Petersburg of Dostoevsky. Description of Petersburg by Dostoevsky. Petersburg in the works of Dostoevsky

The city on the Neva, together with all its majestic and sinister history, has always been in the center of attention of Russian writers.

Peter's creation

According to the idea of its founder Peter the Great, caused by "from the marshland of swamps," Petersburg was to become a stronghold of national glory. Contrary to the ancient Russian tradition of erecting cities on the hills, it really was built in a marshy lowland at the cost of the lives of many nameless builders, exhausted by dampness, cold, marsh miasms and hard work. The expression that the city "stands on the bones" of its builders can be understood literally. At the same time, the meaning and mission of the second capital, its magnificent architecture and impudent mysterious spirit made Petersburg truly a "marvelous city" that made admirers of himself his contemporaries and descendants. It is no coincidence that today we have the opportunity to enjoy the many-sided "portraits" of this amazing city in the works of the greatest artists of the word and we mention idioms such as Petersburg Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Akhmatova, Blok.

Twin City

Shrouded in mystery, sheltering on its direct, submerged avenues, the unreal Major Nos Kovalev and the afterlife of the unfortunate Akaky Akakievich, the city itself seems like a ghost, ready to melt along with the fog. St. Petersburg in Dostoevsky's works, as well as in Gogol's fantastic stories, appears as a strange "obsession", a dream that will disappear at the very moment when he "wakes up, who dreams everything" (novel "Teenager"). Often the Granite City in the works of writers is an almost animate being, capable of influencing the destinies of people. He becomes the culprit of the broken hopes of poor Evgeny in Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman", and the desperate threat of the sufferer "Uzho you!", Thrown toward the statue, is addressed to the whole city-abuser. Petersburg in the works of Dostoyevsky is not only a character, but also a kind of twin of the characters, strangely refracting their thoughts, experiences, fantasies and the future. This theme was born still on the pages of the Petersburg Chronicle, in which the young publicist Fyodor Dostoevsky with alarm sees the traits of morbid gloom that slip in the inner image of his beloved city.

Petersburg in Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment

This work is a real textbook of human studies in the part that relates to the experience of acute spiritual crises, the comprehension of extremely dangerous ideas. The moral experiment of Raskolnikov is that he believes that a good man who wishes to make humanity happy is allowed to sacrifice life - not his own, but someone else's, even if in his opinion, the most useless. The hero tests his theory, and for him it becomes obvious that he is not a winner, but a victim: "he killed himself," and not "an old woman." Partly the instigator of the murder is Petersburg. Dostoevsky is hard to suspect of hatred for this city, but here the writer ruthlessly exposes the atmosphere of a brutal, fetid, drunken urbanist monster that throttles Raskolnikov and imposes on him the idea that only the strongest survive.

City-partner

The author skillfully interlaces the image of urban landscapes, street scenes and interiors. Petersburg Dostoevsky logically subscribes to the plotline, and its details are the most accurate strokes in characterizing the characters and developing the idea of the work. How does this happen?

Cityscapes

The first description of St. Petersburg by Dostoevsky we meet immediately - in the first chapter of the first part. The heat, stuffiness, stench and every minute come across the drunkard's way painfully respond to the frustrated nerves of Raskolnikov. In the first chapter of the second part, with the horrific details, the same picture repeats: stench, stuffiness, heat, people scurrying past, and again the young man is going through hard times. The crowding and stuffiness of the urban slums is also the spiritual atmosphere of almost the entire novel. Only now it is said about the sun, intolerably cutting eyes. The motif of the sun will then take metaphorical completeness, and while its bright light torments the entangled in his idea of Raskolnikov.

Magnificent panorama

In the second part of the novel, in Chapter 2, Raskolnikov is frantically searching for a place to hide the values taken from the old woman. And suddenly here it freezes from the breathtaking panorama - clean air, a blue river and the dome reflected in it . Does it delight the hero? No, he never understood, could not decipher for himself this "magnificent picture", from which he felt "inexplicable cold" and "dumb and deaf spirit".

"Drunk" Petersburg

Dostoevsky's crime and punishment of the hero he created was, of course, not only as an acute psychic detective story. The path from the moral impasse to the light is spatially realized as the way out of a close dusty city into the vastness of the "sun-drenched boundless steppe" where "there was freedom" - not only physical, but freedom from soul-infecting ideas and errors. In the meantime, in the sixth chapter of the second part of the novel, we see evening Petersburg as the eyes of Dostoevsky the humanist, who pierces the poor urban poor. Here, a ragamuffin is lying across the street "dead drunk", a crowd of women "with pitted eyes" homings, and this time in a painful ecstasy Raskolnikov breathes in this grating air.

City-judge

In the fifth chapter of the fifth part of the novel, St. Petersburg is shown by a corner, from the window of Raskolnikov's closet. The evening hour of the setting sun awakens a "young yearning" in a young man, who torments him with a premonition of a curled eternity "on the edge of space". And this is already the verdict that the logic of events renders to the schismatic theory. Petersburg Dostoevsky at this moment appears not only as an accomplice in the crime, but also as a judge.

Storm

In the sixth chapter of the sixth part, a dour and gloomy evening is broken by a terrible thunderstorm, in which lightning flashes without a break, and the rain "poured like a waterfall," ruthlessly sweeping the earth. This is the evening before the suicide of Svidrigailov, the man who brought the principle of "love yourself" to the last point and ruined yourself with it. The storm continues with a restless noisy and then howling wind. In a cold haze, an alarm bell rings, warning of a possible flood. Sounds remind Svidrigailov of the once-seen girl suicide in a coffin strewn with flowers. All this seems to push him to suicide. Morning meets the hero with a thick milky-white mist, enveloping the city, consciousness, spiritual emptiness and pain.

