Christopher Columbus and the «Great River Orinoko» in the Genesis of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

Abstract

Abstract In the Notebooks to Crime and Punishment, kept by Dostoevsky during 1864–1865, we find a calligraphic annotation «Orenoko» 1 and one abbreviated variant «Oren<oko>». While these two caligraphic entries appear to be accidental and without much bearing on the genesis of Crime and Punishment, in actual fact these entries are traces of an alternative conception of the novel with which Dostoevsky was working, which is connected with the question of the meaning of life and the philosophical journey of his heroes. The theme of South America figured prominently in these deliberations, represented by the River Orinoko (the second largest river of the South American continent, called the «Big River» by the Indians), by the figure and destiny of Christopher Columbus and by Daniel Defoes’s novel Robinson Crusoe. Dostoevsky’s letters and works testify to his abiding interest in the discovery of America, the slave trade, and the attempts of the followers of Fourierism to establish there a society along new just principles. This article investigates the traces of the theme of Orenoko, the discovery of America and Defoe’s novel in Dostoevsky’s works, with special emphasis on the Notebooks to Crime and Punishment The semantic nexus “Robinson Crusoe — Christopher Columbus” in its portrayal of one of the incarnations of a “positively beautiful man”, ready to pronounce his “new word” and advance the history of mankind, forms an expanded paradigm that includes the appearance of “uninhabited island” as the last refuge for a talented person not recognized and rejected by the crowd. Simultaneously, it depicts the genesis of Dostoevsky’s “artistic Word”.