humanity happy, to save the disadvantaged - Dostoevsky’s philosophical response to the revolutionary sentiments of the 1860s.

Having made the “murderer and the harlot” the main characters of the novel and brought Raskolnikov’s inner drama to the streets of St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky placed everyday life in an environment of symbolic coincidences, heartbreaking confessions and painful dreams, intense philosophical debates and duels, turning St. Petersburg, drawn with topographical precision, into a symbolic image of a ghostly city . The abundance of characters, the system of heroic doubles, the wide coverage of events, the alternation of grotesque scenes with tragic ones, the paradoxically sharpened formulation of moral problems, the absorption of the heroes by the idea, the abundance of “voices” (different points of view, held together by the unity of the author’s position) - all these features of the novel, traditionally considered Dostoevsky's best work became the main features of the mature writer's poetics. Although radical critics interpreted Crime and Punishment as a tendentious work, the novel was a huge success.

5) Great novels of the writer In 1867-68. a novel has been written "Idiot", the task of which Dostoevsky saw in “the image of a positively beautiful person.” The ideal hero Prince Myshkin, “Prince Christ,” the “good shepherd,” personifying forgiveness and mercy, with his theory of “practical Christianity,” cannot withstand the clash with hatred, malice, sin and plunges into madness. His death is a death sentence for the world. However, as Dostoevsky noted, “wherever he touched me, everywhere he left an unexplored line.”

Next novel "Demons"(1871-72) was created under the impression of the terrorist activities of S. G. Nechaev and the secret society “People's Retribution” organized by him, but the ideological space of the novel is much wider: Dostoevsky comprehended the Decembrists, and P. Ya. Chaadaev, and the liberal movement of 1840- 1960s, and the sixties, interpreting the revolutionary “devilishness” in a philosophical and psychological key and entering into an argument with it through the very artistic fabric of the novel - the development of the plot as a series of disasters, the tragic movement of the destinies of the heroes, the apocalyptic reflection “cast” on the events. Contemporaries read “The Demons” as an ordinary anti-nihilistic novel, passing by its prophetic depth and tragic meaning. The novel was published in 1875 "Teenager", written in the form of a confession of a young man, whose consciousness is formed in an “ugly” world, in an atmosphere of “general decay” and a “random family.”

The theme of the breakdown of family ties was continued in Dostoevsky’s final novel - "The Brothers Karamazov"(1879-80), conceived as a depiction of “our intelligentsia Russia” and at the same time as a novel-life of the main character Alyosha Karamazov. The problem of “fathers and sons” (“children’s” theme received an acutely tragic and at the same time optimistic sound in the novel, especially in the book “Boys”), as well as the conflict of rebellious atheism and faith passing through the “crucible of doubts” reached its climax here and predetermined the central antithesis of the novel: the opposition of the harmony of universal brotherhood based on mutual love (Elder Zosima, Alyosha, boys), painful unbelief, doubts in God and the “world of God” (these motives culminate in Ivan Karamazov’s “poem” about the Grand Inquisitor) . The novels of the mature Dostoevsky are a whole universe, permeated with the catastrophic worldview of its creator. The inhabitants of this world, people of split consciousness, theorists, “crushed” by an idea and cut off from the “soil”, despite their inseparability from the Russian space, over time, especially in the 20th century, began to be perceived as symbols of the crisis state of world civilization.

6) "A Writer's Diary". The end of Dostoevsky's journey

In 1873, Dostoevsky began editing the newspaper-magazine “Citizen,” where he did not limit himself to editorial work, deciding to publish his own journalistic, memoir, literary-critical essays, feuilletons, and stories. This diversity was “redeemed” by the unity of intonation and views of the author, conducting a constant dialogue with the reader. This is how the “Diary of a Writer” began to be created, to which Dostoevsky devoted a lot of energy in recent years, turning it into a report on his impressions of the most important phenomena of social and political life and setting out his political, religious, and aesthetic convictions on its pages. In 1874, he abandoned editing the magazine due to clashes with the publisher and deteriorating health (in the summer of 1874, then in 1875, 1876 and 1879, he went to Ems for treatment), and at the end of 1875 he resumed work on the Diary, which was a huge success and prompted many people entered into correspondence with its author (he kept the Diary intermittently until the end of his life). In society, Dostoevsky acquired high moral authority and was perceived as a preacher and teacher. The apogee of his lifetime fame was his speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1880), where he spoke about “all-humanity” as the highest expression of the Russian ideal, about the “Russian wanderer” who needs “universal happiness.” This speech, which caused a huge public outcry, turned out to be Dostoevsky’s testament. Full of creative plans, planning to write the second part of The Brothers Karamazov and publish The Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky suddenly died in January 1881.

There is no 11 question.

12. The first success of the new school was Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor People. In this and in Dostoevsky's early novels and stories that followed (until 1849), the connection between the new realism and Gogol is especially obvious. After leaving the service, D. decided to devote himself to literature and in the winter of 1844-1845. wrote Poor people. Grigorovich, an aspiring novelist of the new school, advised him to show his work to Nekrasov, who was just about to publish a literary almanac. After reading Poor People, Nekrasov was delighted and took the novel to Belinsky. “A new Gogol is born!” - he cried, bursting into Belinsky’s room. “Your Gogols will spring up like mushrooms,” Belinsky replied, but he took the novel, read it, and it made the same impression on him as it did on Nekrasov. A meeting was arranged between Dostoevsky and Belinsky; Belinsky poured out all his enthusiasm on the young writer, exclaiming: “Do you yourself understand that you wrote this?” Thirty years later, remembering all this, Dostoevsky said that it was the happiest day of his life.

The main feature that distinguishes the young Dostoevsky from other novelists of the forties and fifties is his special closeness to Gogol. Unlike others, he, like Gogol, thought primarily about style. His style is as intense and intense as Gogol's, although not always as unerringly precise. Like other realists, in Poor People he tries to overcome Gogol’s purely satirical naturalism, adding elements of sympathy and human emotionality. But while others tried to solve this problem, balancing between the extremes of grotesque and sentimentality, Dostoevsky, in a true Gogolian spirit, as if continuing the tradition of the Overcoat, tried to combine extreme grotesque naturalism with intense emotionality; both of these elements are fused together without losing anything in individuality. In this sense, Dostoevsky is a true and worthy student of Gogol. But what is read in Poor People, their idea is not Gogol’s. This is not disgust for the vulgarity of life, but compassion, deep sympathy for trampled, half-depersonalized, ridiculous and yet noble human personalities. Poor people are the “acme”, the highest point of the “humane” literature of the forties, and in them one feels, as it were, a premonition of that destructive pity that became so tragic and ominous in his great novels. This is a novel in letters. Its heroes are a young girl who ends badly, and the official Makar Devushkin. The novel is long, and preoccupation with style lengthens it further. A new approach to the type of little person who has grown under the writer’s pen to the scale of a personality - a deep, contradictory personality; intent. Compassionate attention to her is combined with an innovative way of revealing the characters' self-awareness. Makar Devushkin is distinguished by a high degree of reflection, an attempt to comprehend existence through the perception of the wretched life of his own kind.

