The construction of the novel Crime and Punishment. The history of the creation of Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment"

For six years, F. M. Dostoevsky developed the concept of the novel "Crime and Punishment", just during his penal servitude. That is why the first thought was to write about the ordeals of Raskolnikov. The story was not supposed to be long, but nevertheless a whole novel arose.

In 1865, Dostoevsky told the idea of ​​his novel with the title "Drunk" to the publisher of the journal "Domestic Notes" A. A. Kraevsky, demanding three thousand rubles in advance for this. To which Fedor Mikhailovich was refused.

Not having a penny in his pocket, Dostoevsky concludes a slave agreement with the publishing house of F. T. Stellovsky. According to the contract, the poor writer undertakes to transfer the right to publish the complete collections of his work in three volumes, as well as to provide a new novel on ten sheets within a year. For this, Dostoevsky received three thousand rubles and, having distributed his debts, leaves for Germany.

Being a gambler, Fedor Mikhailovich is left without money, and subsequently without food and light. It was this state of his that helped to give birth to a work that became known to the whole world.

The new idea of ​​the novel was the story of repentance for the crime of one poor student who killed a greedy old money-lender. Three people became the prototypes for creating the plot: G. Chistov, A. T. Neofitov and P. F. Lasener. All of them were young criminals of that time. In the same 1865, Dostoevsky did not find a balance between his thoughts, and as a result, he burned the first draft of the work.

Already at the beginning of 1866, the first part of "Crime and Punishment" was published. Inspired by the success, in the same year all six parts of the novel appear in the Russian Messenger. In parallel with this, Dostoevsky creates the novel The Gambler, which was promised to Stellovsky.

When creating the novel "Crime and Punishment", three draft notebooks were created that describe all the author's working stages.

"Crime and Punishment" reveals two main themes: the commission of a crime itself and the consequences of this action on the offender. From this came the name of the work.

The main purpose of the novel is to reveal the feelings for the life of the protagonist Raskolnikov, for what purpose he went to the murder. Dostoevsky was able to show how feelings of love and hatred for people resist in one person. And in the end, to receive forgiveness from the whole people.

F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" teaches its reader to find human sincerity, love and compassion under all the gloomy masks of the surrounding society.

Option 2

Fedor Mikhailovich is a famous Russian writer of the 19th century. He created a greater number of novels, stories, in which he concluded all his life experience. Now his works are read with special trepidation. The most famous creation of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is the novel Crime and Punishment. It is included in the school curriculum. Of course, because every person who thinks about morality and ethics must study it.

This article presents the history of the creation of the most famous work of Dostoevsky.

In the autumn of 1859, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote to his brother that he was ready to start writing a novel in the winter. He had a plan in his head for a long time. He emphasized that it would be the confession of a criminal. In it, he is ready to accommodate all his life experience, acquired during his stay in hard labor. He thought about many things, lying on the bunk, when he was freezing in a damp cell. It was in the place of hard labor that the writer met a large number of people strong in spirit and morale. These people helped change Fyodor Mikhailovich's beliefs.

Six years later, Dostoevsky set to work. During this period, many other novels were written, but not the main one. The main theme of all those works was the idea of ​​poverty, the humiliation of people who were forced to face all these difficulties in order to repent. In 1865 the work was written. It bore a name different from the current one - "Drunken". Dostoevsky brought it to the editorial office, where his creations were usually printed, but there Kraevsky said that there was no money for publication. Dostoevsky was saddened, but then turned to another editor. The novel was published, Dostoevsky received the money, distributed all the debts and went to travel. But the novel was not finished.

Initially, the emphasis was on the lives of poor people, who are called "drunk". Dostoevsky showed the life of the Marmeladov family, black Petersburg, showed all the cruel reality, after all, he was a realist after all. Dostoevsky is sure that all the poverty and beggary of people is purely their fault.

Then the writer went to Dresden and there he thought that it would be better for him to edit his work. And he brought the story of Raskolnikov into the novel, or rather, he revealed it many times in more detail. This means that the author wanted to pay attention to the criminal part of the work.

