Dostoevsky

(What They Don’t Teach You in School)

Robert Mann

Dostoevsky (What They Don’t Teach You in School)

Robert Mann

ISBN 0-938618-17-2

publisher: The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo

wolandusa@yahoo.com

Preface

This publication is an attempt to encapsulate my previously published research dealing with Dostoevsky’s Elijah symbolism – a feature of his work that has gone unnoticed in mainstream scholarship. Although the title of this essay holds true in regard to what is taught about Dostoevsky in schools and universities throughout the world today, I hope that my discoveries will someday gain at least a measure of acceptance and currency among students of Dostoevsky. This, of course, is assuming that Dostoevsky’s works will not be completely eliminated from the course of study – a trend that seems well underway already.

My acquaintance with the Elijah theme began in 1980 as I was rereading Crime and Punishment after working for several years with folkloric sources pertaining in part to Elijah the Prophet. That initial discovery was published as an article in Canadian Slavonic Papers (1981). A few years later, Coronado Press published my monograph Dostoevsky’s Secret Code: the Allegory of Elijah the Prophet (1987) about the Elijah leitmotif, which spans much of Dostoevsky’s fiction, unnoticed by scholars in Russia and abroad. An expanded Russian edition was published by the Leningrad division of the Russian Academy of Sciences – unfortunately, in 1992, just as the Soviet Union, chameleon-like, assumed a new color. Readers lost interest in Russian classics, pressing tightly up to the book stalls to acquire fresh editions of Dumas and other delicacies that had been difficult to find throughout the Soviet period, when Socialist Realism was in the air. Subsequently The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo was kind enough to print my odd little book called The Brothers Karamazov: an Unorthodox Guide (2002). In that same year, they also printed my afterword to Gabriel Choreb’s English translation of The Landlady. Possibly these books have received no attention simply because the deep well-spring of Slavic studies has run dry, so to speak, and interest in Dostoevsky – especially interest in literary studies about Dostoevsky – has all but evaporated. However, those previous publications might have been too tedious to read. With that possibility in mind, I have attempted to streamline and simplify some of my previous arguments.

At any rate, I hope that students of Dostoevsky will find my interpretations to be of some value. As for Yuri Marmeladov, Jay Macpherson and Solomon Gromyko, dedicated scholars who all collaborated with me in writing and editing my previous publications, it is hard for me to express how close we became in those years of working together. Although all three now dwell in a better realm, I will always be thankful for their help and encouragement. Thanks to them, I was never entirely alone.

Robert Mann

Part 1: Elijah the Prophet in Russian Tradition

Part 2: The Village of Stepanchikovo: Ilyusha’s Nameday

Part 3: Crime and Punishment: Elijah’s Storm Again

Part 4: The Landlady: Il’ia Murin’s Thunder and Lightning

Part 5: The Brothers Karamazov: Arrest in the Rain at ‘Wet Village’

Part 6: The Eternal Husband: Another July Thunderstorm

Part 7: “Mr. Prokharchin”: Elijah’s Retribution for a Miser

Conclusion

Elijah the Prophet in Russian Tradition

When thunder struck overhead in prerevolutionary Russia, it was a common practice to make the sign of the cross, believing that the rumbling was that of Elijah the Prophet as his chariot wheeled its way across the clouds. Popular belief made Elijah the wielder of thunder and lightning, and people expected a thunderstorm each year on Elijah’s feast day (July 20, Old Style). Goncharov alludes to this folk belief in his novel Oblomov:

The thunderstorms there are nothing to fear; they are only beneficial. They always come at the same established time, almost never forgetting Elijah’s Day, as though to confirm the well-known belief of the folk.[1]

The belief is ancient, rooted in pre-Christian lore surrounding the foremost god in Slavic myth, the thunder god Perun. After Russia’s conversion in 988, the important functions of Perun were in part transferred to Elijah, giving him a special significance in the nation’s new Christian pantheon. Elijah was even made the central hero of epic songs about the conversion, although his true identity and the religious underpinnings of the songs later became obscured as they were passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years. By the sixteenth century, he was thoroughly russified, depicted in the epic songs as a mighty warrior from the town of Murom – Il’ia Muromets.[2]

When the early Slavs were first introduced to Christian lore, their attention was naturally drawn to Elijah the Prophet. In 1st Kings 17-21, Elijah is given the divine power to control the rainfall, and he invokes fire from heaven to ignite a burnt offering in a duel with the priests of Baal. He brings down the same lightning fire onto the soldiers of Ahaziah in 2nd Kings 1. In 2nd Kings 2, Elijah ascends to Heaven on a fiery chariot drawn by fiery steeds. The chariot rises in a whirlwind, and Slavic church texts also speak of an earthquake which accompanied the Prophet’s miraculous ascent:

Elijah, blessed of God, thou hast seen in the earthquake and the whirlwind God’s coming, which enlightened thee of old. For, riding on the four-steed chariot, thou hast crossed vast expanses, filled with wonderment and inspired by God.[3]

In Revelation 11, attributed to St. John the Apostle, two “witnesses” oppose a beast from the netherworld, one of the apocalyptic symbols of evil. According to Orthodox Church tradition, the two witnesses are Elijah and Enoch the Righteous. In St. John’s account, the two witnesses are said to have the power to control the rain while they deliver their prophecies.

Elijah’s associations with fire, rain, lightning and a god-like trek across the sky made it inevitable that the Slavs would perceive him as a Christian counterpart to their pagan god of thunder and lightning. This perception was reinforced by the fact that Elijah’s feast day (July 20, Old Style) comes at a time of summer when thunderstorms are frequent. As the conversion of the people proceeded decade after decade, the thunder-wielding Elijah began to supplant the pagan thunderer Perun in ritual songs and traditional incantations. Instead of appealing to Perun for rain, converts would now turn to Elijah and address their pleas to him. The Elijah-Perun connection is reflected in the procedure that was followed, according to a chronicle account, when the Kiev Prince Oleg concluded a treaty with Constantinople in 945. The pagan members of the prince’s retinue swore to the treaty beside the idol of Perun, while those who were Christians took an oath in the Church of Elijah the Prophet.[4]

Dostoevsky was obsessed with the problem of Russia’s national identity – “the Russian soul.” Convinced of the exceptional nature of Russian faith, he sought a feature of Russian lore that might serve as a reflection, or emblem, of a specifically Russian spirituality. Early in his writing career, he found that emblem in Elijah the Prophet as he was perceived in Russian folk belief, and he repeatedly weaves the Russian image of Elijah the Prophet into the symbolic fabric of his fiction. It is no exaggeration to say that Elijah is the foundation upon which a number of Dostoevsky’s works are constructed.

The Village of Stepanchikovo: Ilyusha’s Nameday

The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants (1858-1859) is a good starting point for a discussion of Dostoevsky’s Elijah theme because it is the only work in which the writer lays bare his symbolism by alluding directly to the Biblical prophet.[5] In all his other works, Dostoevsky evokes Elijah through indirect means such as thunderstorms, and lightning – without explicitly referring to the prophet by name. A violent thunderstorm culminates the action in Stepanchikovo. The storm occurs precisely on the feast day of Elijah, and the thunder and lightning are attributed explicitly to the wrathful prophet. Stepanchikovo provides valuable insights concerning Dostoevsky’s allegorical technique and his use of folklore, and it is indispensable for presenting evidence of the Elijah theme to those skeptical scholars who are reluctant to believe any discovery that they did not make themselves.

Stepanchikovo is a light, farcical portrayal of the confrontation between two contrasting personalities: Yegor Ilyich Rostanev and Foma Fomich Opiskin. Rostanev is a forerunner of Prince Myshkin in The Idiot. He is naïve and childlike in the extreme. Meek and self-effacing, “he would give away his own shirt” or “carry someone for miles on his back” [5]. His hospitality has no limits, and his home becomes a refuge for spongers and poor relatives. Slandered and taken advantage of by those around him, Yegor Ilyich nevertheless invents every imaginable excuse to justify the sins of others, all the time blaming and criticizing himself.

Foma Fomich, on the other hand, is a petty, vain, backbiting tyrant who tries to usurp all authority in Rostanev’s home, where he lives as the clandestine lover of Rostanev’s mother. With hopes of improving their own fortunes, Foma and his lover try to coerce Rostanev into marrying the rather “touched” but wealthy spinster Tatyana Ivanovna. An obstacle in their path is the young governess Nastasya, with whom Yegor Ilyich has fallen in love. However, his love for Nastasya is so unselfish and noble that he is even willing to marry the rich spinster in order to make everyone happy, if only Nastasya can remain in his house. In order to legitimize this arrangement in the eyes of his mother and other members of her camp, he enlists the aid of his nephew, inviting him from Petersburg to his country estate with the hope that the young man will want to marry Nastasya.

But the nephew soon perceives that the love between Nastasya and Rostanev is deep, sincere and mutual, and he is quick to see the absurdity and unfairness of the predicament which has been imposed upon his uncle. He is shocked and exasperated by the ways in which Foma tyrannizes and manipulates Rostanev, who acquiesces to Foma’s every demand and virtually lives as a servant in his own home. A thoroughgoing xenophile, Foma even sets about reforming the servants and peasants by teaching them French and trying to frenchify their manners and habits.

When the young peasant boy Falalei repeatedly dreams of a white bull, Foma shames him for not dreaming of something more lofty and noble. He also forbids the boy to dance the Komarinsky, a national Russian dance which celebrates the exploits of a drunken peasant. But Falalei persists in dancing the Komarinsky, a temptation too strong for his poetic nature to resist, and the white bull keeps reappearing to him in his dreams no matter how hard he tries to stop it. The bull functions as a symbol of the rough-hewn peasantry – of the Russian nation in its actual, quintessential form, a culture with which Foma will not be reconciled. As the patron and representative of this culture, Rostanev is casually compared with a bull when Foma tells him: “You understand as much about the lofty and refined as a bull understands about beef!” [74] A parallel symbol is the name of Korovkin (derived from korova ‘cow’), whom everyone expects to appear as Foma’s opponent in a philosophical debate. But when he finally arrives at the end of the novel, he is drunk and covered with straw after sleeping in a barn. No philosophical debate takes place after all.

The novel’s climax comes on the holiday of Elijah the Prophet (July 20). Yegor Ilyich gets up in the morning intending to propose on this day to Tatyana Ivanovna in order to placate his mother and Foma. But his neighbor Bakhcheev arrives with news that the young man Obnoskin has carried off Tatyana to marry her and become heir to her wealth. Flattered by the young man’s attentions and tempted by the romantic dream of elopement which she has doubtless harbored throughout her adult life, she has willingly gone with Obnoskin. However, she soon has a change of heart and reaches out pleadingly to Bakhcheev as he passes their carriage while on his way to the holiday Mass at a nearby monastery. Instead of continuing on to church, Bakhcheev races to warn Rostanev of the abduction.

A chase ensues, led by Rostanev and Bakhcheev, and the crazy spinster is rescued. Obnoskin attempts apologetically to explain his actions by stating that he intended to use his wealth in order to help the poor and to establish a stipend for needy students. Obnoskin’s naïve, straightforward manner suggests that this was indeed a sincere motive, although it coexisted alongside his mother’s goal of self-aggrandizement. Obnoskin’s charitable aim (which, incidentally, parallels the altruistic goal behind Raskolnikov’s murder of the old pawnbroker), coupled with his mother’s greed, serves as a moral mirror for Rostanev, who sees that he, too, was about to commit an unconscionable act in marrying Tatyana. As in the case of Obnoskin, his own motives were unselfish and altruistic, even if misguided, while his mother’s goals for inducing him to marry were self-seeking and reprehensible. Thus, Rostanev sees the error of his ways, although the necessity to marry Tatyana Ivanovna has now fallen away of itself, as the fiasco of the elopement has cast a dark shadow on her sanity and respectability, virtually eliminating her as a potential bride for Rostanev.

The crisis of Tatyana Ivanovna’s abduction is only the prelude to the final disaster which ensues the same day. It is the nameday of Rostanev’s eight-year-old son Ilyusha (a form of endearment for Il’ia ‘Elijah’). However, jealous of the attention which Ilyusha will receive on his nameday, Foma has announced that his nameday falls on the same date. It is a blatant lie, but Ilyusha nevertheless memorizes a mock epic poem by the farcical, fictitious poet Kuz’ma Prutkov and recites the poem in Foma’s honor when all are assembled after the rescue of Tatyana. But Foma is insulted by the undignified tone of the poem and announces that he is parting with Rostanev forever. He lambasts Yegor Ilyich and proceeds to give hypocritical advice to everybody, as though he were a departing Savior.

Rostanev has yielded to Foma’s tyranny and criticism throughout the novel, but his patience now suddenly comes to an end when Foma proceeds to slander Nastasya. Foma accuses her of an indecent liaison with Rostanev, claiming that Yegor Ilyich has thoroughly corrupted her morals. At this point, Yegor Ilyich takes Foma by the shoulders and flings him “like a straw” through glass doors leading outside. Foma flies through the closed doors and down seven steps into the yard. Following Rostanev’s instructions, the servant Gavrila drives Foma away on a wagon. Inside, the women scream and nearly faint; Falalei sobs. The smashing of the doors is soon echoed by the crash of thunder as a powerful lightning storm begins outside:

[...] I shall also add that at this minute a strong thunderstorm unleashed itself outside: the blows of the thunder could be heard more and more frequently, and the large drops of rain began to knock at the windows.

“There’s a nice holiday for you!” muttered Mr. Bakhcheev as he lowered his head and spread his fingers. [139]

Amid the pandemonium, Yegor Ilyich asks Nastasya to marry him, but she and her impoverished father Yevgraf try to dissuade him, arguing that she is too lowly and undignified for him. Yevgraf then joins Rostanev’s mother in urging him to go rescue Foma from the storm. Rostanev replies:

“Wait a minute, Yevgraf Larionich!” shouted Uncle Yegor. “I beg you, listen to just one more word I have to say. Just one more word...”

Having said this, he walked over to the corner, sat down in an armchair, lowered his head and covered his eyes with his hands, as though reflecting on something.

At this moment, a terrifying blow of thunder crashed almost directly over the house. The whole building shook. Yegor’s mother screamed. So did Perepelitsyna. Other women in the room made the sign of the cross, dumb from fear. So did Bakhcheev.

“Lord, it’s Elijah the Prophet!” whispered five or six voices all at once.

The thunder was followed by such a terrible downpour that it seemed like an entire lake had been overturned over Stepanchikovo.

“What about Foma Fomich? What’ll happen to him out in the fields?” squeaked the old maid Perepelitsyna.

“Yegorushka! Go bring him back!” his mother cried in despair. Then, as though insane, she lunged toward the door. The other women restrained her, flocking all around, sobbing, screaming and consoling her. It was Sodom at its worst!

He left in just his jacket. If he at least had an overcoat!” continued Perepelitsyna. “And he didn’t take an umbrella, either. The lightning will kill him!..? [142]

On a symbolic plane, the rage of Yegor Ilyich is the wrath of the thundering Elijah. Yegor’s patronymic (Ilyich ‘son of Elijah’) links him with the Biblical prophet who could destroy armies with divine fire and who later came to be seen by the eastern Slavs as an armed, thundering enforcer of divine law. Yegor Ilyich seems to elicit the thunder as he meditates in the armchair. The thunder is his “one more word” – the word of Elijah the Prophet. The casual comparison of the downpour to an overturned lake is actually less casual than it appears at first glance. It ties in with one of Foma’s tirades in which he chastises Rostanev for being cruel to his mother (a totally groundless accusation, of course):

“How will you feel,” Foma said, “if your own mother comes to your window begging, by mistake of course, and reaches out her hand, while you, her own son, are drowning somewhere in your soft down mattress and... well, in luxury and so forth! It’s horrible, simply horrible! But most horrible of all – allow me to tell you frankly, Colonel – most horrible of all is the way you stand here in front of me like a dumb pillar, blinking your eyes and with your mouth all agaw. It’s plain indecent. At the very suggestion of this actually happening you should be tearing out your hair by the roots and pouring out streams... what am I saying! – rivers, lakes, seas, oceans of tears!.. [9-10]

Although Foma is unaware of it, his words foreshadow the thunderstorm which accompanies Rostanev’s wrathful explosion. The storm of Elijah is the storm of Yegor Ilyich, who is an earthly manifestation of the prophet. While the “lakes” of tears correspond to the “lake” of rain which inundates Stepanchikovo, the allusion to Rostanev’s “tearing out his hair by the roots” evokes associations with Elijah’s habit of uprooting trees.

Rostanev’s outward appearance is carefully drawn to evoke associations with the booming prophet:

He resembled the epic heroes of Russian folklore: tall and well-built, with ruddy cheeks and teeth as white as ivory. He had a long brown mustache and a loud, ringing voice. His laughter came in open-hearted volleys and he spoke jerkily in a clipping staccato. [5]

The “volleys” of Rostanev’s laughter (raskatistyi smekh) correspond to the “volleys” of Elijah’s thunder (raskaty groma [136]). The comparison of Rostanev with the heroes of the Russian folk epic is not fortuitous.[6] Dostoevsky has in mind Il’ia Muromets (Elijah of Murom), who has many connections with Elijah the Prophet in the Russian oral tradition and, in fact, goes back to Elijah the Prophet portrayed as the Christianizer of Rus’ in ancient epic tales about the conversion.[7] Dostoevsky alludes to Il’ia Muromets in the earlier novella A Little Hero, and in his later notebooks he repeatedly mentions Il’ia Muromets as the spiritual ideal of the Russian folk imagination.[8] Rostanev’s throwing Foma through the closed doors is drawn with an eye to the fighting tactics of Il’ia Muromets, who pushes the heathen foe (Idolishche, originally the idol of Perun, later reinterpreted as a Tatar invader) right through the wall of the Kiev palace.[9]

Rostanev embodies both the wrathful and merciful dimensions of Elijah the Prophet. After throwing Foma out into the storm, he finally consents to go rescue him if he will “publicly confess his guilt” and ask Nastasya’s forgiveness. Yegor mounts his horse Polkan and rides away bareback in search of Foma, who had set out on foot with his walking stick. He finds Foma after he has headed back toward Stepanchikovo, frightened by the storm. Some peasants in a wagon help bring Foma back to the house.

Foma remains an incorrigible hypocrite, but his tyranny is now tempered somewhat. He gives his blessing to Rostanev’s marriage, praising Nastasya’s purity of soul, thereby making everyone happy.

Soon thereafter, Rostanev discusses the problem of good and evil with his nephew. Their conversation can be seen as a statement of one of the novel’s central themes (however poorly it is demonstrated on the example of Foma Fomich). The nephew remarks that “the depths of the human soul cannot be fathomed” and that one should not give up hope for those who have fallen morally [160-161]. In replying, Yegor Ilyich speaks of the trees that have been washed clean by the storm:

“[...] But just look what a fine spot this is!” he added, looking all around. “What nature! What a picture! And what a tree! Just look: as big around as a man! What sap, what leaves! And the sun! Look how everything has perked up and been washed clean after the storm... You’d think the trees also comprehend something about themselves, that they feel and enjoy life...” [161]

Soon thereafter he adds: “Wondrous, wondrous is the Creator!” The tree is clearly a symbol of man, his soul renewed by the Water of Life and his conscience illuminated by the divine lightning. The message is one of hope and faith in the divine spark which glows in every human soul.

This theme is conveyed most poignantly when Foma taunts and ridicules the simple peasant boy Falalei:

“[...] Now what do you think? Can there possibly be even a piece or scrap of soul in this living hunk of beef? [...] Why are you standing there with your mouth ajar? Want to swallow a whale? Tell me: do you think you’re beautiful [prekrasen implies ‘noble,’ ‘magnificent’]?

“Yes, I’m b-b-beautiful!” Falalei replied through muffled sobs. [66-67]

The same theme is echoed by the servant Gavrila when he finally lashes out against Foma for trying to humiliate him:

“No, Foma Fomich,” Gavrila replied with dignity. “I’m not being vulgar and it wouldn’t be proper for me, a serf, to be vulgar in your presence, sir. But every man carries the image of God, His image and likeness. It’s my sixty-third year, sir. [...] And never in my life have I seen anything as indecent as this!” [74-75]

An inner consciousness of his own spirituality gives the simple Russian peasant a resolute sense of dignity which even Foma cannot break.

