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 A.M.GORKY INSTITUTE OF WORLD LITERATURE
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Crime and Punishment in War and Peace: The Counter-Chronological Etiology of the Murder-Apologia Disease

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  • Author: Olga A. Meerson
  • Information about the author:

    PhD in Slavic Studies/ Russian Literature, Columbia University, NYC, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages, Georgetown University, 3700 O St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20057, USA.

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  • For citation:

    Meerson, O.A. “Crime and Punishment in War and Peace: The Counter-Chronological Etiology of the Murder-Apologia Disease.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 1 (17), 2022, pp. 143–157. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2022-1-143-157
  • Received: 24 Jan. 2022
  • Published: 25 Mar. 2022
  • Issue: 2022 no. 1 (17)
  • Department: COMPARATIVE RESEARCH
  • Pages: 143-157
  • DOI: Visit Website
  • UDK: 821.161.1.0
  • BBK: 83.3(2=411.2)
  • Publication Type: Research Article
  • Keywords: apologia of murder, order of narration vs. order of events in the plot, counter-chronology of historical subtext, ideology as medical etiology, history of ideas as anamnesis, Napoleon/ Napoleonic idea.
  • Abstract: This article dwells on the author’s initial discovery of a subtext from Crime and Punishment in War and Peace (1994) — something we hardly expect, given the timeline of the historical events addressed in each novel. Ideologically, however, the influence goes from Dostoevsky to Tolstoy, not the other way around. In the scene of the Fire of Moscow in War and Peace, describing how Pierre Bezukhov becomes afflicted with the idée fixe of the Great Man affording to murder for the benefit of humanity, an idea initially ascribed to Napoleon, Tolstoy intertextually dwells on the image of Rodion Raskolnikov, his story, and ideology, presented by Dostoevsky as clinical etiology.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my colleague Svetlana Slavskaya Grenier for her help with the bibliography and the important comments on the analysis of the text.

References

1. Ashimbaeva, N.T. Dostoevskii. Konteksty slov [Dostoevsky. Words in Context]. St. Petersburg, Serebrianyi vek Publ., 2014. 232 p. (In Russ.)

2. Gusev, N.N. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi. Materialy k biografii s 1828 po 1855 god [Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Materials for a Biography from 1828 to 1855]. Moscow, Izdatel’stvo AN SSSR Publ., 1957. 916 p. (In Russ.)

3. Dostoevskii, F.M. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: v 30 tomakh [Complete Works: in 30 vols]. Leningrad, Nauka Publ., 1972–1990. (In Russ.)

4. Meerson, Olga. “Literary Genesis of a Justification for Killing: From Posterity to Forefathers”. Tolstoy Studies Journal, vol. VII, 1994, pp. 44–51. (In English).

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