Despite the time, the work is still relevant today.

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”, like all the works of Dostoevsky, is saturated with ideas “in the air”, facts gleaned from reality itself. The author wanted to "dig through all the questions in this novel."

But the theme of the future work did not immediately become clear, the writer did not immediately dwell on a specific plot. On June 8, 1865, Dostoevsky wrote to the editor of the magazine " Domestic notes A. A. Kraevsky: “My novel is called “Drunk” and will be in connection with the current question of drunkenness. Not only the question is analyzed, but all its ramifications are also presented, mainly pictures of families, the upbringing of children in this environment, and so on. and so on. There will be at least twenty sheets, but maybe more.

Fedor Dostoevsky. Portrait by V. Perov, 1872

However, after some time, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe work, the central character of which was obviously to be Marmeladov, began to occupy the writer less, since he had the idea to write a story about a representative of the younger generation. Dostoevsky sought to portray in the new work modern youth with its broad public interests, noisy debates on burning ethical and political issues, with its materialistic and atheistic views, which he characterizes as "moral instability". In the first half of September 1865, Dostoevsky informs the editor of Russky Vestnik M. N. Katkov that he has been working on a five-six-sheet story for two months, which he expects to finish in two weeks - in a month. This letter outlines not only the main storyline, but also the ideological concept of the work. A draft of this letter is found in one of those notebooks that contain the rough drafts of Crime and Punishment.

“The idea of ​​the story cannot ... contradict your journal in anything; on the contrary, Dostoevsky informs Katkov. “This is a psychological account of one crime. The action is modern, this year. A young man, expelled from the university students, a tradesman by birth and living in extreme poverty, out of frivolity, out of unsteadiness in concepts, succumbing to some strange "unfinished" ideas that are in the air, decided to get out of his bad situation at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular adviser who gives money for interest. The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy, takes Jewish interest, is evil and seizes someone else's age, torturing her younger sister in her working women. "She is good for nothing", "what does she live for?", "Is she useful to anyone?" etc. - These questions confuse the young man. He decides to kill her, to rob her in order to make his mother, who lives in the district, happy, to save his sister, who lives as a companion with some landowners, from the voluptuous claims of the head of this landowner's family - claims that threaten her with death, complete the course, go abroad and then all his life to be honest, firm, unswerving in the fulfillment of his "humane duty to mankind", which, of course, "will make amends for the crime."

Crime and Punishment. 1969 feature film 1 episode

But after the murder, writes Dostoevsky, “the whole psychological process of the crime unfolds. Unresolvable questions arise before the killer, unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's truth, earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up forced to convey to himself. Forced to die in penal servitude, but to join the people again; the feeling of openness and disconnection with humanity, which he felt immediately after the commission of the crime, tormented him. The law of truth and human nature have taken their toll... The offender himself decides to accept the torment in order to atone for his deed...

In addition, there is a hint in my story that the legal punishment imposed for a crime is much less intimidating to the criminal than the legislators think, partly because he and himself his morally demands».

Dostoevsky in this letter emphasizes that under the influence of materialistic and atheistic views (this is what he meant when he spoke of "strange" unfinished "ideas that are in the air") Raskolnikov came to a crime. But at the same time, the author points here to the extreme poverty, the hopelessness of the hero's situation. In the early draft notes, there is also an idea that Raskolnikov was pushed to the crime by the difficult living conditions of NB. Let's see why I did it, how I decided, there is an evil spirit. NB (and this is where the analysis of the whole affair, anger, poverty begins) the exit of necessity, and it turns out that he did it logically.

Crime and Punishment. Feature film 1969 episode 2

Dostoevsky enthusiastically works on the story, hoping that it will be "the best" that he wrote. By the end of November 1865, when a lot had already been written, Dostoevsky felt that the work needed to be built differently, and he destroyed the manuscript. “I burned everything ... I didn’t like it myself,” he wrote on February 18, 1866 to Baron A.E. Wrangel. - The new form, the new plan carried me away, and I started again. I work day and night, and yet I work little” (ibid., p. 430). "The New Plan" is, obviously, the final plan of the novel, in which not only the theme of Marmeladov (the proposed novel "The Drunk Ones") and the theme of Raskolnikov (the story of the "theoretical crime") are intertwined, but Svidrigailov and especially Porfiry Petrovich, which is not mentioned at all in the earliest notebooks.