But if all men bear the likeness of God in their souls, they also carry the potential to become like the Devil. These two spiritual polarities are manifested in the eccentric personalities of the all-forgiving Yegor Ilyich and the vain, conniving Foma Fomich. Throughout the novel, Dostoevsky hints at Rostanev’s associations with Elijah and God, using the seemingly casual details and turns of speech that are typical of his style. Rostanev’s home, for example, is said to be a “Noah’s ark” [6] for all the poor friends and relatives who find refuge there. The allusion is to God’s mercy, reflected in Yegor Ilyich, and the promise of salvation.

When the peasants in Rostanev’s village of Kapitonovka hear the false rumor that he is planning to consign sixty-eight souls (i.e. serfs) over to Foma, they appear before Yegor Ilyich praying for mercy (otmolit’sia [32]):

“[...] they’ve taken it into their heads that I’m going to give them away, all of Kapitonovka... sixty-eight souls to Foma Fomich!”

“We don’t want anybody except you!” the peasants intoned all at once like a choir. “You’re the father and we’re the children!”

The underlying image is unmistakable: it is the flocks of the faithful invoking God Himself.

“[...] and always come to me when you have need; come straight to me any time!”

“Our father! You are the father and we are the children! Please don’t forsake us for Foma Fomich! [34]

“[...] Walk with God now and I’ll be happy... don’t worry now, I won’t abandon you.”

“Defend us, Father!”

“Let us see your light, Father!”

And the peasants all fell down at his feet.

“Come on now, this is nonsense! Bow down to God and the Czar, not to me... Go on now. Conduct yourselves well and you’ll earn kindness [zasluzhite lasku]...” [36]

In similar fashion, the word gospodin (‘master,’ ‘lord’) is carefully manipulated to point to Rostanev’s symbolic association with God. Several examples could be cited, but most interesting is an episode in which Yegor Ilyich finally relieves Gavrila of the unbearable burden of trying to learn French:

“[...] What are you doing with that French lesson book?” he yelled wrathfully [s iarost’iu], turning to Gavrila. “Away with it! Burn it! Trample it! Tear it up! I am your lord and master and I’m telling you to stop trying to learn French. You must obey me because I am your lord and master, not Foma Fomich!..”

“Praise Thee, O Lord!” Gavrila mumbled quietly. [81]

Among the other multifarious turns of speech that are used in this allusive manner, one might single out the nephew’s promise to be ready to help Rostanev “forever and ever” (vo veki vekov) [81]. This scriptural, prayer-like formula is echoed later in the same chapter when Yegor swears “by all the saints” that he is Foma’s friend “forever and ever.” Repeated allusions to “paradise” and casual references to Nastasya and other characters as “angels” also seem to identify Rostanev with God, enthroned and surrounded by the saints and angels.

The old valet Gavrila is appropriately named after the Archangel Gabriel, who in church lore is traditionally portrayed at the side of the Divinity. Rostanev’s sister Praskov’ia is named after St. Paraskeva “Piatnitsa.”. The Russian holiday of Elijah began on St. Paraskeva’s Day (the Friday before Elijah’s Day) and continued through Elijah’s Day itself (July 20, Old Style). In this sense, Paraskeva is a spiritual sister of Elijah, and this sisterhood is reflected in the relationship between Yegor Ilyich and his sister Praskov’ia. The icon of Paraskeva was carried in ritual processions on Elijah’s feast day in some regions. She is a spiritual “sister” of Elijah not only in the broad sense (i.e. as a fellow saint), but also in that she, too, struggled against idolatry. Her name is the Greek word meaning ‘Friday’; hence, her Russian epithet Piatnitsa (‘Friday’). Her cult was popular throughout Russia, where she was seen as a patron of women and of household activities such as spinning, weaving and sewing. According to legend, she never married, devoting her life to God, and a number of convents in Russia bear her name. Afanas’ev links her cult with a pre-Christian deity corresponding to the Germanic goddess Freya, whose day of provenance was Friday.[10]

Dostoevsky hints at the connection between Praskov’ia and Paraskeva in Bakhcheev’s characterization of Praskov’ia:

“[...] I have no desire to even speak of Yegor Ilyich’s sister Praskov’ia Il’inichna. Forty years old and she’s still unmarried. Nothing but oo’s and ah’s, and cackles like a hen. I’ve had all of it I can take. All there is to her is just her female sex. That’s all there is to respect in her – nothing but the fact that she’s of the female sex. [...]” [24]

In the final chapter, which serves as an epilog, one learns that Bakhcheev eventually proposed marriage to Praskov’ia but was refused. Instead, she devotes her life to her brother and Nastasya:

[...] Praskov’ia Il’inichna lives with them and takes pleasure in serving and pleasing them in every way. It is she who looks after the household tasks. Mr. Bakhcheev proposed to her soon after Uncle’s wedding, but she gave him a flat refusal. Everyone then concluded that she would enter a convent, but that didn’t happen either. Praskov’ia Il’inichna has one remarkable peculiarity: she totally effaces herself before those whom she loves, constantly disappears from their view, looks them in the eyes, submits to all their caprices, looks after them and serves them. Now, after the death of her mother, she considers it her duty to stay by her brother’s side and to serve [ugozhdat’] Nastasya in every possible way. [166]

The epithets applied to Praskov’ia throughout the novel – “good,” “humble,” “compassionate” – all serve to highlight her saint-like qualities.

The name of Rostanev’s meek and humble bride is derived from Greek Anastasia ‘Resurrection’. While Rostanev’s patronymic is associated with Elijah the Prophet, his first name, Yegor, is a folk variant of Georgii, from St. George. Appropriately for Rostanev, this saint is viewed as a benevolent patron of the peasant farmer.

Thus, the portrait of Rostanev, Praskov’ia and Nastasya is that of man in the likeness of God and His saints. Fallen man, or man in the likeness of the Devil, is best represented by Foma, whose last name, Opiskin, (from opiska ‘a slip of the pen’) is suggestive of imperfection and the notion of sin, or moral error. “Thrice-accursed,” “anathema,” “serpent-monster” (ekhidna): these epithets, commonly applied to the Devil, are applied to Foma, quite aptly, by characters in the novel.

Foma’s hypocrisy is entirely transparent, so it is easy for the reader to simply invert the meaning of his words to arrive at the truth. For example, when Foma declares that he is leaving Stepanchikovo forever, he says that he is “enriched with new knowledge about the corrupt condition of the human race.” [137] He means to condemn Yegor Ilyich, but the author is clearly alluding to Foma’s own fallen state. Similarly, when Foma speaks of Rostanev’s “serpent speeches” (zmeinye rechi [85]), it is clear that the author’s allusion is to Foma himself as serpent-Devil. He has seduced Rostanev’s mother – “the female half” of the household – with his pseudoscience and false erudition – in short, with his Tree of Knowledge in the symbolic Gerden of Eden that is Rostanev’s estate. He formerly served as a “jester” (shut - also a term for the Devil) for her husband until his death and was adept at mimicking all sorts of animals. This motif is intended to evoke associations with the animal metamorphoses of the Devil, which abound in Christian lore. In his characterization of Foma the narrator uses figures of speech that are evocative of serpents and black magic:

[...] he could sometimes foretell the future, but he was especially good at interpreting dreams and he was a master at condemning his neighbor. [8]

Foma Fomich is the personification of the most boundless vanity, but of a particular kind of vanity: the kind that afflicts complete nonentities and, as usual in such cases, it is the vanity of one who has been injured and downtrodden by painful failures; it is vanity which has been festering for a long, long time and which secretes envy and venom at any encounter, at anyone else’s success. [11]

Hearing of Foma’s antics, “good people would make the sign of the cross and spit” [13], a common folk form of simple exorcism.

The ejection of Foma from Rostanev’s home elicits associations with Satan’s expulsion from heaven. The seven porch steps down which Foma falls seem to correspond to the seven heavens. But it is also reminiscent of the exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and of the Last Judgment. Foma’s falling down the porch steps (which he later refers to as “my fall”) is evocative of man’s fall from grace.

As a symbol of the wrath of God, the lightning of Elijah is closely linked with the apocalyptic “cup of God’s wrath” and with the “grapes of wrath” which are reaped in the Apocalypse. Yegor speaks of this cup after he has thrown out Foma and the storm rages outside:

“Momma!” he continued. “The cup was full to overflowing. You saw for yourself. That’s not the way I wanted things to happen, but the hour struck and it had to be done!” [140]

As the storm first gathers overhead, Foma, too, unaware of the apocalyptic implications of his speech, talks arrogantly about reaping:

“And now a few details. They may be small, but they’re indispensable, Yegor Ilyich. The hay is still not mowed in the Zachariah Meadow. Don’t wait till it’s too late. Mow it, and mow it now! That’s my advice...” [138]

The author’s oblique allusion is to the proverbial bringing in the sheaves – reaping the harvest of one’s good and bad deeds. Foma then advises Yegor not to destroy the trees, and adds:

“... It’s too bad you sowed the iarovóe so late. It’s amazing how late you sowed the iarovóe !..” [138]

Iarovóe refers to various grains sowed in the spring, but it is derived from iaryi, which most commonly means ‘fierce,’ ‘wrathful.’ Iarost’ is one of the Biblical terms for God’s wrath. The sowing of the iarovóe is an allusion to the sowing and reaping of God’s wrath. Once again, Foma’s words are true in a way he never intends: it is indeed amazing how long it takes for Rostanev’s wrath to reach fruition![11]

The scene of pandemonium which follows Rostanev’s explosion is referred to in a passage cited above as “Sodom at its worst” in order to highlight the associations with an apocalyptic cataclysm. Bakhcheev alludes figuratively to the Last Judgment when he first describes Foma’s tyranny to the narrator:

“... Yes, sir, I can tell you things that’ll make your jaw fall open and you’ll stand there with your mouth all agape until the Second Coming!” [25]

The theme of apocalyptic retribution is foreshadowed in the introductory chapter, where the nephew relates how once as a boy he and his uncle tied a mean old lady’s house cap to a kite and launched it into the sky. The Russian word meaning ‘kite’ (zmei) also means ‘dragon’. One might say that the boy and his uncle symbolically fed the evil woman to the dragon of the Apocalypse.

Foma is a usurper, like Satan, who would be supreme in heaven. Foma would rule the household, usurping the fire of Yegor Ilyich, the symbolic Elijah. Fire imagery is repeatedly applied to him as he “burns,” “flames” and “explodes” with envy and all his evil passions. And yet, he hypocritically instructs Yegor to extinguish the “housefire” of his [Rostanev’s] unbridled passions:

“[...] if there is at least a spark of morality left in your heart, then bridle your passions! And if the destructive venom hasn’t yet enveloped the whole building, then put out the housefire as best you can.” [137]

By inverting the sense of Foma’s words once again, one can decode the author’s intended message: it is time for Elijah to extinguish the housefire of Foma’s unbridled passions. The passage is another allusion to the rainstorm of Elijah.

The pleophonic, folk variant of the word for ‘lightning’ is consistently used instead of the standard literary form: molon’ia instead of molniia. It is intended to lend the dialog a colloquial flavor, but it also serves as a key to the Elijah allegory in the novel. While the peasant boy Falalei is being persecuted by Foma for dreaming about the white bull, he grows thin and weak. In a vain ritual of exorcism, the chambermaid Malan’ia stands in the corner beneath the icons and sprinkles Falalei with sanctified water. Her name, Malan’ia, is chosen for its similarity to molon’ia (‘lightning’) in order to present the ritualistic sprinkling as an analogue to the rain of the lightning-wielder Elijah. Praskov’ia, a “living icon” of sorts (St. Paraskeva), also participates in the ritual.

As the Elijah motifs illustrate, Dostoevsky put great energy into Stepanchikovo. He considered it his best effort and waited impatiently to learn the opinions of editors and readers. He must have been bitterly disappointed when most of the reviews proved to be negative. Nekrasov is said to have remarked: “Dostoevsky is washed up.” Pleshcheev’s letter to A. P. Miliukov concerning the novel is especially interesting:

“[...] Except for Rostanev (the uncle) there’s not a single living character. It’s all contrived and concocted; terribly clumsy. Please don’t tell him this. I’ll somehow avoid talking about it. It’s a touchy business discussing this sort of thing. It could possibly harm our friendship. And, anyway, what sort of judge am I? Maybe the novel is superb and I simply don’t understand it. I don’t want to force my opinion on anyone. I haven’t heard anyone else’s reaction.”[12]

Like Pleshcheev, various reviewers criticized Stepanchikovo for its lack of realism and contrived melodrama.[13] However, a work should be judged in the context of its style and genre. Stepanchikovo is a farcical allegory; it is not intended to be a specimen of sheer realism. Before criticizing Stepanchikovo for not having “a single living character,” one should first determine to what extent the characters are intended to be “true-to-life” human beings, as opposed to sacred images borrowed from the icon case.

Stepanchikovo is invaluable for the study of Dostoevsky’s fiction. It is only in Stepanchikovo that the writer presents Elijah the Prophet and his July holiday without requiring that the reader deduce these symbolic referents from an array of allusive details. It presents a human conflict as a reflection of a higher struggle between God and Satan. Rostanev embodies the boundless love of a merciful God as well as the explosive wrath of God’s enforcer Elijah. The conflict with the demonic Foma Fomich finally culminates in a thunderstorm precisely on Elijah’s Day, the nameday of Rostanev’s young son Ilyusha. This pattern, explicitly associated with Elijah in Stepanchikovo, is paralleled by similar patterns and allusions to Elijah in other works written by Dostoevsky both before and after Stepanchikovo – although literary scholars have failed to notice them.[14]

Crime and Punishment: Elijah’s Storm Again

Crime and Punishment is the story of a murderer’s path to confession. An inner, spiritual awareness of the necessity to accept suffering for his sins leads Raskolnikov to confess his crime, even though he knows there is no legally incriminating evidence against him. In Dostoevsky’s view, all men share the spirit of Christ, and the story of Rodion Raskolnikov is an allegory about the spiritual path of mankind as a whole. His crime can be compared with original sin and the fall of man in the Bible. A clerk at the police station remarks that the murderer escaped capture because the building where the old pawnbroker lived is “a Noah’s ark” [83]. The clerk simply means that the building is large, with plenty of places where the murderer might hide. But there is also a suggestion of the ark that saved the human race after Adam’s fall and the corruption of his descendants – a vague hint at the promise of salvation which looms before Raskolnikov throughout the novel.

Other Biblical symbols mark Raskolnikov’s path and show that, after the crime, he is following in Christ’s footsteps toward suffering and redemption. He visits Sonia at the Kapernaumovs’, whose name is derived from Capernaum, one of a series of towns Christ visited before his crucifixion, healing the afflicted and raising Lazarus from the dead. In the novel, Kapernaumov and his wife are both lame and they have a speech impediment; Kapernaumova is half deaf, their eldest child stutters, and their other children are sickly; the derelict building in which they live, the dwelling of cripples and a prostitute, recalls the Biblical Capernaum, the fate of which Christ compared to Sodom (Matthew 11:23-24). Of course, it is at the Kapernaumovs’ that Sonia reads to Raskolnikov about the resurrection of Lazarus.

Following Christ, Raskolnikov “takes on the cross” given him by Sonia when he goes to confess. He then bows at the crossroads (perekrestok: from krest ‘cross’) and kisses the ground. A bystander speculates that he is a pilgrim about to set out for Jerusalem, the city of Christ’s crucifixion. On the way to the police station, Raskolnikov thinks about “drinking the cup.” He may have in mind only the “cup” of his own sufferings, but the parallel with the “bitter cup” of Christ is unmistakable. Like Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who followed Christ to his crucifixion, Sonia follows Raskolnikov to the police station and later to Siberia. An early draft states that she follows him “to Golgotha.”[15] When he is sick and in delirium in Siberia, Sonia waits by his side, much as Mary Magdalene waited at Christ’s tomb. Finally, his spiritual resurrection occurs shortly after Easter, the holiday of Christ’s resurrection.

As he struggles with the nihilistic idea that has taken possession of his mind, leading him to kill the old pawnbroker, Raskolnikov encounters other “great sinners” in whom he might see a reflection of his own fallen spirit. They include the lecher Svidrigailov, whose tormented conscience finally leads him to suicide, and the drunk Marmeladov, who pleads to be “crucified” and follows a seemingly suicidal path with his alcoholic’s “cup of sorrow” in hand. Alongside these fallen spirits the murderer encounters representatives of communal authority with whom he duels and to whom he is irresistibly drawn throughout the novel. Most prominent among them are Porfirii Petrovich, the wily police examiner who torments the murderer with insinuations and subtle mockery, and Il’ia Petrovich (nicknamed Pórokh), the assistant police superintendent to whom Raskolnikov eventually confesses. Through a series of word-plays, allusions and imagery associated with Elijah the Prophet, Pórokh is made a symbol of divine retribution and the law of God.

Il’ia Petrovich figures in three highly symbolic episodes: first, when Raskolnikov is summoned to the police station for not repaying his debt to his landlady; second, when he dreams that Il’ia Petrovich is beating his landlady; and third, when he finally confesses during his second visit to the police station. His first name Il’ia links him with his namesake, the Biblical Elijah. In the earliest surviving draft, Dostoevsky vacillates between the name Aleksandr Ilyich (“son of Il’ia”) and Il’ia Petrovich. Eventually he settled on the latter, but this vacillation shows the name Il’ia (‘Elijah’) to be of special significance.

Pórokh (‘Gunpowder’) is a nickname given to Il’ia Petrovich by his comrades in the army because of his fiery temperament. The police superintendent, Nikodim Fomich, first mentions the nickname in a passage that juxtaposes the words porók (‘vice,’ ‘crime’) and pórokh (‘gunpowder’):

“Poverty [porok] is no vice, my friend. But, as we all know, you’re gunpowder [porokh]. No tolerance for these little slights...” [80]

The similarity between porók and pórokh points to an underlying word-play between Il’ia Pórokh and Il’ia Prorók (‘Elijah the Prophet’), the lord of thunder and lightning in Russian folk belief.

The nickname Porokh (‘Gunpowder’), resembling prorok (‘prophet’) and eliciting associations with fire, is appropriate for a symbolic Elijah the Prophet. But for Dostoevsky and his Petersburg readers the nickname also elicited associations with the Church of Elijah the Prophet at the Powderworks (Tserkov’ Ilii-proroka na Porokhovykh) and with the local custom of making an annual pilgrimage to the powderworks on the feast day of Elijah. Goncharov repeatedly alludes to this custom in Oblomov, where Elijah the Prophet looms as a central symbol of Judgment:

They talked about Elijah’s Friday and about the annual outings made on foot to the Powderworks, about the holiday at the Smolensk Cemetery in Kolpino. [Oblomov, Part 4, Chapter 1]

“[...] Just the other day, on Elijah’s Friday, we went to the Powderworks.”

“Well, do a lot of people gather there?” asked Oblomov [...]

“No, this year there weren’t many. In the morning it rained, although later it cleared up. In good weather there’s a lot of people.”

[Oblomov, Part 3, Chapter 2]

St. Paraskeva’s Day came on the Friday before Elijah’s Day, and was known as “Elijah’s Friday,” as in the passages just cited from Goncharov. The holiday of Elijah would actually begin on St. Paraskeva’s Day and continue through Elijah’s Day. For this reason the holiday of Elijah could last several days or even an entire week. During the Elijah’s Day holidays in the late 1800’s, as many as 100,000 people would gather near the Church of Elijah the Prophet at the gunpowder factory. The church had been built there in the eighteenth century with the hope that Elijah would protect the workers and their families from fire, drought, and explosions. The strategy had limited success, as explosions at the factory were frequent. One enormous explosion in 1858 took the lives of sixty-nine men and rattled windows throughout much of the city. Another explosion in 1864 (not long before Dostoevsky began working on Crime and Punishment) cost fifteen more lives.

Dostoevsky endows Il’ia Petrovich with the fiery attributes of the thunder-wielding prophet. He has a “lightning gaze” (a “thunderous gaze” in one of the notebooks).[16] He spews a rain of saliva when he grows excited, and he “lets loose with all his thunderbolts” against a brothel keeper who is summoned to the police station. When the superintendent arrives and finds Porokh in a rage, he exclaims: “Again that rumbling, thunder, and lightning; that whirlwind and hurricane once again!” The whirlwind and hurricane recall the fiery whirlwind in which the Biblical Elijah ascends to heaven.