The second work to appear in print is Double. The poem (the same subtitle as Dead Souls) also grows out of Gogol, but in an even more original way than the first. This is a story told with almost Ulyssesian detail, in a style phonetically and rhythmically extraordinarily expressive, the story of an official who goes mad, obsessed with the idea that another official has appropriated his identity. This is a harrowing, almost unbearable read. The reader's nerves are strained to the limit. With cruelty, which Mikhailovsky later noted as his characteristic feature, Dostoevsky describes for a long time and with all the power of persuasiveness the torment of Mr. Golyadkin, humiliated in his human dignity. But, for all its painfulness and unpleasantness, this thing takes possession of the reader with such force that it is impossible not to read it in one sitting. In its own, perhaps illegal, kind of cruel literature (cruel, although, and perhaps because it is intended as humorous), The Double is a perfect literary work. Of Dostoevsky's other works of the first period, the most notable are The Hostess (1848) and Netochka Nezvanova (1849). The first one is unexpectedly romantic. The dialogue is written in a high rhetorical style, imitating a folk tale and very reminiscent of Gogol's Terrible Vengeance. It is much less perfect and weaker constructed than the first three, but the future Dostoevsky is more strongly felt in it. The heroine seems to be a forerunner of the demonic women of his great novels. But both in style and in composition here he is secondary - he is too dependent on Gogol, Hoffmann and Balzac. Netochka Nezvanova was conceived as a broader canvas than all previous works. Work on it was interrupted by the arrest and conviction of Dostoevsky.

13. In terms of genre, this work is a synthesis of autobiography, memoirs, and documentary essays. The integrity of the Notes is given by a global theme - the theme of people's Russia, as well as the figure of a fictional narrator. Alexander Petrovich Goryachnikov is close to the author in some ways: he acutely senses the colossal gap that separates the nobles from the common people even in hard labor, even in conditions of general deprivation. D. came to the conclusion that in everyone there are hidden abysses of dark, destructive forces, but also - in everyone - the possibility of endless improvement, the beginning of goodness and beauty. The Notes explore crimes committed by people who are gentle by nature, inexplicable cruelty, and the senseless submission of victims. At the same time, the internal craving of the downtrodden people for beauty and art is conveyed (chapter on the prison theater). The image of the kind-hearted Tatar Aley is lovingly depicted, and the story of doctors saving inhumanly punished people from death is sympathetically told. The notes for the first time holistically develop Dostoevsky's anthropology. Man is a universe in a collapsed and small form. From individual sketches a panorama of the House of the Dead is formed. It became a symbol of Russia during the last years of Nikolaev’s rule. Who is responsible for the hell of the House of the Dead: historical circumstances, the social environment, or each individual endowed with the freedom to choose good and evil? In the coming years, D. will focus on the problem of human freedom.

14. Raskolnikov was a priori depicted by D. as an extremely contradictory, even bifurcated figure. Portrait: “remarkably good-looking,” but dressed completely shabbyly. The details of the interior and the description of the room of a dropout student form not only a generalized symbolic structure (the room looks like a coffin), but also the background of the psychological motivation of the crime. Thus, the realist author implicitly points out the connection between the psychological state and lifestyle, habitat: a person experiences their influence. But R. still did not lose his quixotic selflessness and ability to empathize. But he extinguishes the noble impulses of his soul with cold conclusions. R. is a person with a split psyche, with incompatible attitudes: meaningful cruelty, aggressiveness and deep compassion, love of humanity. He is the generator and executor of ideas rolled into one. But the idea is painfully comprehended by him, and just as painfully experienced. First a theory, a new word, then a painful empathy for one’s own idea of blood according to one’s conscience, and finally a trial and deed. R, killing the money lender, tries to hide the true reasons behind a virtuous façade (to help humanity). D. reveals the secret self-interest of visible selflessness. It is based on R.’s harsh life experience, on personal troubles. The modern world is unfair and illegal in R's view. But the hero does not believe in future universal happiness. The exorbitant pride inherent in the hero gives rise to a cult of absolute self-will. This is the psychological basis of the theory of crime. One of the leading motives for the crime is an attempt to assert the very right to permissiveness, the “right” to kill. From here follows the second most important motive - testing one’s own strength, one’s own right to commit a crime (“Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right ...”) The hero wanted to get rid of prejudices, conscience and pity, to stand on the other side of good and evil. R. tries to overthrow God, despite statements that he believes in both God and the New Jerusalem.

R. is tormented by the fact that he did not pass the test, he killed, he killed, but he did not cross. He couldn't stand his crime.

R.'s nightmares are the last phase of punishment. Its essence lies in the painful feelings of what was done. In torment reaching the limit, beyond which there are only two mutually exclusive outcomes - destruction of personality or spiritual resurrection.

Word "double" used by M. M. Bakhtin, it is taken from Dostoevsky’s story “The Double” (about a “forked” man; one can feel the Gogolian tradition, elements of phantasmagoria; this story has been compared to Gogol’s “The Nose”). The very motif of the “double,” the dark second “I,” the black man, the mysterious visitor, etc., is quite often found in Dostoevsky’s great novels (the ghosts of Svidrigailov, the demon of Stavrogin, the “devil” of Ivan Karamazov). This motif is of romantic origin. However, from Dostoevsky he receives a realistic (psychological) perspective. Sonya and Svidrigailov are Raskolnikov’s “doubles”. The world of Sonya and the world of Svidrigailov practically do not intersect, but each of them individually is closely connected with the world of Raskolnikov. By “world” we here mean the entire set of themes, images, motifs, techniques and compositional elements (portrait, etc.), with the help of which characters are created.

So, for example, the world of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov is depicted using a number of similar or very close motifs (a child and a harlot, lack of living space, the moral right to “cross the line,” the fatal murder weapon, symbolic dreams, the proximity of madness). Svidrigailov tells Raskolnikov that they are “birds of a feather,” and this frightens Raskolnikov: it turns out that Svidrigailov’s gloomy philosophy is Raskolnikov’s theory taken to its logical extreme and devoid of humanistic rhetoric. Like all Dostoevsky’s “doubles,” Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov think a lot about each other, which creates the effect of a “common consciousness” of the two heroes. The main form of self-disclosure of the “double” heroes is their dialogue, but plot parallels are no less important. Svidrigailov is the embodiment of the “dark” aspects of Raskolnikov’s soul, and his death coincides with the beginning of a new path for the novel’s protagonist. Analyzing the confessional monologues of the characters, you can find that the character is confessing not to another person, but as if to himself. He turns his interlocutor into his double. Psychologically, this corresponds to a situation where a person is looking for someone to listen to him, and, finding an interlocutor, assigns him a passive role and does not take into account the independence of someone else’s consciousness. Dostoevsky's hero is used to communicating with doubles, and if he sees a real Other person, then this is truly an event in his life. For Raskolnikov, such an event was his meeting with Sonya. At first, when communicating with Sonya, Raskolnikov does not perceive her reactions, her emotional movements at all. Gradually the heroes begin to understand each other.