Dostoevsky at first intended to tell the story on behalf of the hero, to give Raskolnikov's diary, confession or memoirs about the murder he had committed. There are fragments in the notebooks in which the narration is in the first person, sometimes in the form of a confession, sometimes in the form of a diary. The drafts of "Crime and Punishment" also contain passages written in the first person, with first person corrections to the third. The writer was embarrassed that “confession in other points would be unchaste and it would be difficult to imagine what it was written for,” and he abandoned this form. “The story is from myself, not from him. If confession, then too much to the last extreme everything needs to be explained. So that every moment of the story is clear. “You need to assume the author is a being omniscient And infallible, exposing everyone to the view of one of the members of the new generation.

The novel "Crime and Punishment" was first published in the journal "Russian Messenger" for 1866 (January, February, April, June, July, August, November and December).

In 1867, the first separate edition was published: Crime and Punishment. A novel in six parts with an epilogue by F. M. Dostoevsky. Revised edition." Numerous stylistic corrections and abbreviations were made in it (for example, Luzhin's monologue at the commemoration was significantly shortened, a whole page of Raskolnikov's reasoning about the reasons that prompted Luzhin to slander Sonya was thrown out). But this editing did not change either the ideological content of the novel or the main content of the images.

In 1870, the novel, without additional corrections, was included in the IV volume of Dostoevsky's Collected Works. In 1877, the last lifetime edition of the novel was published with minor stylistic corrections and abbreviations.

The manuscript of the novel in its entirety has not come down to us. The Russian State Library stores small fragments of the manuscript of Crimes and Punishments, among them there are both early and late versions, the text of which is approaching the final version.

Dostoevsky's notebooks are stored in TsGALI. Three of them contain notes about the idea and construction of "Crime and Punishment", sketches of individual scenes, monologues and replicas of the characters. Partially, these materials were published by I. I. Glivenko in the journal Krasny Arkhiv, 1924, vol. VII, and then in full in 1931 in a separate book: “From the archive of F. M. Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment". Unpublished Materials. The earliest entries refer to the second half of 1865, the latest, including an autocommentary on the novel, to the beginning of 1866, that is, by the time the novel was printed.

Topic: The history of the creation of socio-psychological
novel Crime and Punishment.
Petersburg in the image of F. M. Dostoevsky

Goals: to acquaint students with the history of the creation of "Crime and Punishment" and reviews of critics about it; to form an idea about the genre of the work, the features of the composition, plot, main conflict; by analyzing chapters from part I of the novel, to show the unusualness of Dostoevsky's depiction of the city of St. Petersburg; to determine what influence the city had on the heroes of the novel, on their thoughts, feelings, actions.

During the classes

Epigraph to the lesson:

Don't you remember, I told you about one confession-novel, which I wanted to write after all ... All my heart will rely with blood on this novel. I conceived it in hard labor, lying on the bunk, in a difficult moment of sadness ...

(from a letter to brother Michael
October 9, 1859)

I. Opening speech of the teacher.

the history of the creation of the novel "Crime and Punishment"

The idea of ​​"Crime and Punishment" was nurtured by the writer for six years! during a trip abroad, Dostoevsky began to write a novel, which at first he wanted to call "Drunk", and in the center to portray the dramatic story of the Marmeladov family, but the idea changed.

In September 1865, he outlined the program of his work, his main idea in a letter to the publisher of Russkiy Vestnik: “This is a psychological account of one crime. The action is modern... A young man, expelled from university students, a tradesman by birth and living in extreme poverty, out of frivolity, out of unsteadiness in concepts, succumbing to some strange "unfinished" ideas that are in the air, decided to get out of his bad situation at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular adviser who gives money for interest! The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy. “What does she live for?”, “Is she useful to anyone?” etc. - these questions confuse the young man. He decides to kill her, rob her, in order to make his mother, who lived in the county, happy, save my sister… and then to be honest all my life… Unsolvable questions arise before the murderer, unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart… The laws of truth and human nature have taken their toll. ... The criminal himself decides to accept the torment to atone for your cause."