Porokh’s other fiery traits include a red beard and a cigarette which elicits a complaint from Raskolnikov. Porokh “flames,” “boils” and “burns” when he is angry. He speaks in a thundering voice and his “lightning” is mentioned again and again: “It was as though thunder and lightning had struck in the office...;” “she [the brothel keeper] was all atremble beneath Porokh’s thunder an d lightning” [78]. His rank, assistant superintendent, is a playful parallel to that of Elijah the Prophet, who as a figure of divine retribution might be called an assistant of God. In the context of Dostoevsky’s symbolism, the term for ‘superintendent’ (nadziratel’: literally, ‘overseer’) is suggestive of an all-seeing god. As Georgii Meier has noted, the superintendent’s name, Nikodim Fomich, has a decidedly Biblical coloring. [17] When Porokh instructs Raskolnikov, “Please be quiet! You are in a government office!” (“Izvol’te ma-a-lchat’! Vy v prisutstvii!” ) [77], a second, symbolic meaning is implied by the author: You are in His presence. (Prisutstvie can mean both ‘office’ and ‘presence’.)

Two weeks pass between the murder and Raskolnikov’s confession. Throughout this time, the weather in Petersburg is unbearably hot and muggy. The stifling air bears down on Raskolnikov physically, while the weight of his crime bears down on his spirit. But on the fourteenth day the weather finally changes. That evening, in his last interview with Raskolnikov, Porfirii Petrovich remarks with characteristic cunning, referring as much to Raskolnikov’s spiritual state as to the weather:

“Going for a stroll now? Should be a fine evening. If only there’s no storm. But then again, that would actually be better. It would freshen things up...” [352]

That night, a spectacular thunderstorm unleashes itself over Petersburg. The rain comes down “like a waterfall,” lashing the ground for hours. Lightning strikes time after time, and the tremendous glow lasts up to five seconds [384]. Raskolnikov spends the whole night outdoors in the storm, and it is at this time that he finally decides to confess:

His suit was in a horrible state: all muddy, torn and tattered after the whole night in the rain. His face was almost unrecognizable from fatigue, the bad weather, physical exhaustion and the struggle with himself which had continued for nearly twenty-four hours. He had spent the whole night alone, God knows where. But at least he had made up his mind. [395]

After his thorough drenching in the thunderstorm, Raskolnikov visits his mother and his sister Dunia, who speaks of “washing away” his crime [399]. Then he confesses that evening to the gruff and fiery Il’ia Petrovich, the symbolic Elijah the Prophet, master of thunder and lightning. The thunderstorm is the spiritual storm of Elijah the Prophet which purifies the heart. Dostoevsky has in mind not only the general association of Elijah and thunderstorms in popular Russian lore, but also the specific folk belief that Elijah will unleash a storm each year on his feast day, July 20. The action in Crime and Punishment gets underway “in the beginning of July” [5]. If we assume this means the first week of the month (July 1-7), then the day of the storm and of Raskolnikov’s confession is July 15-21 (the fifteenth day in the novel); i.e., on or near the feast day of Elijah. One can assume that the storm, in Dostoevsky’s conception, is the proverbial Elijah’s Day storm of folk belief that also culminates the main action in Stepanchikovo. In Dostoevsky’s conception, it begins on the eve of Elijah’s Day, and Raskolnikov confesses to Il’ia Petrovich on July 20. In confessing to this symbolic Elijah, Raskolnikov is surrendering to divine Judgment. Thus, the pattern of Stepanchikovo, with an Elijah’s Day thunderstorm at the story’s climax, is repeated in Crime and Punishment.

Raskolnikov’s route toward confession – the spiral staircase leading up to the police station – is a spiritual ascent into the realm of divine wrath and mercy. The spiral shape of the stairway evokes once again the whirlwind that carried Elijah into heaven. Raskolnikov’s head “spins” as he climbs the stairs, reinforcing the associations with Elijah’s whirlwind.[18]

The spiral staircase also figures in one of Raskolnikov’s dreams, where its spiritual significance is quite clear. Neither asleep nor awake, he sees a series of images whirling before him: a tavern, a billiard table, a tobacco shop, a staircase strewn with egg shells, and the belfry of the Church of the Ascension. He hears “the sound of Sunday bells” (or, literally, “Resurrection” bells: voskresnyi zvon kolokolov) [210]. The vision incorporates images of a corrupt netherworld and a higher spiritual realm, with the stairway as a bridge between the two planes. The stairway is the one which leads to the police station, as suggested by the egg shells which litter the stairs when Raskolnikov ascends to the police station to confess to Porokh in Part Six. His dream signifies a tortuous ascent from sin to redemption.

The first episode at the police station, when Raskolnikov is summoned for his debt to his landlady, is an allegorical portrayal of his spiritual torment. It is his first opportunity to confess, but he remains barricaded in his fortress of pride and weathers the storm of abuse which the symbolic Elijah the Prophet rains down on him. As Georgii Meier has shown, the heavily perfumed Luiza Ivanovna is a symbol of Raskolnikov’s sinful, fallen spirit.[19] Her dress, which is like a balloon and occupies almost half the room, gives her an airy, buoyant, amorphous aspect. The narrator refers to her with the formula pyshnaia dama, which means ‘flamboyantly dressed lady’ in the given context, but is suggestive of fluffiness and airiness. Luiza Ivanovna takes buoyant little leaps as she walks, and she “flies” out of the room. She is half German and her speech is a comical hodgepodge of German and Russian, while Raskolnikov is evidently steeped in German letters and is called a “German hatter” by a drunk who makes fun of his hat near the beginning of the novel [7]. In her heavy German accent Luiza Ivanovna spills words “like peas,” a comparison which is intended once more to establish a symbolic link with Raskolnikov, who “smashed” (ogoróshil, derived from gorókh ‘peas’) the pawnbroker’s head and whose altruistic, utopian scheme to get rich is alluded to symbolically as “thoughts about Tsar Gorokh” (about ‘Tsar Peas,’ emperor of a proverbial Neverneverland).

The scandal that was caused in Luiza Ivanovna’s “noble house” by her “ignoble guest” parodies Raskolnikov’s crime, which is the result of nihilistic ideas infecting his mind. The intruder who ran riot at Luiza Ivanovna’s is a hack writer. Symbolically, he is linked with the intellectual, reasoning side of Raskolnikov’s nature and with the ideas that have gained possession of Raskolnikov’s spirit. The connection between the hack writer and the “former student” Raskolnikov is brought out in the same scene by Il’ia Petrovich:

“That’s the way they are, these hack writers, literati, students and prophets... Phoo!” [79]

“Here you are, sir. Just take a look: Mr. Writer here, or Student, that is - former student – won’t pay the money he owes, he’s written all sorts of I.O.U.’s, he won’t vacate his apartment, constant complaints are coming in against him, and he deigns to take offense because I’ve lit up my cigarette in his presence!” [80]

Luiza Ivanovna’s “noble house” is evidently a brothel, but she stands before Elijah Porokh persistently asserting her innocence. She symbolizes Raskolnikov’s spirit as he stands before the eternal tribunal of the Lord, refusing to confess his guilt.

Luiza Ivanovna’s remarks concerning the “nobility” of her house and the “ignobility” of her guest refer symbolically to Raskolnikov himself. When he returns to the police station near the end of the novel, Il’ia Petrovich makes repeated allusions to Raskolnikov’s noble background [407-8]. These words doubtless ring ironically in the ears of the murderer. When Raskolnikov bows down at the crossroads on his way to confess, bystanders remark:

“One of the nobility!” somebody noted with authority.

“Nowadays it’s hard to tell who’s a noble and who isn’t.” [405]

The police summon Raskolnikov to the station because of his debt to his landlady, Zarnitsyna. However, as Meier notes, the Russian word khoziaika means not only ‘landlady,’ but also ‘mistress’ (i.e. ‘mistress of a household or property’) and so suggests that Raskolnikov has neglected not only a financial debt, but also his duty to his inner “mistress” – his own soul, or conscience.[20] At the beginning of the novel, the narrator paraphrases Raskolnikov’s thoughts, stating that he was not afraid of any landlady [5]. But why should he fear any other landlady besides the one to whom he owes money? This rather strange display of bravado hints at the landlady’s second function as a symbol of Raskolnikov’s conscience, or spiritual “mistress.” The other landlady is his own conscience. In addition, she is an assessorsha – literally, an assessor’s widow; but on the symbolic plane she is Raskolnikov’s “moral assessor.” Her widowed state points to a link with the realm beyond death, a concern for the eternal and divine. As a symbolic emanation of Raskolnikov’s conscience, she can be said to be in mourning – for the killer’s fallen spirit.

The landlady’s name in the early drafts is Sof’ia, the highly symbolic name later attached to Marmeladov’s daughter. Despite the reassignment of names, the landlady remains another symbol of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom. Her surname, Zarnitsyna, is derived from zarnitsa, a term for sheet lightning or the glow which accompanies a bolt of lightning. After his first visit to the police station, Raskolnikov dreams that Il’ia Petrovich is brutally beating Zarnitsyna on the stairway outside his room. Her terrible “howling, gnashing and weeping” are reminiscent of hellish, apocalyptic tortures. It is as though “the world had been turned upside down;” or as though the Last Judgment and the end of the world were approaching. When the groans and cries of the landlady have stopped, Raskolnikov lies in terror for half an hour, unaware that he has only been dreaming [90-91]. Only the symbolic roles of Il’ia Petrovich and Zarnitsyna give this seemingly absurd nightmare a clear meaning. Raskolnikov’s conscience, symbolized by the landlady, is tormented by a symbolic Elijah the Prophet. The quiet realizations of Raskolnikov’s conscience glow like sheet lightning beneath the bolts of divine vengeance. When the servant woman Nastasya (her name is from Greek Anastasia ‘Resurrection’) comes to Raskolnikov’s room and illuminates the darkness with her candle (svet ozaril komnatu), he asks her who was beating the landlady. She replies that no beating took place. According to her, this is only “the blood crying out” in Raskolnikov [92]. The double meaning, unintended by Nastasya, is that the blood spilled by Raskolnikov is crying out – that is, his conscience, symbolized by the landlady in his dream, is in torment.

Instead of the symbolic cleansing by water in the thunderstorm, Dostoevsky had earlier planned a purification by fire. The notebooks refer to a housefire in which Raskolnikov helps to save the tenants. Afterwards, he returns home to his mother, all scorched and singed, much as he comes back dishevelled and weatherbeaten by the thunderstorm in the final version. The housefire experience gives him the hope of redemption. Still covered with soot from the fire, he goes to confess to Il’ia Petrovich, who says: “Why are you all charred? Oh yes, of course! Good Lord!”[21] The notebooks also refer to a vision of Christ and to a whirlwind (vikhr’) at the time of the fire.[22]Like the hurricane and whirlwind mentioned by Nikodim Fomich in describing Il’ia Petrovich, this whirlwind was doubtless associated with the fiery whirlwind of Elijah the Prophet. Together with lightning storms, housefires were a special provenance of Elijah in Russian folk belief, and the housefire in the drafts was evidently planned as a trial in which Raskolnikov attains to a vision of Divine Truth and Redemption as he experiences the whirling flames of the prophet’s fire. The writer later abandoned this plan, opting for an Elijah’s Day lightning storm instead of a fire. The fire motif still survived in an episodic allusion to Raskolnikov’s having once saved some people from a housefire.

Other traces of the early housefire episode are discernible at several points in the novel, including the first episode at the police station. Exhausted by his inner spiritual struggle, Raskolnikov has grown indifferent to everything around him: “Even if at that very moment he had been condemned to burn, he wouldn’t have even flinched...” [81] A further intimation of the purifying function of the prophet’s fire is Nikodim Fomich’s praise of Porokh:

“[...] a most noble man, I assure you, but he’s gunpowder, gunpowder? He flares up, boils up, burns up - and that’s it? It’s all over? And as a result there’s only the gold of the heart” [80]

The phrase “as a result” (v rezul’tate) implies that the “gold of the heart” refers to the heart of the suspect as well as that of Il’ia Petrovich. Of course, Nikodim Fomich is unaware of this double entendre, which was planted by the author himself. Porokh’s fire purifies the hearts of his suspects like gold in a furnace, recalling the evocation of Elijah in Malachi 3:2-3:

...and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

Yet another subtle allusion to the fiery whirlwind of Elijah can be discerned in the newspaper headlines which Raskolnikov scans in the Crystal Palace as he looks for reports of the murder:

Raskolnikov sat down and began to search: “Izler — Izler — Aztecs — Aztecs — Izler — Bartola — Massimo — Aztecs — Izler... The devil? Ah, here are some newsbriefs: Woman Falls Down Stair? — Merchant Burns Up From Spirits [meshchanin sgorel s vina] — Fire in Peski — Fire on Petersburg Side — another fire on Petersburg Side — another fire on Petersburg Side — Izler — Izler — Izler — Izler — Massimo... Ah, here it is...” [124]

What associations is Dostoevsky attempting to evoke here? Bartola and Massimo were dwarves who were exhibited in Petersburg in 1865, touted as the last living Aztecs. They were obvious imposters. Ivan Ivanovich Izler operated an amusement park outside Petersburg. It was famous for fireworks and balloon rides that were offered there. Thus, the allusions to the Aztecs elicit associations with small people who pose as someone far more lofty. Izler, on the other hand, brings to mind fireworks (man playing with fire) and an ascent into the sky. But the report about a woman’s fall down the stairs suggests precisely the opposite – a precipitous descent. The stairs themselves inevitably bring to mind the stairway leading to the police station and the stairs on which Porokh beats the landlady in Raskolnikov’s dream. The notion of a fire is present in the report about the death of the merchant as well as the reports of housefires. (“Burn up” is a common term for death from sudden consumption of great quantities of alcohol.) The author certainly associated these housefires with Elijah the Prophet. Thus, the carefully organized sequence of headlines is more than a reflection of contemporary Petersburg realia. They subtly allude to Raskolnikov’s Napoleonic attempt to take the law of God and man into his own hands and to usurp the authority of Elijah. But the usurper’s attempt to ascend into the heavenly heights fails, and he tumbles from the sky, scorched by the prophet’s fire.

After the storm, Raskolnikov visits his mother and sister and goes to Sonia, where he “takes on the cross” by accepting a small cypress cross which she gives him. Then he kisses the ground at the crossroads and goes to “drink the cup,” while Sonia follows. As in the first episode at the police station, the word “dukh” and its cognates suggest a spiritual significance in Raskolnikov’s final encounter with Il’ia Petrovich. Once again he stops to catch his breath (perevesti dukh) before entering the police station [406]. When he enters, Il’ia Petrovich greets him, exclaiming:

“Ah! ‘He can’t be seen, and he can’t be heard, but... how’s it go in the fairytale?...’I smell a Russian’?... Can’t remember!” [406]

The formula Il’ia Petrovich is trying to recall from Russian folktales is russkim dukhom pakhnet, which is comparable to “Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!” It means ‘I smell a Russian,’ and is said of the Russian fairytale hero when he has become invisible but his presence is detected. However, because dukh means ‘spirit’ as well as ‘odor,’ the formula can be rendered literally as ‘I smell a Russian spirit.’ It is this symbolic, secondary meaning that is most significant. The contrite “Russian spirit” which the assistant superintendent now smells presents a neat contrast to the smell of the German brothel keeper’s perfume (dukhi), which was so conspicuous in the first police station episode. Further repetition of the word dukh in the scene of the confession underscores its symbolic importance. Il’ia Petrovich uses it in characterizing Raskolnikov: “...learned studies - that’s where your spirit soars!” [407-8] He also casually refers to the stuffiness of the police station: “The air [dukh] here is so stopped up...” [409], an authorial allusion to Raskolnikov’s entrapped spirit which yearns to be free from the fetters of guilt.

Near the end of each episode at the police station, Raskolnikov is offered a glass of water. He faints after his first interview with Il’ia Petrovich and wakes up to “a yellow glass filled with yellow water” [83]. In the second police station episode, as Raskolnikov confesses, Il’ia Petrovich offers him a glass of water and enjoins him to drink [409-10]. Both these drinking motifs, and especially the “yellow water,” are drawn with an eye to the “bitter cup” of suffering which Raskolnikov resolves to drink when he ascends the spiral staircase to face “Elijah the Prophet. In neither case does he actually drink the water, but in confessing he accepts the “cup” of suffering. These drinking motifs derive ultimately from Matthew 27: 33-34:

When they had reached a place called Golgotha, that is, the place of the skull, they gave him wine to drink mixed with gall, which he tasted but refused to drink.

Note that in the phrase zheltaia voda (‘yellow water’) the Russian word for “yellow” (zheltaia) shares the same root with the word for “gall” (zhelch’).

Svidrigailov also spends part of the night in the thunderstorm. But his life has been consumed by debauchery, and visions of his past torment him when he tries to sleep. For him the thunderstorm is an apocalyptic time of Judgment. Illuminated by Elijah’s lightning, his transgressions become unbearable to him and he finally commits suicide.

While Raskolnikov’s path to suffering and resurrection resembles that of Christ, Svidrigailov follows the path of Judas, who accepted thirty pieces of silver for betraying Christ. Svidrigailov sells his soul to Marfa Petrovna for thirty thousand “pieces of silver” when she ransoms him from jail for thirty thousand silver rubles. In Slavonic church writings, Judas is said to have hanged himself on a “bush” (kust). Dmitry Karamazov considers following in Judas’ path when, with three thousand rubles in a bag under his shirt, he thinks of hanging himself on a bush (rakita, also known as rakitov kust) by the roadside.[23] Svidrigailov, too, contemplates suicide beneath a bush (kust) on one of the Petersburg islands [392, 394]. But he only walks as far as a police station with a fire tower on Vasil’evskii Island and, finding it equally suitable, he shoots himself beneath the fire tower as a Jewish fireman watches. (This building also served as a fire station; the fire department in Petersburg and other Russian cities was an agency of the police.) In the context of the thunderstorm and other fiery-prophet motifs, the firemen’s watchtower suggests a divine presence, an “Overseer” who watches events from above. When Svidrigailov first sees the watchtower, he thinks: “At least there will be an official witness.” [394] The station is symbolically equivalent to the police station of Il’ia Petrovich, emanation of Elijah. On the level of symbolic allusion, Svidrigailov commits suicide in the presence of Elijah, whose provenance is lightning and fire.

On the eve of his suicide, Svidrigailov visits a beer garden where a gloomy German clown and some off-tune songsters are entertaining the public. When a quarrel erupts among some copyists (pisarishki: writers in caricature), they ask Svidrigailov to be their “judge.” He “judges” them for fifteen minutes, but the only thing that is clear to him is that one of them has stolen a silver spoon from the eating establishment and pawned it off to a Jew. Svidrigailov simply pays for the spoon himself and leaves. This little scandal involving a mere silver spoon mirrors his own Judas’ path, much as the scandal at the German brothel keeper’s (involving a hack writer) reflects Raskolnikov’s crime. Svidrigailov’s sitting in “judgment” over a petty thief is a parody of the divine Judgment before which Svidrigailov himself stands.

When he returns to his hotel that night, Svidrigailov hears in the next room a strange sort of whisper, sometimes bordering on a muffled shout. When he peers through a crack in the wall, he sees two men:

One of them had removed his jacket. He had extremely curly hair and a red, inflamed face. He held the pose of an orator, with his feet wide apart in order to maintain his balance, and, pounding himself on the chest, he reproached the other man in pathetic tones, saying that he was a beggar with no rank, that he had pulled him up out of the mud, that he could drive him out if he wanted to, and that there was only the finger of the Almighty to see them. His friend sat there on the chair looking like someone who wants very much to sneeze, but can’t. He cast an occasional dull, ram-like glance at the orator, but evidently had no comprehension of what he was talking about, and probably wasn’t even listening. A candle was burning to the end on the table. There was also a nearly empty carafe of water, wine glasses, bread, cups, cucumbers and teacups that had long been empty. Surveying this scene, Svidrigailov walked away from the crack and sat down on his bed. [389]

The dull-witted “beggar” in this scene symbolizes Svidrigailov’s fallen spirit. Turning this beggar back out (into the “mud”) is a foreshadowing of Svidrigailov’s death in the rain when his conscience can no longer bear Elijah’s punishment. The upraised “finger of the Almighty” that “sees” corresponds to the watchtower which rises over the police station like a church belltower and seems to represent a divine witness to the suicide.

