Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, David McDuff (Translator)

Genres: Classics

720 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2003

About the author

Alternate spelling, see main profile Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reviews

[Sebastian Tchkotoua · Rating 5 out of 5]

“‘Where was it,’ thought Raskolnikov, as he walked onward, ‘where was it I read about a man who’s been sentenced to die, saying or thinking, the hour before his death, that even if he had to live somewhere high up on a rock, and in such a tiny area that he could only just stand on it, with all around precipices, an ocean, endless murk, endless solitude and endless storms — and had to stand there, on those two feet of space, all his life, for a thousand years, eternity — that it would be better to live like that, than to die so very soon! If only he could live, live and live! Never mind what that life was like! As long as he could live! … What truth there is in that! Lord, what truth! Man is a villain. And whoever calls him a villain because of it is one himself!’ he added a moment later” (191).

“‘What do you suppose?’ Razumikhin shouted, raising his voice even louder. ‘Do you suppose I’m going on like this because they talk nonsense? Rubbish! I like it when they talk nonsense! Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over other organisms. It’s by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I’m human. Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that’s an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can’t even talk nonsense with our own brains! Talk nonsense to me, by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one’s own way is almost better than to talk a truth that’s someone else’s; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely being a parrot! The truth won’t go away, but life can be knocked on the head and done in. I can think of some examples. Well, and what’s our position now? We’re all of us, every one of us without exception, when it comes to the fields of learning, development, thought, invention, ideals, ambition, liberalism, reason, experience, and every, every, every other field you can think of, in the very lowest preparatory form of the gymnasium! We’ve got accustomed to making do with other people’s intelligence — we’re soaked in it! It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t what I’m saying true?’ cried Razumikhin, trembling all over and squeezing the hands of both ladies. ‘Isn’t it?’” (241-242).

“‘N-no other reasons are conceded!’ Razumikhin came back at him with fervour. ‘It’s not nonsense! … I can show you the books they have: they put it all down to being “a prey to one’s surroundings” — and that’s it! It’s their favourite expression! From that it follows directly that if only society were to be organized sanely, crime would simply disappear, as there would be nothing to protest about and everyone would become virtuous, just like that. Nature isn’t taken into consideration, nature is banished, nature is not supposed to exist. The way they see it, it’s not mankind which, moving along a historical, living path of development, will finally transmute itself into a sane society, but rather a social system which, having emanated from some mathematical head, will at once reorganize the whole of mankind and in a single instant make it virtuous and free from sin, more speedily than any living process, bypassing any historical or living path! That is why they have such an instinctive dislike of history: “It’s nothing but a catalogue of outrage and follies,” they say — and it can all be explained as the result of stupidity! That’s why they have such distaste for the living process of life: they don’t want the living soul! The living soul demands to live, the living soul isn’t obedient to the laws of mechanics, the living soul is suspicious, the living soul is reactionary! No, what they prefer are souls which can be made out of rubber, even if they do have a smell of corpse-flesh — but at any rate they’re not alive, they have no will of their own, they’re servile, won’t rebel! And as a result they’ve reduced everything to brickwork and the disposition of the rooms and corridors inside a phalanstery! Their phalansteries may be ready, but the human nature that would fit them is not yet ready, it wants to live, it hasn’t yet completed the vital process, it’s not ready for the burial-ground! It’s impossible to leap over nature solely by means of logic! Logic may predict three eventualities, but there are a million of them! Snip off the entire million and reduce everything to the question of comfort — that’s a very easy solution to the problem! Temptingly obvious, and one needn’t even think about it! That’s the main thing — that one shouldn’t need to think! The whole of life’s mystery can be accommodated within two printer’s sheets!’” (304-305).

