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Abstract:

This article examines the third meeting between Rodion Raskolnikov and Investigating Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment. It focuses on the paradoxical and unexpected nature of Porfiry’s statements and on the difference with the previous self he showed during the first two encounters with the main character. The core part of the analysis revolves around Porfiry’s words to Raskolnikov, after calling him a murderer: “I am a finished man, nothing more… But you are a different story: God has prepared a life for you.” These unexpected words not only reveal Porfiry Petrovich’s own spiritual tragedy — faintly hinted at throughout the novel — but also open the “perspective of a new life” (an expression from Dostoevsky’s notebooks for the novel) for Raskolnikov, anticipating his final “resurrection.” Ultimately, Porfiry’s engagement with the protagonist is also an act of self-knowledge. By paying attention to this unexpected plot twist in the novel’s final section regarding the relationship between the murderer-hero and the investigator who discovered his crime, readers can discern the trajectory of the evolution of the plan for Crime and Punishment in its concluding stages and better understand the nature of Dostoevsky’s novel-tragedy.

Keywords: Rodion Raskolnikov, Porfiry Petrovich, novel-tragedy, plan evolution, tragic alternative, spiritual tragedy, knowledge and self-knowledge, perspectives of a new life.