The police building which evidently served as the real prototype for Porfirii’s office also has a firemen’s watchtower on its roof.[24] In his game of cat-and-mouse with the murderer, Porfirii Petrovich employs various turns of speech which allude to Raskolnikov’s role as usurper of the prophet’s fire. When Raskolnikov only reacts cynically to his suggestion that he confess, Porfirii replies: “What sort of prophet are you?” [351] At one point he refers to himself as the target of a thunderbolt:

“...And do you remember Mikolka? Do you remember it well? Now that was thunder for you! A thunderbolt right out of the clouds! Yes, but how did I take it? I didn’t believe that thunderbolt even a tiny bit, you saw for yourself!...” [347]

Thus, Porfirii recognizes this figurative “thunderbolt” – which would make Mikolka, not Raskolnikov, the murderer – to be false, and the passage is suggestive of a usurper-prophet (Raskolnikov). The real thunder and lightning are on Porfirii’s side.

One might try to explain in purely psychological terms Raskolnikov’s final resolve to confess and “drink the cup”. One might argue that his decision to go to Porokh is prompted by a masochistic impulse. But the world of Crime and Punishment reaches beyond the realm of body and mind alone, encompassing God and the human spirit. The symbolic Biblical motifs throughout the novel all point to a deeper awareness of sin and to a spiritual need to seek atonement through suffering.

A number of critics, including Konstantin Mochulsky, claim that Raskolnikov’s spiritual transformation in the epilogue hardly follows from the earlier characterization of the hero. According to Mochulsky, the epilogue is a poorly contrived appendage to the novel, hastily concocted in order to please the readership and publisher.[25] However, the symbolism associated with Elijah in both the final version and the drafts clearly shows that the murderer’s spiritual resurrection was envisioned by Dostoevsky long before the writing of the novel was nearing its end. Тhe Elijah motifs make it clearer than ever before that Dostoevsky’s stance as author of Crime and Punishment was that of a Christian who believes in a merciful God and the possibility of redemption for any sinner. The folkloric Elijah symbolism, Raskolnikov’s surname (from raskol’nik – schismatic Russian Old Believers), the Mikolka episode and many other details show that Dostoevsky intended to portray what he interpreted as a special spirituality of the Russian people.

The Landlady: Il’ia Murin’s Thunder and Lightning

The early novella The Landlady is probably the least understood of all of Dostoevsky’s works.[26] Most critics find it so perplexing that they devote little attention to it or choose to ignore it altogether. Belinsky was frankly baffled by the tale. Soon after its first publication, he wrote:

Not only the main theme of this seemingly interesting tale, but even its basic sense will remain an enigma to us until the author publishes the necessary explanations and interpretations for this wondrous riddle of his far-fetched imagination. What exactly is it? An abuse of talent or an impoverished talent which is striving to climb higher than its abilities permit and, therefore, fears to go the usual route and seeks a path that has never been heard of before? We do not know the answer, but it seems to us that the author wants to reconcile Marlinsky with Hoffman, mixing in a little new-fangled humor and smearing on some Russian folklore for frosting [...]. There is not a single simple, lifelike word or expression in this entire tale. Everything is contrived, stilted, artificial and false.[27]

Critics’ understanding of The Landlady has advanced very little since Belinsky wrote this appraisal in 1847. The dearth of scholarship devoted to this story is testimony to the puzzlement which it engenders.[28]

However, a key to the riddle is once again the folkloric figure of Elijah the Prophet. As in Stepanchikovo and Crime and Punishment, a symbolic representative of divine wrath bearing the name Il’ia (Elijah) stands at the thematic center of the tale. Like the police superintendent Il’ia Petrovich (nicknamed “Gunpowder”) in Crime and Punishment, he is repeatedly associated with thunder, lightning and fire. The blast of his rifle echoes the divine thunder, while the flash of his knife reflects the lightning of Elijah the Prophet.

As the story opens, a young man – Vasilii Mikhailovich Ordynov – goes out in search of a room. He has lived a solitary existence for three years after completing his university studies and receiving a small inheritance – enough to live on for about three years. He has been writing a tract which formulates his own original “system,” a term which signifies an alternative to the existing order such as a socialist or utopian theory.[29] As the story unfolds, it will eventually become clear that his new system is a rejection of the Christian system based upon the notions of sin and suffering as a gateway to redemption. The “wonderful, joyous image of his idea” is only beginning to emerge from his soul, and “the time for its incarnation and realization was still far off, possibly very far off, and maybe even altogether impossible!”[30] Living as a recluse, entirely cut off from the real world, Ordynov has “thoroughly grown wild” (odichal sovershenno). His own spiritual “wildness” seems to be mirrored by his landlady, an elderly widow who now moves away “to some backwoods” (v glush’), as though his own soul had left him. Her moving away forces him to look for another room.

Ordynov eperiences an unexpected joy and exhilaration as he wanders along the Petersburg streets in search of a room. His pale cheeks grow ruddy and his eyes seem to flash with “new hope” as he breathes the cold, fresh air and observes the noisy, animated life around him. Isolated in his stuffy little room, he had forgotten about the real world outside:

It hadn’t entered his head that there was another life – noisy, thunderous, eternally troubled, eternally changing, eternally calling and, sooner or later, unavoidable. [265]

Thus, at the very outset it is suggested that Ordynov’s emerging theory is divorced from reality and impossible to realize, while the life outside, from which he has turned away, is inescapable.

Ordynov listens in fascination to the speech of the people around him and seems to examine the conclusions he has recently drawn in the solitary silence of his room. But his head begins to reel from the “noise, lustre and whirlwind” of life, and he is overcome by sadness:

A melancholy and sorrow took hold of him. He began to worry about his whole life, about everything he did and even about his future. A new thought was giving him no peace. It suddenly dawned on him that he had been alone all his life, that nobody had loved him and he hadn’t been fortunate enough to love anyone else. [267]

Haunted by recollections of the solitariness of his entire life, Ordynov wanders into an outlying, deserted part of town and eats in a lonely tavern. His surroundings are gloomy, dark and unfriendly. But then he wanders into a church, which at first is illuminated by the rays of the setting sun coming through a narrow window in the cupola. As the sun sets, the holy lamps and candles take over, illuminating the gilded icons with their glowing flames.

Overcome by deep anguish and “a certain suppressed feeling,” Ordynov leans against the wall in a dark corner and momentarily drifts into forgetfulness. He is aroused when an old man resembling a merchant enters the church, accompanied by a beautiful young woman. The old man is dressed in native Russian fashion. A “fiery gaze” (ognevoi vzgliad) flashes from beneath his gloomy, overhanging eyebrows. The young woman kneels before the icon of the Virgin and prays mournfully. Illuminated by the icon lamps, tears can be seen streaming down her face. When they leave the church, Ordynov follows the couple as far as the gateway of the building where they live, but when the old man turns and looks at him rather menacingly, he returns to his room. He lights a candle, and the image of the weeping woman, embodying rapture and adoration as well as horror and childlike contrition, rises before his imagination to torment him.

The next morning, Ordynov sets out in the opposite direction and rents a room from a German who lives alone with his daughter. Ordynov pays a deposit and the German, nicknamed Spiess (cf. Spiessbürger: ‘philistine’), praises him for his love of science and learning. Promising to return with his belongings in the evening, Ordynov heads back to his room, but suddenly changes direction and returns to the church where he saw the mysterious couple. After a long wait, however, the couple fails to appear, and Ordynov leaves the church, his face flushed as he “stubbornly suppresses a certain feeling which urged itself upon him independently of his own will.” In an effort to change his train of thought, he eats again at yesterday’s tavern and wanders outside of town “into the backwoods” (v glush’). But the lonely scene which he encounters there only depresses him: “dead silence;” an emaciated horse; a broken wheel; a dog which growls as it gnaws its bone; and a baby, scratching its head and clothed only in a miserable shirt. The miserable scene seems to reflect the loneliness and sterility of the hermit’s life which Ordynov has been living. He heads back toward “the city, out of which came the sonorous ringing of the bells as they summoned all to the evening service.”

In the church, he now finds the mysterious couple and kneels down beside the young woman. Her face, illuminated once again by the church lamps, expresses “boundless piety” and her tears “seem to wash away some terrible crime.” Overcome by a feeling that is both rapture and torment, Ordynov breaks into sobs and presses his feverish head to the cold church floor. This outpouring of his soul comes after all the tiring, sleepless nights of “stifling and endless silence amid unconscious longings and unbearable spiritual throes.” It is compared to a thunderstorm:

[...] just as the whole sky suddenly grows black on a hot, humid day and a thunderstorm begins to pour rain and fire down onto the thirsting land, clinging to the emerald branches with pearls of rain, smashing down the grass and fields, beating down to the ground the flowers’ little cups so that, afterwards, when the sun’s first rays appear, everything will again come to life and rise toward the sun, triumphantly sending its sweet incense up to the heavens, rejoicing at its life renewed... [271]

As the young woman leaves the church, she becomes “all aflame like the glow of the sunset” (budto zarevom) when she turns to look back at Ordynov. A “strange enmity” grips the young man’s heart when his eyes meet the “bilious and mocking gaze” of the old man as he walks away from the church.

The next morning, Ordynov seeks out the mysterious couple’s apartment with the wild hope of renting a room from them. He must climb a muddy, dilapidated spiral stairway to reach their apartment on the top floor. Before ascending the stairs, he passes a Tatar janitor and a coffinmaker who lives on the ground floor. The old man, “as pale as death,” greets him surrily at the door, but the young woman intercedes and willingly rents him a tiny room. Its most notable features are a gilt icon and icon lamp on a shelf in the corner and a large Russian stove. The old man asks for Ordynov’s passport and introduces himself as Il’ia Murin, a merchant (meshchanin).

The spiral stairway in this story is a precursor of the spiral stairway leading to the police station in Crime and Punishment. It is suggestive of a whirlwind ascent into a higher spiritual realm where Elijah the Prophet resides. In passing the coffinmaker, Ordynov symbolically climbs beyond the realm of mortality for a duel with Elijah.

Ordynov’s head spins as he unpacks his meager belongings: dobro, used here with a tinge of irony. It might be rendered well with English ‘goods’: the symbolic implication is that the only good deeds which Ordynov can present to Elijah at Judgment are his books and anticlerical writings. Murin takes Ordynov’s passport and tells him to “live with peace” (an apparent double entendre addressed to Ordynov, who has cut himself off from the real world: zhivi s mirom ‘live with peace,’ which might also be read literally as ‘live with the world’). Although Ordynov had hoped for another glimpse at the beautiful woman, Murin immediately retreats inside, closing the door. Ordynov feels a hatred for Murin growing inside him:

For some unknown reason it wasn’t easy for him to even look at the old man. There was something contemptuous and spiteful in his eyes. But this unpleasant impression soon faded. For three days now Ordynov had been living in a sort of whirlwind in comparison with his former quiet life; but he was in no condition to sort it all out in his mind. In fact, he was afraid to. Everything in his life had gone topsy-turvy; he vaguely felt that his life had been broken in two. A single urge, a single expectation had taken control of him and no other thought concerned him. [273]

After an old servant woman gives Ordynov dinner, he tries to read, but finding that he cannot concentrate, he decides to go for a walk:

Walking at random, not even seeing the road, he tried as best he could to concentrate (sosredotochit’sia dukhom), to gather his fragmentary thoughts and to think over his situation somewhat. But the effort only flung him into suffering and torment. Chills and fever seized him by turns, and at times his heart suddenly began to pound so hard that he had to lean against a wall for support. “No, death is better,” he thought. “Death is better,” he whispered through feverish, trembling lips, giving little thought to what he was saying. He walked for a long time. Finally, noticing that he was drenched to the bone and that the rain was pouring down in bucketfuls, he returned home. [274]

As in Crime and Punishment, Elijah the Prophet brings pressure to bear on a transgressor with his rainstorm. For Ordynov a symbolic time of Judgment has arrived.

When it grows dark, Ordynov goes to Murin’s room in order to “obtain fire” (dostat’ ognia), but the door is locked. The old servant woman gives him some matches. He soon drifts off to sleep and dreams that he rises from bed and stumbles, falling onto a stack of firewood, when Murin returns from vespers. The symbolic allusion is to the fires of Hell and Judgment. Ordynov attempts, like Prometheus, to usurp the fire of the divine thunderer, but then finds himself threatened by the flames of Judgment.

He wakes up in a fever and finds the young woman, Katerina, looking after him in his illness that was evidently brought on by the rain. She is an incarnation of the purest, most unselfish love, while Ordynov, starved for love by a life that has known only loneliness, yearns for her passionately. She represents the divine aspect of Ordynov’s spirit; she is his soul. Her symbolic role closely resembles that of Zarnitsyna, Raskolnikov’s landlady. Both are landladies, or spiritual mistresses on the symbolic plane. Both are associated with celestial light: Katerina with the sunset (zaria) and its glow (zarevo), Zarnitsyna with the glow of lightning (zarnitsa). They are meek figures who, at least in the imagination of the central hero, are tortured by a symbolic Elijah. Katerina’s tearful, mournful aspect links her with the “lady in mourning” in Crime and Punishment. Symbolically, she mourns for Ordynov’s fallen spirit.

Katerina’s symbolic spiritual role is highlighted by an intricate network of imagery and deceptively casual expressions with manifold meanings. To the feverish Ordynov the room seems to be spinning as Katerina talks to him. She tells him that when he gets well, they will live “as brother and sister.” When Ordynov asks where she is from, she only replies, “I’m not from these parts.” She talks of love and notes that “books, they say, ruin a person.” Then she asks whether Ordynov likes to pray. Clearly, Katerina enters the story as an antithesis to Ordynov’s rational, anticlerical thinking.

When Murin arrives and Katerina goes to join him, Ordynov in his delirium experiences glimpses of hellish doom and heavenly rapture:

[...] the thought flitted through his mind that he was condemned to live in a long, unending sleep filled with strange, fruitless alarms, struggle and suffering. In horror he tried to rise up against the ominous fatalism that was stalking him, but in a moment of strained, desperate struggle an unknown power would vanquish him once again, and he could clearly feel how he would lose his memory and how an impassable, bottomless darkness would open before him, and he would fly headlong into it with a cry of anguish and desperation. But at times there were moments of unbearable, even destructive happiness, when life’s essence frenziedly intensifies throughout one’s whole being, when the past becomes perfectly clear, when the present bright moment rings with triumph and joy, and one dreams clearly of the unknown future; [...] and one hails a life resurrected and renewed. [277-78]

He experiences his fever as hellish flames which torment him and consume his blood. But then he feels (or imagines) Katerina’s burning tears falling onto his face and a long, gentle kiss which opens before him a vision of his childhood.

First he sees a blissful picture of infancy and early childhood, when bright spirits hovered around his cradle and he knew only happiness and his mother’s love. But suddenly a “mean old man” begins to appear before him, peering from behind every bush and from beneath every letter of his grammar book, laughing, grimacing and teasing him. The boy vaguely senses that his entire future is in the hands of the gnome-like old man, who brings “the slow poison of grief and tears” into his life, instilling in him an “unchildlike horror.” The old man takes the boy’s mother away from him and begins to whisper to him a long, wondrous fairytale that is “incomprehensible to the heart of a child.” It tortures the boy and fills him with horror and “an unchildlike passion.” He becomes aware that he is alone in a hostile world and wonders why he is here, suspecting that he has wandered into a den of thieves (zlodeiskii priton). At night, an old woman begins to whisper the same long fairytale, but now the fairytale assumes striking forms which rise before the boy’s imagination. He sees luxurious, enchanted gardens; cities rising and falling; cemeteries sending out to him their dead; and finally:

He felt himself die, becoming only dust, without resurrection, forever and ever. He wanted to flee, but there was no corner in the whole universe where he might seek refuge. [280]

The long fairytale which instills horror in the boy is the story of real life, of the real world of sin and corruption. It is the story of man’s fall and exile from the “luxurious, enchanted garden” and of the apocalyptic doom and eternal death which await evildoers. The “mean old man” is an emanation of Elijah, the divine tormentor who rains down suffering on fallen man, forever reminding him of his fallen state. The first appearance of the mean old man marks the dawn of conscience, a coming of age for Ordynov, the time in his boyhood when he had to assume responsibility for his good and bad deeds.

When Katerina relates how Il’ia Murin took her away from her parents, Ordynov clearly sees in him the “mean old man” of his dream, who separates the boy from his mother. He hears a “spiritual storm” in Katerina’s words. “Her life becomes his life; her sorrow – his.” Indeed, the story of Katerina’s separation from her parents is the story of Ordynov’s own spiritual coming of age, of the dawning of his own conscience. Katerina’s tale (most likely a figment of Ordynov’s delirious imagination) is a spiritual allegory which runs parallel to his dream about the “mean old man.” It combines Biblical metaphors with the motifs of folklore and wedding ritual.

Katerina first tells about the stormy night when Murin came to buy her soul. The storm is so strong that it snaps an old oak tree outside Katerina’s home and wrecks her father’s boats on the river. At midnight, as she sits at home preparing a shroud for her dying mother, Murin comes knocking at their gates. He has always instilled fear in her and has never treated her gently. He enters their home, all wet from the storm, which has “driven him twenty versts.” Neither Katerina nor her mother know where he resides. He flings down his hat and gloves and sits down “without praying to the icons, without bowing to the hosts” (obrazam ne molitsia, khoziaevam ne klaniaetsia – a variation on a formula pertaining to Il’ia Muromets in the bylina “Il’ia and the Huge Idol”). Speaking in Tatar with Katerina’s mother, Murin “buys” the girl’s soul and gives her a box of pearls. After he leaves, Katerina and her mother use the language of Russian wedding ritual in referring to Murin as a “merchant”: kuptsy byli, tovar pozabyli... ‘Merchants were here; they forgot their wares.’ – a typical formula of the folk matchmaking ritual, referring to the party of the groom, who come to virtually buy the bride. This bridegroom, however, is the heavenly “groom” who comes at midnight.

Katerina returns to her room and listens to the storm all through the night. Five nights later, there is another storm when the “groom” returns to take away his bride; Katerina feels as though she is on fire and longs to go “to the edge of the world, where the storm and lightning are born.” Appropriately, the symbolic Elijah returns at this moment. He kills Katerina’s mother and causes her father’s death by setting fire to his factory and evidently pushing him into a hot cauldron (kotel: also a term for a furnace, or boiler). Then, singed and smoking, Murin flees with Katerina to a “wide, wide river.” When they climb into his boat and row away, “the shores disappeared in a glimmering.” Murin then addresses this sea-like river:

“Greetings, little mother, stormy little river! You give drink to God’s people and me you feed! Have you watched my goods while I was gone? Are my wares intact? [...] For all I care you can take them all, stormy and insatiable as you are! Just so you promise to watch and cherish my one most valuable pearl! Spill at least a little word, fair maiden, shine in the storm like the sun, drive away the dark night with your light!” [298]

Murin, who initially introduces himself to Ordynov as a meshchanin (‘merchant’), is the “merchant” of Matthew 13:45-46 who buys a valuable pearl:

45 And the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant who seeks good pearls,

46 Who, finding one valuable pearl, went and sold all he had, and bought it.

It is a human soul which Murin “buys,” sundering the parental bonds and setting its conscience free. As merchant of souls, he stores his wares in a “wide, wide,” “stormy” river which seems vast and endless. The river is a symbol for the heaven above, refuge for redeemed souls and Katerina’s longed-for source of storm and lightning. After Katerina spends a year with Murin on the far side of the river, the young man Alyosha crosses the river to claim her as his betrothed. His words hint at the connection between Katerina’s role as landlady (khoziaika ‘mistress’) and her symbolic function as an emanation of Ordynov’s soul. He reproaches her for joining the “destroyer of souls” (literal rendering of dushegubets ‘murderer’) and taunts her for selling her soul:

“[...] Buy my soul, too. Take it, mock my heart and my love, fair maiden. Now I’m an orphan, my own master [khoziain], and my soul is my own, no one else’s. I’ve never sold it to anyone, unlike someone else who doused out her memory. But a heart isn’t something to be bought. I’ll give it to you for free; or is it, as it seems, a question of gain?” [300]

With the breaking of parental ties, Alyosha becomes the “master” of his soul; he is free to follow his own conscience. Ordynov, too, is without parents, and each attempts to wrest Katerina from Murin’s domain. Alyosha lives entirely alone as he waits to carry Katerina away, while Ordynov lives as a recluse before his confrontation with Murin. Alyosha is a dream manifestation of Ordynov himself. Alyosha fails to win Katerina from Murin, who evidently pushes him into the river during a storm. This happens soon after Alyosha taunts Murin by suggesting that it might be his time to “drink the water;” i.e., to drink the bitter cup, to die. Similarly, Ordynov takes Murin’s antique knife (an attempt to usurp Elijah’s lightning) and approaches the old man as he lies in bed, intending to stab him. However, the attempt fails when Murin opens one eye and breaks into demonic laughter (a motif that was inspired by Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades”), whereupon Ordynov trembles and drops the knife. Katerina then screams hysterically, “Alyosha! Alyosha!” Ordynov and Alyosha are further linked by the fact that this episode comes just after Ordynov and Murin drink wine, associated here with the “bitter cup” of suffering. Thus, Alyosha’s claim to be “master of his own soul” elucidates the allegory of Ordynov’s duel with Murin: consumed by his bookish plan for a rational world, Ordynov longs to free his spirit, or conscience, from all bonds with God in order to be the sole master of his actions, to be free of guilt and to answer to no divine master (khoziain: the landlord, Il’ia Murin, Elijah the Prophet) or spiritual mistress (khoziaika: the landlady, Katerina, Ordynov’s divine aspect, his conscience). But Katerina, representing his conscience, chooses of her own free will to remain wed to Elijah. Ultimately, this implies that Ordynov’s own conscience rejects his utopian system, which has evolved as a protest against the divine order with all the guilt, suffering and apparent injustice which that order entails.

