Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment. A Russian Realistic Novel. First English edition 1886, translated by Fred Whishaw
KumKum presenting a copy of the novel ‘Disgrace’ by Coetzee
Yet as Malcolm Muggeridge, the English journalist, diarist and satirist, points out in his penetrating video biography of Dostoyevsky in 1975, Russia’s literacy rate at the time was ten percent. How did such a superb story teller, who could plumb the psychological depths of the characters he created, survive and thrive in such a parched soil of readers? It was not until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 that literacy rapidly rose to 100%, and from a nation of serfs who were slaves to a landed gentry, a vast intelligentsia arose.
Arundhaty, Saras, Shoba, Geeta, Devika
Though Dostoevsky trained as a military engineer following the wishes of his father, his heart was set on becoming a writer and at the age of twenty three he took the plunge and wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, telling the stories of impoverished people in St Petersburg. That set him on course for a career in which there were ups and downs. Ultimately, he wrote not only the present novel, but his even more celebrated work, The Brothers Karamazov.
Saras, Shoba, Geeta
At 200,000 words it was our longest novel of the year. It takes a while to get going and lends itself to judicious skipping, as do all Russian novels. A note on Russian names. They generally consist three parts: the first or given name, the second is the patronymic derived from the father, and the last is the family name. The patronymic is created by taking the given name of a person’s father and adding a suffix to it. ... The most common men’s suffixes are -ovich or -evich (meaning son of) while for a woman they are -ovna or -evna which stands for daughter of. Thus, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov is the name of the famous author (his father was also Vladimir). People also have affectionate names, in this case, Volodya. When you address a person formally you have to use the first two names, here, Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Hemjit, Priya, KumKum
The avid readers, all of whom had dedicated themselves to finishing the novel in time for the reading are gathered here at the end:
(Seated) Gopa, Hemjit, Geetha (Standing) Joe, Pamela, Geeta, Devika, KumKum, Shoba, Arundhaty, Zakia, Saras, Priya
Fyodor Dostoevsky - portrait by Vasili Perov, 1872
The readers wished Geetha on her birthday and presented a bouquet of gerbera flowers to her. Thommo could not be present on account of a sudden visit to Bengaluru.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky short biography (1821 – 1881)
Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, son of a doctor, in a religious family. He himself was immersed in religion all his life, and therefore treated sin and retribution for sin in his novels, which owe a great deal to psychology as well. He was at first educated at home by tutors and then at age thirteen went to a private school. His mother died soon after and his father was murdered when Dostoevsky was eighteen by serfs on his estate; his father was a cruel man apparently. Although Dostoevsky trained to be a military engineer, he loved literature and when he finished school he turned to writing. Some of the traits of his characters in the novels show up in himself, for example, a degree of nervous instability.
His novels often deal with people in poor circumstances, and we can see in Crime and Punishment, the novel we are reading, that there is a great deal of poverty, degradation, and hopelessness among the people and the dingy apartments they inhabit. Few can make ends meet. His first novel was Poor Folk in 1843, the story of a down-and-out government functionary. It was praised by Belyinsky, a famous critic. His second novel, The Double, was less successful. In that period he wrote stories experimenting in different forms.
In 1847 he unfortunately got involved with a group agitating against the government and got arrested and sentenced, ultimately spending four years in prison and four more in a Siberian army camp. All of this experience was turned to use in his novels.
In 1859 he returned to St. Petersburg with a wife from Siberia who contributed little to his happiness. He wrote some unheralded work (Memoirs from the House of the Dead) but it was his short novel, Notes from the Underground, that explored new territory. He justifies individual freedom as a necessary part of human life, even if humans often do not use their freedom for good ends.
Dostoevsky was a gambler and lost money and owed debts and fled the country at times to get away from his debtors. He married a second time when his first wife died in 1864 and the new wife was both practical and even-tempered, and a great help for him. She even took down some novels of his by dictation. In 1866 he published Crime and Punishment, his most popular novel. Though not strictly a detective story, it may be seen as a man pursued by his conscience and unable to live up to the extravagant reasoning which prompted him to commit the crime, namely to secure the funds to achieve the greatness that he thought lay in him. And because he was a superior person he was allowed to do things with impunity that ordinary folk couldn’t do. This was a theory about which Raskolnikov wrote a paper: “The 'extraordinary' man has a right ... to permit his conscience to step over certain obstacles … if it is absolutely necessary for the fulfilment of his idea on which quite possibly the welfare of all mankind may depend.” (p.276)
The novel The Possessed followed in 1871. His greatest novel is considered to be The Brothers Karamazov, about four brothers who murder their father. The psychology of the four brothers is distinct and plays a major role in the novel. Sigmund Freud thought the novel illustrated great insight. Dostoevsky died soon after he finished the novel. Russians mourned his death. In the words of Irwin Weil, a professor and lifelong researcher on Dostoevsky and Russian literature, “When he died there was a huge demonstration in memory of this incredibly powerful sensibility, writer, litterateur and expositor of human experience in a way and with an intensity that very few people could write.” Nearly a hundred thousand mourners came out on the streets to pay their respects. The link to Prof. Weil's video above is very instructive. The hour long lecture has a torrent of insights derived from his lifelong engagement with Dostoevsky.
