“Nature Made Us This Way…”: Crime without Punishment? (Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ivan Bunin) Article 2: “Are There Such Signs at Birth?”

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Author: Gennady Yu. Karpenko
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DSc in Philology, Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Public Relations, S.P. Korolev Samara National Research University, Moskovskoe Shosse, 34, 443086 Samara, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7325-2802

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Karpenko, G.Yu. “‘Nature Made Us This Way…’: Crime without Punishment? (Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ivan Bunin). Article 2: ‘Are There Such Signs at Birth?’.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 2 (26), 2024, pp. 161–203. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2024-2-161-203
Received: 05 Feb. 2024
Published: 25 June 2024
Issue: 2024 no. 2 (26)
Department: DOSTOEVSKY IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES
Pages: 161-203
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2024-2-161-203
EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/ODVMEL
UDK: 821.161.1.0+27
BBK: 83.3(2=411.2)+86.37
Keywords: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Bunin, “Loopy Еars,” marginal anthropology, physiognomy, atavism, degeneracy, “born criminal.”
Abstract: The article examines the thesis of marginal anthropology as represented by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the novel Crime and Punishment and creatively reinterpreted by Ivan Bunin in the short story “Loopy Ears,” under the influence of the achievements of the Italian school of criminal law. “According to the law of nature,” people are divided into ordinary men and “natural criminals,” the latter identifiable by the atavistic “mark” of Cain. Dostoevsky and Bunin conceptualize the image of the “extraordinary man” differently. Dostoevsky, aiming to show the transformative effect of the “law of Christ” on the individual, nevertheless does not completely debunk the marginal anthropic reality, leaving it “free” in public spaces, thereby potentially “allowing” it to manifest, and it can find its practical and historical confirmation in criminals “by nature” (as in The House of the Dead). Bunin, without doubt or reservations, introduces a “dangerous reality” in the story — a “born criminal”, and endows him with characteristic signs, “stigmata” that are recognizable in the light of criminal anthropology. His appearance in historical life is due not to social circumstances, as researchers claim, but to the laws of atavism. Unlike Dostoevsky, Bunin does not lead his hero to renewal and transformation, but instead plot-wise releases the “born criminal” to freedom, leaving him without punishment. On the other hand, the identification of the “Old Testament code” associated with the “Cain complex” in the works of Dostoevsky and Bunin makes it possible to actualize the eschatological motif of the “second” creation. Historically, the act of the “second” creation is incomplete: culture again and again seeks to correct the onto-anthropological result of the sixth day because Cain comes back again and again to the history of humanity, or maybe he never left. It is necessary to discuss not only Bunin’s polemic with Dostoevsky, but also their detailed exploration of the acute anthropological problem that worried both writers as they sought to unravel the mystery of man, hierarchically related to God and various emerging evolutionary and social anthropic “impurities.”

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