Dostoyevsky: his grammatical constructs

I've been applying all I've learn, particularly the kind of grammatical schemes detailed here and here, about poetics to extant literature.  I picked up Crime and Punishment the other day.  The book's now crammed with notes in the margins.  It's a slow process, but developing a literary eye and ear seems indispensable to writing.  There are loads of things to analyse, like suspense, tension, his lexicon to analyse--but Dostoyevsky's grammatical constructs first struck me.

One technique he uses is to place one short sentence after, on average, two longer, complex sentences.  You can see this style below, from the first paragraph of Crime and Punishment.

• (1) She occupied the floor beneath him, and her kitchen, with its usually-open door, was entered from the stairase. (2) Thus, whenever the young man went out, he found himself obliged to pass under the enemy's fire, which always produced a morbid terror, humiliating him and making him knit his brows. (3) He owed her some money and felt afraid of enountering her.

The reader is jolted by the difference in pace between sentence (1) and (2), and (3).  This seems useful for two reasons.  The first is that it would become monotonmous to read the same kind of complex sentences again and again, in the same way it is monotomous to hear the same beat again and again without variaration.  See the altered version below, and then compare it to the former.

• (1) She occupied the floor beneath him, and her kitchen, with its usually-open door, was entered from the stairase. (2) Thus, whenever the young man went out, he found himself obliged to pass under the enemy's fire, which always produced a morbid terror, humiliating him and making him knit his brows. (3) He owed her some money, from being unable to pay rent since his retreat into solitude, and felt afraid of enountering her.

The other reason is emphasis.  The change in rhythm, in the former example, focuses the reader on (3).  This is particularly important, as the reader is made to focus on the fact the character is poor and afraid, which is important to the this part of the story and is the focus of the next paragraph.

It surprised me how Dostoyevsky's use of language, and not simply action or description, effected the atmosphere of Crime and Punishment's world.  Later on his uses "polysyndeton" effectively to show an oppressive atmosphere: '...and complaints, and have to make excuses and subterfuges...'.  The use of grammar, eh.  No just knowing what verbs and nouns are...