The Bridges of St. Petersburg: A Motif in Crime and Punishment
By: Richard Gill
Publication Details: Dostoevsky Studies 3 (1982): p145-155.
Source: Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 167. Detroit: Gale,
2006. p145-155. From Literature Resource Center.
[In the following essay, Gill argues that images of bridges in Crime and Punishment serve as symbols of
Dostoevsky's central themes.]
Read casually, the opening sentence of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment appears to be no more than a
rather matter-of-fact statement, conventionally providing expository details of setting and character: "On an
exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and
walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."1 Nevertheless, as the Russian critic Vadim K.
Kozhinov has observed, this initial sentence, though almost documentary in character, also has a symbolic
function; and when reconsidered in the light of what follows later in the narrative, it represents indeed "the
embryo of the whole huge novel," succinctly introducing images and motifs that are "linked organically" with
Dostoevsky's total design and meaning.2 The reference to the "exeptionally hot evening," Kozhinov goes on to
specify, is more than a weather report: it establishes not only the suffocating atmosphere of St. Petersburg in
midsummer but also the infernal ambience of the crime itself.3 The garret room, later described as a cupboard
and a coffin, reappears throughout the novel as an emblem of Raskolnikov's withdrawal and isolation. Even the
brief account of his slow and hesitant walk, Kozhinov notes, reveals the same irresolution that Raskolnikov will
display before and after the crime.4 Curiously, however, Kozhinov's meticulous explication of this pregnant
sentence completely overlooks its final detail--namely, the bridge itself.5
If, as the Russian critic convincingly maintains, the opening sentence is meant to serve as a kind of overture to
the novel, the bridge, like the other particulars, may also be interpreted as more than a matter of documentation.
In fact, its climactic position implies that the movement of Raskolnikov towards the bridge and thus to the
pawnbroker's room, in a calculated "rehearsal" (p. 5) of the crime, initiates the whole complex action of the
novel. As with rooms and weather, moreover, allusions to bridges recur throughout the novel, not incidentally
but in connection with nodal points of the action and motivation. My purpose here therefore is to show more
fully how this hitherto neglected motif of the bridge functions in Dostoevsky's dialectical orchestration.
To be sure, given the topography of St. Petersburg--with its rivers, canals, and islands--bridges would naturally
be mentioned in almost any novel set there. Dostoevsky's approach to the city, however, shuns reportorial
naturalism. As more than one study has shown, Dostoevsky--like Balzac, Baudelaire, Dickens, and Gogol--was
among the first to recognize the symbolic possibilities of city life and imagery drawn from the city. In Crime
and Punishment, particularly, St. Petersburg becomes a paysage moralisé. The actual city, "rendered with a
striking concreteness," is, to use Donald Fanger's words, "also a city of the mind in the way that its atmosphere
answers Raskolnikov's spiritual condition and almost symbolizes it."6 The crowded streets and squares, the
shabby houses and taverns, the noise and stench, all are imaginatively transformed into a rich store of metaphors
for states of mind. From this standpoint, the hump-backed bridges crisscrossing Czar Peter's labyrinthine city
are, as found in the novel, likewise to be viewed as metaphorical and highly suitable for marking the stages of
the tortuous course of Raskolnikov's internal drama.
Indeed, considered phenomenologically in terms of Gaston Bachelard's "poetics of space," bridges are potently
expressive. As Bachelard writes, "space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent
space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all
the partiality of the imagination."7 Thus, "all great simple images reveal a psychic state"; they "speak" to us.8
Bachelard himself concentrates on houses, without any references to bridges; nonetheless, his methodology-what he calls "topoanalysis" or "the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives" 9--may be
applied to bridges. Bridges also "speak," and with remarkable nuance. They suggest both union and separation,
distance and contact. Linking and joining what would otherwise remain separate, they also evoke the
"transitional," the state of being in-between. Crossing a bridge graphically accentuates the passage from one
stage to another, just as pausing on a bridge offers a vantage point for looking backward or forward, localizing
the uneasiness of indecision or the finality of commitment. Such phenomenological implications of bridges are
particularly relevant to Raskolnikov's peculiar psychology, his obsession with taking a "new step," (p. 4) his
vacillation between one extreme state of mind and another. All this, Dostoevsky would instinctively recognize.