15. See 18 (there is both genre and composition)

16. The evolution of Raskolnikov's character (restoration of spiritual integrity) is depicted by Dostoevsky according to the ideas of Christian anthropology. The human soul is dual in nature, it is predisposed to both good and evil. This motif is found, for example, in Lermontov (“Hero of Our Time,” where Pechorin’s reasoning largely contains common motives with the reasoning of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov). A person inevitably faces the question of which path to choose - good or evil, reconciliation with the world or total rebellion. Reconciliation with God and people is a spiritual feat, the result of which will be personal growth. Rebellion and resistance limit a person in his little world, alienating him from the community of people. This is exactly what happens to Raskolnikov at first.

For Raskolnikov, to reconcile means to accept the injustice of the world, to agree that “a scoundrel is a man.” Raskolnikov's revolt takes place on the path of fighting against God, but the main background of the rebellion is social and philosophical. Sonya says that it was Raskolnikov who departed from God, and for this God punished him, “gave him over to the devil” (in Christian moral theology this is called “permission”). The novel shows Raskolnikov's path from rebellion to humility, which lies through suffering.

Raskolnikov asserted the boundless will of the individual; his claims can be called “superhuman”; here the philosophy of F. Nietzsche is partly anticipated. In the novel “Demons” this path is called “man-deity” (in contrast to the God-man Christ - this is a situation when a person puts himself in the place of God). Raskolnikov's individualistic revolt turned out to be untenable. A solitary individual is not yet a person; Raskolnikov's real personality is revealed only in the epilogue, when, through communication with Sonya, he became closer to people and realized that love exists in life.

There is no question 17.

18. Roman PiN ( Crime and Punishment) is based on the detective genre form. The criminal-adventurous intrigue, cementing the plot, either appears on its surface (murder, interrogations, testimony, hard labor), or hides behind guesses, hints and analogies. And yet the classic detective plot is displaced (the criminal is known in advance). The phases of the plot are determined not by the progress of the investigation, but by the hero’s painful movement towards confession. For D., a crime is not so much a manifestation of a pathological, sick person in his being, but rather a sign of social ill-being, a trace of painful and dangerous crazes in the minds of modern youth.

The conflict in its most general form is expressed by the title of the novel, which carries several meanings. The novel is divided into two compositional spheres: the first is a crime, pulling the line of conflict into a tight knot. Punishment is the second compositional sphere. Intersecting and interacting, they create characters, space and time, everyday details, etc. embody the meaning, the author's picture of the world.

Dostoevsky's novel can be defined simultaneously as socio-psychological and philosophical. This is a new stage in the development of the novel genre in the era of realism. All plots are depicted realistically, the social and everyday background is clearly indicated, the inner world of the characters and their deep psychological conflicts are recreated in detail. Poet, philosopher and ideologist of symbolism Vyach. Ivanov defines Dostoevsky’s genre as a “tragedy novel.” Often there is such a definition as “ideological novel” or “novel of ideas.” One of the most famous definitions of the “Crime and Punishment” genre belongs to M. M. Bakhtin - a “polyphonic” (i.e., polyphonic) or “dialogical” novel. Each hero has his own autonomous (independent) inner world (Bakhtin’s terms are “outlook”, “point of view”). The main structure-forming principle in the novel is the free interaction of these different worlds, the “chorus of voices.” The voice of the author, according to Bakhtin, occupies an equal position with the voices of the heroes in Dostoevsky. The author allows the reader to immerse himself in the consciousness of the hero, gives his heroes greater freedom, and does not completely dominate them. The novel has three main plot lines, and each of them is dominated by a specific genre principle. At the center of the narrative is the story of Raskolnikov, this hero forms the compositional center of the novel, all other plot lines are “contracted” to him.

Raskolnikov's storyline has a detective basis. However, it is not difficult to see that this is no longer a detective novel. The main character with whom the reader identifies is a criminal, and not an investigator, as is the case in detective novels. Thus, we can say that the essence of the “investigation” is different from that in a detective novel: it is a search not for a person, but for the “idea” or “spirit” that caused the crime.

Second plot line in the novel- the history of the Marmeladov family. It is connected with the unrealized idea of the novel, which was to be called “Drunk” (stylistically, this is reminiscent of the titles of Dostoevsky’s earlier works - “Poor People”, “Humiliated and Insulted”). The genre origins of this storyline are the early realistic prose of the natural school (stories and essays dedicated to the “physiology of St. Petersburg”) and the everyday life “tabloid novel” (for example, the novel “Petersburg Slums” by N. Krestovsky, based on which the television series “Petersburg Mysteries” was recently filmed) ). The theme of these works is the life of the “lower classes” of society; they widely represent such socio-psychological types as an inhabitant of a “drinking establishment”, bankrupt nobles, a money lender, a prostitute, people of the “demimonde” and the underworld.

The third storyline in the novel is connected with Dunya(persecution by Svidrigailov, Luzhin’s matchmaking, marriage to Razumikhin). This line develops in the spirit of a sentimental story or melodrama (a characteristic set of cruel “sensitive” scenes, a happy ending). Dunya belongs to the type of proud and inaccessible women sometimes portrayed by Dostoevsky (for example, Katerina Ivanovna in the novel The Brothers Karamazov). The desire to help her, to save her from a “senseless victim” is one of the secondary psychological motivations for Raskolnikov’s crime. It is with Dunya that the plot is connected with the appearance in the novel of such ideologically important characters as Luzhin and especially Svidrigailov, another, along with Sonya, Raskolnikov’s psychological “double”. Gradually he comes to the fore.

All storylines receive a final resolution in the Epilogue.

Dostoevsky's novel is a “novel of ideas.” Each of the “voices” heard in the novel represents some kind of ideology, “theory”. Disputes between heroes are a polemic of ideologies. Raskolnikov's ideology . It is presented in an article, the content of which we learn from Raskolnikov’s dialogue with Porfiry Petrovich. The theory is hard-earned, honest, and has no formal logical contradictions. She is merciless and loyal in her own way. The whole world is criminal, so there is no concept of crime. One category of people is “material”, others are the elite, heroes or geniuses, they lead the crowd, fulfilling a historical necessity. When asked by Porfiry Petrovich how to distinguish genuine “Napoleons” from impostors, Raskolnikov replies that the impostor will not succeed, and history itself will discard him. Such a person will simply be sent to a madhouse, this is an objective social law. When asked which category he classifies himself in, Raskolnikov does not want to answer. The ideological background of the article is Max Stirner’s philosophical work “The One and His Property” (solipsism: the world as the “property” of the thinking Subject), Schopenhauer’s work “The World as Will and Representation” (the world as an illusion of the thinking “I”), the works of Nietzsche are anticipated (criticism traditional religion and morality, the ideal of the future “superman”, replacing the modern “weak” man). Dostoevsky correctly notes that “Russian boys” (an expression from the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”) understand Western abstract philosophical ideas as a direct guide to action; The uniqueness of Russia is that it becomes a place of realization, materialization of these phantasms of European consciousness.

