The lineage of Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

Following one thread, 3 works from Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) to Gambler's Luck (Spielerglück). Back to all 27 works

1. 1834

   The Queen of Spades (Pikovaya dama)

   Alexander Pushkin

   Russian Golden Age. Russia. written in Russian.

   A calculating engineer of Napoleonic profile frightens an old countess to death to extract her secret of three winning cards, and goes mad.

   What it handed down

   To Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) (1866)

   Direct source, probable.

   Pushkin's Hermann is a poor, ambitious young man with 'the profile of Napoleon' who causes the death of an old woman to get her secret. Raskolnikov repeats the pattern: Napoleonic self-image, an old woman as the obstacle, and a breakdown after the deed. Dostoevsky later called The Queen of Spades the height of fantastic art.

   Where it came from

   • Gambler's Luck (Spielerglück), E. T. A. Hoffmann 1820

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