What do we know about St. Petersburg? This is a city created by the hands of talented architects, a symbol of the heyday and grandeur of post-Petrine Russia. The city of magnificent balls and palace coups, striking today with its splendor. But there was another, unknown to us, distant Petersburg. A city where people live in “cells”, in dirty yellow houses with dark staircases, and spend their free time in stinking taverns and taverns. A city where life is hopeless, scary and ghostly. It is precisely this image of Petersburg in the novel Crime and Punishment that Dostoevsky draws.
Game of contrasts
There is such an expression: "Petersburg of Dostoevsky." It reflects the perception of the city by the writer. Fyodor Mikhailovich saw him sick, damp, gloomy, and yet beautiful. He, like the hero of his novel Raskolnikov, loved Petersburg with painful and bitter love, perceived it exclusively in a special way. And Pushkin, and Nekrasov, and Gogol in their works recreated the contrasting image of St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky is distinguished from them by the special nature of worldview, which is explained by the aggravation of contrasts of the then capital of Russia during the writer's stay in it (in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century). At that time, capitalism was rapidly developing, due to bank offices, working outskirts, tenement houses and factories, the city was growing rapidly. But back to the work.
Roman F. M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment." The image of St. Petersburg
It is summer, the street is hot, but the city landscape is gloomy and gloomy . We look at the summer city through the eyes of a hungry poor man. Everywhere there was crush, stuffiness, dust, everywhere lime, brick, woods, everywhere a special stench, familiar to every Petersburger who could not leave in the summer to the country.
The image of St. Petersburg in the novel by Dostoevsky does not always appear like this. There are descriptions of nature paintings and magnificent views of the capital, but they are only a contrast to the joyless image. Among discharged women, wealthy mansions, a hungry youth feels rejected. On the bridge, from which the gaze of the Neva majestic panorama opens up, Raskolnikov almost fell under a rich stroller, and for fun the passerby whips him with a whip. The young man is more interested in the Haymarket. Yes, she is a beggar, but here he finds a peculiar beauty and feels his own.
On the streets of the city
The image of St. Petersburg in the novel Crime and Punishment is recreated so vividly, because all the events mostly take place on the street. A dandy carriage somewhere in the alley near Sennaya crushes the unfortunate Marmeladov. The very next day, on the street, his half-mad and consumptive widow was bleeding. Svidrigailov is shooting at the embankment. On the street, Raskolnikov is popularly trying to bring repentance. All of these close-up scenes are complemented by fluent episodes. A background is created from them, on which the tragic fate of Sonechka, Marmeladov, Raskolnikov unfolds.
In the houses of heroes
From the dirty noisy streets Dostoevsky takes us to the houses typical of capitalist Petersburg where his heroes live. We find ourselves in the fetid yards, climb the gloomy narrow stairs. The rooms are painted in twilight, they are poorly lit by the dim end of a candle or by the oblique rays of the setting summer sun. The image of St. Petersburg in the novel Crime and Punishment seems creepy, and life cries out miserably on its littered streets and miserable slums. Actually occurring events - the murder of an old woman-interest-bearer, the emergence of "out of the ground" a man calling Raskolnikov a "killer", desperate street cries - look like nightmarish visions of a madman. At the same time, Raskolnikov's delusional dreams are so reminiscent of reality ...
World of poverty
A gloomy gray city, in which drinking, urging the poor to pour their sorrows, located on every corner ... drunk people and prostitutes on the streets, poverty, disease and powerlessness reign everywhere - this is the image of St. Petersburg created by Dostoevsky. Here you can suffocate from the stench, there is a desire to quickly run away, get fresh air into your lungs, get rid of the vapors of immorality and meanness. Such is he, the terrible world of unbearable suffering, the world of poverty, the world in which Raskolnikov’s semi-crazy thoughts are born. Among the characters inhabiting the pages of the novel, there are often children. Dostoevsky is relentlessly haunted by thoughts of their fate, the writer's heart sharply wound their torment.
Another image of St. Petersburg
In the novel Crime and Punishment, the city is represented not only by offended and humiliated people, but also by active, industrious people who can do what. Here is a scammer Koch buying up expired items from an old interest-bearing woman. Here is the holder of the drinking center Dushkin hiding the stolen goods. Here is a merchant Yushkin charges for cheap rooms. Here Daria Frantsevna and Louise Ivanovna literally sell women. Two figures clearly stand out against the background of these characters: the industrial businessman Luzhin and the sharpie Svidrigailov. The first is a villain capable of any atrocities, the second is a visitor to St. Petersburg taverns, who even tortured serfs during the period of serfdom. All these people create the image of St. Petersburg. However, it does not come down to a description of the ugly life of heroes, but carries a philosophical and symbolic meaning.
The city as the personification of reality
Dostoevsky believed that Petersburg was not created for people, but for the glory of the sovereign. Peter the Great did not feel the aspirations of his people, tried to instill in the Russians European tastes and thinking. So his city turned out to be “non-Russian”, “composed”. Raskolnikov’s everything is annoying here: the disgusting smell, and unbearable heat, and yellow. He walks along the alleys around Sennaya, but does not notice beautiful buildings, does not see Yusupov Garden, passes by the Ascension Church. His attention is drawn only to pubs with dirty peasants, poor passers-by, driven to extreme despair by suicides, petty merchants ... Petersburg is a symbol of an unjust, unsettled society, ruthless and unresponsive to ordinary people. Nevertheless, Russian people live here, having preserved their spiritual integrity and the Orthodox faith. They suffer in Russian, believe in Russian, are saved in Russian. The city is an actor, not even a witness, but an accomplice in Raskolnikov’s wild crime and his repentance, repentance and the return of people to the world.
Finally
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is a brilliant writer who considers different aspects of his contemporary society and paints real pictures of the life of the Russian people without embellishment. The images of people created by him in the novel Crime and Punishment are imbued with a spirit of protest against human humiliation and social injustice. The writer's worldview is based on fundamental truths: love for a person and recognition of his spiritual personality. All Dostoevsky’s searches are aimed at creating decent living conditions for people. City landscapes in this carry a huge semantic load. The image of St. Petersburg embodies the sense of hopelessness that the heroes of the work experience. The city crushes, smothers, inspires crazy ideas, brings nightmare visions. In this setting, Raskolnikov 's crazy theory is born .