Svidrigailov's ideology. Svidrigailov preaches extreme individualism and voluntarism. Man is naturally cruel, he is predisposed to commit violence against other people to satisfy his desires. This is Raskolnikov’s ideology, but without the “humanistic” rhetoric (according to Raskolnikov, the mission of the “Napoleons” is to benefit humanity). One can name some literary “predecessors” of the Svidrigailov type. In the Age of Enlightenment, these are characters in the philosophical novels of the Marquis de Sade, representing the type of “libertine” (a person free from moral prohibitions). De Sade's characters deliver long monologues in which religion and traditional morality are rejected. In the era of romanticism, this is a “demonic” hero of the Pechorin type. Romantic motives also include nightmares and visits from ghosts. At the same time, the novel recreates a very concretely realistic social type of Svidrigailov: in the village he is a depraved landowner-tyrant, in St. Petersburg he is a man of the demimonde with dubious connections in the criminal world and, possibly, with a criminal past. Svidrigailov's metaphysical rebellion is expressed in the way he imagines “eternity”: in the form of a stuffy “bathhouse with spiders” (this image strikes Raskolnikov’s imagination). According to Svidrigailov, a person does not deserve anything more. Svidrigailov tells Raskrlnikov that they are “birds of a feather.” Raskolnikov is frightened by such similarities. Poet and philosopher of the era of symbolism Vyach. Ivanov writes that Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov are related like two evil spirits - Lucifer and Ahriman. Ivanov identifies Raskolnikov’s rebellion with the “Luciferic” principle (rebellion against God, an exalted and in its own way noble mind), and Svidrigailov’s position with “Arimanism” (lack of vital and creative forces, spiritual death and decay). Raskolnikov experiences both anxiety and relief when he learns that Svidrigailov committed suicide.

It should not be forgotten that Svidrigailov’s crimes are reported only in the form of “rumors,” while he himself categorically denies most of them. The reader does not know for sure whether Svidrigailov committed them; this remains a mystery and gives the image of the hero a partly romantic (“demonic”) flavor. On the other hand, throughout the entire action of the novel, Svidrigailov performs almost more specific “good deeds” than the other heroes (give examples). Svidrigailov himself tells Raskolnikov that he did not take upon himself the “privilege” of doing “only evil.” Thus, the author shows another facet of Svidrigailov’s character, in confirmation of the Christian idea that in any person there is both good and evil, and there is freedom of choice between good and evil.

Ideology of Porfiry Petrovich. Investigator Porfiry Petrovich acts as the main ideological antagonist and “provocateur” of Raskolnikov. He tries to refute the theory of the protagonist, but upon careful examination it turns out that Porfiry himself builds his relationship with Raskolnikov precisely according to the principles of this very theory: it is not for nothing that he became so interested in it. Porfiry seeks to psychologically destroy Raskolnikov and achieve complete power over his soul. He calls Raskolnikov his victim. In the novel, he is compared to a spider chasing a fly. Porfiry belongs to the type of “psychologist-provocateur” that is sometimes found in Dostoevsky’s novels. Some researchers believe that Porfiry is the embodiment of an alienated legal Law, a state that gives the criminal the opportunity, through his own torment, to come to repentance and suffer punishment as a way out of the current crisis situation. In any case, it is not difficult to see that the ideology of Porfiry Petrovich does not represent any real alternative to the ideology of Raskolnikov.

Luzhin's ideology. Luzhin represents the type of “acquirer” in the novel. Please note that the sanctimonious bourgeois morality embodied in Luzhin seems misanthropic to Raskolnikov: in accordance with it, it turns out that “you can kill people.” The meeting with Luzhin in a certain way influences Raskolnikov’s internal psychological process; it gives another impetus to the hero’s metaphysical rebellion.

Lebezyatnikov's ideology . Andrei Semenovich Lebezyatnikov is a parodic figure, a primitive and vulgar version of a “progressive” (like Sitnikov from Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”). Lebezyatnikov’s monologues, in which he sets out his “socialist” beliefs, are a sharp caricature of Chernyshevsky’s famous novel “What is to be done?” in those years. The author portrays Lebezyatnikov exclusively through satirical means. This is an example of the author’s peculiar “dislike” for the hero - this happens in Dostoevsky. He describes those heroes whose ideology does not fit into the circle of Dostoevsky’s philosophical reflections in a “destructive” manner.

Ideological “alignment of forces”. Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov, Luzhin and Lebezyatnikov form four ideologically significant pairs. On the one hand, extremely individualistic rhetoric (Svidrigailov and Luzhin) is contrasted with humanistically colored rhetoric (Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov). On the other hand, deep characters (Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov) are contrasted with shallow and vulgar ones (Lebezyatnikov and Luzhin). The “value status” of the hero in Dostoevsky’s novel is determined primarily by the criterion of depth of character and the presence of spiritual experience, as the author understands it, therefore Svidrigailov (“the most cynical despair”) is placed in the novel much higher not only than Luzhin (a primitive egoist), but also Lebezyatnikov, despite a certain altruism of the latter.

Christian religious and philosophical pathos of the novel. Raskolnikov’s spiritual “liberation” is symbolically timed to coincide with Easter. Easter symbolism (the resurrection of Christ) echoes in the novel the symbolism of the resurrection of Lazarus (this gospel story is perceived by Raskolnikov as addressed to him personally). At the end of the Epilogue, another biblical character is also mentioned - Abraham. In the book of Genesis, he is the first person to answer God's call. An important Christian theme of the novel is the appeal of God to man, the active participation of God in the fate of man. In the final chapters of the novel, a number of characters speak about God in precisely this sense. The novel in its draft edition ended with the words: “The ways in which God finds man are mysterious.”

19. In search of a moral ideal, Dostoevsky was captivated by the “personality” of Christ and said that people need Christ as a symbol, as faith, otherwise humanity itself will crumble and become bogged down in the game of interests. The writer acted as a deep believer in the feasibility of the ideal. Truth for him is the fruit of the efforts of reason, and Christ is something organic, universal, all-conquering.

Of course, the equal sign (Myshkin - Christ) is conditional, Myshkin is an ordinary person. But there is a tendency to equate the hero with Christ: complete moral purity brings Myshkin closer to Christ. And outwardly Dostoevsky brought them closer: Myshkin is at the age of Christ, as he is portrayed in the Gospel, he is twenty-seven years old, he is pale, with sunken cheeks, with a light, pointed beard. His eyes are large and intent. The whole manner of behavior, conversation, all-forgiving sincerity, enormous insight, devoid of any greed and selfishness, irresponsibility when offended - all this has the stamp of ideality. Myshkin was conceived as a person who came extremely close to the ideal of Christ. But the hero’s actions were presented as a completely real biography. Switzerland was not introduced into the novel by chance: it was from its mountain peaks that Myshkin descended upon the people. The hero’s poverty and sickness, when the title “prince” sounds somehow inappropriate, the signs of his spiritual enlightenment and closeness to ordinary people carry something painful, akin to the Christian ideal, and something childish always remains in Myshkin.

The story of Marie, who was stoned by her fellow villagers, which he tells in the St. Petersburg salon, resembles the Gospel story about Mary Magdalene, the meaning of which is compassion for the sinner. On the other hand, it was important for Dostoevsky that Myshkin did not turn out to be an evangelical scheme. The writer endowed him with some autobiographical features. This gave the image vitality. Myshkin has epilepsy - this explains a lot in his behavior. Dostoevsky once stood on the scaffold, and Myshkin tells a story in the Epanchins’ house about how a person feels a minute before execution: a patient who was being treated by a professor in Switzerland told him about this. Myshkin, like the author, is the son of a seedy nobleman and the daughter of a Moscow merchant. The appearance of Myshkin in the Epanchins’ house, his non-secularism are also autobiographical features: this is how Dostoevsky felt in the house of General Korvin-Krukovsky, when he was courting the eldest of his daughters, Anna. She was known as the same beauty and “idol of the family” as Aglaya Epanchina.

