The function of oneiric miniatures in the inner plot of F.M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. This study examines the structural interaction of the oneiric component of the novel poetics of Crime and Punishment with the plot of the entire work. The aim of the study is to define the role of oneiric miniatures in the main character’s image development. For this purpose, the series of dreams of the protagonist is singled out as a separate poetological construct, which shows compositional overlap with the strong position of the first dream.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The comprehensive study of F.M. Dostoevsky’s work is based on hermeneuticinterpretation, structural-semantic, phenomenological methods, the method of holistic analysis with the use of motive analysis techniques. Special attention is paid to the hermeneutic opposition of the first and second dreams in terms of the bipolar psychologism of Raskolnikov’s image. In the concept of Dostoevsky’s bipolar poetics of the text, the cycle of oneiric miniatures is analyzed as the basis of the internal plot, revealing the discourse about the hero’s “new word” full of understatement.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The analysis of the conversation with Razumikhin about “great sadness” shows the non-coincidence of the concepts of “truly great people” and “nonordinary” (in the context of his article) in the hero’s autoreflection. The image of a horse from the first dream allegorically correlates with the picture of nomadic life, which the hero observes in the finale of the work, as well as with the dream of biblical Egypt, symbolizing salvation from spiritual slavery and loneliness. The subtextual image of the prophet Moses is interpreted as an image of merging with the people, etymological parallels of the name “Rodion” with the Egyptian origin of the name “Moses” are given. The surname “Raskolnikov” and the name “Sonya” are also interpreted in a Gnostic way about the “mistake” in the creation of the world and its imperfection.CONCLUSION. The existential error in Raskolnikov’s own speculative theory is deduced from the analysis of the hero’s dream cycle as a projection of an internal plot into an external one. This approach is the key to interpreting the evolution of Raskolnikov’s image from tragic alienation to vitalistic awakening.