Reinterpretation of Images From Dostoevsky’s Novel Crime and Punishment in Russian Rock Poetry

Russian rock poets focus on Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment and its characters: the old woman pawnbroker, Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov. The hero of rock poetry lives in the initially given anti-space, where the state is a well-organized structure that exists due to the suppression of personality. The classic interpretation of the novel’s idea - the fall and subsequent resurrection of the human soul - is impossible for the rock poet, who is painfully focused on the root cause of social injustice, symbolically embodied in the ‘eternal’ image of the old woman pawnbroker. The emphasized motive of her immortality makes the conflict of personality and the existing system tragically insoluble. The ‘self’ of the lyrical hero coincides with the consciousness of Raskolnikov. The main character of the novel turns out to be only ‘one of many’, any of those who decide to challenge the system - and lose. The moral meaning of the novel is reinterpreted: it only maintains the existing order, showing the impossibility of struggle, because the crime turns against the rebel himself, who is not able to withstand the torment of conscience. There is a redistribution of the ‘weight’ between the characters. The heightened experience of the meaningless struggle with the existing world order and social injustice pushes rock poets to Dostoevsky’s anti-heroes, in particular to Svidrigailov, who becomes an independent tragic figure. He, like everyone, is sinful, in his extreme cynicism he is even deprived of the opportunity to deceive himself - and the last thing remaining for him is bitter irony of himself, life and even the existential problem of human afterlife. At the same time, Sonya Marmeladova - the moral antipode of Raskolnikov - is mentioned in the texts only once, since she is not included in the conflict of personality and society, but acts as its victim, like Raskolnikov himself (therefore, this place in the system of characters is already occupied by a hero, whose nature is identical to that of the rock poet, more expressive, and similar to the demonic images of gloomy, gothic romanticism).