Crime and Punishment: Choreography of Text and Text of Choreography

Here is analyzed Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment not as being translated into choreography, but from the point of view of Dostoevsky’s own “choreography” of visualized metaphors of movements, constituting the encoded text of the novel. In the article “choreography of text” means verbal description of various motions, gestures, and positions, whereas “text of choreography” means the way one could interpret their message. In other words, it means the reading of presented visible actions as another unwritten though indirectly expressed text. Dostoevsky often refers to visuality and instead of words he describes silent movements. These movements are symbolic, and they silently speak of inner experiences, emotions, and thoughts, presented in a form of clearly visible events of the external world. A “sketch” to Crime and Punishment from the point of the “choreography of text” in the context of Raskolnikov’s doubleness is The Double, in which the whole fifth chapter is a recording of a complex, dynamic “dance” of bifurcation. Like the story, the novel concerns the inner life of the main character, the difficult path of one Raskolnikov to the other. This metaphysical path is shown as physically existing, and contradictory movements of the hero’s soul gain visibility while going through it. It seems the writer truly possesses not only the art of the words but also the one of choreography and can speak about the most essential things using body language. Sometimes the culmination points of the leading message of the novel are expressed in short but deeply symbolic words, and at times they are rather shown than spoken. Considering that the actual meanings of the text are not lying on the surface, but are concealed behind symbolic words and movements, these details require close attention and a thorough analyses which the essay is dedicated to.