“‘No, that’s not quite what I wrote,’ he began in a modest, unassuming tone. ‘Actually, I will admit that you’ve given an almost correct account of my idea, even a completely correct one, if you like … (He seemed to take pleasure in agreeing that it was completely correct.) The only point of difference is that I don’t at all insist that extraordinary people are in all circumstances unfailingly bound and obliged to commit “all sorts of atrocities”, as you put it. Indeed, I don’t even think that an article which said that would be allowed into print. No, all I did was quite simply allude to the fact that an “extraordinary” person has a right … not an official right, of course, but a private one, to allow his conscience to step across certain … obstacles, and then only if the execution of his idea (which may occasionally be the salvation of all mankind) requires it. You say that my article is obscure; I am prepared to explain it to you, to the best of my ability. I think I may not be mistaken in supposing that that is what you would like me to do; by all means, sir. It is my view that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not on any account, as a result of certain complex factors, have become known to people other than by means of sacrificing the life of one person, the lives of ten, a hundred or even more persons, who were trying to interfere with those discoveries or stand as an obstacle in their path, then Newton would have had the right, and would even have been obliged … to get rid of those ten or a hundred persons, in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind. From this it does not, of course, follow that Newton had the right to kill anyone and everyone he wanted to, or go stealing at the market every day. Furthermore, as I remember it, I went on to develop the idea that all the … well, for example, all the law-makers and guiding spirits of mankind, starting with the most ancient ones, and continuing with the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Mahomets, the Napoleons and so on, were all every one of them criminals, if only by the fact that, in propounding a new law, they were thereby violating an old one that was held in sacred esteem by society and had been inherited from the ancestors; and, of course, they did not shrink from bloodshed, if blood (sometimes entirely innocent and shed in valour for the ancient law) was something that could in any way help them. It is in fact worth noting that the majority of those benefactors and guiding spirits of mankind were particularly fearsome blood-letters. In short, I argued that all people — not only the great, but even those who deviate only marginally from the common rut, that’s to say who are only marginally capable of saying something new, are bound, by their very nature, to be criminals — to a greater or lesser degree, of course. Otherwise they would find it hard to get out of the rut, and it goes without saying that, again because of their nature, they could not possibly agree to remain in it, and indeed, in my view, they have a positive duty not to agree to remain in it. As you will perceive, there’s nothing particularly new in my argument so far. All this has been printed and read a thousand times. As for my division of people into the ordinary and the extraordinary, I agree that it is somewhat arbitrary, but after all, I don’t insist on precise figures. It’s only my central idea that I place my faith in. That idea consists in the notion that, by the law of their nature, human beings in general may be divided into two categories: a lower one (that of the ordinary), that is to say raw material which serves exclusively to bring into being more like itself, and another group of people who possess a gift or a talent for saying something new, in their own milieu. There are within these categories infinite subdivisions, of course, but the distinguishing features of each are quite clearly marked: the people of the first category, the raw material, that is, are in general conservative by nature, sedate, live lives of obedience and like to be obeyed. In my view, they have a duty to be obedient, as that is their function, and there is really nothing about this that is degrading to them. The second category all break the law, are destroyers, or have a tendency that way, depending on their abilities. The crimes of these people are, of course, relative and multifarious; for the most part what they are demanding, in highly varied forms, is the destruction of the present reality in the name of one that is better. But if such a person finds it necessary, for the sake of his idea, to step over a dead body, over a pool of blood, then he is able within his own conscience to give himself permission to do so — always having regard to the nature of the idea and its dimensions — note that. It’s in this sense alone that I speak in my article of their right to crime. (You’ll remember that we started off with the discussion of a legal question.) Actually, there’s no need to get particularly alarmed about this, you know: the masses are almost never prepared to acknowledge them this right, they flog them or hang them (more or less), thereby quite correctly exercising their conservative function, the only slightly odd thing being that in subsequent generations those same masses put on a pedestal the people they’ve flogged or executed and pay homage to them (more or less). Those of the first category are always the lords of the present, while those of the second category are lords of the future. The first conserve the world and increase its population; the second move the world and lead it towards a goal. Both the one and the other have a completely equal right to exist. In short, the way I see it, everyone possesses equal rights, and — vive la guerre éternelle — until the New Jerusalem, of course!’” (308-310).

“‘Be quiet, Sonya. I’m not laughing at all; I mean, I know it was the Devil who led me to do it. Be quiet, Sonya, be quiet!’ he repeated blackly and insistently. ‘I know it all. All of that passed through my mind, and I whispered it to myself as I lay there in the darkness … I argued it all through with myself, right down to the last, most insignificant detail, and I know it all, all of it! And I got so sick, so sick of all that drivel! I kept wanting to forget it all and make a fresh start, Sonya, to stop uttering drivel! Do you really think I went into it like a fool, head first? No, I went into it like a fellow with some brains, and that was my undoing. Do you really think I didn’t know, for example, that the very fact that I’d started to search my conscience and ask myself whether I had any right to assume power over someone else like that meant that I didn’t have any such right? Or that the fact I was asking myself the question: “Is this man a louse?” meant that man wasn’t a louse for me, but might very well be for someone to whom the question would never occur and who would go straight into action at once … Or, finally, that the fact I’d spent so many days agonizing over the question of whether I was a Napoleon or not meant that I knew beyond all shadow of doubt that I wasn’t one … I endured the whole, the whole of the torment that drivel caused me, Sonya, and I tried to shake it off: I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for my own sake, for no one but myself! I didn’t want to lie about that even to myself! I didn’t kill in order to help my mother — that’s rubbish! I didn’t kill in order to get money and power and thus be able to become a benefactor of mankind. That’s rubbish, too! I simply killed; I killed for my own sake, for no one but myself, and the question of whether I’d become someone’s benefactor or spend all my life like a spider, drawing people into my web and sucking the vital juices from them, was a matter of complete indifference to me at that moment! … And above all, it wasn’t the money I wanted as a result of killing; at least, it wasn’t so much the money as something else … I know all this now … You must understand me: in taking the path that I did, I might very well never have committed another murder again. It was something I needed to find out, it was something else that was forcing my hand: what I needed to know, and know quickly, was whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a man. Whether I could take the step across, or whether I couldn’t. Whether I could dare lower myself and pick up what was lying there, or not. Whether I was a quivering knave, or whether I had a right …’” (499-500).

[Derp Boy]

After finishing Crime and Punishment, I felt uneasy knowing that I had survived a struggle rather than just reading a book. It is without a doubt the best book I have ever read because it is brutally honest about the human mind rather than because it is lovely, sophisticated, or consoling.
Because it doesn't flatter the reader, it's the best book I've ever read. It makes the assumption that we are capable of self-deception, cruelty, and moral cowardice before posing the question of what it would take to confront those realities without crumbling. After reading it, one's understanding of guilt, conscience, and the terrifying freedom of human thought is irrevocably changed. It is a book that lingers like a verdict.