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Abstract:

The article examines the smells of the city in Crime and Punishment. The sense of smell, as well as vision or hearing, can convey a significant amount of information. As both a biological process and a cultural-historical phenomenon, smells reflect not only immediate olfactory sensations and everyday reality but also evoke cultural associations and emotional imagery. The historical meanings of smells, specific to a particular culture, are embedded in the public consciousness as evaluative categories: “good — bad”, “useful — harmful”, “familiar — foreing,” and so on. This property allows odors to serve as an important element of social relations and fulfill communicative functions. In fiction, the communicative properties of smells are used for historical and geographical context, characterization of characters, atmospheric creation, and the expression of the author’s position on a particular issue. The process of medicalization in Russian urban culture during the second half of the 19th century is particularly relevant to understanding the role of smell in Dostoevsky’s works. The popularization of scientific discoveries and medical recommendations established new important criteria for assessing the quality of life and shaped sanitary and hygienic standards for everyday life. These shifting standards altered the social meaning of smells, a fact that is reflected in the works of Dostoevsky and his contemporaries. This article explores how everyday smells, typical of a social environment, are extrapolated from the physical to the spiritual level.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, smells of the city, urban culture, olfactory culture, Crime and Punishment.