Image by unknown photographer, via Public Domain Archive.
by Jillian Funnell
The first sentence of any written work is undoubtedly one of the most important. These inaugural words may provide glimpses of the plot, the protagonist, the principle, that are fundamental in shaping the reader’s perception of the text to come. The first sentence of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment reads, “[i]n early July, in exceptional heat, towards evening, a young man left the garret he was renting in S——y Lane, stepped outside, and slowly, as if in two minds, set off towards K—— n Bridge” (Dostoevsky 5). At first glance, it is a simple, explanatory, and detailed introductory statement that establishes the ‘who’ and ‘where’ any book needs. Yet how the ‘who,’ the young Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, interacts with the ‘where’ illuminates one of the novel’s central themes: transition. From its title, the text presents itself in a constant state of transition between two things: moral and immoral; extraordinaire and louse; innocence and guilt; Crime and Punishment. But in the novel, within the transitional state of the characters, the ‘ands’ that link two things together materialize as the physical space of thresholds. In that first sentence, Raskolnikov is introduced alongside two thresholds that become grounded into his transitional, psychological being – the door and the bridge. By foregrounding these spaces from the outset, Dostoevsky signals that the spaces Raskolnikov moves across will be inexplicably linked to his shifting moral movements. In Crime and Punishment, the thresholds of doors and bridges function as physical embodiments of Raskolnikov’s inner psychological transitions from crime and moral crisis to confession. Whether confronting an open door or hesitating on a bridge, each threshold conveys his mental state to the reader, leading us to his eventual crossing through the doorway of confession.
Space, the physical realm, is not just substance. It is concrete yet abstract, one dimensional and multidimensional, material and immaterial, ours, yet no one’s. We are embodied in space, exist as space, and we seek space to understand the meaning of the world around us. Space surrounds us, enveloping the mind and its ideas to the point where they begin to become one. The spatial aspects of Crime and Punishment are alive within the stifling heat of St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky utilizes the “poetics of space” (Gill 1) by letting the plot and space converse with each other to create an intertwined and complete story. Each thought or spatial movement is paired with a counterpart, creating a complex literary web of both mental and physical connection. The Russian literary theorist Mikahil Bakhtin discusses Dostoevsky’s use of space in his book Problems with Dostoevsky’s Poetics, particularly in chapter four. The space is an integral part of the book, and each place creates a new aspect of connection between the story and its characters:
The threshold, the foyer, the corridor, the landing, the stairway, its steps, doors opening onto the stairway, gates to front and back yards, and beyond these, the city: squares, streets, facades, taverns, dens, bridges, gutters. This is the space of the novel. (Bakhtin 170)
Each variation of these spatial locations or structures communicates something to the reader, either through event or mental process. Bakhtin writes that action is concentrated in two ‘points’ of space: on the threshold and on the public square (149). In particular, he says that the physical threshold is where scenes of importance are located, “where crisis, radical change, an unexpected turn of fate takes place, where decisions are made, where the forbidden line is overstepped, where one is renewed or perishes” (169). A threshold is a space of in-between and is what one must cross to get from one place or position to another. Bakhtin describes how in the book, “everything is shown in a moment of unfinalized transition” (167) and therefore “stand[s] on the threshold ([…] of life and death, falsehood and truth, sanity and insanity)” (147 emphasis in original). Even “Petersburg too is devoid, as it were, of any internal grounds for justifiable stabilization; it too is on the threshold” (167). The base of instability throughout the book, balancing between two places, two positions, “two minds” (Dostoevsky 5), creates the importance of both physical and mental thresholds throughout the storyline. These two are irrevocably linked.
The transitional spaces of the novel mirror mental changes, if it be of motive or of mind, and vice versa. This creates a visual map of characters’ minds and their transitional states of being. The map of Raskolnikov’s mind takes him through and over two particular thresholds, being just as in the first sentence, the door and the bridge. Going through a door is a quick transition from one side to another, and one that the person must willfully interact with by opening, closing, or locking the door. These thresholds usually appear in sudden, critical transitions and, as Yulia Yukhnovich says in her article about open doors, in “tense psychological moments when [Raskolnikov] stands before a fateful, moral choice” (Yukhnovich 81; my trans.). Bridges are a slower, more accentuated crossing that give a clearer graphic visual of the passage from one position to another. Their length also gives an option to rest in the middle, providing a vantage point to look forwards, backward, or out to the horizon. Raskolnikov often finds himself “rest[ing] both elbows on them and gaz[ing] out” (Dostoevsky 203) in decisive moments of reflection, indecision, and finality.