The writer took care that the naive, simple-minded prince, open to goodness, at the same time, would not be ridiculous or humiliated. On the contrary, so that sympathy for him increases, precisely because he is not angry with people: “for they do not know what they are doing.”

One of the pressing issues in the novel is the appearance of modern man, the “loss of appearance” in human relationships.

The terrible world of owners, greedy, cruel, vile servants of the money bag is shown by Dostoevsky in all its dirty unattractiveness. As an artist and thinker, Dostoevsky created a broad social canvas in which he truthfully showed the terrible, inhuman nature of bourgeois-noble society, torn apart by self-interest, ambition, and monstrous egoism. The images he created of Trotsky, Rogozhin, General Epanchin, Gani Ivolgin and many others with fearless authenticity captured the moral decay, the poisoned atmosphere of this society with its glaring contradictions.

As best he could, Myshkin tried to raise all people above vulgarity, to raise them to some ideals of goodness, but to no avail.

Myshkin is the embodiment of Christian love. But such love, love-pity, is not understood, it is unsuitable for people, it is too high and incomprehensible: “one must love with love.” Dostoevsky leaves this motto of Myshkin without any evaluation; such love does not take root in the world of self-interest, although it remains an ideal. Pity and compassion are the first things a person needs. The meaning of the work is in a broad display of the contradictions of Russian post-reform life, general discord, loss of “decency”, “plausibility”.

The strength of the novel lies in the artistic use of the contrast between the ideal spiritual values developed by humanity over many centuries, ideas about the goodness and beauty of actions, on the one hand, and the genuine existing relationships between people, based on money, calculation, prejudices, on the other.

Prince Christ could not offer convincing solutions in exchange for vicious love: how to live and which path to follow.

Dostoevsky in his novel “The Idiot” tried to create an image of “a completely wonderful person.” And a work should be evaluated not based on minor plot situations, but based on the overall concept. The question of the improvement of humanity is eternal, it is posed by all generations, it is “the content of history.”

The main idea of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful person.

20. It is well known that all the novels of Dostoevsky’s “great pentateuch” are replete with many gospel reminiscences and motifs. The action of all his novels (except for “The Teenager”) is organized around a certain gospel fragment, which becomes a symbolic image and structural model for the plot of the works. In the novel “The Idiot,” according to many scientists, this is a description of the execution of Christ. Thus, researcher A.B. Krinitsyn writes that “a symbolic image of Myshkin’s fate in the novel is Hans Holbein’s painting “Christ in the Tomb.” The fact is that “Christ is depicted on it so disfigured by torment and death that the audience should inevitably have the thought of the impossibility of resurrection... This image can have such a direct impact on the beliefs of the heroes because,” the researcher continues, “it is perceived by them as a very definite interpretation of the Gospel story about the torment and execution of Christ (explained in detail by Hippolytus when describing and explaining the picture).” Indeed, the ideological center of the novel is precisely this gospel story about the torment and execution of Christ. But, it seems, the novel “The Idiot” is much broader and more meaningful in ideological-aesthetic, philosophical-religious, and structural terms, which makes it possible to interpret its plot in accordance with one of the many fragments that make up the Gospel, namely - a story about the last week of the Savior’s earthly life (received in Christianity the name of Holy Week), the semantic center of which is the description of the crucifixion of Christ. Dostoevsky himself defined the idea of the resurrection of man as the idea of “restoring a lost man - a Christian and highly moral thought.” This gospel narrative is reflected in the text of the novel, but the main thing is that the main idea of the work is determined not by the suffering and death of the Savior, but by His Resurrection (on the third day after death). Therefore, the ending of the novel points us not to the “failure of Myshkin’s mission,” but to the hope that arises in the hearts of the young generation of the novel, the friends of Prince Myshkin, and the act of the protagonist truly became a link in the chain of hope. First of all, the compositional principles that unite the novel and the gospel narrative about Holy Week help to increase the emphasis on the event, which will subsequently become the main one for the formation of the plot. Thus, the main principle of the novel’s composition - antithesis11 - is realized in the opposition of the purity and faith of Prince Myshkin and the unbelief and malice of St. Petersburg society, and in the Gospel fragment - the love and mercy of Christ and the unbelief and hatred of the Pharisees.

And the use of a “ring” composition in the text of the novel and in the text of the Gospel allows us to establish a connection between the beginning and the end of both works. Perhaps, like Christ who ascended to heaven, Prince Myshkin in some way leaves this world and, like the Savior, leaves behind “disciples”, his successors - the younger generation, in whose hearts Myshkin’s ideas have left a deep imprint.

The relationship between Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna is illuminated by a legendary mythological plot (Christ's deliverance of the sinner Mary Magdalene from demonic possession). The full name of the heroine - Anastasia - in Greek means “resurrected”; Barashkov's surname evokes associations with an innocent atoning sacrifice. In this woman, violated honor, a sense of her own depravity and guilt are combined with a consciousness of inner purity and superiority, exorbitant pride - with deep suffering. She rebels against Totsky’s intentions to “place” his former kept woman, and protests against the very principle of universal corruption, as if parodying it at her own birthday in an eccentric scene. The fate of Nastasya Filippovna perfectly reflects the tragic denial of the world by a person. Nastasya Filippovna perceives Myshkin’s marriage proposal as a meaningless sacrifice, she cannot forget the past, and does not feel capable of a new relationship. D.’s self-respect is not only the well-known underside of pride, but also a special type of protest against humiliation. For Myshkin and Rogozhin N.F. becomes the embodiment of evil fate. D. turned the topic of beauty in a different direction: he saw not only the well-known ennobling influence of beauty, but also its destructive principles. The question of whether beauty will save the world remains an inextricably tragic question.

20. The basis of the plot of the work and the ideological content of the image of Nastasya Filippovna in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Idiot".

The novel, on which the writer worked in Switzerland and Italy, was published in 1868. Two years have passed since the writing of Crime and Punishment, but the writer is still trying to portray his contemporary in his “broadness”, in extreme, unusual life situations and conditions.

Only the image of an ambitious criminal who eventually came to God gives way here to an ideal man who already carries God within himself, but perishes (at least as a full-fledged personality) in a world of greed and unbelief.

If Raskolnikov thinks of himself as a “man-god,” then the main character of the new novel, Lev Myshkin, according to the writer’s plan, is close to the ideal of the embodiment of the divine in man. “The main idea of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult than this in the world, especially now. All writers, not only ours, but even all European ones, who took on the task of depicting a beautiful person, always gave in. Because the task is immeasurable... There is only one positively beautiful person in the world - Christ.” Another main idea (from the lecture): “there is so much strength, so much passion in the modern generation and it does not believe in anything.”

At first glance, the idea of the novel seems paradoxical: to portray a “completely wonderful person” in an “idiot,” “fool,” and “holy fool.” But in the Russian religious tradition, the weak-minded, like holy fools, who voluntarily took on the appearance of a madman, were seen as pleasing to God, blessed, and it was believed that higher powers spoke through their lips. In the drafts for the novel, the author called his hero “Prince Christ,” and in the text itself the motifs of the Second Coming are persistently heard.