This is the original intention of the novel. Gradually, it "grew", covering a wider range of problems.

According to most literary critics, "Crime and Punishment" (1866) - socio-psychological novel, in which the author explores the inner world of an individual hero, as well as the psychology characteristic of different social groups: humiliated and offended city people, prosperous merchants, disadvantaged peasants, petty employees. The writer expresses sharply opposing judgments, excluding each other's points of view, confronts characters embodying different ideological principles. At the heart of the dramatic conflict of the novel is “the internal struggle in the souls of the characters and the struggle of these characters, torn apart by contradictions, among themselves” () .

In the center of Dostoevsky's work is a crime, an ideological murder. Thus, "Crime and Punishment" is a novel about the "ideological killer" Raskolnikov. The writer traces the "psychological process of the crime."

On the composition of the novel. Literary critics note two-partness the structure of the work.

Part I - preparation and commission of a crime.

Part II - the impact of this crime on the soul of Raskolnikov.

The chapters within each part are arranged according to the degree of intensity of suffering. () . The composition is gradually complicated by new storylines.

Dostoevsky's book is "a harsh verdict on the social system based on the power of money, on the humiliation of man, a passionate speech in defense of the human person." The search for a way out of the terrible world of profit and calculation into the world of truth is the main idea of ​​the novel.

About the work: “There are brilliant pages in Crime and Punishment. The novel is exactly poured, so it is built. With a limited number of characters, it seems that there are thousands and thousands of fates of unfortunate people in it - all of old Petersburg is visible from this unexpected angle. A lot of “horrors” are pumped up, to the point of unnaturalness ... "

II. Conversation with students on the topic "Petersburg of Dostoevsky".

"Crime and Punishment" is sometimes called the "Petersburg novel".

1. Tell us about Raskolnikov. Why did the writer give the main character such a last name? (Researchers draw attention to the possibility of a dual interpretation of Raskolnikov’s surname: “One thing comes from the interpretation of the semantic part, like a split is a split, the other puts forward a root connection with a split – splitism, obsession with one thought, fanaticism and stubbornness.”)

2. How do you see the streets of St. Petersburg, along which Raskolnikov wandered? (Part I, ch. 1, 2.) (You can select the main route of the hero. Raskolnikov left the house - the vicinity of Sennaya Square, visited one of the poorest apartments in the city, in the Marmeladov family; Raskolnikov on K-th Boulevard, then across the bridge , a view of the "other" Petersburg, again on the Haymarket. The house in which the hero lives; room-closet.)

3. Tell us about the people who met on the path of Rodion Raskolnikov. What impression did they make on you? (From meeting people, something pitiful, dirty, ugly remains.)

4. What else is happening on the streets of the city? (The suicide of a woman on the bridge, the fall of Sonya and the girl whom Raskolnikov saw, Svidrigailov shot himself in the street, the unfortunate Marmeladov fell under the carriage, beggars, drunken emaciated faces. A life full of hopeless grief.)

5. Where do Dostoevsky's characters live? (Description of Raskolnikov's closet (part I, ch. 1), the room of the old pawnbroker (part I, ch. 3), the passage room of the Marmeladovs (part II, ch. 2), Sonya's dwelling (part IV, ch. 4 ).)

6. Read the pages where the landscape is described. What is the role of the landscape? What is the meaning of color in Dostoevsky's work?

7. What are your feelings about St. Petersburg as described by Dostoevsky?

8. Which of the writers before Dostoevsky depicted St. Petersburg in his books?

9. What is unusual about Dostoevsky's Petersburg (in contrast to the image of the city in the works of Pushkin, Gogol)? (Dostoevsky’s Petersburg is a giant city, striking in its contrasts (luxurious mansions and palaces, beautiful avenues, dressed up women - and slums, deaf courtyards, tenement houses with closet rooms, where there is crampedness, dirt and stench). Pushkin wrote about the contrasts of Petersburg , Gogol, Nekrasov, but in Dostoevsky these contrasts are “especially sharpened.” (Color painting also helps. Dostoevsky uses yellow, gray, black (dark) colors to help show poverty, the hopelessness of people's existence.)

