Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment is a story of Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, a former law student, who is a half-orphan but has a loving mother Pulkheria Alexandrovna and sister Dunya. Dunya is ready to sacrifice and get married for the sake of materially benefiting her family and helping Rodya pursue his career in law. Angered Rodya refuses to accept the sacrifice. He rebels against the world order and decides to kill an elderly pawnbroker. He believes that a pawnbroker is a parasite on society, a lower form of being and that gives him a right to kill her. The alleged inferiority of the old woman, in his opinion, justifies his deed.

He hits her on the head with an axe until she dies. As the victim’s sister Lizaveta enters and witnesses the crime, he kills her too. By a lucky chance, he flees the building unnoticed, taking only a few things with him and leaving a box with a large sum of money behind Terrified by his deed, he is no longer able to think rationally. The crime he committed drives him mad and he torments himself with thoughts of the approaching punishment. That leads to mental anguish and serious illness with fever and hallucination. In the end, Porfiry discovers the truth. Rodya, at Sonya’s insistence, pleads guilty and is exiled to Siberia for 8 years. Sonya, who was earlier pushed into prostitution by poverty, follows him and contributes to his spiritual change. Love helps him through the hard times and he is looking forward to his life with her.

Dla reżysera nie jest to pierwsze zetknięcie się z proz± Dostojewskiego, albowiem Krzysztof Babicki miał już okazję adaptować na deski teatru „Biesy” (dwukrotnie – w Teatrze Wybrzeże w Gdańsku i w Teatrze im. Juliusza Osterwy w Lublinie) oraz „Idiotę” (w Teatrze im. Juliusza Osterwy Lublinie).

Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on October 30, 1821 in Moscow, died on January 28, 1881. Regarded as one of the world’s greatest novelists.

Dostoevsky completed his studies at the Academy of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg in 1843, graduating as a lieutenant, but decided to quit the army a year later and pursue a career in writing. His first novel, Poor Folk, was widely acclaimed. The favourable opinion of an influential critic Belinsky made Dostoevsky’s start in the literary circles easier. He kept publishing novels, but his early writing is believed to be inferior to his subsequent works.

Dostoevsky belonged to a liberal intellectual Petrashevsky group. Members of the organization were arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death. Just before the execution, the sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia followed by compulsory military service. At that time he married the widow Marya Dmitrievna Isaeva, who returned with him to St. Petersburg in 1859. After his release, Dostoevsky published Memoirs from the House of the Dead based on his prison experience which had an impact on his personality and spirituality and formed the basis for his novels.

He spent a few years in Western Europe making observations which led him to reject Western philosophies as models for Russian society. He struggled with debts and gambling. His situation improved after the publication of Crime and Punishment, describing the psyche of a tormented murderer. Afterwards he wrote a number of other classics of world literature, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky’s novels still influence writers more than a century after his death.