Raskolnikov’s transitions through these thresholds communicates his spiritual condition, and act as markers for progress, or regression, throughout the storyline.
After Raskolnikov’s initial bridge crossing in the first sentence over K—— n Bridge, he sets off to the pawnbroker’s apartment for what he deems a “test of his venture” (Dostoevsky 8). This ‘test’ sets him off to much indecision, self-torment, and gives him “no escape from his anguish” (13). This is until the next day, when Raskolnikov crosses the bridge over the Neva to the Islands and feels an immediate respite from the atmosphere which “hemmed him and weighed him down” (66). The threshold he crosses takes him from his spiralling mind to one that reflects the serenity of the natural imagery he finds on the far side of the bridge. The next morning, Raskolnikov awakens in the bushes of the idyllic island from his haunting nightmare of the slain mare, terrified that his own murderous actions may reflect that of his terrors. As he is “crossing the bridge” (74) to return home, Raskolnikov prays “‘Lord, […] show me my path, while I renounce this damned . . . dream of mine!’” (74) and proclaims to abandon his criminal intent for freedom. This decision, his choice to choose the sane of his “two minds” (5) reflects his position in the middle of the bridge; yet he leaves towards the side of the threshold that holds his anguish and his craving for power amongst the cramped streets of the city. With this transition through space, Raskolnikov turns aways from what provides him peace and retraces his steps back over the threshold to the turbulent mind that he inhabited before – one that consumes him when he overhears Lizaveta talking in the Haymarket moments later. These early bridge crossings chart his initial mental deliberations before he faces his doorways of “fateful, moral choice” (Yukhnovich 81; my trans.); thresholds where his wavering intentions transition into brash and consequential action.
Before he could “take the step” (Dostoevsky 508) and act on his desires, Raskolnikov is faced with the locked door of Alyona Ivanovna’s apartment. This manifests as the physical border between his intent and the act of murder itself. As he listens to the pawnbroker’s “hand cautiously feathering the lock” (92), she is pressed up on the opposite side of the locked door. Here, the door holds him back from his target, and the crime exists as a mere idea. Raskolnikov still holds nothing but the intention of killing. However, as the latch is lifted from the inside and “he grab[s] hold of the door and pull[s] it towards him” (92), the physical border is removed. This enables him to “walk straight through into the main room” (93), taking that step, crossing that threshold, to transition thought into irreversible action. Now fully immersed and fully committed to bringing the axe down onto the pawnbroker’s head, the crossover into the apartment manifests as an act of murder rather than just the idea of it. However, the door to the apartment remains ajar throughout the murders of both Alyona and Lizaveta. The open passageway serves as Raskolnikov’s escape: an exit that can remove both his guilty hands and mind from the space of the scene and wipe his now supposedly ‘extraordinary’ conscience clean. Even as “he rush[es] to the door and fasten[es] the latch” after realizing the gravity of his actions, his mind tells him, “[b]ut no, that’s wrong too! I must go. Go” (99), leading him to lift the latch and perceive himself righteously innocent once more. Raskolnikov refuses to close the door because that means he would be trapped with tangible proof of his crime and forced to understand that he is not a saviour, but a lousy killer. Yet his extraordinary plan becomes threatened by two voices climbing the stairwell, forcing him to “slip quickly and nimbly back into the apartment and close the door behind him. Then he grabbed the latch and quietly, soundlessly placed the hook in the eye” (100). As he finally locks the door, he has both committed the crime in body and in soul. He has sealed himself in with his sins, forcing himself to comprehend his guilt as he sits pressed up against the opposite side of the door at which he once stood innocent.
In a desperate attempt to conceal both his crime and conscience, Raskolnikov begins to isolate himself behind his own locked door, trapping himself in his twisted mind. From the time he gets back around 8 o’clock in the evening to past 10 o’clock the next morning, he is left to his madness in the coffin he calls a home. Raskolnikov is not a stranger to being alone, however, these 14 hours of isolation are unlike his regular reclusive life – his door is locked. As Nastasya and the caretaker come banging on his door the next morning, she expresses the irregularity of his hooked door:
‘Open up. It’s gone ten.’
‘What if he’s out?’ came a man’s voice [. . .]