In horrifying pictures of poverty, abuse of the individual, the unbearable stuffiness of life, we see the image of St. Petersburg, where a person is lured by social and material dead ends that give rise to tragedies. Insulted and humiliated there is no way out. They suffocate in a huge city. (Marmeladov: “Do you understand, do you understand, dear sir, what it means when there is nowhere else to go?”). Hopelessness is the leitmotif of the novel.)

Homework.

1. Reading a novel. Parts II, III.

2. Individualist rebellion by Rodion Raskolnikov. (The reasons for the "rebellion", its implementation, the behavior of the hero after the crime can be traced through the text.)

Dostoevsky's novel was literally gained by the author's suffering and excites the minds of readers to this day. The history of the creation of the novel "Crime and Punishment" is not simple, it is very interesting. The writer put all his soul into this novel, which still haunts many thinking and thinking people.

The birth of an idea

The idea of ​​writing a novel originated with Dostoevsky at a time when the writer was in hard labor in Omsk. Despite hard physical work, ill health, the writer continued to observe the life around him, for people whose characters, under conditions of imprisonment, were revealed from completely unexpected sides. And here, in hard labor, seriously ill, he decided to write a novel about crime and punishment. However, heavy hard labor and a serious illness did not make it possible to start writing it.

"All my heart will rely with blood on this novel,"

This is how Dostoevsky imagined the work on the work, calling it a novel-confession. However, the author was able to start writing it much later. Between the idea and its implementation, “Notes from the Underground”, “Humiliated and Insulted”, “Notes from the Dead House” were born. Many themes from these works, the problems of society described in them, found their place in Crime and Punishment.

Between dream and reality

After returning from Omsk, Dostoevsky's financial situation leaves much to be desired, worsening every day. And writing a huge problem-psychological novel took time.

Trying to earn at least a little money, the writer suggested that the editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine publish a short novel, The Drunk Ones. The author wanted to draw public attention to drunkenness. The plot was supposed to be connected with the Marmeladov family. The head of the family, a former official, dismissed from service, becomes an inveterate drunkard, and the whole family suffers.

However, the editor insisted on other conditions: Dostoevsky sold all the rights to publish the complete collection of his works for a meager fee. In accordance with the requirements of the editorial board, the author begins to write a novel, which must be submitted as soon as possible. So almost suddenly the writer began to work on the novel Crime and Punishment.

Start

Dostoevsky suffered from the disease of the player - he could not help playing. And, having received a fee from the magazine, the writer, having corrected his affairs a little, again succumbed to the gambling temptation. In Wiesbaden, he had nothing to pay for the table and light in the hotel. Thanks only to the kind disposition towards him of the owners of the hotel, Dostoevsky did not stay on the street.

To get the money, it was necessary to finish the novel on time, so I had to hurry. The writer decided to tell a story about how a poor student decided to kill and rob an old woman. The plot was supposed to be a story about one crime.

The author has always been interested in the psychology of his characters, and here it was extremely important to study and describe the psychological state of a person who deprived another of his life, it was important to reveal the “process of crime” itself. The writer had almost finished the novel, when suddenly the manuscript was destroyed for a completely incomprehensible reason.

Psychology of creativity

However, the novel had to be handed over to the editor under the contract. And the hard work began again. The first part of the magazine "Russian Messenger" was published already in 1866. The term for writing the novel was ending, and Dostoevsky's plan only gained more and more completeness. The history of the student is closely intertwined with the history of the drunkard Marmeladov and his family.

The writer was threatened with creative bondage. To avoid it, the author takes a break from Crime and Punishment for 21 days and writes a new novel, The Gambler, in just three weeks and takes it to the publisher.

