Chapter Four

“The Parable of the Prodigal Son” in Crime and Punishment

For sheer dramatic intensity, very few scenes in world literature can match the crucial candle-lit episode in Crime and Punishment where Sonia reads to Raskol’nikov from the Gospels about the raising of Lazarus. It is a redemptive episode comparable in its power to the horrific murder scenes—scenes that it parallels—at the beginning of the novel. “The candle-end had long since burned low in the crooked candlestick, dimly illuminating in this poverty-stricken room the murderer and the woman who had gone astray (bludnitsa) who had come together so strangely to read the eternal book” (PSS 6: 248-252). That she reads from Lazarus, who rose from the dead after four days in the tomb, is especially important for the twin motifs of death—whether spiritual or physical—and the subsequent regeneration that underlie Fyodor Dostoevsky’s great novel. And the Lazarus story is crucial as a symbolic key for Raskol’nikov’s own four days between murder and his first hesitant steps toward recovery. So essential is the tale of Lazarus for Raskol’nikov’s eventual redemption that it occupies all of Part IV, Chapter 4, in Dostoevsky’s novel, with a significant repetition of the number four) which figures as temporally comparable to Raskol’nikov’s own period in “hell”). Yet, for all its passionate dramatic force and its central importance for understanding Crime and Punishment, the story of Lazarus—however crucial it may be—is not the only biblical tale to play an important role in the novel. The twin motifs of death and regeneration, and of loss and return; and the miracle of love associated quite rightly with Lazarus also figure as central to one of the most moving and significant parables of the New Testament: “The Parable of 144 Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response the Prodigal Son”.1 Both the story of Lazarus and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” include “journeys”.2 The “journey” for Lazarus is a temporal one over a period of four days, from death and decay to a return back to life. The journey of the Prodigal Son is spatial (geographical) but also temporal and spiritual, for he returns home with a new understanding, appreciation, and love for Father. We know quite well how important “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” was for Dostoevsky personally, since, as Joseph Frank notes (2002: 748; emphasis added), Dostoevsky on his death bed “requested […] that the parable of the Prodigal Son be read to [his] children” and that his children should turn to God “if they should ever commit a crime (a prestuplenie) […], to trust God as their Father, plead with Him for forgiveness, and be certain that He would rejoice in their repentance, just as the father had done on the return of the Prodigal Son”. And, as the Elder Zosima reminds his “children” in The Brothers Karamazov (PSS 14: 267), “Don’t forget also the parables of Our Lord, mainly from the Gospel of Luke (such have I done) [….]”.

1As Askol’dov has observed, all of Dostoevsky’s novels reprise the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”. S.A. Askol’dov, “Dostoevskii kak uchitel’ zhizni”, in V.M. Borisov, A.B. Roginskii and E.L. Novitskaia eds., O Dostoevskom: Tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli 1881-1931 godov. Sbornik statei (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 253. Many thanks to Caryl Emerson and Ksana Blank for bringing Askol’dov’s essay to my attention. This chapter is based on a paper delivered at the 2000 Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, in Denver. I would like to thank Caryl Emerson for her helpful and constructive comments. Bocharov treats the Prodigal Son motif in post-revolutionary Russian fiction but not in Dostoevsky. A. Bocharov, “Vremia vozvrashcheniia, bremia vozvrashcheniia”, Oktiabr’ 4 (April 1984): 186-192. Robin Feuer Miller (Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Journey [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007]) discusses parables in Dostoevsky’s work but refers only in passing to Lazarus in Crime and Punishment. Tat’iana Kasatkina briefly mentions the Prodigal Son but does not develop the theme. Tat’iana Kasatkina, “Filosofskie i politicheskie vzgliady Dostoevskogo”, Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura 8 (1997): 170. I would like to thank Paul Friedrich for making very helpful comments on this chapter. 2Brett Cooke has reminded me of similarities between the legend/myth of the Wandering Jew and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. According to the legend, the Wandering Jew Ahasuerus refused to let Jesus rest on the way to the Crucifixion. As a punishment, he was forced to roam the earth until the Second Coming. Gustave Doré, who illustrated Dante’s Inferno, would also depict the Wandering Jew. For a brief but thorough summation of the legend, see R. Edelmann, “Ahasuerus, The Wandering Jew”, Galit Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes, eds., The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 1-10.