Fyodor Dostoevsky grave in Saint Petersburg
Dostoevsky's body of work consists of 11 novels, 3 novellas, 17 short stories, and numerous other works. Refer to
(https://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Dostoevsky-Fyodor.html)
The readings for the session were arranged in order of the pages of the novel for the sake of continuity of the narrative. It was judged successful, perhaps a method to be followed in future for all the novels we shall read.
Soviet Union stamp, 1971
KumKum suggested at the end that perhaps KRG could read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and take two sessions to cover it adequately. The much quoted line from it is:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Zakia
In this short passage read by Zakia, Raskolnikov is gripped by revulsion at the ugly thought of murder that has entered his head. A glass of cold beer in a tavern clears his mind. He seems to have revived, released from the terrible burden of his thoughts. “But even at that moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not normal.”
Geetha
Marmeladov confesses to Raskolnikov that his daughter, Sonya, has had to become a prostitute to support the family because he squandered all their money in drink. Geetha said that a minor character often has a significant influence on the behaviour of other characters. Marmeladov is filled with guilt, and fear for what he has brought upon his family by his dissolute behaviour. He is looking for moral redemption. He goes on yakking in the manner of garrulous old men spelling out the details of his life and his wife's accomplishments, scarce bothering whether the listener is interested in his ramblings. Joe pointed out the Dostoevsky has chosen some of the names to fit the characters, e.g.,
Marmeladov means marmelade or jam in Russian, signifying the person gets into a jam most of the time.
Raskolnikov from Russian raskol, to split up; he is a divided personality
Razumikhin derived from Russian Razhum meaning intelligence. He doesn’t think of fantastic schemes like Raskolnikov, but gradually works his way toward success.
Zamyatov (the police detective) has name derived from zametit meaning to notice. He is perceptive and sniffs out Raskolnikov’s guilt early in the novel.
Arundhaty
Dunya’s mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, learns that her financial credit has suddenly improved when people hear that her daughter, Dunya, is to wed Pyotr Petrovitch; she considers Pyotr to be kindly, and a man of business. Pulcheria (the name is derived from the Latin word for ‘beautiful’, pulcher) is only concerned with her son Rodya (Raskolnikov) and doesn’t mind sacrificing her daughter’s life to get money to give her son. “It’s all Rodya, precious Rodya, her first born! For such a son who would not sacrifice such a daughter! ”
Lili Horváth as Dunya in the 1998 TV film
Hemjit
Raskolnikov overhears a student in a tavern say that he could kill the old pawnbroker Alyona, make off with her money, and put it to the service of humanity. Raskolnikov is agitated to hear such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was conceiving them. Hemjit raised the question whether this is all the imagination of Raskolnikov, or did it really happen? Was it a case of his hearing what he wanted to hear?
Devika
Raskolnikov returns to the scene of his crime, and on bumping into two workers he claims he has come to rent a flat. His strange behaviour makes them think of taking him to the police station.
Devika was reminded of the 2004 film Mindhunters, in which a group of young FBI students are undergoing training as profilers. A highly realistic training approach is adopted by assigning the group, variations of actual investigations, including elaborate sets, props, and FBI actors to play out the roles in each scenario. In the sequence a real criminal usurps the training routine and returns to the scene of a crime. This caused Devika to think of the similar scene in Crime and Punishment as ideal for reading. Long before the FBI, Dostoevsky had already set out such a scene in his novel. Raskolnikov wants to go back and see how it all happened. He seems a bit unhinged.
Joe said in modern times a lawyer would have been able to argue ‘temporary insanity’ if Raskolnikov went to him as a client. And got him off on a lenient sentence.
Geeta
Razumikhin meets Dunya and her mother to report on Raskolnikov’s slightly crazed state, and philosophises that men arrive at truth after many errors. He later kisses the hands of Dunya with whom he has fallen in love.
