The Presidential Library presented “Crime and Punishment” in Dostoevsky’s paintings

On Friday, March 22, 2019 the Presidential Library hosted an unusual video lecture for students and senior pupils from the “Knowledge of Russia” series. The theme of the meeting is “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky: creative history and drawings in manuscripts”. Few people know about this, but the classic of world literature painted quite well.

On the pages of his drafts you can find different drawings, including small portraits of the heroes of the works or their prototypes. The leading researcher of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) Konstantin Barsht told about all this in the video lecture, paying special attention to what “illustrations” accompanied one of the writer's main works - the famous novel Crime and Punishment (1866).

Surprisingly, Dostoevsky began it with sketching of... the head of Peter I. The writer was keenly interested in the personality of the first Russian emperor, believed that he "put Russia like a coin on the edge", dramatically changing the course of its development. Dostoevsky called the Russian intelligentsia "children of Petrov". And it is not by chance that a number of heroes of “Crime and Punishment” carry the patronymic Petrovich: investigator Porfiry Petrovich, lawyer Petr Petrovich Luzhin.

According to Konstantin Barsht, the writer drew of the face of Peter the Great with a wax copy of the first Russian emperor, which was shown at the Hermitage during the years of writing the novel.

Several other mini-portraits on the draft pages of the "Crime of Punishment" are inscribed in geometric shapes. Barsht finds an explanation for this. The fact is that in his youth Dostoevsky was fascinated by the system of physiognomy of Gall and Lavater. According to their teachings, in the form of the skull and the features of a person’s face one can describe his inclinations and character traits. Thus Dostoevsky, using drawings, "constructed" the characters of his heroes...

On another page of “Crime and Punishment”, we find a portrait of Don Quixote or the author of a book about him, Miguel de Cervantes (they are depicted very similarly). For Dostoevsky, Don Quixote was the most important work of world literature, in which he drew his inspiration.

- Only three words written in different ways: Semipalatinsk, Petersburg and Literature. “It’s in these three words that Fyodor Mikhailovich’s whole career lies”, - said Konstantin Barsht. In St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky became a writer. Then there were years of hard labor and exile, after which he returned to work in the city of Semipalatinsk. And, finally, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he wrote his main works.

In addition, in the pages of the draft manuscript of the most famous novel of Dostoevsky, you can find the faces of his wife and beloved brother, as well as of Raskolnikov, his mother and sister. Real people coexist with characters, which is not surprising - most writers' works are to some extent autobiographical...

Students of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, senior pupils of the Second St. Petersburg gymnasium, the Academy of Talents in St. Petersburg, schools of the Admiralty and Krasnoselsky districts of the northern capital took part in the video lecture. Students from Barnaul, Kirov, Veliky Novgorod, Tomsk, Sovetsky and senior pupils from Zavodoukovsk connected the event via video-conferencing mode.

Let us add that this is already the second meeting in the framework of the lecture series “The Life and Work of Fyodor Dostoevsky”. February 19, 2019 it was about the first original printed work of Dostoevsky, written in 1844-1845, the novel “The Poor Folk”. The next meeting with Konstantin Barsht will take place on April 23.

The video lecture will be devoted to “searching for the main character of the novel “Idiot”” in the materials of the writer's drafts.

Konstantin Abrekovich Barsht is a member of the editorial board of the Polish-Czech magazine Slovanske Studie - Studia Slavica (Opole-Ostrava), the interdisciplinary online journal Narratorium (RSUH), editor-in-chief of “Dostoevsky Materials and Research”, the author of the courses "Modern Russian literary criticism" and "Fyodor Dostoevsky. Textual science and poetics”, a participant in the project “Textual Research and Diplomatic Transcription of the “First Notebook” by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864–1865)”.

A collection “Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) (Dostoevsky’s World)”, which included digital copies of the texts of the works of the great Russian writer, philosopher and journalist and materials about his life and work is available on the Presidential Library’s portal.