The first pages of the work prepare the reader for the unusualness of Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. A first and last name sounds like an oxymoron (a combination of something incompatible); the author's description of appearance is more like an iconographic portrait than the appearance of a person in the flesh. He comes from “far away” in Switzerland to Russia, from his own illness - into a sick St. Petersburg society obsessed with social ills.

The Petersburg of Dostoevsky’s new novel is different from the Petersburg of “Crime and Punishment,” because the author realistically recreates a specific social environment - the capital’s “demimonde.” This is a world of cynical businessmen, a world of aristocratic landowners who have adapted to the requirements of the bourgeois era. Here, in a society “without moral foundations” (as well as throughout Russia), in the words of the writer himself, chaos, confusion, disorder prevail. Here, rather, hated Catholicism triumphs; Holbe’s painting is the central symbol: The Idiot is a novel under the sign of the dead Christ.

First of all, according to the writer’s plan, the main characters of the novel should have experienced the tangible positive influence of Myshkin: Nastasya Filippovna, Parfen Rogozhin and Aglaya Epanchina.

In this woman, violated honor, a sense of her own depravity and guilt are combined with a consciousness of inner purity and superiority, exorbitant pride - with deep suffering. She rebels against Totsky’s intentions to “place” his former kept woman and, protesting against the very principle of universal corruption, as if parodying it, plays out an eccentric scene at her own birthday.

at the heart of all Dostoevsky’s novels lies “the tragedy of man’s final self-determination, his basic choice between being in God and fleeing from God to non-existence.” The fate of Nastasya Filippovna perfectly illustrates the tragic denial of the world by a person. Myshkin’s marriage proposal is assessed by Nastasya Filippovna as a sacrifice, a meaningless sacrifice, because she cannot forget the past, does not feel capable of a new relationship: “You are not afraid, but I will be afraid that I ruined you and that you will reproach me later.” Internally feeling like a “street”, “Rogozhinsky”, she runs away from the aisle and gives herself into the hands of Parfen.

Only Myshkin deeply understands her secret dream of moral renewal. He “believed at first sight” in her innocence; compassion and pity speak in him: “I can’t stand Nastasya Filippovna’s face.” Myshkin intuitively chooses Nastasya, not Aglaya, because love for Agla is only Eros, and love for Nastasya is covered in Christian compassion.

Unable to support in Rogozhin’s soul the good shoots that burst from the depths of his shattered soul under the influence of love, Nastasya Filippovna becomes for him, as for Myshkin, the embodiment of evil fate. Speaking about desecrated beauty in the world of money and social injustice, Dostoevsky was one of the first to turn the problem of beauty into a different semantic plane: he saw not only the well-known ennobling influence of beauty, but also its destructive principles. According to Dostoevsky, in the inescapable internal contradiction of man, as his generic trait, lies the ambivalence of beauty, inextricably connecting the divine and the devil, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The question remains inextricably tragic in the novel: will beauty save the world?

The motif of the destructive power of money in contemporary Russia sounds especially strong to the writer in The Idiot. But this is only a social background for another, deeper meaning. The transformation of the world on the basis of evangelical love remained an unattainable ideal, and Myshkin himself remained a hero and a victim. He himself split in two during the course of the novel under the influence of eros, and the result of the splits and influences of this world was final madness. Although in the beginning he is a true Christ, the world wants to undermine his integrity.

Related information.

The work of Fyodor Dostoevsky is the heritage of Russian culture.

Briefly about Dostoevsky

– one of the brightest classics of Russian literature of the 19th century. Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, but the classic did not live long - 59 years. Dostoevsky died in 1881 from tuberculosis.

The work of Fyodor Dostoevsky did not receive recognition during his lifetime. But after the author’s death, he began to be considered one of the best writers of Russian realism.

Four of Dostoevsky's novels are included in the 100 best literary works in the history of mankind. They not only began to read the great classic after his death, but also to stage plays based on his novels, and when cinema arose, many of his stories were filmed, more than once.

The young writer had a hard life, and it greatly influenced his literature, making it as “real” as we see and love it now.

Analysis of Dostoevsky's creativity

The following four novels deserve the most attention:

Brothers Karamazov;
Idiot;
Crime and Punishment;
Demons.

is the author’s last novel; he spent two years creating it. It is based on a complex detective story, honed simply to the smallest detail. The crime has a lot to do with the love story. But most importantly, this symbiosis conveys the whole spirit of the society in which Dostoevsky lived.

The novel touches on such important and difficult issues as the question of God, immortality, murder, love, freedom, betrayal.

Demons is one of Dostoevsky's most striking novels, in which there is a huge note of political orientation. The novel touches on issues of various terrorist movements, revolutionary movements unfolding at that time in the Russian Empire. One of the key places in the novel is occupied by people - atheists and those people who did not attribute themselves to any class.

The Idiot is a famous novel by Dostoevsky, written outside the Russian Empire. This novel is called the most complex work of the classic. In his work, Dostoevsky portrays a character who would be beautiful in everything. His hero begins to get involved in the destinies of other people, in order to benefit them, but only destroys their lives. Subsequently, Dostoevsky's hero becomes a victim of his own attempts to benefit.

- this is a deep, philosophical work and it can help a person understand himself. Crime and Punishment is Dostoevsky's most famous and most widely read work. According to the plot of the novel, the main character is Raskolnik, a poor student commits a double murder and theft, and then the ghosts of this event begin to torment him. We will see the deep psychological experiences of the main character about the person who committed the crime. There is also a deep love line here.

Raskolnikov tests her for a poor girl who is forced to take the path of prostitution for food. The novel touches on themes of murder, love, conscience, poverty and much more. The main advantage of the novel is its realism; it accurately conveys not only the spirit of that era, but also of the era in which you and I live. Dostoevsky’s work is not only these four novels, but everyone should know and read these works.

F.M. Dostoevsky, a phenomenon of world literature, opened a new stage in its history and largely determined its face, the paths and forms of its further development. Dostoevsky is not just a great writer, but also an event of enormous importance in the history of the spiritual development of mankind.

Almost the entire world culture is present in his work, in his images, in his artistic thinking. And not just present: she found in Dostoevsky her brilliant transformer, who ushered in a new stage of artistic consciousness in the history of world literature.

The artistic world of Dostoevsky is a world of thought and intense quest.

The same social circumstances that separate people and give rise to evil in their souls, activate, according to the writer’s diagnosis, their consciousness, push the heroes onto the path of resistance, give rise to their desire to comprehensively comprehend not only the contradictions of their contemporary era, but also the results and prospects of all history humanity, awaken their reason and conscience. Hence the sharp intellectualism of Dostoevsky's novels, which is especially valuable today. Kirpotin V. Ya. Dostoevsky the artist M., 1972. p. 139.

The exceptional sharpness and internal tension of thought, the special saturation of action, which are characteristic of his works, are consonant with the internal tension of life of our time.

Dostoevsky never depicted life in its calm flow. He is characterized by an increased interest in crisis conditions of both society and the individual, which is by far the most valuable thing in a writer.

The writer’s works are full of philosophical thought, so close to the people of our time, and are akin to the best examples of literature of the 20th century.

