Background
Originally Bunin planned to write a large novel about a serial killer, "vyrodok" (a moral degenerate) named Sokolovych, for which the now known text of the story would form a kind of primal factual basis. In the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (ЦГАЛИ) there are several expanded versions of the story, each pointing to directions in which it was supposed to develop into a novel. One of them feature as its obvious turning point Sokolovich's words addressed to a policeman: "In this case I am more of a sufferer than a criminal. Why? This does not concern you in any way". In another rough draft Sokolovich's family past and socio-psychological aspects of the environment were explored. In it, the murderer, arrested in Vologda a month after the act, asks for permission to produce a hand-written account of what preceded it and (according to the author) "comes out with something much more cruel and bizarre than might have been expected even taking into account the nature of the atrocity committed."''Crime and Punishment'' parallels
According to the literary scholar Aleksandr Dolinin, ''Looped Ears'' (that's his version of the title's translation) "rewrites" ''Crime and Punishment'', constructing a "recognizable Dostoevskian world of gloomy, oppressive Saint Petersburg with its misty streets, demonic slums, seedy taverns and hotels, and then exploding it from within." The story's two characters, the murderer Sokolovich and the prostitute Korolkova, his victim, are "the grim travesties of Raskolnikov and Sonia lacking any redeeming moral aspects of their models." Bunin's down-to-earth treatment of murder and prostitution, argues the critic, is intended to debunk Dostoevsky's melodramatic 'humanization' of the subject. Sokolovich takes it upon himself to take issue with the author of ''Crime and Punishment'' in his monologue, expounding his own philosophy of murder:External links
References
{{Ivan Bunin Short stories by Ivan Bunin 1917 short stories