When Ordynov wakes up from his dream about the “mean old man,” he peers through a crack in his wall and sees Murin and Katerina. Then, following an unconscious urge which “flares up in his blood like a housefire,” he staggers to their door and forces his way into their room [281]. Murin’s eyes “flash with enmity” and his face is distorted by wrath. He gropes for a rifle hanging on the wall and fires at Ordynov. The barrel “flashes” and the shot rings out, but he misses. When the smoke clears, Ordynov sees Murin writhing in an epileptic seizure: the falling sickness. Like Smerdiakov’s epileptic seizure in The Brothers Karamazov and Myshkin’s seizure on the twisting stairway of The Scales Hotel when Rogozhin is about to stab him, Murin’s attack (pripadok: from padat’ ‘to fall’) of the falling sickness (paduchaia bolezn’) is intended to elicit associations with man’s fall into sin. It is the “falling sickness” of Elijah the Prophet; i.e., the wrath which errant man incites in the fiery Avenger. Murin confesses that he almost stabbed Katerina with his knife during another seizure, and he attributes Ordynov’s breaking into his room to the same “black weakness.”

Thus, Ordynov encroaches on Murin’s domain in a direct way three times: when he tries to enter Murin’s room to “obtain fire;” when he breaks in and Murin fires his rifle; and when he threatens the old man with a knife. The fire and the knife on the wall are Elijah’s fire and lightning; the flashing rifle, which also hangs on the wall, can be said to represent both the thunder and the lightning of the Prophet. Murin is also threatened by Alyosha as they row across the river, but in the end it is Alyosha himself who drinks the “bitter cup.” His doom is foreshadowed by Murin when they meet beside the river: “Greetings, Alyosha, God help you! Have you lingered too long on the pier? Hurrying to your boats? [na suda svoi pospeshaesh’?]” [301] The word suda (‘boats’) was carefully chosen for its associations with sud (‘Judgment’). As it turns out, Alyosha is indeed hurrying to his Judgment and doom. And, according to a police official, Alyosha’s demise evidently comes during another attack of Murin’s “falling sickness.”

Appropriately, the symbolic “Prophet” foretells the future for people who come to him to learn their fortunes. According to rumor, he correctly foretold the death of a young officer, and people whose fortunes he tells often go away as pale as death. When Ordynov asks the Tatar janitor about Murin’s fortune-telling, he uses the verb koldovat’, which can refer to all kinds of black magic and wizardry. At the end of the tale, after his attempts to wrest Katerina from Murin have ended in failure, Ordynov compares himself with “that sorcerer’s (kolduna) boastful apprentice who stole the magic word of his teacher and ordered the broom to fetch some water, but drowned when he forgot how to say ‘Stop.’” Much as the sorcerer’s apprentice fails to cope with the craft he has stolen, Ordynov fails to usurp the lightning of Elijah.

The central theme of The Landlady is that man carries within him a divine spark which will cause him to choose God’s imperfect world of suffering, sin, guilt and atonement even though he has the freedom to prefer another arrangement. This is the same theme which lies at the heart of many of Dostoevsky’s later works, including Crime and Punishment, where the murder of the old pawnbroker is the fruit of a scheme that is closely akin to Ordynov’s utopian “system.” Katerina – the symbol of Ordynov’s own soul – is given the freedom to leave “Elijah” Murin at any moment, yet she freely chooses to remain with him. In parallel fashion, Ordynov finally abandons his “system” and turns to the Church:

Now he reread that plan, reworked it, thought about it, read, labored over it, and finally rejected his idea, raising nothing on its ruins. But something resembling mysticism, predetermination and secret mystery began to penetrate his soul. The unfortunate fellow became aware of his sufferings and would ask God for healing. His German landlord’s servant, a God-fearing old Russian woman, took great pleasure in telling how her quiet, humble roomer would pray, and how he would kneel motionless for hours at a time, with his forehead on the church floor... [318]

Katerina hints at the importance of the theme of free will when she recites a proverb: “Freedom is sweeter than bread and more beautiful than the sun.” Of his own free will, Ordynov surrenders his freedom to God, just as Murin predicts:

“[...] A weak man can’t bear it alone. Just give him everything, and he’ll return by himself and give everything back. Make him emperor of half the whole world [poltsarstva zemnogo], just try, and what do you think he’ll do? He’ll hide in a slipper, he’ll turn so small. Give a weak man freedom, and he’ll bind it up into a bundle and bring it back himself.” [317]

The soul turns back to God like a flower turns to the sun. In his divine aspect, or soul, man senses the mysterious necessity and justice of his sufferings. Hence, the seemingly masochistic pleasure which Katerina derives from her sorrows:

“[...] What is bitter to me and tears my heart is that I am his disgraced slave and the shame and disgrace are pleasing to me myself, shameless as I am, and it’s pleasing for my heart to recall its sorrow, as though it were joy and happiness. My sorrow is that there is no strength in my heart and no anger for my wounds!..” [299]

After Katerina tells Ordynov the story of her “elopement” with Murin, she prepares to leave, saying: “Until tomorrow, my tears!” The tears stream down her face like dewdrops as she presses Ordynov’s head to her breast and kisses him good-night. When he wakes up the next morning, his eyes are wet with tears and, like his own soul-symbol Katerina, he finds a strange pleasure in his suffering:

He felt that the tears had not yet dried on his eyes – or had fresh, new tears splashed like a mountain spring from his flaming soul? And wonder of wonders! His torments were even sweet to him, although he vaguely felt with all his being that he could endure such punishment no longer. [302]

At the end of the story, it becomes apparent that Murin – Dostoevsky’s symbolic Elijah the Prophet – in all likelihood is merely an ordinary criminal, like Koshmarov (‘Mr. Nightmare’), the landlord who repeatedly pays him visits. Ordynov has, indeed, wandered into a den of thieves, as he feared in the dream about the “mean old man” of his childhood. This mirroring of God in a common thief reminds the reader of the coexistence of divine goodness and diabolic evil in man’s nature, a major theme throughout the works of Dostoevsky. But the unexpected ending also serves to highlight the fact that Murin and Katerina, in their symbolic, spiritual roles, are primarily a reflection of the inner workings of Ordynov’s soul, of his own free will. Indeed, much of his interaction with the mysterious couple is imagined by him in his delirium. His spiritual transformation comes not as the result of coercion or external forces; it is his own soul, guided by a divinely inspired conscience, which gravitates back toward God.

The name Il’ia Murin is a regional variant of Il’ia Muromets, the name of the foremost hero of the Russian folk epic.[31] This legendary hero appears to go back to early epic tales in which Elijah the Prophet comes to Kiev and destroys the idol of Perun, the pagan god of thunder, rain and lightning. As centuries passed, the tale’s hero came to be seen as an ordinary mortal, named Il’ia, with extraordinary strength. Eventually Murom came to be seen as his place of origin. It seems unlikely that Dostoevsky was aware of the folk hero’s origin in the figure of Elijah the Prophet, but he alludes to Il’ia Muromets in various works that incorporate Elijah symbolism. A number of beliefs pertaining to Elijah the Prophet are sometimes attached to Il’ia Muromets. For example, an indentation in a stone is attributed by some to the steeds of Elijah, while others say it was formed where the steed of Il’ia Muromets struck the stone with his hoof. At the end of one tale, Il’ia Muromets rises to heaven and takes control of thunder and lightning after he defeats the Glutton (a version of the Huge Idol). Folklorists have usually attributed these motifs to contamination, or confusion, of the two extraordinary Elijahs. It could have been this overlapping of folk legends that led Dostoevsky to choose the name Il’ia Murin, a name that might guide the reader’s imagination into the realm of folk belief, the realm of Elijah the thunderer and rainmaker.

As a symbolic Elijah, Murin is a precursor of figures such as Il’ia Petrovich in Crime and Punishment. Like Il’ia Petrovich, he has both a “thunderous gaze” and a “gaze like lightning.” His rifle brings to mind Il’ia Petrovich’s nickname, “Gunpowder” and the explosive activity of the thundering prophet Elijah. His drinking wine with Ordynov – in a scene threaded with allusions to sorrow and bitterness – symbolically parallels the bitter cup of yellowish water that is held out to Raskolnikov when he visits Il’ia Petrovich. Near the end of the story, at the police station, Murin diagnoses Ordynov’s illness as the sad result of “too much book learning,” while Il’ia Petrovich speaks disparagingly of writers, literati and students such as Raskolnikov. Imagery pertaining to fire is used again and again in the portrayal of Murin, as in that of Il’ia Petrovich. His eyes are continually “inflamed”; they “flash” (like lightning) and glow like hot coals, and he wears a fiery red scarf around his neck. In Ordynov’s eyes, these fiery attributes are a reminder of Elijah’s lightning and the hellfire that awaits those who turn from God. Immediately after relating to Ordynov how she prays before the icon of the Virgin (referring to Her as vladychitsa ‘The Mistress’), Katerina exclaims of Murin: “He is mighty! Great is his word!” [On vlasten! Veliko ego slovo! 294] The obvious Biblical style of these lines hints rather blatantly at Murin’s divine significance.

Alongside Il’ia Murin, who is prominent in both dream and reality, there is another symbolic emanation of Elijah in the story: the policeman Yaroslav Ilyich. The policeman’s patronymic tells us that he is the “son of Il’ia,” while his first name is formed from iar- (‘fierce’). (The same “fierce son of Elijah” also appears in “Mr. Prokharchin” – again as an earthly reflection of the prophet Elijah.) While Murin turns out to be a criminal, Yaroslav Ilyich has apparently been dismissed from his post by the final scene of the story, possibly because of infractions pertaining to Koshmarov’s den of thieves. On the plane of everyday reality, both of these symbolic “Elijahs” turn out to be sinful souls. Both are part of the imperfect world which Ordynov comes to accept in the end.

Besides his name, Yaroslav Ilyich shares other attributes with the Russian folkloric Elijah and with his fictional descendant Il’ia Petrovich “Gunpowder.” As a policeman, he is an enforcer of the law. He is “red-cheeked,” lively and boisterous. Ordynov feels the ground shake beneath his feet (like the earthquake accompanying Elijah’s ascent) just before he encounters Yaroslav Ilyich. (The ground also shakes as Il’ia Murin arrives in one scene.) Yaroslav Ilyich smokes a pipe “with a certain inspiration,” while Raskolnikov complains about “Gunpowder’s” smoking a cigarette. He thanks Ordynov for “always bringing a balm (bal’zam)” [i.e., for his encouraging praise], a motif which can be related to the storm metaphor near the beginning of the story, in which the fields and flowers are said to send incense to the heavens after the storm. A chair “thunders” when Yaroslav Ilyich slides it across the floor, and he rides a “dashing buggy” (likhie proletki: derived from letat’ ‘to fly’) which “comes flying,” drawn by a pair of dashing red horses. His buggy is a creative variation on the icon portrayal of Elijah’s chariot with its fiery red horses, and it is a literary antecedent for the buggy in which the police and fire chief Il’ia Ilyich “flies” about town in The Possessed.

Dostoevsky’s characteristically double-edged portrayal of Yaroslav Ilyich hints repeatedly at his symbolic connection with Elijah the Prophet:

Yaroslav Ilyich had the unusual tendency to seek out good, noble people everywhere, especially educated people who, at least by virtue of their talent and elegant behavior, are worthy of belonging to higher society. [...] in the tone of his voice there was something bright, powerful and commanding which tolerated no dallying [...] [283]

At the end of the story, Ordynov encounters Yaroslav Ilyich during a rainstorm. Soaked and muddy, and with a raindrop clinging “in some fantastical way” to the tip of his nose, he informs Ordynov that Koshmarov has been found to be the leader of a band of thieves, exclaiming:

“After this, just try to judge about all of mankind? He was the head of the whole band? Their ringleader? Isn’t that something?!”

Yaroslav Ilyich spoke with feeling and, because of one man, he passed judgment on all of mankind. Iaroslav Ilyich cannot do otherwise; it is in his character. [320]

“I always like to reward justice,” he says to Ordynov. When Ordynov objects that he is too magnanimous, their dialog takes this peculiar turn:

“No, I’m being perfectly just,” Yaroslav Ilyich objected especially heatedly. “What am I in comparison with you? Well, isn’t it the truth?”

“Oh, my God!”

“Yes, sir...”

Here a silence ensued. [284]

Here Dostoevsky uses the same rather comical technique of double entendre that he later brings into play in Stepanchikovo, where the peasants address Yegor Ilyich as their “lord” and “father.”

After mentioning Pushkin’s “amazing way of depicting human passion,” Yaroslav Ilyich recommends his district doctor to the ailing Ordynov. In praising his expertise, he relates how the doctor “nobly” amputated the injured hand of a worker whose life was threatened by “Anthony’s fire” (gangrene). The authorial allusion is to the hellfire which threatens Ordynov’s soul if his spiritual ailment (stemming from his “passion” for learning) is not healed. Later, Murin claims to know of a remedy for Ordynov’s ailment, attributing his sickness to the books which have caused “mind and wisdom to get mixed up” (um za razum zashel).

Murin and Katerina are counterposed by Ordynov’s German landlord and his daughter Tinchen. The two couples are symbolic antipodes. Unlike Murin, the German approves of Ordynov’s interest in science and is even eager to join him in his studies. Murin sees a spiritual cure (implied on the symbolic plane) for Ordynov’s sickness, while Tinchen sets about treating Ordynov when he rejoins them near the end of the story. She doubtless uses the conventional methods of western medicine and, judging by the fact that Ordynov remains ill for three more months, her treatment seems to leave much to be desired. The German is scrupulously precise in assessing Ordynov’s rent, counting every kopek, while Murin even refuses to accept compensation for the time Ordynov has lived in his apartment. Yaroslav Ilyich extolls this “holy hospitality which rests with the Russian people.” The opposition between Murin and the German is that between western rationalism and Russian spirituality. Details such as Murin’s Russian garb and the Russian stove in his apartment serve to emphasize the symbolic importance of nationality in this work. The many formulas and motifs from Russian folk songs and tales used in the portrayal of Murin and Katerina give the allegory of Ordynov’s soul a specifically Russian coloring. And, of course, this can also be said of the Elijah symbolism, which is based on a specifically Russian folkloric perception of the Prophet.

Dostoevsky endows Murin with the intensely wrathful qualities of Elijah at the risk of misleading the reader. The fire of the Prophet and the Devil’s hellfire are functionally similar and easy to confuse. Most readers and critics, unaware of the connections with Elijah, have tended to interpret Murin as a demonic figure. Dostoevsky sets up signposts to guide the reader past this pitfall. Most notable is the scene in which Murin bluntly tells Katerina that he is not the Devil and proves it by crossing himself. However, in the final analysis, it is clear that readers and critics have missed signposts of this type – partly because they are not familiar with the Elijah folklore or they never suspect a connection with that lore. Ingenious as it is, The Landlady requires more attention to detail than readers are generally willing to give. Its fantastical motifs and the hazy boundary between delirium and reality challenge readers’ imaginations. Its many hints, word-plays and spiritual symbols are skimmed over by eyes that are in a hurry to reach the end of the story so that they can move on to works written in a more realistic style. If the story’s reception had been more positive, the subsequent style of Dostoevsky’s fiction might have been more boldly fantastical.

***The Brothers Karamazov*: Arrest in the Rain at ‘Wet Village**’

The Christian worldview demands an acceptance of cruelty, injustice and suffering as a part of God’s grand plan for salvation and redemption. Ivan Karamazov cannot accept this worldview, and his story of the Grand Inquisitor thoughtfully formulates his rebellion against it. He formulates as a thinker all the anger and outrage which his brother Dmitry feels — outrage against a cruel father who abandons his own children. The cruel God who leaves mankind alone in a cruel and unjust world where even little children must suffer is mirrored in old Karamazov, the cruel father who abandons his children.

God the Father has an assistant, Elijah the Prophet, who with his thunder and lightning reminds people of their debt to God. The mean old Fyodor Karamazov uses the retired army captain Nikolai Ilyich Snegiryov as an assistant in collecting on a debt. He serves old Karamazov as an intermediary in collecting on a promissory note signed by his son Dmitry. Snegiryov has red hair, like the fiery Il’ia Petrovich whose thunder and lightning Raskolnikov finally comes to welcome. He lives on Lake Street (Ozernaia ulitsa), the real-life prototype for which was Elijah’s Street (Il’inskaia ulitsa) in Staraya Russa, where Dostoevsky worked on parts of the novel. Elijah’s Street led past the mineral waters spa and several small lakes that are beside it and then continued to the Church of Elijah the Prophet, for which it was named. In Soviet times, the street was renamed Mineral Waters Street (Mineral’naia ulitsa). One can easily discern the chain of associations that led the writer to place Nikolai Ilyich’s abode on “Lake Street,” a name that is connected with the lakes along Elijah’s Street and, more generally, with the water that is controlled by Elijah. Children make fun of Snegiryov’s beard, calling him mochalka (a dried gourd used as a sponge). Again, the mochalka (derived from the root mok- 'wet') adds to the associations linking Snegiryov with water. The children's focusing on Nikolai Ilyich's beard brings to mind the folk custom of "weaving Elijah's beard" by leaving the first sheaf of grain standing in the field and tying it into a knot.[32]

Snegiryov has a son named Ilyusha who is bedridden by tuberculosis and eventually dies from the disease. His health seems to worsen because of the guilt he feels for the stray dog Zhuchka, which he believes he killed by placing a sharp pin in the dog’s food. Ilyusha, a dying child, embodies the unjust cosmic system against which Ivan Karamazov rebels – a world with guilt, sin and suffering at its center, a world where the divine law, according to folk belief, is enforced by the thundering Elijah. Eventually the older boy Kolya Krasotkin, a mentor to the younger boys, begins to turn away from the atheistic, materialist outlook of the seminary student Rakitin and brings Ilyusha a dog that he claims is Zhuchka, only he has given the dog a new name: Perezvon, a term that refers to the ringing of church bells. He thereby removes the burden of guilt that the sick boy has borne. It is a symbolic redemption from sin, with the hope of salvation. The dog’s new name reflects Kolya’s gravitation toward the spiritual world of the Church. Kolya also brings Ilyusha a small cannon and gives it to him along with some gunpowder. The boys jubilantly fire the cannon. One might say that Kolya is surrendering the thunder to Elijah in the symbolic figure of Ilyusha. The cannon and the gunpowder in this scene have direct antecedents in Il’ia Petrovich, the redheaded artillery officer nicknamed “Lieutenant Gunpowder” — the fiery Elijah to whom Raskolnikov turns to confess.

The name Karamazov, which might be interpreted as “smeared with punishment,” ties in closely with the Elijah theme. However, in the earliest drafts for the novel one finds another name in its place: Il’inskii— a family name that alludes directly to Elijah the Prophet and the cosmic dilemma that he reflects. Although this name was replaced by Karamazov, the writer included in the final draft a priest who is identified as “the Il’inskii father,” meaning he is from a village with a Church of Elijah.[33] When Dmitry desperately tries to scrape together money, the priest leads him to a village called Sukhoi Posyolok (‘Dry Village’), where he hopes to make a deal with a lumber dealer named Gorstkin. However, when Dmitry finally reaches the peasant hut where he is staying, the wealthy peasant is dead drunk and fast asleep. The rich merchant is a metaphor for God. Dmitry turns to Gorstkin for what he sees as justice, but this symbolic God is deaf to his plea. “Elijah” (in the Il’inskii father) has brought Dmitry to “God,” but God shows him no grace — Dmitry is not contrite. Debts are all he brings to God. That night in the peasant hut he nearly suffocates because the stove flue had been left closed. He wakes up with the sensation that he is burning. The hot ordeal is a reminder of the torments of hell, but Dmitry will not come to understand this until after his arrest.

