“The fly was flying, she saw! Is this possible?” The Problem of Omniscience of the Author and Mithopoetic Effect in Dostoevsky’s Novel “Crime and Punishment"

Abstract

Dostoevsky was about to write a novel in the form of a confession, but later due to moral reasons he refused the form of the first person narrative (Ich-Erzählung). A new form of narrative appeared spontaneously on behalf of the author. At first, Dostoevsky just replaced in the manuscript the form of the personal pronoun I on He. The narration from the author preserved many features of the narration from the first person of the hero. The change in the form of the narrative became the subject of the writer’s reflection in his notes for the novel. His self-criticism is a key to the concept of the novel. The author has acquired the gift of omniscience. God knows everything — this is not given to the mortal. The change in the subject of the narrative had an unexpected effect. Esoteric, which is hidden from others, appeared in real life. The actualization of archaic forms of consciousness and the sacralization of themes, ideas, words, dialogues, motives, time and space takes place in the novel. Sacred connects the mythical and the ethical aspects. One does not reject the other. Both are religious. The mythical expresses the moral law. The text acquires knowledge and consciousness, being becomes an event and a co-being. Poetic animism (the animation of objects and phenomena) is manifested in key episodes. Poetry gives birth to a myth. The author creates the world, creates a poetic idea of the world and man. In the novel, Dostoevsky created the original narrative form “from the author” as an “omniscient being”. Later this type of narration was developed in the novel “The Idiot”, in the tale “The Eternal Husband”, in the “Diary of the Writer”. In other novels, Dostoevsky preferred that the author should have not complete but limited knowledge, so that he had the right, as he said, “to guess and ... to be mistaken”. In 1866, Dostoevsky discovered a new concept of the novel as a genre that entered the World literature as a Russian novel.