Information about the author: 

Abstract:

The article is devoted to the study of the reception of F.M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” in Swedish crime fiction of the 1880s, in particular in the works by G. af Geijerstam and V. Benedictsson. The author analyzes the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s perception as a “criminal psychologist” and the transformation of his ideas in Swedish literature. Dostoevky’s ideas about the nature of the crime clashed in the Swedish cultural space with the influence of É. Zola’s Naturalism and C. Lombroso’s theories about the biological predisposition to crime. Using the examples of G. af Geijerstam’s stories “Förbrytare” and “Den förolyckad”, as well as V. Benedictsson’s story “Förbrytarblod”, the article demonstrates how Swedish authors emphasized the hereditary and social causes of crime, simplifying the philosophical depth of Raskolnikov’s rebellion to personal passions or despair. The article pays particular attention to the genre specificity: the transition from the novel to a short form, where psychological analysis is reduced to recording the “moments” of mental breakdowns. The article emphasizes that the reception of Dostoevsky in Sweden reflected the specifics of the local literary process, where the dominance of the Naturalistic paradigm limited the perception of the philosophical and religious content of the Russian writer’s works. The article contributes to the study of the mechanisms of adaptation of Russian literature in the Scandinavian context and opens up prospects for the analysis of the works by other Swedish authors, for example, A. Strindberg, who comprehended the work of F.M. Dostoevsky more deeply.