Russian folk belief actually knew two Elijahs: Wet Elijah (Iliia mokryi) and Dry Elijah (Iliia sukhoi). People would invoke Wet Elijah in times of drought. When there was too much rain or flooding, they would turn to Dry Elijah for help. In both Novgorod and Pskov, there was one church dedicated to Wet Elijah and another consecrated to Dry Elijah. When rain was needed, special services and cross processions would get underway at the Church of Wet Elijah, but when there was too much water people congregated at the Church of Dry Elijah. Dmitry’s desperate quest for cash and the hand of Grushen’ka culminates in his arrest at Mokroe (‘Wet Village’) — appropriately enough, in the rain. As the interrogation continues in Mokroe, the rain comes down “in bucketfuls.” “The thunder has struck,” Dmitry says after his arrest and initial interrogation at Mokroe:

“[...] I now understand that for my sort a blow is needed, a blow of fate, to take me like a lasso and tie me up with a force from outside. I would have never turned around on my own! But the thunder has struck. I accept the torment of accusation and public disgrace. I want to suffer, and through suffering I will be cleansed.”[34]

His arrest at Mokroe, he eventually realizes, is the hand of Providence. He receives the grace of God, symbolized by the rain of Elijah, even though Mokroe, drenched by the rain, presents a miserable scene. In a letter to Nikolai Liubimov (November 16, 1879), Dostoevsky wrote about Dmitry: “His character is typical Russian: if the thunder does not sound, the peasant will not cross himself.”[35] The writer is alluding to the Russian custom of making the sign of the cross whenever thunder is heard. It was believed that thunder and lightning are created by Elijah as he rumbles across the clouds in his chariot.

After his arrest, Dmitry Karamazov dreams about a group of peasants whom he saw standing by the road, baby in arms, after their home had been destroyed by fire. The intended associations are with the fire of Elijah and with an unjust world in which even innocent children suffer. However, Dmitry accepts Elijah’s “thunder,” God’s unfathomable order — and he welcomes suffering as a path to redemption. The baby in the dream, he thinks, is a prophecy for him.

The Elijah motifs in The Brothers Karamazov comprise only a small portion of the voluminous work as a whole, but they stand at the thematic center of the story, coming into play at the key moment of Dmitry’s arrest at Mokroe. In his last great novel Dostoevsky continues to grapple with the same cosmic dilemma that he addresses in earlier works such as The Landlady and Crime and Punishment.

The Eternal Husband: Another July Thunderstorm

Dostoevsky wrote his short novel The Eternal Husband in Dresden in the fall and winter of 1869, after publication of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. Before beginning to write The Eternal Husband, Dostoevsky used the words “my usual theme” in characterizing the work as he envisioned it.[36] Like Crime and Punishment, The Eternal Husband is the story of a sinner’s path to confession. Unlike Raskolnikov, however, the sinner does not confess in the end. The story culminates in a dramatic episode during a July thunderstorm that is associated with the Judgment that the central character, Velchaninov, must face for his misdeeds. Coming at the story’s climax, the thunderstorm is doubtless the Elijah’s-Day storm that was so venerated in Russian belief – the same storm that culminates Stepanchikovo and Crime and Punishment.

Velchaninov is an outgoing, cynical man of the world who has lived a profligate’s life, squandering fortunes and flitting from lover to lover. Filled with “arrogant self-confidence,” his eyes no longer shine with “clarity and goodness” and his complexion has lost its former “feminine softness.” [6][37] He has fallen from innocence into corruption. As the narrative opens, Velchaninov is tormented by a certain anxiety (toska). He suffers from memories of “crimes” he has committed and debts he never paid. The narrator is careful to point out that Velchaninov’s malady goes deeper than the “verdicts of his mind alone.” It seems to Velchaninov that the recollections of his crimes are being presented to him from a new, unfamiliar point of view by someone else, an external force. He tries to joke to himself:

“[ … ] Somebody out there is concerned for my morality and is sending me these damned memories and tears of repentance.” [9]

He consults a doctor about his new anxiety, which tends to come at night. The doctor comments on the phenomenon of divided personality and recommends a change in
lifestyle and possibly a laxative as well, a motif which seems to mock the very notion that the problem is a physical ailment or simply a problem of clinical psychology.

Meanwhile, July approaches with all the heat, dust and stifling air (dukhota) that are typical of Petersburg. Velchaninov had planned to leave Petersburg by July, but decided to stay after his lawsuit took a bad turn in March, the same time his attacks of anxiety began. But he derives a certain “pleasure” from the stifling city with “the mouse-like hurry-scurry of its civil servants” and “the cowardliness of their miserable souls” (truslivost’ ikh dushonok). Every day he subjects himself to a cheap, unpalatable dinner at a cafe on Nevsky, by the Police Bridge. It seems to him that there is “something morbid” in this self-imposed ordeal. The allusions to his lawsuit and to the Police Bridge are calculated to evoke associations with accountability and judgment for one’s deeds.[38]

It is at the cafe that he comes to a sudden realization one stifling day, the third of July. He sits down at his table “in the nastiest of spirits” (v samom skverneishem raspolozhenii dukha). Then it dawns on him that what has been bothering him recently is a man in mourning whom he has encountered on the street on five different occasions. The man wears a hat with a ribbon of black crepe as an emblem of mourning. He seems somehow familiar to Velchaninov, like an old acquaintance who has been long forgotten, but Velchaninov cannot recollect who he might be. That night he dreams that a crowd has gathered in his doorway, accusing him of a crime. They all wait for a silent man sitting at a table ‒ clearly the man in mourning ‒ to pass judgment on Velchaninov. Enraged, Velchaninov begins to beat the man, hitting him again and again until the bell at the door rings loudly three times. Then he wakes. Shortly thereafter, at three in the morning, the man with the crepe on his hat pays him a visit. He turns out to be Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, whose wife had carried on a year-long affair with Velchaninov while he lived with the couple in their home. She recently died of consumption, in March, the same time Velchaninov’s peculiar “anxiety” began.

Then ensues a subtle cat-and-mouse game in which Trusotsky torments Velchaninov without letting on that he knows Velchaninov is the true father of his six-year-old daughter Liza. Finally, during a thunderstorm toward the end of July, Velchaninov wakes up in the night to find Trusotsky standing over him with an open razor. He overcomes Trusotsky in a brief struggle and they part. Pavel Trusotsky, “the man in mourning,” is a living emanation of Velchaninov’s conscience, much like Raskolnikov’s landlady (who is a widow) and “the lady in mourning” who quietly leaves the police station when Raskolnikov arrives. Velchaninov owes Trusotsky 4000 rubles, bringing to mind the monetary debt owed by Raskolnikov to his landlady. Velchaninov’s dream runs parallel to that of Raskolnikov in which Porokh beats the landlady. In one case, a symbolic Elijah the Prophet tortures the murderer’s “conscience”; in the other, the transgressor fights his “conscience,” which sits in judgment over him. The meek landlady peeks furtively from her room, while Trusotsky is repeatedly seen peering from small windows: the carriage window in Bagautov’s funeral procession; the window of the eating establishment beside the cemetery where Liza is buried; and the little window of the upstairs room where he is locked in at the Zakhlebinins’. Velchaninov locks up Trustotskii in a small room after wresting the razor from him and subduing him.

After the incident with the razor, it is revealed that Trusotsky learned about his wife’s affair from a letter he found soon after her death in March. Thus, Velchaninov’s tormenting recollections of his past transgressions began at the moment Trusotsky, an emanation of his conscience, learned of the betrayal.

As an embodiment of Velchaninov’s conscience, or the divine side of his spirit, Trusotsky is repeatedly associated with Christian symbols. He refers to the hotel where he is staying as the Pokrovskaia (‘The Intercession’). He visits women, evidently prostitutes, on Voznesenskii (‘Ascension’) Prospekt. When, drunk, he learns of the death of his love child Liza (whom Trusotsky has been rearing as his own daughter), he instinctively tries to cross himself. He uses the expression kazhdyi Bozhii den’ (literally, ‘on each of God’s days’) with a special significance when he mentions how he hosted Velchaninov for an entire year, serving him wine every day, and when he mentions his daily visits to Bagautov, another one of his wife’s lovers.

Numerous details suggest that Trusotsky is in a certain sense Velchaninov’s double. Velchaninov wonders whether Trusotsky is spying on him or whether he himself is pursuing Trusotsky. Their close genetic relationship is intimated when Trusotsky greets Velchaninov as his “own brother” (bratets rodnoi). On their last night together,
Trusotsky nurses the ailing Velchaninov “like his own son.” Dostoevsky makes Trusotsky about seven years older than Velchaninov because the innocent, divine
aspect of the spirit is present from birth, while the corrupt self is younger, evolving as the age of innocence passes.

Velchaninov complains that Trusotsky “hangs” (visnet) on people’s necks, but he himself is forced to admit that he “depends” (zavishu) on Trusotsky for Liza to
recover. Their unity as two symbolic halves of the human spirit is represented by their drinking together and exchanging kisses.

Velchaninov is inspired with the idea of making a new start in life by devoting himself heart and soul to his young daughter. In other words, without confessing his guilt to Trusotsky, he hopes to simply turn his back on the past and seek atonement in his love for Liza:

“Liza’s love,” he dreamed, “would cleanse and redeem all my former useless and filthy life; instead of me, an idle, corrupt, burnt-out man, I would bring up a pure and wonderful being, and for her sake everything would be forgiven me and I would forgive myself everything.” [62]

This hope is like Raskolnikov’s vow ‒ undertaken after his talk with Marmeladov’s little daughter Polechka ‒ to embark upon a new, altruistic life without confessing his crime (Crime and Punishment, Part Two, Chapter 7). The plan fails because, as Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to Katkov, it is contrary to “divine Truth.”[39]

Liza becomes the embodiment of Velchaninov’s projected “new self,” but without Trusotsky she withers and dies. The dream of a new life is impossible without
reckoning with conscience (Trusotsky) and confessing one’s guilt. Liza’s passing is a symbolic foreshadowing of Velchaninov’s own spiritual death. He is haunted by a
memory of “a single little finger which ‒ God knows why ‒ had turned black during her illness” and which he had noticed as Liza lay ready for burial. In a figurative sense, the blackened finger points accusingly at Velchaninov ‒ at the corruption of his own soul.

The expression “God knows” is placed strategically throughout the whole novel. In Chapter Two, it is used three times in the short paragraph describing Velchaninov’s realization that the man with the crepe on his hat is the source of his anxiety:

[…] at this moment ‒ God knows by what process ‒ he suddenly comprehended the reason for his anxiety, his own peculiar anxiety that had tormented him for the past several days and in general recently; God knows how it had managed to become bound to him and God knows why it did not want to be loosed; now he saw and understood everything like his own five fingers.

“It’s all that hat!” he muttered, as though inspired[…] [11]

In Chapter One, Velchaninov’s recollections of past transgressions come “suddenly and God knows why.” These seemingly insignificant turns of speech are signals that Velchaninov’s pangs of conscience are divinely orchestrated. After Liza’s death, Velchaninov wanders about aimlessly for two weeks and then visits her grave. At the cemetery, he is inspired with new hope and “a certain pure, peaceful faith in something” which he feels Liza has sent him from beyond the grave. The next day, he encounters Trusotsky, who now has a conciliatory expression on his face. He smells of cologne (dukhi – derived from dukh, which can mean ‘spirit’ as well as ‘smell’ or ‘stench’) and is about to go visit the Zakhlebinins, whose youngest daughter he hopes to marry. He virtually reads Velchaninov’s heart and mind:

“[…] I approached you just now, basing my hopes on the nobility of certain feelings in your heart, Aleksei Ivanovich; specifically, on those very feelings which might have been awakened in your heart of late… I think I’m making myself clear, sir. Am I not?” [67]

Trusotsky persuades Velchaninov to accompany him on his visit to the Zakhlebinins’. The visit becomes a test to see whether Velchaninov can behave according to the law
of God and conscience. Velchaninov later reminisces that Trusotsky “wanted terribly to forgive me.” He analyzes Trusotsky’s motives:

“… He took me there[…] trusting in the nobility of my feelings – perhaps believing that we would embrace and weep beneath a bush there, in the proximity of innocence.” [103]

But, naturally, Velchaninov yields to temptation and joins forces with the nihilistic “little demon” Nadya in humiliating Trusotsky.

When old Zakhlebinin leaves for his nap, he tells the young people: “God be with you, God be with you. Have fun now…” Then, in the ensuing game of proverbs, the young people use addages which allude to God and have a peculiar, accidental relevance to Velchaninov:

“The dream is frightful, but God is merciful.”

“A prayer to God and service to the Tsar will not go unrewarded.” [77]

When it is Trusotsky’s turn to guess the proverb, he stands waiting with his back to the group as the rules require, “intending to fulfill his sacred duty.” At this moment, they
make a fool of him by quietly sneaking away, leaving him to stand there alone. Later, during a game of tag, they cleverly lock him in a room upstairs. He cannot call for help because his shouts would wake up the sleeping host, and he is left to watch helplessly from the window. Symbolically, Velchaninov has betrayed his own conscience, allowing it to be “locked up.”

By now “the hottest days of July” have set in and a thunderstorm is brewing. Like the storm itself, Trusotsky “prepares himself and concentrates” as he rides back to town with Velchaninov. After noticing that Trusotsky is sweating, Velchaninov asks the coachman:

“Will there be a thunderstorm or not?”

“There sure will! And what a storm it’s going to be! It’s been steamin’ all day!” [84]

Despite his outward good humor, Velchaninov experiences onslaughts of anxiety that wear him down as the day progresses. By evening he is physically ill. His suffering increases as the storm develops, reaching its peak in the middle of the night. The thunderstorm of this fateful night is once again the storm of the wrathful Elijah, which punishes unrepentant sinners. Symbolically, it is the same storm which rages when Raskolnikov decides to confess and Svidrigailov chooses suicide.

Earlier in the day, before setting out for the Zakhlebinins’, Trusotsky had promised Velchaninov:

“[…] when we return, I will unfold everything before you, like at confession, Aleksei Ivanovich, trust me!” [68][40]

In fact, Trusotsky unfolds a razor and stands over Velchaninov as the latter is tortured by the same dream as before. This time, however, people in the dream seem to be carrying his coffin up the stairs. Once again the bell rings three times and he wakes up, grasping the razor instinctively, without seeing it, and wresting the much weaker Trusotsky to the floor. The “unfolded” (razvernutaia) razor falls at his feet. He ties up Trusotsky “for some reason,” locks him inside another room (again, he cannot say why), and tries to sleep again.

Before the incident with the razor, Trusotsky nurses the ailing sinner with boiling water and extremely hot plates wrapped in towels – details that expand the fire imagery associated with Elijah. Velchaninov’s conscience punishes him, but above all it is concerned with his spiritual welfare and salvation. “The dream is frightful, but God is merciful.”

Thus, Elijah’s lightning strikes and the razor unfolds over Velchaninov: the time for confession has come. But no confession is forthcoming. Velchaninov overpowers
his own conscience. His tying up his “conscience” is drawn with an eye to the sacrament of confession, known as “binding and loosing” (sviazat’ i razviazat’).8 Refusing to confess, Velchaninov will not let his conscience be “unbound.” When he opens the room where Trusotsky is locked up, he finds his captive already untied. Trusotsky leaves, and Velchaninov’s anxiety goes away. He feels that “something has come to an end, been resolved (razviazalos’: literally, ‘come untied’).”

After this ritual of non-confession, Velchaninov experiences an overwhelming urge to “tell all” to somebody, and the first person he turns to is his doctor, who earlier suggested a laxative for his anxiety. The doctor, of course, must bind his injured hand. In turning to the doctor, Velchaninov is unconsciously pursuing an inward need for confession, the sacrament of binding and loosing. But the need to confess is an urge which his corrupted spirit stubbornly represses.[41]

For years, Velchaninov has been drawn toward his friends the Pogorel’tsevs (a family name that elicits associations with pogorel’tsy: ‘victims of a housefire’).

Here in this family he was simple, naive and good. He took care of the children, never beat about the bush, admitted everything and confessed everything [ispovedovalsia vo vsem]. He swore to the Pogorel’tsevs that he would live a little longer in the “big world” and then he would move in with them for good. [39]

This pipedream is never realized. Before going to bed on the fateful night of the storm, Trusotsky quips that he will “smoke the little spirit out of the nursery” (My dushok etot vykurim, iz detskoi-to…).[42] He is alluding to his eighteen-year-old rival Lobov, but when Velchaninov wakes up in misery in the middle of the night, he has grown weak “like a baby.” He notices that the storm has been raging and that the room is full of cigarette smoke (nakureno). It is the corruption in Velchaninov’s spirit that Trusotsky is smoking out. He lights up just as Elijah’s storm is most intense. Together with Elijah’s lightning storm, Trusotsky’s smoking is evocative of exorcism. His cigarettes, like the cigarette of the fiery Il’ia Porokh, are analogous to the lightning fire of the prophet. Interestingly enough, Trusotsky began smoking in March, after his wife’s death, the same time Velchaninov’s anxiety began.

The razor that Trusotsky holds over Velchaninov is also a parallel to the punishing lightning of Elijah, although the cut which Velchaninov receives comes to symbolize for him his final “divorce” from the eternal husband. Trusotsky is an “eternal husband” not only because he must always be bound to a wife, but also in that he represents the eternal, spiritual side of Velchaninov. A bond of obligation unites him with Velchaninov, much as it unites Raskolnikov with his landlady. A double meaning, unknown to Velchaninov, is implied when he exclaims to Trusotsky: “…we are people of different worlds… a grave has come between us!” When Trusotsky replies, “Yes, but on my side there is more,” the encoded message is that his side is the eternal side beyond the grave.

Two years after the fateful night, Velchaninov encounters Trusotsky at a provincial train station. He nearly accepts an invitation to visit Trusotsky and his new unfaithful wife at their home, but resists the temptation and chooses to continue on to see a lady friend in Odessa. The final break with “conscience” comes when Trusotsky refuses to shake Velchaninov’s scarred hand. By now, Velchaninov has learned to live a Sybarite’s life of mild debauch, keeping his sins in moderation in order to avoid another duel with his conscience. After parting with Trusotsky at the end of the novel, he decides not to visit another female acquaintance who lives in the region because he is “out of spirits” (slishkom uzb byl ne v dukhe).

The term “conscience” (sovest’) is conspicuously infrequent in this tale about a man’s struggle with his conscience. This is because “conscience” is the key to the allegory which the writer has constructed. It must be used sparingly for events to retain their element of mystery for both Velchaninov and the reader. Velchaninov is a worldly man who scoffs cynically at spiritual concepts. His own lack of conscience is reflected ironically in his statement to Trusotsky: “In all good conscience I consider that all affairs between us are finished.” In the end, he fails to recognize his own spirituality. Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov surrender in the struggle with their conscience; Velchaninov finds a modus vivendi which enables him to ignore his.

