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Kierkegaardian doubles in: Crime and Punishment
Author(s) -
Greenway John L.
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1978.tb00737.x
Subject(s) - impossibility , punishment (psychology) , character (mathematics) , philosophy , principal (computer security) , epistemology , psychoanalysis , wish , literature , psychology , art , law , social psychology , computer science , geometry , mathematics , political science , operating system
Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky apparently had no knowledge of each other, yet Kierkegaardian concepts can be of great use in elucidating the complexities of Dostoevsky's novels, particularly Crime and Punishment . As an instance of this, in his Journal from 1834 Kierkegaard considered dramatizing the “idea of a master‐thief”; the character sketches he gives are strikingly similar to Raskolnikov, Sonia, Pulcheria Ivanovna and Marmeladov. Furthermore, Dostoevsky visited Copenhagen for a week while drafting the novel. After this visit, he drastically altered the manuscript, adding doubles to Raskolnikov strongly Kierkegaardian in their conception. No influence is being asserted here, however; rather, I wish to show how Kierkegaard's concept of the three stages of existence can clarify the relationships among Raskolnikov's principal doubles. Though both authors abandon endings which synthesize antinomies, the impossibility to synthesize Raskolnikov's doubles into a unified ending posed problems for Dostoevsky as novelist that the either/or of life's stages never did for Kierkegaard as philosopher.