In selecting the bridge as a motif, Dostoevsky may also have recalled--and perhaps intended ironic allusion to-the role bridges played in two well-known contemporary Russian works, both of which advanced sociopolitical
ideas antagonistic to his own. The earlier one, Alexander Herzen's From the Other Shore, a book Dostoevsky
admired for its poetic force despite his differences with the author's politics,10 opens with the image of a bridge
as an historical metaphor for the struggles of the nineteenth century. The liberal-minded Herzen, diagnosing the
abortive revolution of 1848, still held fast to his own hopes for the future, "the other shore"; and, evidently
remembering the words of his socialist friend Proudhon, who envisioned a new world where the injustices of the
present would appear "comme un pont magique jeté sur un fleuve d'oubli,"11 he began his own book with a plea
to his son not to remain "on this shore":
We do not build, we destroy. ... Modern man, that melancholy Pontifex Maximus, only builds a bridge--it will be
for the unknown man of the future to pass over it.12
Dostoevsky, with aspirations towards a future antithetical to that of Herzen, might very well have relished
exploiting the liberal's image in the portrayal of his own ideological dissenter, Raskolnikov. The other book,
What Is To Be Done? by N. G. Chernyshevskij, a veritable summa for the Nihilists of the 1860's and thus a
target for Dostoevsky in both Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment, opens with a dramatic
scene on a St. Petersburg bridge. In the early hours of the morning, a flash is seen on the bridge, and a shot is
heard. A man is then presumed to have killed himself, but when the bridge guard rushes to the spot, there are no
traces of any one to be found. The suicide is now disputed, particularly because of the grotesque circumstances.
"Does one blow his brains out on a bridge?" people ask. "Why a bridge? It would be stupid to do it on a
bridge."13 In Chernyshevskij's novel, it turns out of course that there has been no suicide; Lopukhov, one of the
main characters, has simply staged one to deceive his wife.14 But this incident, as narrated, closely resembles the
actual suicide of … by Tuchkov Bridge, and may be a possible source for the absurd manner of its execution:
"… took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles (the bridge guard) raised his eyebrows. 'I say, this is not the
place for such jokes.'" (p. 495)
In any case, whether Dostoevsky was mindful of these Russian works or not, a specific bridge in St. Petersburg
is often the stage for a decisive moment in Crime and Punishment. (Indeed, as James M. Curtis points out, to
appreciate the significance of Raskolnikov's whereabouts in the novel, it is helpful to keep a map of the city in
mind.)15 In the opening, to repeat briefly, Raskolnikov's crossing Kokushkin Bridge, in the first sentence, takes
him from his own neighborhood into that of the pawnbroker; in fact, her house is just on the other side of the
canal the bridge spans (p. 4). His actual encounter with the suspicious pawnbroker aggravates his indecision and
self-loathing; and the days following are given over to tortured introspection. Then comes a moment of spiritual
insight when he dreams of the mare being beaten to death. Here the topographical details correspond to his
ambivalent psychological state:
... he forgot at once what he had just been thinking about and even where he was going. In this way he walked
right across Vasilevskij Ostrov, came out on to the Lesser Neva, crossed the bridge and turned toward the
islands. The greenness and freshness were at first restful to his weary eyes after the dust of the town and the
huge houses that hemmed him and weighed him down.(p. 54)
The bridge he has crossed is Tuchkov Bridge, the same one later associated with … suicide. In this instance, its
implications are positive: Raskolnikov's passage across the bridge from the stifling mainland of the city to the
rather idyllic retreat of Peterburgskij Island represents, subjectively, a transition from the calculating and
inhumanly cold side of his divided self to another and superior one open to spontaneous and generous feeling.
This is borne out by the imagery and incidents of the sequence. Dostoevsky's presentation of the natural imagery
of the setting, as Gibian has shown, draws upon the traditional symbolism of myth: the "greenness" of the
vegetation and the "freshness" of the atmosphere are manifestations of the ancient life-giving elements of earth
and air.16 The natural surroundings, in contrast to the urban, release Raskolnikov's humane feelings, and after he
falls asleep in the grass, the dream of the mare brutally slain by its master, prefiguring the murder of the
pawnbroker, fills him with moral horror. Upon awakening, he abandons his criminal plan as vile and
loathesome. Significantly, this decision is made on Tuchkov Bridge, the same one that brought him to the island.