Studies of The Eternal Husband such as the eighty-page treatise by V. Ia. Kirpotin which approach the work only as a realistic portrayal of peculiar psychological
types tend to miss the point. Kirpotin, for example, writes nothing about the spiritual significance of the storm, the relevance to Velchaninov of “smoking out the spirit,” the
connection between the razor and confession, and the many word-plays and casual allusions which are guideposts to theme at the deepest level. One can only assume that he has overlooked these important features.[43]

“Mr. Prokharchin”: Elijah’s Retribution for a Miser

Dostoevsky’s symbolic Elijahs can be traced back to the early story “Mr. Prokharchin,” written in the spring and summer of 1846.[44] Overshadowed by
the later novels and by works with clearer literary antecedents such as “The Double,” “Mr. Prokharchin” has been neglected and inadequately appreciated in literary studies. However, subtle allegory, word play and literary allusions nevertheless make this story a delight for the careful reader. It attests to striking consistency in poetic technique over a wide span of years and, together with The Landlady, it belies the notion that an ideological gulf separates Dostoevsky’s early works from those written after his return from exile.[45]

In addition to a policeman who figures as a symbolic Elijah, one finds in “Mr. Prokharchin” a landlady who is closely associated symbolically with the hero’s conscience, apocalyptic allusions to the Last Judgment, and a housefire that is symbolic of divine retribution ‒ motifs that were to resurface nineteen years later in the writing of Crime and Punishment. Woven into the apocalyptic allegory are clever allusions to Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades (1834), a classic tale which also left an imprint on Crime and Punishment.[46]

The idea for “Mr. Prokharchin” was likely suggested to Dostoevsky by press accounts of large sums of money found in the possession of apparent paupers after their death. For example, in June 1844, The Northern Bee reported the death of a civil servant who had lived in a tiny room on Vasil’evskii Island, subsisting mostly on bread and water. His landlady found over 1000 silver rubles in his mattress when he died from causes resembling malnutrition.[47] Dostoevsky’s Semyon Ivanovich Prokharchin is a lowly civil servant who rents a small corner in a boarding house, drinking cheap herbs instead of tea and skimping on food in order to save a few kopeks. He pays less than other tenants for his corner and he constantly reminds his fellow lodgers that he is a poor man, alluding to his poor sister-in-law in Tver whom he helps to support. Actually, though, Prokharchin is a thoroughgoing misanthrope. He has neither imagination nor concern for his fellow man, and his “sister-in-law” is a myth which he has concocted as a smokescreen for nearly 2500 rubles horded away in his mattress.

Prokharchin is reticent and unsociable, and these qualities, together with his total lack of imagination, win him the disfavor of his fellow roomers. A trunk under his bed is filled with rags, old boots and worthless junk, but he keeps it carefully locked and even buys a special German lock ‒ all as a ruse to distract attention from his mattress. When one of the young lodgers, Zinovii Prokofevich, teases Prokharchin by suggesting that the chest might be the hiding place for a large fortune, the old miser reacts with unexpected violence. His goal to amass wealth is an all-consuming obsession. Zinovii’s joke threatens to encroach upon this innermost secret of Prokharchin’s soul. The demented old miser broods over the joke for several days and lashes out at Zinovii at every opportunity. Then the boarders play a practical joke on Prokharchin. In his presence, they discuss a fictitious scheme to train and examine civil servants in the social graces. They hint at Prokharchin’s antisocial behavior as they speak of the aims of the plan:

“[ … ] people will dance and, in addition to all the earmarks of nobility, they will acquire polite behavior, courtesy, respect for their elders, a strong character, a good, open heart and all kinds of pleasant manners.” [245]

This trauma and similar practical jokes affect the miser so deeply that one day he simply disappears. Three days later, the landlady sends the lodgers out in search of the “fugitive” with instructions to find him “dead or alive.”

The lodger Sud’bin finds Prokharchin near a fleamarket and follows him to the scene of a housefire nearby. Prokharchin’s fate is stalking him at this point, as suggested by the name Sud’bin, derived from sud’ba (‘fate’) and sud’bina (‘bitter fate’) At the fire, Prokharchin is met by Zimoveikin, a drunken thief, vagrant and former bribe-taker whose name elicits associations with zmei (dragon’). As further details show, he is symbolic of the Devil. The narrator relates how Zimoveikin tried to seduce the landlady and then directly proceeds to characterize him as Prokharchin’s “seducer” (obol’stitel’):

The next day everything ended quite lamentably. Either because Zimoveikin’s characteristic dance proved to be all too characteristic or because he “shamed and disgraced” Ustin’ia Fedorovna, as she put it, “while she’s a friend of Iaroslav Ilyich, and if she had wanted, she could have become an ober-officer’s wife long ago” ‒ whatever the reason, Zimoveikin was obliged to beat a hasty retreat. He left, then returned and was driven away ignominiously. Then he wedged his way into Semyon Ivanovich’s good graces, relieving him of his new slacks in the process, and now he made an appearance once again as Semyon Ivanovich’s seducer. [247]

This sequence of “seductions” points to a symbolic connection between Prokharchin and his landlady. As in Crime and Punishment, she represents his conscience, or spiritual “mistress” (khoziaika ‘landlady’; ‘mistress of a household’). She is a friend of the policeman Iaroslav Ilyich, a symbolic Elijah the Prophet whose first name is derived from iaryi (‘fierce’) and whose patronymic means ‘the son of Elijah.’ Hence, he is the “fierce son of Elijah,” a figurative descendant of the fiery prophet. Regardless who the landlady is referring to when she speaks of an ober-officer, her mentioning this rank together with Iaroslav Ilyich hints at Elijah’s celestial sphere of activity, like the terms nadziratel’ (‘overseer,’ ‘superintendent’) and pomoshchnik nadziratelia (‘assistant to the super-
intendent’), which refer to Nikodim Fomich and Il’ia Porokh in Crime and Punishment. Thus, on an allegorical level Prokharchin’s conscience, or “spiritual mistress,” is acquainted with a symbolic Elijah, the enforcer of divine justice.

Like Raskolnikov, Prokharchin owes a debt to his “spiritual mistress,” whom he has deceived for years in paying a pauper’s rent. On the symbolic plane, Zimoveikin’s words allude to this debt when he bows to the floor like a jester and rambles about gratitude and duty:

“ … Senia, you’re a nice man, congenial, not quick to take offence! You’re straightforward, with good intentions… Do you hear? It’s all because you’re
well-meaning. I’m the silly troublemaker, the panhandler. But you good people haven’t abandoned me, I hope. I’m deeply honored. My thanks to all of you and to your landlady! You see, I bow to the ground. You see? There! My debt. I pay my debt, my dear landlady!” [256]

Although Zimoveikin contrasts himself with Prokharchin, whom he characterizes as a “doer of good deeds,” his buffoonery actually mimics the miser’s hypocritical pose as
he pretends to be paying the landlady her due. After Prokharchin’s death, Iaroslav Ilyich tells the landlady how to file for payment of the debt (dolzhishek). Symbolically, it represents the debt of conscience owed by a man who has no good deeds to his credit.

The spectacle of the housefire is a vision of the Last Judgment for the miser. He is brought home semi-conscious at four o’clock in the morning. Later, as he lies in a fever, the fire is brought back to Prokharchin in a nightmarish delirium. He dreams that it is payday and he has just received his wages. As he descends the office stairway, he hides half the money in his boot, already inventing excuses for his presumed poverty which he can bring into play after paying the landlady her meager rent. In preparation for the vision of hellfire which is to follow, the term zakonnoe vozmezdie (‘lawful retribution’) is used for Prokharchin’s wages.

On the stairway, Prokharchin encounters another office worker, Andrei Efimovich, a little bald man who alludes to his seven children as he counts his wages. “If there’s no money, there’ll be no kasha,” he points out. He directs an angry glance at Prokharchin, as though Prokharchin were to blame for his seven children. Although the miser is “sure of his innocence, […] it nevertheless turns out that he, Semyon Ivanovich, is guilty.” He suddenly fears that Andrei Efimovich will seize him and take away his “retribution,” denying the existence of Prokharchin’s sister-in-law and using the money for his seven children. Prokharchin flees in panic, gasping for breath as he runs. Soon he is joined by a large crowd, who also run alongside him. Each jingles his own “retribution” in his back pocket as he runs. Like the trumpets of the Apocalypse, firemen’s trumpets thunder as Prokharchin is swept by the waves of humanity to the scene of the fire. Greeted there by the Satan-like Zimoveikin, he is pressed against a fence “as though with tongs” in a courtyard where firewood is stored. The allusion here is to the fiery furnace of Perdition.

The people emerge from the houses, bars, taverns and the fleamarket (tolkuchii rynok, suggestive of shoving and grinding). Prokharchin’s attention is especially attracted by a “sinful woman” (greshnaia baba) dressed in rags and bast sandals [251]. She brandishes her crutch and outshouts even the firemen as she rambles incoherently about how her children have turned her out and about two five-kopek coins which she has lost. Children and kopeks are hopelessly confused in her speech, much as money is linked with a fictitious filial relationship in Prokharchin’s life. The “sinful woman” is an emanation of Prokharchin’s fallen spirit. As she continues shouting, oblivious to the sparks and cinders that are flying all around, Prokharchin is suddenly overcome by terror as he realizes that “there is something behind all of this and he isn’t going to get off scot-free.” [251]

At this point, a man in tattered peasant dress and with singed hair and beard begins shouting in order to rally the crowd (ves’ Bozhii narod: literally, ‘God’s entire nation’) against Prokharchin. The miser freezes in terror when he recognizes the man as a cabdriver whom he deceived five years earlier, slipping away without paying the fare and “lifting his heels as he ran, as though he were running barefoot across a white-hot metal plate.” The enraged crowd entwines Prokharchin “like a many-colored dragon” (podobno pestromu zmeiu), crushing and strangling him. Dostoevsky’s portrayal of the crowd in this hellish episode as both a dragon and a flowing stream brings to mind icon depictions of the Last Judgment, in which sinners descend into Hell along a serpent-like river of fire.[48] Waking up, Prokharchin imagines that he is on fire together with his entire corner and, most important, his mattress. He clutches the mattress and flees from his partitioned corner, but the other lodgers find him and carry him back to his bed.

… they carried him triumphantly back behind the partitions, which, incidentally, were not on fire at all. All that was on fire was Semyon Ivanovich’s head. There they laid him back in bed. In the same way the tattered, unshaven, stern organ grinder places his Pulcinella back in his travelling case after it has raised a ruckus, beat everyone up, and sold its soul to the Devil. Until a new presentation, it must end its existence in the same trunk with that very same Devil and with the negroes, Petrushka, Mademoiselle Katerina and her lucky lover the overseer-captain. [251-52]

The trunk in this extended simile is a metaphor for the grave. “Seduced” by Zimoveikin, Prokharchin has sold his soul to the Devil. The “new presentation” for which he must wait is the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. In Russian church lore, including icons of the Last Judgment, demons are portrayed as black men. Mademoiselle Katerina and her officer-lover correspond, respectively, to the landlady (Prokharchin’s conscience, soul, or the good part of his spirit) and a symbolic Elijah the Prophet such as Iaroslav ll’ich. The Russian term for the “overseer captain” is kapitan ispravnik, derived from ispravit’ (‘to correct’, ‘to set straight’) and suggestive once again of Elijah’s function as an enforcer of divine retribution. Here the landlady’s remark that “she knows even Iaroslav Ilyich and, had she wanted, she could have become an ober-officer’s wife long ago” becomes doubly significant. In this symbolic context. it seems likely that Dostoevsky associated Petrushka with St. Peter, who guards the gates to Heaven. Thus, all the puppets in this passage have spiritual analogues: Prokharchin’s corrupted self, his soul, the Devil, demons, Elijah and St. Peter.

Finally, Prokharchin “stretches out his legs and sets out along the path of his sins and good deeds.” [259] The final shock which precipitates his death is Zimoveikin’s attempt to rob him at night. Added to the spectacle of the fire and the miser’s fears that his employment and income will be terminated, this trauma is too much for him. Soon laroslav Ilyich arrives “with his following.” The word prichet is used in the figurative meaning ‘following,’ but its primary meaning is ‘church-goers,’ or a ‘church congregation.’ It points to the symbolic, spiritual significance of the “fierce son of Elijah.” Like Elijah, who oversees Judgment, laroslav Ilyich arrives to preside over the fmal phase of Prokharchin’s symbolic retribution. His arrival is heralded by allusions to an executor (ekzekutor also means ‘executioner’) and to a housefire immediately following word-play with grekh (‘sin’). These are further clues that the author indeed has Elijah the Prophet in mind:

Mr. Prokharchin stretched out his legs and set out along the path of his good and bad deeds. It is uncertain whether Semyon Ivanovich was frightened by something … or whether there was some other reason [grekh], but the fact is that even if the executor himself had appeared in the apartment and personally given Semyon Ivanovich his dismissal [Abschied] for freethinking, reckless behavior and drunkenness… even if Semyon Ivanovich had immediately received a reward [cf. “retribution” in the housefire episode], or if, finally, the house had caught fire and Semyon Ivanovich’s head had begun to burn, he might have not even deigned to stir a finger at the news. [259]

As Iaroslav Ilyich examines the scene of Prokharchin’s death, the miser’s body is pushed off the bed so that his bony legs jut upward “like two branches on a tree that has been burned” [260]. Once again the allusion is to the fire of retribution and, in all likelihood, to the lightning of Elijah the Prophet. Iaroslav Ilyich exposes the “ignoble” contents of Prokharchin’s trunk and raises a whirling storm (buria) of fluff from the mattress as he removes the miser’s horde of 2497 rubles. Prokharchin’s “ignoble” trunk, with its rags and junk, symbolizes his ignoble spirit. The trunk’s contents simply “smell of a coffer” (pakhlo zalavkom), a pun based on the similar words zalavkom (‘coffer’) and zolovkoi (‘sister-in-law’). Instead of a sister-in-law, Prokharchin’s only claim to any nobility of soul, the lodgers find a coffer full of junk!

The concept of Prokharchin’s guilt and of final Judgment lies at the heart of the story. It is hinted at with casual double entendres throughout the narrative. When Prokharchin is brought home after the fire, the term vinovatyi is applied to him. Here it is used in a secondary meaning, ‘the person who is the cause of the commotion,’ but its basic meaning is ‘the guilty one.’ The driver who brings him home suggests that Prokharchin might have had a stroke or a mild epileptic seizure, but the lodgers decide “there must be another cause.” The term grekh is used here colloquially in the meaning ‘cause,’ but its basic meaning is ‘sin.’ This usage of grekh is repeated in the passage about Prokharchin’s death, cited above.

As noted above, Dostoevsky enriches his story with a chain of motifs derived from Pushkin’s immortal masterpiece The Queen of Spades. In both stories, the all-consuming passion of the central character is to grow rich. An important difference is that Pushkin’s Germann has an altruistic goal of sorts ‒ to improve the life of his descendants as well as his own ‒ while Prokharchin has none. Germann hopes to learn a secret series of winning cards from an old countess who has inherited the secret from St. Germain. He obtains the secret, but causes the countess’ death in the process. The cards are Three, Seven and Ace. Germann wins on the Three and the Seven, but he mistakenly plays a Queen of Spades instead of the Ace, losing the fortune he has amassed on the first two cards. He goes mad and is taken to an insane asylum.

When he first learns the secret, the winning cards become an obsession for him. A young girl reminds him of a Three of Hearts. Portly gentlemen remind him of the Ace. When asked the time of day, he replies: “Five to the Seven.” When Germann looks into the coffin at the funeral of the old countess, she winks at him. Later, the Queen of Spades squints and laughs at him when he makes his fateful error at the gambling table.

On one plane of interpretation, Germann is simply a common man who attempts to rise above his fate and fails. But numerous details point to a second level of interpretation on which the countess is a symbol of tsarist authority, while Germann represents rebellious forces from below which would usurp that authority. He is compared to Napoleon and linked symbolically with the Russian Freemasons, whose secret meetings provided a forum for a relatively free expression of liberal ideas concerning government and society.[49] On this symbolic plane, Germann is a rebel and a freethinker who wants to rise above “Queen” and “King.” He would become “Ace,” the highest of cards which is at the same time a “One,” a symbol here of the individual unfettered by royalty. Like Faust in his quest for life and happiness, Germann virtually sells his soul to the Devil, causing the countess’ death and cruelly taking advantage of her young protegee. He is said to have “the profile of Napoleon and the soul of Mephistopheles.”

It is with an eye to The Queen of Spades that Dostoevsky weaves the words “freethinker” (vol’nodumets) and “Napoleon” into the speech of Zimoveikin and a lodger as they attempt in vain to reason with the crazed miser. When Prokharchin rambles on about his fears that his office might be eliminated, Zimoveikin replies:

“…You freethinker! I’ll report you! What are you? Who are you? A rebel? You ram’s head!…” [256]

The lodger Mark Ivanovich uses the same formulas in speaking ironically of Napoleon:

“ … What are you? You’re a ram! You haven’t a stake nor a house to your name! Do you think you’re the only person there is in this world? Who are you? Napoleon? Are you Napoleon or not? Speak up, sir! Are you Napoleon or aren’t you?” [257]

Of course, Prokharchin’s “freethinking” is limited to his avarice; his “Napoleonic dream” is concealed inside his mattress. Even the thought of minor bureaucratic reform instills fear in the soul of this “Napoleon.” His miser’s dream hinges on preservation of the status quo. Or, at least, so he thinks. For this reason it is fitting that he virtually becomes the Queen of Spades after he dies, winking lasciviously like the countess and the Queen which Germann plays by mistake:

His little right eye was somehow rakishly squinting. It seemed that Semyon Ivanovich wanted to say something, to convey something extremely important, to explain himself without losing any time, as quickly as possible because there were urgent matters at hand… One could seem to hear him say [to the landlady]: “What’s wrong with you? Do you hear, silly woman? Quit your bawling! Get some sleep, do you hear? I’ve died now, you see. No reason to cry now! Really! Lying here isn’t so bad… But that’s not what I wanted to say. You’re an Ace, woman, a real Ace! Do you understand? So now I’ve died. But then, well, if you don’t mind my saying so, that can’t be! So, well then, I haven’t died. You hear? So what if I just get up, huh?” [263]

Prokharchin’s calling his landlady an “Ace” culminates an entire chain of card and number motifs that hearken back to the series of cards in The Queen of Spades. The office worker Andrei Efimovich, who refers to his seven children as he counts his pay, was already mentioned above. It is in Prokharchin’s feverish delirium that Efimovich appears “as an apparition” (kak prizrak) and speaks of the number seven. Similarly, the old countess appears to Germann as an apparition soon after her death and tells him the secret numbers.

Besides the “sinful woman” who speaks confusedly of five-kopek coins (piataki ‘fives’) and her children, Prokharchin also dreams of a man with a four-ruble note in his hand. The term used is chetverka, the same word which refers to a Four in a deck of playing cards. He is rushing home, “where his wife, his little daughter and money amounting to thirty and a half (in the corner under the feather mattress) were all on fire.” Thus, three apparitions appear in Prokharchin’s apocalyptic dream with veiled allusions to the secret numbers of The Queen of Spades. However, while Germann’s Three-Seven-Ace symbolizes a measured upward progression toward power and freedom, the numbers in Prokharchin’s dream seem to represent only a maniac’s hording of money in all denominations.

Like Germann, Prokharchin never gambles for fun with his comrades. Gambling, though, is a favorite pastime of the other lodgers. Significantly, they play cards when he lies in bed delirious after the fire. Prokharchin repeatedly calls Zimoveikin an “Ace” (tuz: ‘ace,’ ‘bigshot’). He also calls Zinovii Ivanovich a “Joker” (shut), but it is intimated that this term would be more appropriately applied to Zimoveikin. In the stream of abuse that he unleashes against Zinovii Ivanovich, Prokharchin includes the words “you Joker-dog” (pes shut). A moment later, the Mephistophelean Zimoveikin enters the room, “sniffing all about” like a dog. Moreover, “Joker” refers to the Devil in Russian expressions such as Shut ego znaet (The Joker only knows).

When Zimoveikin first met Prokharchin, the reader is told, he stole his new breeches. Dostoevsky takes care to employ the genitive case so that the word meaning ‘breeches’ (reituzy) ends in -tuz, sounding like the word for “Ace.”

Another cryptic, playful allusion to cards and The Queen of Spades is the remark (cited above) that Prokharchin has “neither a stake nor a house to his name” (ni kola ni dvora). The basic meaning of Russian kol is ‘a wooden stake,’ although in the Russian idiom just cited it actually refers to a plot of land designated by stakes used as boundary markers; i.e. “a stake of land.” But by virtue of a stake’s resemblance to the numeral One, kol is sometimes used in reference to a “One.” Dvor refers to a farmhouse in the expression used here, but it can also refer to a royal court. Thus, the old idiom hints at a second meaning: Prokharchin has neither an Ace nor any royal cards in his hand. Like Germann’s dream, Prokharchin’s miserable “Napoleonic dream” is only a delusion: death is approaching.

The message is much the same as that of Prokharchin’s name, derived from prokharchit’sia (‘to go broke spending all one’s money on food’). Prokharchin skimps on food for twenty-five years in order to save his kopeks, but Elijah strips him of his tiny fortune when his time of Judgment comes.