In this sequence Razumhikin says, “Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.” Joe said in his experience too scientists arrive at knowledge by testing crazy hypotheses that come to their mind and seeing where they lead. The ideas they conceive often lead nowhere and are discarded; this is similar to writers who consign drafts to the waste paper basket and start again. Joe cited Einstein's breakthrough ideas in relativity that came out of simple thought experiments (‘Gedankenexperimente’). Gopa cited the ring structure of benzene, C6H6, which was discovered by August Kekulé, the German chemist, after having a day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is an ancient symbol known as the ouroboros):
A comment was made about Western and Eastern modes of creative thinking, the one being logical and linear, and the other vaulting over difficulties by metaphorical leaps of the imagination. Joe is not sure such a distinction separates East and West.
Pamela
Raskolnikov expounds his theory that extraordinary men are permitted to commit crimes forbidden to the common masses, because the former have the potential thereby to create enormous good for humankind. If one assumes the crime was committed by Raskolnikov to prove his theory, then his own slip-ups indicate some flaws in that theory.
That Raskolnikov is not the Superman of his theory is made clear by his feeling consumed by guilt subsequently. No, he is an ordinary man and Sonya urges him to acknowledge his guilt in order to expiate his sin.
Raskolnikov argues: “I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty-bound ... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market.”
The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1830) wrote many works on the general nature of the Ubermensch or extraordinary man. The extraordinary man exists for noble purposes according to Hegel; if the ends are noble, then the means can be justified. All sorts of twentieth century calamities have befallen nations led by leaders who believed in the ends justifying the means. The Nazis raised their own stereotypical image of the fair, blond, blue-eyed Germanic type as as an Ubermensch, destined to rule over, and then eliminate, lesser mortals – gypsies, Poles, Russians, Jews, homosexuals, etc. It became a supreme affront to that idea when the great black athlete, Jesse Owens, walked off with four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 – 100m, 200m, 4x100m Relay and Long Jump – all in front of the watching Führer.
Gopa
Razumikhin discusses the article in which Raskolnikov has expounded his theory of the exceptional latitude in behaviour accorded extraordinary people. He asks how many people there are who have the right to kill others under this theory. Gopa’s passage was filled with satirical remarks that provoked laughter, such as these:
“Are there signs at their birth? I feel there ought to be more exactitude, more external definition. Excuse the natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding citizen, but couldn’t they adopt a special uniform, for instance, couldn’t they wear something, be branded in some way?”
“Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even this isn’t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others chastise themselves with their own hands ...”
“it’s alarming if there are a great many of them, eh?
Oh, you needn’t worry about that either,” Raskolnikov went on in the same tone. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number.”
“The man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have not peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of chance.”
Shoba
Shoba chose the passage for she could make out the reader would instantly take a dislike for Porfiry. He is a cagey character who plays a game of cat and mouse with Raskolnikov, and makes him very nervous in his presence. Porfiry is like an expert angler, playing with a big fish that may have bitten but cannot be landed at one go. So he has to reel out and let go for a while, and then reel in again, and continue in this way until he tires out the prey. In the end Porfiry confronts Roskolnikov and tells him he knows he is the murderer and he would do better to confess.
Pamela
Pamela, Hemjit
Raskolnikov expounds his theory that extraordinary men are permitted to commit crimes forbidden to the common masses, because the former have the potential thereby to create enormous good for humankind. If one assumes the crime was committed by Raskolnikov to prove his theory, then his own slip-ups indicate some flaws in that theory.
That Raskolnikov is not the Superman of his theory is made clear by his feeling consumed by guilt subsequently. No, he is an ordinary man and Sonya urges him to acknowledge his guilt in order to expiate his sin.
Raskolnikov argues: “I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty-bound ... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market.”
The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1830) wrote many works on the general nature of the Ubermensch or extraordinary man. The extraordinary man exists for noble purposes according to Hegel; if the ends are noble, then the means can be justified. All sorts of twentieth century calamities have befallen nations led by leaders who believed in the ends justifying the means. The Nazis raised their own stereotypical image of the fair, blond, blue-eyed Germanic type as as an Ubermensch, destined to rule over, and then eliminate, lesser mortals – gypsies, Poles, Russians, Jews, homosexuals, etc. It became a supreme affront to that idea when the great black athlete, Jesse Owens, walked off with four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 – 100m, 200m, 4x100m Relay and Long Jump – all in front of the watching Führer.
Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics in 1936
Gopa
Gopa, Saras
Razumikhin discusses the article in which Raskolnikov has expounded his theory of the exceptional latitude in behaviour accorded extraordinary people. He asks how many people there are who have the right to kill others under this theory. Gopa’s passage was filled with satirical remarks that provoked laughter, such as these:
“Are there signs at their birth? I feel there ought to be more exactitude, more external definition. Excuse the natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding citizen, but couldn’t they adopt a special uniform, for instance, couldn’t they wear something, be branded in some way?”
“Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even this isn’t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others chastise themselves with their own hands ...”
“it’s alarming if there are a great many of them, eh?
Oh, you needn’t worry about that either,” Raskolnikov went on in the same tone. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number.”
“The man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have not peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of chance.”
Shoba
Shoba, Geeta, Devika
Raskolnikov comes forward to claim the items he has pledged to Alyona, the murdered pawnbroker. He has to write an application at the police station in front of Porfiry Petrovitch, the detective who makes him nervous. 
Patrick Dempsey (R) as Raskolnikov and Ben Kingsley (L) as Porfiry Petrovitch in the film Crime and Punishment (1998)
Shoba chose the passage for she could make out the reader would instantly take a dislike for Porfiry. He is a cagey character who plays a game of cat and mouse with Raskolnikov, and makes him very nervous in his presence. Porfiry is like an expert angler, playing with a big fish that may have bitten but cannot be landed at one go. So he has to reel out and let go for a while, and then reel in again, and continue in this way until he tires out the prey. In the end Porfiry confronts Roskolnikov and tells him he knows he is the murderer and he would do better to confess.
Raskolnikov about to murder the pawnbroker Alyona with an axe
Saras
Saras, Shoba, Geeta, Devika
Raskolnikov suspects that the detective Porfiry Petrovitch knows he is the murderer. He is extremely nervous as they play a game of cat and mouse. Raskolnikov expostulates, “Come, strike me openly, don’t play with me like a cat with a mouse. It’s hardly civil, Porfiry Petrovitch, but perhaps I won’t allow it! I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly faces, and you’ll see how I despise you.”
Here is a terrific scene in a 2002 film Crime and Punishment where we witness the Raskolnikov vs Porfiry match when they meet at the police station.
Raskolnikov continues to imagine he has been painted into a corner. This is the monologue in his mind: “Did Porfiry wink at me just now? Of course it’s nonsense! What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset my nerves or are they teasing me? Either it’s ill fancy or they know!”
He continues thus in a haze of recrimination and uncertainty whether Porfiry knows the truth.
KumKum
Zakia, KumKum, Arundhaty
Pyotr Petrovitch who has come to claim Dunya as wife is offended that she puts him on the same plane of affection as her brother Raskolnikov. Dunya has brought her brother and Pyotr Petrovitch together to decide. She addresses Pyotr: “For your sake I must break off with my brother, for my brother’s sake I must break off with you. I can find out for certain now whether he is a brother to me, and I want to know it; and of you, whether I am dear to you.”
But Pyotr, the prig, is offended that she even mentions her brother’s love and his own in the same breath. “Love for the future partner of your life, for your husband, ought to outweigh your love for your brother,” Pyotr pronounces sententiously. And he gets thrown out by Dunya in consequence.
Priya
Katerina Ivanovna being rendered penniless becomes half crazed, and turns her children into performing street clowns to gather a little money. They sing in French to show their education. Raskolnikov tries to persuade her to go home. Katerina also suffers from consumption, and in the midst of her singing, coughs up blood, and collapses. She is carried to the apartment and there:
“She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.”
It is a very sad story, part of Dostoevsky's design to show the utter poverty and hopelessness in which a great many St Petersburg residents lived.
Joe
Sonya has followed Raskolnikov into his imprisonment in Siberia for murder, and takes care of him there. She suddenly finds he has changed. He loves her now and she is infinitely happy, even though seven years of penal servitude still remain for Raskolnikov.
Allowed a little time in the prison, she experiences a new awakening in Raskolnikov: “ ... all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees ... at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything.”
New Testament (‘ Novyy Zavet’) that Dostoevsky took with him to prison in Siberia
Gopa said this scene reminded her of Christ and Mary Magdalen, only the roles were reversed. “They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life.” This sentence casts the final event in the novel as one of redemption, a theme that runs through the Christian religiosity of Dosotoevsky.
As far as Joe was concerned ( Priya has noticed he usually looks for a romantic passage), this was the closest any scene came to intimacy between man and woman in the whole novel. Would Dostoevsky have been a top selling novelist in modern times? He's still in print 150 years later!
Toward the end there is a hint from the author of a sequel to come.
Passages Selected by the Readers:
Link to the PDF file
The 22nd Session was fantastic! Each of us had so much to talk about the book, its various characters, poverty, and the senseless crime.
ReplyDeleteJoe, you do such a good job in collating our random discussions into a pleasant, readable text. Thank you.
K2
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