Then he again continues to write a protracted novel about a crime. He studies the criminal chronicle and is convinced of the relevance of the chosen topic. He ends the novel in Lublin, where he lives at this time with his sister on the estate. The novel was completely finished and printed at the end of 1866.

Diary of a novel

It is impossible to study the history of writing a novel without studying the writer's drafts. Sketches and rough notes help to understand how much effort, work, soul and heart, how many thoughts and ideas the author has invested in his novel. They show how the idea of ​​the work changed, how the range of tasks expanded, how the entire architecture of the composition of the novel was built.

The writer almost completely changed the form of the narrative in order to understand Raskolnikov's behavior and character in as much detail and as thoroughly as possible, to understand the motives for his actions and deeds. In the final version (third), the narration is already in the third person.

So the hero begins to live his own life, and completely independently of the will of the author, does not obey him. Reading the workbooks, it becomes clear how long and painfully Dostoevsky himself tries to figure out the motives that pushed the hero to the crime, but the author almost failed to do this.

And the writer creates a hero in which "two opposite characters alternate in turn." It is clearly seen how two extremes, two principles are simultaneously present and fighting with each other in Rodion: contempt for people and love for them.

Therefore, it was very difficult for the author to write the finale of the novel. Dostoevsky at first wanted to end with how the hero turned to God. However, the final version ends very differently. And this prompts the reader to think, and even after the last page of the novel is turned.

Introduction

The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment” is a socio-psychological one. In it, the author raises important social issues that worried people of that time. The originality of this novel by Dostoevsky lies in the fact that it shows the psychology of a contemporary person trying to find a solution to pressing social problems. Dostoevsky, however, does not give ready-made answers to the questions posed, but makes the reader think about them. The central place in the novel is occupied by the poor student Raskolnikov, who committed the murder. What led him to this terrible crime? Dostoevsky tries to find the answer to this question through a thorough analysis of the psychology of this person. The deep psychologism of the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky lies in the fact that their characters find themselves in difficult, extreme life situations in which their inner essence is exposed, the depths of psychology, hidden conflicts, contradictions in the soul, ambiguity and paradox of the inner world are revealed. To reflect the psychological state of the protagonist in the novel “Crime and Punishment”, the author used a variety of artistic techniques, among which dreams play an important role, since in an unconscious state a person becomes himself, loses everything superficial, alien and, thus, his thoughts manifest themselves more freely. and feelings. Throughout almost the entire novel, a conflict occurs in the soul of the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, and these internal contradictions determine his strange state: the hero is so immersed in himself that for him the line between dream and reality, between dream and reality is blurred, the inflamed brain gives rise to delirium , and the hero falls into apathy, half-sleep-half-delirium, so it’s hard to say about some dreams whether it’s a dream or nonsense, a game of the imagination.

The history of the creation of "Crime and Punishment"

Creative history of the novel

"Crime and Punishment", originally conceived in the form of Raskolnikov's confession, stems from the spiritual experience of penal servitude. It was there that F.M. Dostoevsky first encountered strong personalities who were outside the moral law, it was in hard labor that the change in the writer’s convictions began. “It was clear that this man,” Dostoevsky describes convict Orlov in “Notes from the House of the Dead,” was able to command himself, boundlessly despised all kinds of torment and punishment, was not afraid of anything in the world. In him you saw one infinite energy, a thirst for activity, a thirst for revenge, a thirst to achieve the intended goal. By the way, I was struck by his strange arrogance.

But in 1859 the "confession-novel" was not started. The nurturing of the idea lasted 6 years, during which F.M. Dostoevsky wrote “The Humiliated and Insulted”, “Notes from the Underground”. The main themes of these works - the theme of poor people, rebellion and the theme of an individualist hero - were then synthesized in Crime and Punishment.