Dostoevsky unusually sensitively, and in many ways prophetically, expressed the role of ideas in public life that had already grown in his time and has grown even more today.

One of the main problems that tormented Dostoevsky was the idea of the reunification of the people, society, humanity, and at the same time, he dreamed of each person gaining internal unity and harmony.

He was painfully aware that in the world in which he lived, the unity and harmony so necessary for people was violated - both in the relationships of people with nature, and in the relationships within the social and state whole, and in each person separately.

These questions, which occupied a central place in the circle of thoughts of Dostoevsky the artist and thinker, have acquired special significance in our days.

Today the problem of interhuman ways has become especially acute. connections, about the creation of a harmonious system of social and moral relations and about the education of a full-fledged, spiritually healthy person Kirpotin V. Ya. Dostoevsky-artist M., 1972. p. 140..

Depicting current, topical modernity, Dostoevsky knew how to raise it to the heights of tragedy.

The question facing the writer about the unification of the mind and morality of the individual and humanity with its moral world, which contains the experience of generations, their conscience and wisdom, has acquired enormous significance today.

Dostoevsky encouraged the greatest writers of the 19th century to think, and he encourages us today to solve the most important questions of life.

The specificity of Crime and Punishment is that it synthesizes romance and tragedy.

Dostoevsky extracted tragic ideas from the era of the sixties, in which the “free higher” personality was forced to test the meaning of life in practice alone, without the natural development of society.

An idea acquires novelistic force in Dostoevsky's poetics only when it reaches extreme tension and becomes mania. The action to which it pushes a person must acquire the character of a catastrophe.

The hero’s “crime” is neither criminal nor philanthropic in nature. Action in a novel is determined by an act of free will undertaken to transform an idea into reality.

Dostoevsky made his heroes criminals - not in the criminal, but in the philosophical sense of the word.

The character became interesting to Dostoevsky when a historical, philosophical or moral idea was revealed in his willful crime.

The philosophical content of an idea merges with his feelings, character, social nature of a person, his psychology Mochulsky K.V. Great Russian writers of the 19th century M., 2000. p. 286..

The novel is based on the free choice of a solution to a problem.

Life had to unsettle Raskolnikov, destroy the sanctity of norms and authorities in his mind, lead him to the conviction that he is the beginning of all beginnings: “everything is prejudice, just fears, and there are no barriers, and so it should be.” !

And since there are no barriers, then you need to choose.

Dostoevsky is a master of a fast-paced plot. “Crime and Punishment” is also called a novel of spiritual quest, in which many equal voices are heard arguing on moral, political and philosophical topics. Ibid. 287..

Each of the characters proves their theory without listening to their interlocutor or opponent.

Of the voices, the voice of the author stands out, expressing sympathy for some characters and antipathy for others. He is filled either with lyricism (when he talks about Sonya’s spiritual world), or with satirical contempt (when he talks about Luzhin and Lebezyatnikov) Ibid. 289..

The growing tension of the plot is conveyed through dialogue.

With extraordinary skill, Dostoevsky shows the dialogue between Raskolnikov and Porfiry, which is conducted in two aspects:

firstly, every remark of the investigator brings Raskolnikov’s confession closer;

secondly, the entire conversation in sharp leaps develops the philosophical position set forth by the hero in his article.

The internal state of the characters is conveyed by the writer through the method of confession. Old man Marmeladov confesses to Raskolnikov in the tavern, and Raskolnikov to Sonya. Everyone has a desire to open their souls.

Confession, as a rule, takes the form of a monologue. The characters argue with themselves, castigate themselves. It is important for them to understand themselves.

A person listens to himself, argues with himself, contradicting himself.

The portrait description conveys general social features and signs of age: Marmeladov is a drunken aging official, Svidrigailov is a youthful, depraved gentleman, Porfiry is a sickly, intelligent investigator. This is not the writer's usual observation.

The general principle of the image is concentrated in rough, sharp strokes, like masks. But the eyes are always painted on the frozen faces with special care. Through them you can look into a person’s soul.

And then Dostoevsky’s exceptional manner of focusing attention on the unusual is revealed. Everyone’s faces are strange, everything in them is taken too far to the limit, they amaze with their contrasts. Ibid. 290..

There was something “terribly unpleasant” in Svidrigailov’s handsome face; in Porfiry’s eyes there was “something much more serious” than should have been expected. In the genre of a polyphonic ideological novel, these are the only portrait characteristics of complex and divided people.

Dreams and nightmares carry a certain artistic meaning in revealing ideological content.

There is nothing lasting in the world of Dostoevsky’s heroes; they already doubt whether the disintegration of moral foundations and personality occurs in a dream or in reality.

To penetrate the world of his heroes, Dostoevsky creates unusual characters and unusual situations that border on fantasy.

The artistic detail in Dostoevsky's novel is as original as other artistic means. Raskolnikov kisses Sonya's feet.

A kiss serves to express a deep idea containing a multi-valued meaning. A substantive detail sometimes reveals the entire plan and course of the novel: Raskolnikov did not kill the old woman - the pawnbroker, but “lowered” the ax on the “head with the butt.”

Since the killer is much taller than his victim, during the murder the ax blade threateningly “looks him in the face.” With the blade of an ax, Raskolnikov kills the kind and meek Lizaveta, one of those humiliated and insulted for whose sake the ax was raised.

The color detail enhances the bloody undertone of Raskolnikov's crime. A month and a half before the murder, the hero pawned “a small gold ring with three red stones,” a souvenir gift from his sister.

“Red pebbles” become harbingers of droplets of blood. The color detail is repeated more than once: red lapels on Marmeladov’s boots, red spots on the hero’s jacket.

The symbolic detail helps to reveal the social specifics of the novel.

While affirming the view of his heroes as Christians walking before God, the author simultaneously conveys the idea of a common redemptive suffering for all of them, on the basis of which symbolic fraternization is possible, including between the murderer and his victims.

Raskolnikov's cypress cross means not just suffering, but the Crucifixion.

Such symbolic details in the novel are the icon and the Gospel.

Religious symbolism is also noticeable in proper names: Sonya (Sofia), Raskolnikov (schism), Kapernaumov (the city in which Christ worked miracles); in numbers: “thirty rubles”, “thirty kopecks”, “thirty thousand silver pieces”.

The speech of the characters is individualized. The speech characteristics of the German characters are represented in the novel by two female names: Luiza Ivanovna, the owner of the entertainment establishment, and Amalia Ivanovna, from whom Marmeladov rented an apartment.

Crime and Punishment has its own system for highlighting key words and phrases. This is italics, that is, the use of a different font. Vorovsky V.V. Articles about Russian literature M., 1986. p. 234. .

The highlighted words seem to protect Raskolnikov from those phrases that he is afraid to utter.

Italics is also used by Dostoevsky as a way of characterizing a character: Porfiry’s “impolite sarcasm”; “Insatiable suffering” in Sonya’s features.

The great Russian writer F. M. Dostoevsky expressed through his creativity the immensity of the suffering of humiliated and insulted humanity in an exploitative society and the immeasurable pain for this suffering. And at the same time, he fiercely fought against any search for real ways to fight for the liberation of humanity from humiliation and insult.