Pushkin’s treatment of Germann is characteristically detached; there is no moralizing about Germann’s recklessness in relation to the countess or his cruelty toward the young ward. Germann’s attempt to obtain the secret card combination is presented symbolically as a struggle to rise above an abstract Fate. Pushkin’s narrator does not place his tale in an explicitly ethical or religious framework. If any moral or religious lessons are to be drawn, the reader must interpolate them himself. In “Mr. Prokharchin,” Dostoevsky harnesses Fate to Elijah’s chariot. He combines Pushkin’s classical, pagan theme of an impersonal Fate with the traditional Christian view of God as the ultimate Arbiter. For this reason, the thematic thrust of his story is different. Pushkin portrays primarily the struggle of the individual personality against authority in all its potential forms, including the Czar and ‒ conceivably ‒ God; Dostoevsky portrays the contest waged between man’s fallen spirit and ‒ specifically ‒ God. “Mr. Prokharchin” is a farcical story, but it encapsulates themes and symbols that run through much of Dostoevsky’s later writing.

Conclusion

Although I have limited my discussion to Stepanchikovo, Crime and Punishment, The Landlady, The Brothers Karamazov, The Eternal Husband and “Mr. Prokharchin,” Dostoevsky’s artistic allusions to the prophet Elijah extend far beyond these six works alone. Natasha Ikhmenyeva’s climactic return during a thunderstorm in The Humiliated and the Injured, the thunderstorm that accompanies the coming of age of a young boy in A Little Hero, the thunderstorm that is unleashed over Petersburg in The Idiot as Myshkin encounters Rogozhin’s knife on the twisting stairs of The Scales Hotel, the fire chief Il’ia Ilyich who flies to a fire like a charioteer in The Possessed, the midnight arrival of Ivan Ilyich Pralinskii in “A Nasty Incident”: each of these memorable moments in Dostoevsky’s fiction is colored by the author’s perception of the folkloric Elijah as an emblem of Russian spirituality and a symbol of man’s condition in a troubled universe.[50]

The Elijah leitmotif, consistent in its theme throughout the writer’s career, does much to disprove the contention that an ideological rift separates Dostoevsky’s early writing from his post-exile fiction. (Sergei Belov even asserts that the young Dostoevsky was an atheist.) More important, the many Elijah-related motifs represent a lost dimension in the writer’s art. They give us a more complete understanding of Dostoevsky’s allusive technique, the fabric of his art.

One might ask how it is possible that an entire artistic dimension of such importance could be overlooked by folklorists and literary scholars for 150 years. Elijah the Prophet is not even mentioned in the major studies of Dostoevsky’s fiction, including the recent multivolume publication of the late Joseph Frank. These studies are blind to a key feature of Dostoevsky’s art. The answer, I think, lies in the fact that we live in an era of academic specialization. Russian folklorists, who are well equipped to notice Dostoevsky’s allusions to Elijah, do not generally engage in literary criticism. Many literary scholars, on the other hand, know little about Russian folk beliefs. In order to recognize the Elijah motifs, one needs to synthesize a knowledge of folklore with an ability to analyze the allusive techniques that have played such an important role in Russian literary tradition. A synthesis of this kind was never achieved by scholars in the Soviet period. Moreover, even if a Soviet scholar had recognized the Elijah symbolism in Dostoevsky’s works, it is far from certain that this discovery would have been accepted for publication in journals managed by a regime whose ideology was inimical to that of Dostoevsky. (In the early 1980’s, after my initial discovery of the Elijah allusions in Crime and Punishment, I submitted my research to the journal Russkaia literatura, whose reviewer, the esteemed academician Georgii Fridlender, vetoed publication with the pronouncement: “There is no Elijah the Prophet in Crime and Punishment nor can there be.”)

Literary studies commonly approach Dostoevsky’s fiction with the usual tools that are used in evaluating realism. Characters are analyzed and psychoanalyzed as though they were artistic embodiments of real human beings. Yet, Dostoevsky’s lively, masterful portrayal of human behavior should not blind one to the less realistic features of his art ‒ features that can best be explained by the author’s efforts to embed reflections of a higher realm in his “realistic” portrayal. In characters such as Il’ia Murin, Foma Fomich Opiskin, Raskolnikov’s landlady and Trusotsky, the symbolic creatures of medieval allegory are bestowed with the flesh and blood of modern realism. Dostoevsky’s technique is one of symbolic realism in which symbolic and realistic elements are dispersed unevenly throughout his various works.

One can quibble about the proper terminology for describing Dostoevsky’s technique. One hesitates to call his characters “symbols” because they are not generally perceived as such by other characters around them ‒ and their complexity goes far beyond their function as a “symbol.” How, one might ask, can a ringleader of thieves (Il’ia Murin) be a “symbol” of the prophet Elijah or of God’s system? It seems more appropriate to call him a reflection of Elijah, an emanation or partial embodiment of the Biblical prophet whose interaction with other characters somehow corresponds to the scenarios of Christian teaching. And again, one shies away from the term “allegory” to describe the interaction of characters as emanations of the personae and concepts of Christian belief. Whatever terminology one chooses, it is safe to say that Dostoevsky’s portraits are highly allusive and associative. His characters, many of whom are considered by literary scholars to be “realistic,” are drawn in ways that allude to another, spiritual realm. Some of his lesser known works, such as The Landlady, Stepanchikovo and The Eternal Husband, owe their relative obscurity to the fact that in them allegory ‒ often unnoticed by readers and critics ‒ tends to outweigh realism, in contrast to more popular novels such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, where a more explicit, realistic style tends to prevail.[51] Many readers and some literary scholars are not equipped with imaginations that are compatible with Dostoevsky’s most allusive style.

At any rate, it is truly amazing that this remarkable writer persistently continued to use his Elijah symbolism as a kind of author’s signature when his Elijah motifs were apparently never acknowledged by readers and critics of his day. I have never happened upon any evidence that Dostoevsky’s Elijah symbolism was recognized by his contemporaries ‒ even though it would seem that the Elijah allusions must have been understood by some of his nineteenth-century readers, who were familiar first-hand with the lore pertaining to Elijah.[52] However, this is an open question that requires extensive research in the diaries, correspondence and anecdotes that Dostoevsky’s contemporaries have left us.

Notes

[1] N. A. Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1972), p. 104 [my translation].

[2] See Robert Mann, Lances Sing: a Study of the Igor Tale (Slavica: Columbus, 1989), pp. 7-37; The Igor Tales and Their Folkloric Background (The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo: Karacharovo, 2005), pp. 113-139; Pesn' o polku Igoreve. Novye otkrytiia (Iazyki slavianskoi kul'tury: Moscow, 2009), pp. 30-61.

[3] Velikii sbornik, chast' 2 (Mineia prazdnichnaia), 2nd ed. (Jordanville, 1954), p. 181.

[4] Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, vol. 1 (Leningrad, 1926), p. 54.

[5] All citations from Dostoevsky’s fiction (by page number in brackets) refer to F. M. Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Nauka: Leningrad, 1972-1990). [Henceforth: PSS.] Translations are my own. Stepanchikovo is cited by page number (in brackets) from vol. 3 (1972).

[6] The original reads: "Naruzhnosti on byl bogatyrskoi..." (from bogatyr', a warrior-hero of Russian folk epic tradition).

[7] See Robert Mann, Lances Sing: a Study of the Igor Tale (Slavica: Columbus, 1989), pp. 7-37; The Igor Tales and Their Folkloric Background (The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo: Karacharovo, 2005), pp. 113-139; Pesn' o polku Igoreve. Novye otkrytiia (Iazyki slavianskoi kul'tury: Moscow, 2009), pp. 30-61.

[8] "Look at the Great Russian. When he is the master in charge, does he look like the master? What German or Pole has he not been forced to accede to? He is a servant. But at the same time – with his endurance, his breadth and intuition he is the master. His ideal, the typical Great Russian, is Il'ia Muromets." (F. M. Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 24 (Nauka: Leningrad, 1982), p. 309 [my translation].) In his notes in the same period, Dostoevsky also refers to the wandering pilgrim Ivanishche, who in epic song tradition provides Il'ia Muromets with a staff that originally symbolized the power of the Church.

[9] See Robert Mann, Lances Sing: a Study of the Igor Tale (Slavica: Columbus, 1989), pp. 7-37; The Igor Tales and Their Folkloric Background (The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo: Karacharovo, 2005), pp. 113-139; Pesn' o polku Igoreve. Novye otkrytiia (Iazyki slavianskoi kul'tury: Moscow, 2009), pp. 30-61.

[10] See A. N. Afanas'ev, Poeticheskie zreniia slavian na prirodu (3 vols., Petersburg, 1865-1869), vol. 1, pp. 232-237.

[11] Strong overtones of blasphemy are present in Obnoskin's attempt to carry off Tatiana Ivanovna as well as in Foma's behavior at the nameday celebration. After all, their antics disrupt a religious holiday, the feast day of Elijah. The narrator notes that only Nastasya and Rostanev's children manage to attend church that day. Bakhcheev, whose trek to church was interrupted by the abduction attempt, grumbles during the chase: "They won't even let a man pray on God's holiday!" Later, when Rostanev ejects Foma to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning, Bakhcheev continues to mourn for the ruined church festival: "There's a fine holiday for you!" [139]

[12] Cited from Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 3, p. 505.

[13] See Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 3, p. 505-507.

[14] Even for Stepanchikovo itself, in which the Elijah theme "comes out into the open," the central symbolic role of Elijah has not been understood. For example, the translation by Ignat Avsey, The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants, published by Cornell University Press in 1987, mentions Elijah the Prophet in neither its notes nor its introduction.

[15] Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 7 (1973), p. 192.

[16] PSS, vol. 7, p. 17. The earliest surviving draft alludes to the assistant superintendent as "groznyi poruchik" ('the ominous lieutenant'), using the same epithet that is traditionally applied to Elijah the Prophet: groznyi prorok Iliia ('the ominous prophet Elijah'). The word groznyi evokes associations with groza ‘thunderstorm.’

[17] Georgii Meier, Svet v nochi (o “Prestuplenii i nakazanii”). Opyt medlennogo chteniia (Posev: Frankfurt/Main, 1967), pp. 43-44. Meier notes the parallel between the name Il'ia and the Biblical Elijah, but, surprisingly, he misses the connection with the storm and the chronology of action which places Raskolnikov's confession on Elijah's Day. Meier's study is the only one (before my own studies of Dostoevsky) to note any symbolic role of Elijah the Prophet in Crime and Punishment. He points out the connection between Il'ia Petrovich and the prophet Elijah in his discussion of Raskolnikov's delirium in which Il'ia Petrovich beats Raskolnikov's landlady. Meier notes that the landlady in this episode symbolizes Raskolnikov's soul.

[18] A symbolic spiritual significance for the episode at the police station is intimated by the repetition of words derived from dukh, which can mean 'odor,' 'breath' and 'spirit'. Raskolnikov "catches his breath" (perevel dukh) when he reaches the station, located on the fifth and highest story. The air is stifling (dukhota). The room smells heavily of the brothel keeper Luiza Ivanovna's perfume (dukhí).

[19] Georgii Meier, Svet v nochi (o “Prestuplenii i nakazanii”). Opyt medlennogo chteniia (Posev: Frankfurt/Main, 1967), pp. 43-44.

[20] The landlady's function as an emanation of Raskolnikov's own soul was first pointed out by Georgii Meier. See Georgii Meier, Svet v nochi (o “Prestuplenii i nakazanii”). Opyt medlennogo chteniia (Posev: Frankfurt/Main, 1967), pp. 43-44.

[21] See PSS, vol. 7, p. 149. See also pp. 134-135, 137, 139 and 143.

[22] Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 7, p. 148.

[23] The Brothers Karamazov, Part 1, Book 3, Chapter 11.

[24] See Evgenii Sarukhanian, Dostoevskii v Peterburge (Leningrad, 1972), p. 185-189. The fire department in St. Petersburg was an agency of the police.

[25] See Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (Princeton, 1967), p. 312.

[26] The Landlady is cited from PSS, vol. 1. English translations are mine. Italicized words serve to indicate my own emphasis and are not highlighted in any way in the original Russian. For an English translation see Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Landlady, eds. Jay Macpherson et alia (The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo: Karacharovo, 2004).

[27] Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 1, p. 510.

[28] See A. L. Bem [Boehme], "Dramatizatsiia breda ('Khoziaika Dostoevskogo)," Dostoevskii. Psikhoanaliticheskie etiudy, Berlin, 1938 [Reprint by Ardis, 1983], pp. 77-141; R. Neuhuser, "'The Landlady.' A New Interpretation," Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 10, no. 1 (1968), pp. 42-67.

[29] See the annotation by Ornatskaia and Fridlender in PSS, vol. 1, p. 508.

[30] The Landlady is cited from PSS, vol. 1. English translations are mine. Italicized words serve to indicate my own emphasis and are not highlighted in any way in the original Russian. For an English translation see Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Landlady, eds. Jay Macpherson et alia (The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo: Karacharovo, 2004).

[31] See Vsevolod Miller, Ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti, vol. 1 (1897), p. 379.

[32] One wonders whether this episode might have been inspired by boys' making fun of Elisha in 2nd Kings 2:23-25. They mockingly exhort him to rise into the sky like Elijah and call him baldhead.

[33] "Il'inskii father" can allude to a Church of Elijah or to the village of Il'inskoe, named for its Church of Elijah. In an early draft, this priest is the "Piatnitskii father": the priest from the Church of St. Paraskeva Piatnitsa. Dostoevsky subsequently replaced Paraskeva's Church with the Church of Elijah. Elijah's holy days began with the holy day of St. Paraskeva, known as "Elijah's Friday." In Petersburg, the Chapel of Paraskeva stood by the Church of Elijah at the gunpowder factory.

[34] The original Russian reads: "Понимаю теперь, что на таких, как я, нужен удар, удар судьбы, чтоб захватить его как в аркан и скрутить внешнею силой. Никогда, никогда не поднялся бы я сам собой! Но гром грянул. Принимаю муку обвинения и всенародного позора моего, пострадать хочу и страданием очищусь!" Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 14, p. 458. [The Brothers Karamazov, Part III, Book 9, Part IX.]

[35] "Характер вполне русский: гром не грянет — мужик не перекрестится."

[36] The original Russian reads: “moia vsegdashniaia sushchnost'.” From a letter to Strakhov dated March 30 (March 18 Old Style), 1869. Cited from V. Ia. Kirpotin, Mir Dostoevskogo. Etiudy i issledovaniia, Moscow, 1980, p. 169.

[37] Bracketed page numbers for The Eternal Husband refer to PSS, vol. 9.

[38] Russian terms for “trial” (sud), “judicial” (sudebnoe) and various other words pertaining to the judiciary system are constructed on the same root from which the word for “Judgment” (sud) is formed.

[39] See Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 7, pp. 310-311; 154-155.

[40] The original reads: “A potom, kogda priedem obratno, ia vse razvernu pered vami kak na ispovedi. Aleksei Ivanovich, dover’tes’!” [Chapter 11]

[41] Velchaninov's visit to his doctor brings to mind Goliadkin's doctor in The Double. Goliadkin casually compares his doctor to a priest-confessor and repeatedly stops to catch his breath (perevesti dukh) on his way to the doctor, whose name, Krest'ian Ivanovich, is closely associated with 'Christian.' However, the doctor has no comprehension of Goliadkin's spiritual crisis, and the author's comparison of the doctor with a confessor-priest is intentionally ironical. In the end, the doctor cooperates with the world of slander and deceit in helping to relegate the good, straightforward Goliadkin Senior to an insane asylum. In a similar context of aspirituality, Velchaninov tells nothing about his transgressions to his secular "confessor."

[42] On an ordinary level of everyday reality, this Russian expression should be translated: “We’ll smoke the stench (dukh) out of the nursery.” Dostoevsky is toying with the two meanings of dukh: ‘stench’ and ‘spirit.’

[43] See V. Ia. Kirpotin, Mir Dostoevskogo. Etiudy i issledovaniia, Moscow, 1980, pp. 168-246.

[44] Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 1, pp. 240-263.

[45] For example, in The Young Dostoevsky (1846-1849). A Critical Study (Mouton: The Hague, 1969), p. 267, the late Victor Terras writes: “Gospodin Prokharchin is the irreverent, cynical, nihilistic treatment of a serious theme…” In a later essay, he writes in the same vein: “It seems likely that the young Dostoevsky was secularly oriented and disinclined to undertake the incursions into the realm of metaphysics which characterize the mature writer.” [Victor Terras, “The Young Dostoevsky: an Assessment in Light of Recent Scholarship,” in New Essays on Dostoevsky, eds. Malcolm V. Jones, Garth M. Terry (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1983), p. 37.]

[46] See A. Bem [Boehme], “Gogol’ i Pushkin v tvorchestve Dostoevskogo,” Slavia, VII, 1928-1929, pp. 63-86; VIII, 1929-1930, pp. 82-100, 297-311.

[47] See the annotations provided by T. I. Ornatskaia and G. M. Fridlender in PSS, vol. 1, p. 503.

[48] See, for example, T. V. Tolstaya, The Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin (Moscow, 1979), plate 99.

[49] See Harry B. Weber, “A Case for Freemasonry in Russian Literature,” Slavic and East European Journal, vol. XII, No. 4 (1968), pp. 435-447.

[50] See Iu. I. Marmeladov, Tainyi kod Dostoevskogo. Il'ia-prorok v russkoi literature (Petrovskaia Akademiia Nauk i Iskusstv: St. Petersburg, 1992), pp. 101-116. For a brief discussion of the Elijah theme in Dostoevsky's earliest writing see also "Why I Disagree with Marmeladov (A Note from the Press Operator)" in Yuri Marmeladov, The Brothers Karamazov ‒ an Unorthodox Guide (The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo: Karacharovo, 2002), pp. 63-78.

[51] The Eternal Husband was published in Strakhov's journal The Dawn in the first two issues of 1870. Strakhov himself maintained that The Eternal Husband one of the "deepest and most interesting" of Dostoevsky's works, although he was doubtless prejudiced by the fact that he was the publisher. (See Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 7, p. 482.) At any rate, he predicted that most readers would not really understand the work and, judging by published reviews of the novel and by more recent Soviet literary studies, his prediction was correct. V. P. Burenin, for example, denigrated the "morbid false psychology" and "nervous dialogs" of the novel, paying no heed to the spiritual allegory and symbolic technique which lie at its very heart. (See Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, 1870, No. 31 (January 31); Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 9, pp. 482-483.) A reviewer in The Voice wrote enthusiastically about "a certain mystery, some sort of secret which lurks in all the seemingly banal aspects of life" portrayed in the novel, but there is nothing to suggest that the reviewer had fathomed the mystery himself. (See Golos, 1870, No. 79 [March 20]; Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 9, p. 482.)

[52] Although Dostoevsky’s Elijah symbolism is the most intricate and farflung, other Russian writers also incorporated Elijah the Prophet as an important feature in their fiction. They include Ostrovskii, Bunin and Platonov, but most relevant to the study of Dostoevskii are probably the novels of Goncharov, who repeatedly embeds allusions to Elijah in his writing. In searching for contemporary readers’ responses to Elijah motifs, it might prove useful to investigate responses to Goncharovs’ works. See Iu. I. Marmeladov, Tainyi kod Dostoevskogo. Il’ia-prorok v russkoi literature (Petrovskaia Akademiia Nauk i Iskusstv: St. Petersburg, 1992), pp. 117-140.

Dostoevsky Достоевский Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky

(What They Don’t Teach You in School)

Robert Mann

Table of Contents

Elijah the Prophet in Russian Tradition

The Village of Stepanchikovo: Ilyusha’s Nameday

Crime and Punishment: Elijah’s Storm Again

The Landlady: Il’ia Murin’s Thunder and Lightning

***The Brothers Karamazov*: Arrest in the Rain at ‘Wet Village**’

The Eternal Husband: Another July Thunderstorm

“Mr. Prokharchin”: Elijah’s Retribution for a Miser

Notes

Dostoevsky

(What They Don’t Teach You in School)

Robert Mann

Table of Contents

Elijah the Prophet in Russian Tradition

The Village of Stepanchikovo: Ilyusha’s Nameday

Crime and Punishment: Elijah’s Storm Again

The Landlady: Il’ia Murin’s Thunder and Lightning

The Brothers Karamazov: Arrest in the Rain at ‘Wet Village’

The Eternal Husband: Another July Thunderstorm

“Mr. Prokharchin”: Elijah’s Retribution for a Miser

Notes

***The Brothers Karamazov*: Arrest in the Rain at ‘Wet Village**’