In a letter to Russky Vestnik magazine, talking about his new story, which he would like to sell to the editors, Dostoevsky described his story as follows: “The idea of ​​the story cannot, as far as I can assume, contradict your magazine in anything, on the contrary. This is a psychological record of one crime. The action is modern, this year. A young man, expelled from university students, living in extreme poverty, due to frivolity, lack of understanding, succumbing to some strange, unfinished ideas that are in the air, decided to get out of his position at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular adviser who gives money for interest. The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy, takes Jewish interest, is evil and seizes someone else's eyelids, torturing her younger sister in her working women. “She is good for nothing”, “what does she live for?”, “is she useful to at least someone”, and so on - these questions confuse a young man. He decides to kill her, rob her, in order to make his mother, who lives in the district, happy, to save his sister, who lives as a companion with some landowners, from the voluptuous claims of this landowner's family - claims that threaten her with death - to complete the course, to go abroad and then all his life to be honest, firm, unswerving in the fulfillment of his “humane duty to mankind” - which, of course, will make up for the crime, if only this act against an old woman, deaf, stupid, evil, sick, who herself does not know, for what lives in the world, and which in a month, perhaps, would die of itself.

Despite the fact that such crimes are terribly difficult to commit - i.e. almost always, to the point of rudeness, they expose ends, evidence, and so on. and an awful lot is left to chance, which almost always betrays the culprit, he - in a completely random way - manages to commit his crime both quickly and successfully.

He spends almost a month after that, before the final catastrophe, there are no suspicions on him and cannot be. This is where the psychological process of crime unfolds. Unsolvable questions arise before the killer, unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's truth, earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up being compelled to denounce himself. Forced to join the people again, even if he died in hard labor, the feeling of disconnection and separation from humanity, which he felt immediately after the commission of the crime, locked him in. The law of truth and human nature took their toll, killed beliefs, even without resistance. The criminal decides to accept the torment himself in order to atone for his deed. However, it is difficult for me to explain my thought.

In addition, my story contains a hint of the idea that the imposed legal punishment for a crime frightens the criminal much less than the legislators think, partly because he himself morally requires it.

I have seen this even in the most undeveloped people, in the most rude accident. I wanted to express this precisely on a developed, on a new generation of people, so that the thought would be brighter and more obligatory visible. Several recent cases have convinced me that my plot is not at all eccentric, namely that the killer is a well-developed and even good-minded young man. I was told last year in Moscow (correctly) about one student's story - that he decided to break the mail and kill the postman. There are still many traces in our newspapers of the extraordinary vacillation of concepts that inspire terrible deeds. In a word, I am convinced that my story partly justifies modernity.

The plot of the novel is based on the idea of ​​an "ideological killer", which fell into two unequal parts: the crime and its causes, and, the second, main part, the effect of the crime on the soul of the criminal. This two-part concept will be reflected in the final edition of the title of the novel - "Crime and Punishment" - and on the structural features: of the six parts of the novel, one is devoted to the crime and five - to the influence of this crime on the essence of Raskolnikov and the gradual elimination of his crime.

Dostoevsky sent the chapters of the new novel in mid-December 1865 to Russkiy Vestnik. The first part had already appeared in the January 1866 issue of the magazine, but the novel had not yet been fully completed. Work on a further text continued throughout 1866.

The first two parts of the novel, published in the January and February editions of Russkiy vestnik, brought success to F.M. Dostoevsky.

In November and December 1866 the last part, the sixth part and the epilogue were written. The magazine in the December book of 1866 completed the publication of the novel.

Three notebooks with drafts and notes for Crime and Punishment have been preserved, i.e. three handwritten editions: the first (short) - “story”, the second (lengthy) and the third (final) edition, characterizing three stages, three stages of work: Wiesbaden (letter to Katkov), Petersburg stage (from October to December 1865, when Dostoevsky began the “new plan”) and, finally, the last stage (1866). All handwritten editions of the novel have been published three times, the last two being made at a high scientific level.

So, in the creative process of nurturing the concept of "Crime and Punishment", two opposing ideas collided in the image of Raskolnikov: the idea of ​​love for people and the idea of ​​contempt for them. The draft notebooks for the novel show how painfully F.M. Dostoevsky was looking for a way out: either leave one of the ideas, or cut both. In the second edition there is an entry: “The main anatomy of the novel. It is imperative to bring the course of the case to a real point and eliminate uncertainty, that is, one way or another to explain the whole murder and make its character and relations clear. The author decides to combine both ideas of the novel, to show a person in whom, as Razumikhin says about Raskolnikov in the final text of the novel, "two opposite characters alternate in turn."

