Salvation by fire: the Magdalene and the Madonna in Dostoevsky's poetics

In Crime and Punishment, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov, candle-lit Magdalenes blaze into burning-bush Madonnas, whose fiery presence proves to be redemptive. In each novel, Dostoevsky fans candle flames into redemptive fires through a series of shifting associations: he initially associates Mary Magdalene figures with candles, then transfigures these Magdalenes into Mother of God figures through grand conflagrations, both symbolic and literal. The Magdalene-to-Madonna transfiguration occurs in part through Dostoevsky’s subtle allusions to art historical depictions of Mary Magdalene with candles—such as Georges de la Tour’s The Penitent Magdalen—and through his subtle allusions to liturgical and iconographic depictions of Mary the Mother of Jesus as the burning bush, the Theotokos who bears God and yet is not consumed.