Now, during the moment of transformation, the bridge focuses his attention on water and light, two symbolic
elements in sharp contrast with the dryness and darkness of the city:
He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though surprised at finding himself in this place and went towards
the bridge ... "Lord," he prayed, "show me my path--I renounce this accursed ... dream of mine." Crossing the
bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky.(p. 61)
This decision--this healing of the split between intellect and feeling--is of course only temporary; the crime is
actually committed just a short while later. But the sources of possible regeneration have been introduced, and
like the course of the crime's preparation, key phases of its aftermath involve bridges. Raskolnikov's sense of
isolation and his hostility toward everyone following the crime become painfully intensified during another
bridge scene. On Nikolaevskij Bridge (p. 113), Raskolnikov walks absentmindedly in the middle of the traffic,
and a coachman lashes him with a whip for nearly falling under the horses' hooves. As Raskolnikov recovers
himself by the railing, a woman crossing the bridge charitably hands him a coin of twenty copecks--"in Christ's
name." (p. 114) Her gesture is a reminder of Christian love and salvation, but at this point Raskolnikov is in too
negative a mood to respond with gratitude. Indeed, the setting only accentuates his despair, for it poignantly
reveals to him that his crime has divided him from his earlier self and what was best in his own past:
He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva ... The cupola of the
cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight
... He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he
was attending the university, he had hundreds of times--generally on his way home--stood still on this spot,
gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in
him ... Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now--all his old past, his old thoughts,
his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all.(p. 114)
The images Raskolnikov sees from the bridge are rich with traditional associations: the cathedral represents
orthodox religion and redemption; the waters of the Neva, the bright sunlight, the majestic beauty of the
panorama--all are positive and life-giving.17 His lingering receptivity to such images will be the source of
regeneration later on; at this juncture, however, Raskolnikov gives in to despair and misanthropy: "He opened
his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home. It
seemed to him, he had cut himself off from every one and everything at that moment." (pp. 114-115) In contrast
to the bridge scene before the crime, this one is a spiral turning in what now seems Raskolnikov's irreversible
downward course.
Despair now leads Raskolnikov to consider suicide, and another bridge is pointedly made the setting for his
morbid self-searching. Quarrelling with Razumikhin, he takes off on one of his solitary rambles through the city:
Raskolnikov walked straight to X----Bridge, stood in the middle, and leaning both elbows on the rail stared into
the distance ... Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of the sunset, at the row of
houses, growing dark in the gathering twilight, at one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though
on fire in the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water in the canal, and the water seemed to attract his
attention.(p. 167)
This X-Bridge is actually Voznesenskij Bridge, which takes Voznesenskij Prospect across the canal near the
house where Sonja lives.18 Raskolnikov, standing Hamlet-like in the middle of the bridge, now faces the choice
between life and suicide. These alternatives are symbolized, respectively, by "the one distant attic window on
the left bank, flashing as though on fire" and "the darkening water of the canal." As James M. Curtis has pointed
out, since Sonja's room is described later on in the novel as "looking out on to the canal," (p. 309) it is evident
that it is Sonja's window that Raskolnikov looks at from the bridge; and "the fact that the ray of sunlight from
her window catches his eye means that he will ultimately go to her apartment, confess his crime, and take upon
himself the suffering which ... leads to regeneration."19 At this moment on the bridge, however, "the darkening
water"--in contrast to the way water elsewhere in the novel implies salvation--suggests death. Indeed, as he
gazes from the bridge, a woman suddenly appears and leaps over the railing into the canal. The woman, who has
obviously been drinking, is soon rescued, but her attempt to drown herself objectifies the possibility of suicide
that Raskolnikov has been pondering as an alternative to giving himself up. But the ignobility of death by
drowning repels him, and he decides to go to the police, though his departure from the bridge reveals apathy
rather than determination:
He felt disgusted. "No, that's loathsome ... water ... it's not good enough," he muttered to himself. "Nothing will
come of it," he added, "no use to wait. What about the police office?" ... He turned his back to the railing and
looked about him. "Very well then!" he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and walked in the direction of
the police office. His heart felt hollow and empty.(p. 168)
Almost symphonically, this despair is soon counterpointed with hope. Shortly after witnessing the woman's
attempted suicide, Raskolnikov enters the street where Marmeladov has been accidentally run over by a coach.
Taking the dying man home, Raskolnikov meets Sonja for the first time, along with her small sister, Polenka. As
he leaves, the child's grateful and affectionate embrace prompts Raskolnikov to ask for her prayers. Despair now
begins to give way to hope, and it is more than a coincidence that Raskolnikov finds himself back at the same
place where he considered suicide:
The child went away enchanted with him. It was past ten when he came out into the street. In five minutes he
was standing on the bridge at the spot where the woman had jumped in."Enough," he pronounced resolutely and
triumphantly. "I've done with fancies, imaginary terrors and phantoms! Life is real! Haven't I lived just now?
My life has not yet died with that old woman"!(p. 186)
But his hopeful realization is simply the beginning of his transformation, not its conclusion, as he here rather
complacently assumes. The pride and self-confidence expressed by his words are belied by his bodily
movements, for Dostoevsky immediately adds that "he walked with flagging footsteps from the bridge." (p. 186)
Actually, Raskolnikov does not yet perceive that the true source of this new hope is, not his own presumed
strength of will, but Sonja, whom he has just met and who will show him how regeneration must be earned
through humility.