‘Who put the door on the hook, then?’ Nastasya objected. ‘So he’s locking himself in now, eh? Scared of being stolen I s’pose. Open up, egghead, wakey, wakey!’ (112)
By locking himself in his garret, he isolates himself to depths further than known before whilst mirroring his position as in the pawnbroker’s apartment. Instead of hiding two bodies he hides stolen items and his bloodied clothes; rather than hiding from the two men who came knocking on the pawnbroker’s door, he locks out reality. Yukhnovich writes, “often, a tightly closed door is a boundary separating the external (real) and internal (metaphysical) worlds” (Yukhnovich 82; my trans.). His locked room acts as both a shelter and a cell from the external word; it harbours him from the consequences of his convictions, all while his internal conscience is trapped in his own guilt. In these moments of both mental and physical isolation he is confronted with “the conviction that everything was deserting him” (Dostoevsky 111): his conscience erupts, his mind becomes fractured, his theory has failed, and his fear consumes him. Yet hours later, as he “leant forward and lifted the hook” (113) to let Nastasya in, Raskolnikov began a mental transition, unlocking the door that he trapped himself and his guilt behind to be stepped through once more. This ultimately shows the first sign of movement toward crossing through a new threshold: one to confession.
The doors of the police bureau act as the threshold that Raskolnikov must open and cross himself into his own confession. It is Raskolnikov’s own will and conscience- not any physical barrier-that prevents him from emerging from his torment towards his admission. The day after the murder as he answers his summons from the police, “the door to the bureau itself was… wide open” (116). Raskolnikov walking in and confessing would have been easy- he stood before an open door- but it would not have been his own choice. He was in the office because of someone else’s will and not his own; this is why he could not open the door into confession himself. Raskolnikov’s absence of his own choice in the situation, his mindset, and lack of clarity in his conscience led to the door being open. The second time he enters the police bureau, he again enters on someone else’s accord: that of Porfiry Petrovich. When “Raskolnikov walked into the Criminal Investigations department of ––y District Police Station” (397), he had come to answer a verbal summons from Porfiry to question him as someone who had pawned items to Alyona Ivanovna. Just like the instance prior, he walked through the open door because he was there because of a will that was not his own, signalling that it was not his time to confess. Another instance happens during this same visit; Mikolai, a decorator working in the pawnbroker’s apartment complex, abruptly confesses to the murders. He forces himself through a threshold, through the doorway to confession, that is not his to cross:
There was a second or two, no more, of actual fighting; then, all of a sudden, someone seemed to push someone else forcefully aside, after which a very pale man stepped right into Porfiry Petrovich’s office.
[…] The man who had been unexpectedly shoved aside was the first to chase after him into the room and managed to grab him by the shoulder […]. But with a jerk of his arm, Mikolai wrenched himself free once again […]
‘I’m guilty! I’m the sinner! I’m the killer!’ Mikolai suddenly uttered, fairly loudly, despite seeming so short of breath. (421)
Mikolai’s frantic attempt to seize a doorway meant for Raskolnikov only underscore how confession cannot be compelled or borrowed; it must be chosen. Mikolai’s intrusion serves as a reminder of the very truth Raskolnikov has not yet reached—that until he can open the door himself, the threshold to confession will remain symbolically closed to him.
As these doors communicate Raskolnikov’s inability to open the threshold and take that decisive step, his co-occurring bridge crossings map his long-winded mental transition from criminal despair to convicted hope. Days after the murder and a quarrel with Razmukin, Raskolnikov takes off on one of his self-searching rambles through the city. He ends up on ——sky Bridge, “halfway across, by the railings, rest[ing] both elbows on them and gaz[ing] out” (203). Lost in his anguish, “Raskolnikov, standing Hamlet-like in the middle of the bridge” (Gill 3), looks out from the crown of the threshold for a “way out” (Dostoevsky 205). For one side, he looks into the darkening water of the canal as a choice for the continued sin of not confessing, even to the point of his own suicide to end his suffering. For the other side, Raskolnikov gazes out at the serenity of the sunset, and the beauty it cascades onto the houses across from him. Richard Gill observes, “since Sonja’s room is described later on in the novel as ‘looking out on to the canal,’ it is evident that it is Sonja’s window that Raskolnikov looks at from the bridge” (Gill 3); this links her and her window, “shining, as if on fire” (Dostoevsky 204), to the other side of glowing salvation and hope. However, after commotion on the bridge of someone else’s attempted suicide, Raskolnikov chooses neither side of his mental threshold, nor his sudden promptness to “set off in the direction of the bureau” (205). He instead lets himself be drawn further into his crime through the alluring and “wide open” (206) door of the murdered pawnbroker’s apartment, showing in that moment his continued mental instability and powerlessness over his own mind. However, the ideas of sin and the glow of salvation that Raskolnikov finds on the bridge remain with him as the two sides from which he must choose; these resonate in the characters of the nihilistic Svidrigalov and redemptive Sonya. In a state of tormenting indecision between the two sides of the mental threshold towards the end of the book, Raskolnikov finds himself on a bridge again, “paused by the railings” (584). This is after a coarse conversation with Svidrigalov about his sister’s and his own future, where he is forced to confront his options; either he follow Svidrigalov’s words and “shoot [him]self” (583) or follow Sonya and work towards the light. Yet here, he expresses his hatred for the “lecherous scoundrel” (584), letting Svidrigalov, and the sin he represents, out of his transitive mind and into the murky water below. Raskolnikov holds his mind firm, freeing himself of the influence of Svidrigalov, preparing himself to make the final crossings to the salvation of confession.
