The motif of the sinner’s curse in the text and context of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The idiot”

The article examines the synthesis of heterogeneous genres containing a teleological plot about the curse of a sinner: a synodic tale about the retribution of a sinner and a newspaper criminal chronicle. This plot is realized in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” with the help of the reception of the story about the merchant-perjurer A. A. Mazurin and his descendants who were punished for their sins. One of them is his grandson V. F. Mazurin, who killed his friend the jeweler Kalmykov. The sensational criminal case, known to Dostoevsky from the newspapers, made a strong impression on the writer. Thanks to this, the image of Rogozhin appeared in the novel, and the development of his relationship with Nastasia Filippovna, who foresaw her imminent death by his hand, was rethought. The legend of the ancestral curse that befell A. A. Mazurin is presented according to the memoirs of the famous Moscow entrepreneur N. A. Varentsov and is connected in the article with the description of death and the afterlife torments of sinners in synodic prefaces. The details of V. F. Mazurin’s murder of the jeweler Kalmykov are covered by the court materials of the issues of the newspaper “Moskovskie Vedomosti,” to which Dostoevsky could also refer.