The storm sounds antithetical to the heat and stuffiness of Petersburg, outlines the inevitable turn in the worldview of the protagonist, deftly destroying factual evidence, but unable to hide the mental catastrophe generated by the murder. This idea is brilliantly working weather change, which in the novel is experiencing Petersburg Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment" is a work that affects the depth and accuracy of the use of psychological detail. It is not by chance that Raskolnikov brings down the axes of the ax's ax on the head, thereby directing the point to himself. He seems to split himself, surviving the collapse and spiritual death.

Street scenes

In the first chapter of the first part on the narrow street of the Petersburg slums, there is a remarkable scene: Raskolnikov, who is thinking, suddenly notes with a thunderous cry some drunk in a huge cart drawn by a dray horse. Petersburg FM Dostoyevsky is not indifferent to the spiritual pathology that the hero is going through. The city closely follows and loudly denounces, teases and provokes. In the second chapter of the second part of the city physically affects the hero. Raskolnikov was whipped with a whip by a cab driver, and immediately after that a merchant gave him a twenty-crooner in alms. This remarkable city scene symbolically anticipates the whole future history of Raskolnikov, still "not fully matured", before he accepts alms to the humble.

Do you like street singing?

In the sixth chapter of the second part of the novel, Rodion loiters along the streets where poverty abounds and the drinking entertainment centers are crowded, and witnesses the unassuming performance of organ-grinders. He pulls into the thick of the people, he talks to all, listens, watches, with some dashing and desperate greed, absorbing in himself these moments of life, like before his death. He already anticipates the denouement and wants it, but still pretends to be himself and plays with others, riskily revealing the veil of his secret. The same chapter ends with a wild scene: a drunken woman rushes from a bridge into the river in front of Raskolnikov. And already a conspirator and provocateur is here for the hero Petersburg. Dostoevsky briefly critics characterize as an incomparable master to arrange fateful "accidents". Indeed, how subtly the writer manages to emphasize the change in the mood and the course of thoughts of the hero who accidentally collided with this woman, met with eyes with her inflamed eyes!

Destroy city

The idea of a city-accomplice in a crime and a destroyer again appears in the fifth chapter of the fifth part, where the author paints a scene of madness of Katerina Ivanovna. In the street of the soulless city, Marmaladov was once crushed, engaged in the prostitution of Sonya, the girl, seen by Raskolnikov on the boulevard, is going through a fall. Svidrigailov will commit suicide in the streets of the city, and now, from the hopelessness and despair Katerina Ivanovna is going crazy. And the stone pavement eagerly absorbs her gushing blood.

Houses and Interiors

In the first chapter of the first part of Raskolnikov, with a shudder and fading, he approaches the house of the interest-bearer, who sees him as "overwhelming", disgustingly rising and advancing on a small man. The human anthill of the profitable house horrifies the hero. Today, tour guides show tourists this house on the Griboedov Canal, it is part of the culture of St. Petersburg.

In the chapter of the second part of the first Raskolnikov appears in a tavern and among the drunken cries and incoherent chatter he listens to Marmeladov's piercing confession. These are the details that strengthen the hero in his sinister determination to test his theory. Raskolnikov's chamber, described in the third chapter of the first part of the novel, reminds not the closet, not the coffin. Once Dostoevsky mentions its similarity to the sea cabin. All this eloquently testifies to the inner state of Raskolnikov, squeezed by poverty, unsatisfied pride and his monstrous theory, which takes away his balance and peace.

In the second chapter of the first part and the 7th chapter the second author presents the "passage room" of the Marmeladovs, where the life of the impoverished to the extreme degree of the family constantly appears before the eyes of the curious audience, and there is nothing to talk about solitude and peace. Other people's views, bursts of laughter, thick waves of tobacco smoke - the atmosphere in which life passes and overtakes the death of the Marmeladovs.

In the fourth chapter of the fourth part, we see the dwelling of Sonia in the old green house of Kapernaumov (is it by chance a biblical consonance?). This building is also a tourist attraction for fans of Fedor Mikhailovich's books, it is still called "a house with a blunt angle". Here, as everywhere in the novel, a narrow and dark staircase leads to Sonya's room, and the room itself resembles a barn in the form of an irregular quadrangle with an "extremely low ceiling". The wall with three windows that disgustedly cut through the room went out into a ditch. Ugly and wretched, striking, paradoxically enhances the emotional characteristics of the heroine, who has a rare inner wealth.

The third chapter of the sixth part of the novel presents the scene of the confession of Svidrigailov to Raskolnikov in a tavern, not far from Haymarket. This square in the century before last served as a "frontal place", in addition, there was a huge "sweating" market in the open air. And it is there that Dostoevsky continually deduces his heroes, who remain, despite the thick of the people, yet in terrifying solitude with their sick thoughts and feelings. The open windows of the inn, however, are an anticipation of the public repentance of the hero, who failed in his anti-human selfish beliefs.

Finally

Touching the famous novel, we were convinced that St. Petersburg Dostoevsky - is a full participant in the plot and the ideological content of the work. The same can be said about other works of Fedor Mikhailovich. It remains to add that the writer, according to the apt remark of literary critic Yury Lotman, at the beginning of his work sees in this city a concentrated image of the whole of Russia. In the final works, the dominance of the soulless official principle, which captivated the powerful northern capital, is seen by him as the embodiment of the fears and diseases of the entire great country.