Duality tormented Dostoevsky, becoming for him and his heroes a source of painful, unique and vengeful pleasure - a painful form of recognition of the hopelessness of torment.

He himself was cruelly humiliated and insulted by the terrible reality that turned his heroes into broken people. His life and literary path is a tragedy, the content of which is the suppression and disfigurement of the human soul by a reality hostile to genius, freedom, art, and beauty. The works of this most subjective writer, which are always his personal confession, with their gloomy anxiety, feverish tossing and hesitation, inescapable fear of the chaos and darkness of the surrounding life, capture the sad story of a great but sick soul, sickened by human suffering and desperate, that is, a youth that has outlived its aspirations, dreams, hopes, - the soul, who fell in love with pain, because she had nothing to live with, which means she had nothing to love except pain.

The restless atmosphere of his works reflected the suppressed, distorted protest of reality, which crushed millions of people, just as the unfortunate Marmeladov was crushed to death, and the fragility, doom, and imminent collapse of society itself, built on human suffering, fraught with unknown shocks, formidable cataclysms.

Dostoevsky's creativity was generated by a transitional, crisis era of the collapse of feudal-serf relations in Russia and their replacement by new, capitalist relations.

He was oppressed by serfdom, complete arbitrariness and the autocracy of those in charge and significant persons; he was also suppressed by the growth of new relationships, the widespread rampant predation, and the cynicism of the frankly wolfish laws of life. Dostoevsky expressed fear of the victorious march of capitalism of these social strata, unstable, socially and psychologically unarmed, unprotected, accessible to all kinds of reactionary and decadent influences.

He began his literary career as a student of Gogol, an ally of Belinsky. His spiritual and literary development could have continued further in the same direction, despite the very serious contradictions revealed already in the works of the first period of his work, if this development had not been interrupted so monstrously - rudely, despotic - cruelly, so disgustingly - criminal mockery over his personality: hard labor, soldiering, exile. For ten whole years he was thrown out of life by the same Nikolaev regime that killed Pushkin, killed Lermontov, and hounded Gogol.

A difficult ideological and psychological process took place in him over the years, with his painfully impressionable, naked soul. He lost faith in the possibility of improving reality through struggle, he doubted the very nature of man, the ability of man to rebuild his life with his own strength, with his rational will. He began to seek support in religion - in a cruel constant struggle with himself.

Upon his return to St. Petersburg, after nine years of the deepest loneliness he had experienced, the life of a large capitalist city, with all its colorful contradictions, washed over him. And soon to this stormy swarm of impressions, the chaos of which was later so clearly expressed in “The Teenager”. And he became even more firmly established in his sermon that only through suffering can modern man be cleansed of selfishness, of the temptations of the satanic power of money over everything.

Having left the new, advanced Russia-Russia of Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Herzen, Nekrasov, Shchedrin, Dostoevsky lost his only opportunity to help the humiliated and insulted get out of the darkness. Having absorbed the suffering of humanity into his soul, Dostoevsky bowed before their infinity, to get out of the darkness.

Dostoevsky enthusiastically welcomed the peasant reform of 1861, seeing in it a confirmation of his faith in the “nationality”, the classlessness of the autocracy and its ability to save Russia from the capitalist path.

Despite his inherent irony, Dostoevsky turned out to be capable of Manilov’s idylls, at which, apparently, he himself laughed bitterly. In his articles, he developed sweet pictures of the unity of all classes under the shadow of the throne. And at the same time, his works are full of horror at the all-powerful progress of capitalization of the country, and in his letters he soberly wrote about the growth of the working class, bitterly admitting that Russia is following the same path of development as the West. It seems that not a single artist was not tormented by such an abundance of various contradictions as Dostoevsky. Defense of the cause of reaction and at the same time disgust for the ruling classes that made up the camp of reaction! All such contradictions meant a struggle in the work of the great artist of living life against false reactionary schemes.

Towards the end of his life, Dostoevsky was allowed into the royal palace, he was caressed by the great princes, including the heir to the throne, the future Tsar Alexander III. He became a friend of the leader of the noble reaction, K. Pobedonostsev, chief prosecutor of the “Holy Synod,” a native of the commoners, who turned into an evil and insidious strangler of all living and honest people of Rus'. Dostoevsky wrote his last novel, “The Brothers Karamazov,” listening to the advice of this chief lackey of the kings. The author of “The Karamazov Brothers” considered his goal in the novel to hit the ungodly camp of the revolution as painfully as possible. But in this work he created an image of the deadly corruption of the landowner class in the person of the vile old man Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. And in the image of Smerdyakov, the writer forever branded all sorts of servility - the product and reflection of the nobility. Both of these images belong to the classic achievements of world literature.

The struggle between good and evil in the human soul tormented Dostoevsky and his heroes, occupied such a huge place in his works that it was inextricably linked with the fundamental theme of all his work. The crisis era of breaking up seemed to Dostoevsky a terrible era of the loss of all moral principles, an era of freedom for everything - for any crimes, for trampling on everything holy. It is in this, and only in this, that the objective meaning and significance of all the problems associated with the images of Raskolnikov, Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov and other characters of Dostoevsky lie.

Dostoevsky called for humility, patience, reconciliation, but could never come to terms with the existing reality. He had the real right, earned by all his work, to express a generalizing formula of his work: - I don't like the face of this world! In his images, he posed many big, pressing questions to humanity. He introduced a whole unexplored world into literature - the world of slums, dark corners of a big city, the gloomy life of their inhabitants.

The anxiety that made up the air of his works; the abundance of human torment in them; the acute constant dissatisfaction of his characters with everyone around him; many characters on the verge of madness, abnormality, painful distortion of human relationships; the boundlessness of loneliness and melancholy, helplessness, hopelessness, humiliation and insult at every step - all this in Dostoevsky’s work cries out for the colossal disorder of man and human life.

Dostoevsky is the creator of deep realistic paintings of human grief, classic in their artistic truth and irresistible power, a master of realism who introduced new social types into literature.

In the forties, he experienced a strong influence of anti-serfdom, democratic ideas mixed with the ideas of utopian socialism. This was the influence of the Belinsky circle, the Petrashevsky circle, which was the advanced center of the revolutionary movement in Russia in the second half of the forties. In the forties, the increased exploitation of the peasantry by landowners, the intensification of the class struggle in the country, the growth of the peasant movement, the urgent need to abolish serfdom, which affected everything. The rise of public self-awareness, revolutionary thought, all this fascinated Dostoevsky. He was acutely aware of the general situation and breathed its air. This was reflected in his works. He had neither a sustained revolutionary passion nor a complete belief in the power of the revolutionary movement. His democracy was vaguely dreamy. He wavered between Belinsky's atheism and his aspirations for Christian socialism. He loved poor people. He dreamed of abolishing serfdom. He wanted freedom for the press, for literature. This was his real guilt before the tsarist government.

Mercilessly soberly cutting off all the reactionary lies, the idealization of suffering, the idealization of duality, all Dostoevsky in Dostoevsky, we honor the harsh truth about the life of humanity in a violent society, expressed with such passion and torment in the contradictory, rebellious and resigned, amazing in its artistic power and at the same time sometimes sharply retreating from artistry, excited, searching, suffering creations of the brilliant Russian and world artist.