Dostoevsky searched just as painfully for the finale of the novel. In one of the draft notes: “The finale of the novel. Raskolnikov is going to shoot himself.” But this was the finale only for the “Napoleon idea”. The writer outlines the finale for the “idea of ​​love”, when Christ himself will save the repentant sinner.

But what is the end of a man who combines both opposite principles in himself? F. M. Dostoevsky understood perfectly well that such a person would not accept either the author's court, or the legal one, or the court of his own conscience. Only one court will Raskolnikov take over himself - the highest court, the court of Sonechka Marmeladova, the same Sonechka, in whose name he raised his ax, the very humiliated and insulted who have always suffered since the earth has stood.

Meaning of the novel's title

The problem of crime is considered in almost every work of F. M. Dostoevsky. The writer speaks about the crime in the universal sense, comparing such a view with various social theories popular at that time. In “Netochka Nezvanova” it is said: “A crime will always remain a crime, a sin will always be a sin, no matter how great the vicious feeling rises.” In the novel “The Idiot”, F. M. Dostoevsky states: “It is said “Thou shalt not kill!”, so why should he be killed? No, that's not possible." The novel "Crime and Punishment" is almost entirely devoted to the analysis of the social and moral nature of the crime and the punishment that follows it. In a letter to M. N. Katkov, F. M. Dostoevsky wrote: “I am writing a novel about modern crime.” Indeed, the crime for the writer becomes one of the most important signs of the times, a modern phenomenon. The writer sees the reason for this in the decline of public morality, which was obvious at the end of the 19th century. The old ideals on which more than one generation of Russian people were brought up are collapsing, life gives rise to various social theories that propagate the idea of ​​a revolutionary struggle for a beautiful bright future (let us recall, for example, N. Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?). Elements of bourgeois European civilization are actively penetrating the established way of Russian life. And - most importantly - Russian society is beginning to move away from the centuries-old tradition of the Orthodox world view, atheism is becoming popular. Pushing his hero to kill, F. M. Dostoevsky seeks to understand the reasons why such a cruel idea arises in the mind of Rodion Raskolnikov. Of course, his “environment stuck”. But she also ate poor Sonechka Marmeladova, and Katerina Ivanovna, and many others. Why don't they become murderers? The fact is that the roots of Raskolnikov's crime lie much deeper. His views are greatly influenced by the theory of the existence of “superhumans”, popular in the 19th century, that is, people who are allowed more than an ordinary person, that “trembling creature” that Raskolnikov thinks about.

Accordingly, the very crime of Rodion Raskolnikov is understood by the writer much deeper. Its meaning is not only that Raskolnikov killed the old pawnbroker, but also that he himself allowed this murder, he imagined himself to be a man who is allowed to decide who lives and who does not. According to Dostoevsky, only God is able to decide human destinies. Consequently, Rodion Raskolnikov puts himself in the place of God, mentally equates himself to him. What does this entail? F. M. Dostoevsky had no doubt that only God, Christ, should be the moral ideal of man. The commandments of Christianity are unshakable, and the way to approach the ideal lies in the fulfillment of these commandments. When Rodion Raskolnikov puts himself in the place of God, he himself begins to create for himself a certain system of values. And this means that he allows himself everything and gradually begins to lose all the best qualities, trampling on generally accepted moral norms. F. M. Dostoevsky has no doubts: this is a crime not only of his hero, but also of many people of this era. “Deism gave us Christ, that is, such a lofty conception of man that it is impossible to understand him without reverence, and it is impossible not to believe that this is the eternal ideal of mankind. And what have the atheists given us?” - F. M. Dostoevsky asks Russia and answers himself: theories that give rise to crime, because atheism inevitably leads to the loss of the moral ideal, God in man. Can a criminal return to normal life? Yes and no. Maybe if he goes through long physical and moral suffering, if he can abandon those “theories” that he himself created for himself. Such was the path of Raskolnikov.