“It appeared to him strange and marvelous that he should have stopped in this very same place as he used to do, as if he really imagined he could think the same thoughts now as then, and be interested in the same ideas and images as had interested him once…not long ago. This was almost laughable, and yet his heart was constricted with pain. In some gulf far below him, almost out of sight beneath his feet, lay all his past, all his old ideas, and problems, and thoughts, and sensations, and this great panorama, and his own self, and everything, everything…He felt as if he had soared upwards and everything had vanished from his sight…He felt that he had in that moment cut himself from everybody and everything, as if with a knife.”
-Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

I thought I’d make this a separate post, since it’s long and there are lots of pictures.

So in the afternoon of the 4th, we had a Dostoevsky walk with this well-renowned scholar on Dostoevsky’s life. He basically knows every street Dostoevsky ever walked, whom he spoke with there, all the places he lived, what rooms and corners inspired him, and everything else about Dostoevsky and Petersburg. Upon meeting the guy I didn’t realize he was our expert: white haired, open shirted, hairy, disheveled, unshaven, sucking a cigarette and wearing a wooden cross around his neck. He did not know much English, so Golstein had to translate for us much of the time, although I could understand quite a bit of what he was saying. We weren’t going to the Dostoevsky museum, however, because the expert guy held some kind of grudge against them. How typically Russian.

Some of the places we saw were really cool, and the pictures give a pretty good idea of what it was like, so I’ll let them do most of the talking.

We started out in what was the Haymarket (you might remember it from Crime and Punishment), which was kind of a slummy area. It’s right where the Sadovaya metro stop is—an area we hang out in a lot since it’s pretty busy and nearby to a lot of things (like the Mariinsky). We saw the building where Dostoevsky was imprisoned for two days for using the tsar’s name in an article he wrote (not allowed unless you get permission first). Apparently Dostoevsky didn’t mind the two-day prison sentence since it allowed him some peace and quiet away from his 2 and 3 year old children.

This was the prison:



We saw the street corner where Raskolnikov (if you’re familiar with the book) hears that Elizaveta will be out in the evening, which allows him to plan his crime. The book also comes full circle in this area when Raskolnikov kisses the ground in redemption, like Sonia asked.

We saw some apartments where he lived after his exile. It was interesting to look at them because these houses have not changed much at all since Dostoevsky’s time. We walked along the Griboedov canal, the crooked one, which used to be called the Kateriinsky canal (I think), right where Dostoevsky lived. The canal smells funny and according to the expert gives the region its special smell and texture, and looks especially eerie at night when the railings cast shadows onto the water, making it hard to discern what’s material and unreal.

It was neat to think about the places Dostoevsky lived and how they may have influenced him. He especially liked living in corners of houses, where two roads would meet at a cross section. The expert guy thought it could have something to do with his interest in religion—you know, being in the shape of a cross, (he always liked living nearby to a church too). Or maybe because when he was a student at engineering school he lived in a corner room… who knows. I was surprised to find out how many churches Petersburg once had. He said that in Dostoevsky’s time there were 500 churches for the 1 million people who populated the city. Now there are 15 for 5 million. Although I feel like Petersburg has a lot more than fifteen churches.

(Courtyard of an apartment building he lived in)

Dostoevsky always lived in cheap apartments and moved around a lot. He only lived on what he made from writing, making him one of the first professional writers. His brother lived in this building on the second floor I think, and Dostoevsky spent a lot of time here. So much so that he even moved here eventually.




The odd angle of the building is so they could fit more rooms into the space; Dostoevsky was inspired by this odd angle and there’s reference to it when Dostoevsky describes Sonya’s place (supposed to symbolize her disfigured fate).



It was easy to see how Dostoevsky acquired his ambivalent feelings toward St Petersburg from walking his streets, which are still claustrophobic, dirty, depressing, and oppressive. They have their own kind of decaying beauty.

This is where Dostoevsky lived for a while and Raskolnikov’s house is the brownish house down on one end of the street.

His apartment is the corner one on the right--you can see part of the balcony. Even though Dostoevsky omits exact names of streets sometimes, he is still very exact and you can figure out where these places are. Dostoevsky even lists the number of steps it takes Raskolnikov to get certain places, which pretty much match up. From Dostoevsky’s little balcony on the corner he no doubt could imagine down below the nervously twitching Raskolnikov pacing along his own street.

A plaque and this odd statue thing marked where Dostoevsky began writing Crime and Punishment:



On Dostoevsky’s house there’s a white little plaque that marks how high floodwaters came in 1824 (the flood which inspired Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman”). The expert (I still can’t remember his name) suggested that this perhaps inspired Dostoevsky regarding his idea of a rebel in St Petersburg, along with the notion of an intellectual crime (Dostoevsky saw the creation of Petersburg as Peter’s intellectual crime). And of course the idea of the little man reacting against authority.

This is the bridge near which Raskolnikov tried to hide his loot from the crime, and failed (which is the same bridge where the barber in “The Nose” tries to hide the severed nose he finds). The expert said that the stone under which Raskolnikov hides his loot actually existed. Dostoevsky’s wife asked him how he knew about the stone, and Dostoevsky explained how he really had to pee one day, and that’s how he found it. The stone was still there up till a few years ago when they built something over it.



The pawnbroker’s (the woman whom Raskolnikov murders with an axe, along with her sister) house was very interesting, and looked much like it used to. We were able to go up into the building. We weren’t able to go to Raskolnikov’s because the gate was locked. These buildings are still rundown apartments, even if altered somewhat during soviet times to turn some into communal apartments. But for the most part they’re the same. Cheap housing. The pawnbroker’s was creepy and claustrophobic. This gate and its courtyard are some of the incidental and under-the-surface views of St Petersburg that no doubt impacted Dostoevsky’s view of the city.

This was part of the courtyard:





In one of his stories he has a women kill herself by jumping from one of these floors.



The stairwell up to the pawnbroker’s on the fourth floor has odd acoustics and is very dark and narrow. The gold hand grip things on the staircase have been there since Dostoevsky’s time. Perhaps he even climbed these same stairs when thinking about his book!



This is the door behind which Raskolnikov hides on the second floor and drops the earrings that later get Nikolai into trouble.


This is the pawnbroker’s hall. You can’t quite tell from the pictures, but the wall has had to be continually repainted since people write quotes and things on the walls next to the door. Golstein said in the past there used to be young students around Raskolnikov’s and the pawnbroker’s who would yell “Raskolnikov you did the right thing.” But while we were there it was eerily dark and quiet.



We had to be very quiet walking up and down the stairs because the people who live there don’t like when people try to see the building and apartment.



This grafitti, not very poetically translated means: One life or thousands? Who has the right to decide? I? You? He?


All went well till on our way out this very angry Russian man wearing only his boxers opened his door and proceeded to yell at us in Russian how uncultured (a more meaningful insult in Russia than English,) and how Raskolnikov was never there nor was the pawnbroker and that we were mistaken and trespassing. I think there was some swearing in there, but my vocabulary isn’t that great yet. It would be pretty neat to live there, if you ask me. But most Russians just treat these historic and literary places as everyday things—like the rundown little apartments they are and always have been.