Raskolnikov makes two more transitions – one through a door, then the last over a bridge – to fully accept both his guilt and its consequences. He psychologically prepares himself before he can open and step through the final threshold into his confession. The first of these crossings is the fateful step through the doorway into Sonya’s home right before he tells her, “who killed Lizaveta” (489). Before going into her apartment, he grapples with a mental battle over whether he should confess his guilt to Sonya. But, without a second thought, “to cut short his deliberations and agony, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold” (489). He commits himself, on his own accord, to open and walk through a door that leads him to salvation, humility, and confession. Yet here, he had not convinced himself to admit to the police of his sins, believing that the lack of evidence would free him from any hardship. He had accepted his guilt but not the consequences. However, the day “he’d made his mind up” (614), he returns to Sonya and despite his pride, tells her he will confess to the police. Before he does however, he crosses one final bridge to complete his mental transition. At its apex, he “looked to his left and to his right” (628), surveying both the space, and mind, that he came from and the one to which he was going. In this moment of final reflection he thinks, “a week from now, a month from now, when I’m being taken God knows where in one of those convict wagons over this very bridge, how will I look at the Ditch then?” (628). Here, reflecting in the liminal space between his past and future, Raskolnikov accepts both his guilt and his consequences. This moment bears greater significance when looked at from Raskolnikov’s spatial-mental map, as highlighted by Gill:
Indeed, if a map of St. Petersburg is consulted, it appears that walking along the canal away from Sonja’s room would bring Raskolnikov to none other than Kokushkin Bridge, the one he crossed to go to the pawnbrokers. By crossing this same bridge twice, Raskolnikov turns, literally and metaphorically, from his crime to his punishment. In his beginning is his end, just as in this end there will be a new beginning. (Gill 4)
After this final bridge crossing, Raskolnikov’s mind has now fully transitioned from innocence to guilt; the only thing left now is declaring his guilt to the police. Now, of his own will, authority, mind, and body, Raskolnikov fulfills Porfiry’s “open and frank suggestion: that you turn yourself in” (Dostoevsky 551). As Raskolnikov “open[s] the door to the bureau” and “walk[s] through to the next room” (631), he crosses through the final threshold of confession. He submits himself to both the guilt and criminal consequence of his act, and the transition from sin to salvation.
The last sentences of any written work are undoubtedly some of the most important. This is what the author wants to leave the reader with, and in a few lines, close the arc that bridges the beginning, middle, and end of the story together. The last two sentences of Crime and Punishment read:
But here a new story begins: the story of a man’s gradual renewal and gradual rebirth, of his gradual crossing from one world to another, of his acquaintance with a new, as yet unknown reality. That could be a subject for another tale – our present one has ended. (658)
Just as the book begins, it ends in transition: Raskolnikov’s transition to a new self, a new world, and perhaps even a new story. Dostoevsky uses this state of transition throughout the book to intertwine space and mind, binding Raskolnikov psychologically to the thresholds that he crosses. The action that permeates within “the living sensation of the threshold” (Bakhtin 170) are intertwined with his own mental narrative of the story. By mapping the doors and bridges of St. Petersburg together, the full arc of Raskolnikov’s psychological transitions can be found. These thresholds guide the story from innocence to guilt, crime to punishment, and finally Raskolnikov’s eventual submission into his “new […] unknown reality” (Dostoevsky 658) – the product of the choices he made, the doors opened, and bridges crossed.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Characteristics of Genre and Plot Composition in Dostoevsky’s Works.” Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, edited by Caryl Emerson, University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 101–80. JSTOR