Journal Article

Guilt: A Space of Liminality and Dialogism in Dostoevskian Aesthetics

Hazra, Rea

2022

Overview

Fyodor Dostoevsky is often hailed as the undisputed champion of “the insulted and the injured” much like Milton’s Satan. His world is one of crime and punishment, guilt and expiation, God and the Devil. Dostoevsky is intriguing not because he sides with the devil or god, but because he shows the devil in god and god in the devil. Hence, Dmitri Karamazov who is immersed in debauchery is the one who is wronged, guiltless, guileless, is the one before whom the pious saintly priest Zossima reverentially and symbolically prostrated and it is the vile Svidrigailoff who is capable of conquering an idea he always feared, as Raskolnikov broods, “Was the desire to live so difficult to conquer? Did Svidrigailoff, who feared death, surmount it?” (427). The dominant emotion in his novels is guilt and it is on the edifice of guilt that Dostoevsky constructs his aesthetics. This paper proposes that Guilt becomes a liminal, interstitial space in Dostoevsky’s aesthetics allowing for the development of both, the emotion as well as the artistry, giving his novels their unique essence. This paper will primarily concentrate on Crime and Punishment and The Idiot in tracing the formation and consequences of this “third space” which “enables other positions [perspectives] to emerge,” as Homi Bhabha explicates in his interview with Jonathan Rutherford (211).

• Publisher: Vishvanatha Kaviraja Institute of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics
• Subject: Aesthetics / Christianity / Comprehension / Criticism and interpretation / Dialogue / Dostoevsky, Fyodor / Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821-1881) / Emotions / Guilt / Guilt (Psychology) / Liminality / Literary criticism / Milton, John (1608-1674) / Miscommunication / Novelists / Portrayals / Satan