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Abstract:

The scope of the semantic field of the combination “trembling creature” in Crime and Punishment is perceived by modern researchers as quite definite and narrow. This perception of the words relates to Pushkin’s text, which has been unambiguously established as their precedent, where the combination refers to the Koran. Apparently, it is precisely because of this “obvious” definiteness that it did not occur to anyone to apply here the method of conceptual analysis and look at how exactly the words with the root “tremble” appear in the novel. In doing so, we can state a serious conflict between the obvious meaning of a creature “trembling” in the combination used by Raskolnikov as opposed to “those who have the right” and the novel situations in which we see characters shivering or shuddering. It is important to note that a consistently conducted analysis of the concept makes it possible to radically expand the scope of the precedent texts in Dostoevsky’s mind, and each of them answers one or another of the novel’s “unanswered” questions, changing or convincingly confirming the “strong” ideal lines of the novel’s universe. Among the precedent texts are the biblical story of Cain (which Dostoevsky intended to make the main precedent text, as it is evident from the drafts; however, in the final text he overshadowed it), Pushkin’s poem “To the Slanderers of Russia,” and Byron’s Cain.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trembling creature, Pushkin, “To the Slanders of Russia,” Byron, Cain, Elizabethan Bible, “shudder and tremble.”