Crime and Punishment (75 page)

1
2
.
more useful
: Dostoyevsky and his journal
Epoch
often scorned the utilitarianism of a rival journal, the
Russian Word
, mocking its contributors for making out that ‘a pair of boots are even better than Pushkin' (
PSS
). Their prime target was the talented young critic Dmitry Pisarev, to whom the remark is now commonly attributed. In fact, Pisarev understood ‘usefulness' in a much broader sense, asking, in his essay ‘The Realists' (
1864
), for poets to be useful ‘as poets'.

1
3
.
Whatever is useful . . . is thereby noble!
: Echoing Chernyshevsky's claim in his essay ‘The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy' (
1860
) that ‘only that which is useful for man in general can be considered a true good'.

1
4
.
grey and rainbow-coloured banknotes
: Worth, respectively,
50
and
100
roubles.

1
5
.
vile,
hussarish Pushkinism
: A schoolboy poem attributed to Pushkin in the
Contemporary
in
1863
contains a couplet specifically linking ‘horns' with Hussars: ‘But Hussars are not to blame / For the length of a husband's horns' (
BT
).

1
6
.
but now I respect you
: Again Lebezyatnikov takes his cue from Chernyshevsky's
What Is to Be Done?
, in which a similar sentiment is expressed by Vera Pavlovna's husband Lopukhov when she tells him she has fallen in love with another man (Chapter
3
,
XXV
).

1
7
.
kutya
: A dish of rice, raisins and honey or sugar, usually eaten at funeral banquets; previously mentioned in Part One, Chapter V.

1
8
.
Gostiny Dvor
: A further allusion to the luxurious shops of Nevsky Prospect, glimpsed in the background of the novel from the poverty of its primary setting. The neoclassical Great Gostiny Dvor, one of the world's oldest shopping arcades, still thrives today.

1
9
.
Pani chorazyna
: ‘Madame Ensign' (Polish).

2
0
.
Panie!
: ‘Mister!' (Polish, vocative case).

2
1
.
bread and salt
: The phrase
khleb-sol'
(bread-salt) is found in a variety of idiomatic expressions in Russian, most commonly to signify hospitality.
In Katerina Ivanovna's repeated usage it gains a proud ring, despite its humble literal meaning (an example of the ‘pauper's pride' mentioned earlier).

2
2
.
Vater aus Berlin
: ‘Father from Berlin' (German).

2
3
.
T—
—
, the town of her birth
: Almost certainly a covert allusion to Katerina Ivanovna's real-life prototype Maria Dmitrievna, Dostoyevsky's first wife, with whom he had a difficult marriage (
1857–64
) cut short by her death, also from ‘consumption'. Maria Dmitrievna was born in Taganrog and graduated from Taganrog boarding school with a certificate of distinction (
BT
). Compare the descriptions of the ailing Katerina Ivanovna (and her attitude towards her husband, Marmeladov) with the description of Maria Dmitrievna left by Baron Wrangel, a friend of Dostoyevsky's: ‘very thin, with a passionate and excitable nature. Even then the ominous flush played over her pale face and a few years later consumption did carry her off to the grave. She was well read, quite well educated, inquisitive, kind-hearted and extraordinarily vivacious and impressionable. She had an ardent concern for Fyodor Mikhailovich and was very kind to him; I don't believe that she held him in very high esteem – it was more a matter of pity for an unfortunate man crushed by fate' (cited in
KL
).

2
4
.
en toutes lettres
: ‘Quite explicitly' (French).

2
5
.
Geld
: ‘Money' (German).

2
6
.
her father was a colonel
: In the space of two pages, Katerina Ivanovna has upgraded her father's status from ‘court counsellor' (whose military equivalent in the Table of Ranks was lieutenant colonel) to colonel (
BT
).

2
7
.
Bürgermeister
: ‘Town mayor' (German).

2
8
.
Gott der Barmherzige!
: ‘Merciful Lord!' (German).

2
9
.
sausage-maker
: A pejorative nickname for German women in Russia at the time, when most sausage shops in St Petersburg were run by Germans (
SB
).

3
0
.
for the right hand . . . not to know
: See Matthew
6
:
3
: ‘But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.' Tikhomirov aptly comments that Lebezyatnikov's ‘forgetfulness in this situation is far from accidental, since he renounces alms-giving on principle' (
BT
).

3
1
.
The General Conclusion of the Positive Method
: A collection of articles, edited and translated from French and German by N. Neklyudov and published in St Petersburg in
1866
; it included ‘Brain and Spirit. A Survey of Physiological Psychology for All Thinking Readers' by the German doctor and writer Theodor Piderit (
1826–1912
), and ‘The Regularity of
Apparently Voluntary Human Actions from the Point of View of Statistics' by the economist Adolph Wagner (see Part One, note
47
). A review in the Russian press bewailed the book's incoherence, but singled out Piderit's and Wagner's articles for praise; it seems likely that here, too, Lebezyatnikov is merely parroting someone else's opinion (
BT
,
PSS
).

3
2
.
Panie łajdak!
: ‘Mr Scoundrel!' (Polish).

3
3
.
unhappier than you are now
: An abrupt change in the Russian text: from the respectful, second-person plural form with which Sonya has addressed Raskolnikov until now, she switches to the familiar singular form with which he has long been addressing her. From this point on she will switch between the two forms.

3
4
.
neither Toulon nor Egypt nor the pass at Mont Blanc
: References to two of Napoleon Bonaparte's celebrated triumphs (see Part Three, notes 29 and
31
) and to his audacious crossing of Mont Blanc in
1800
with
40
,
000
men and heavy artillery in order to strike at the rear of the Austrian army in Italy.

3
5
.
all this was dawning on me
: Tikhomirov traces this ambivalent image of sudden revelation, ‘like the sun', to the appearance of devils, masked as angels, in the cave of the eleventh-century hermit Isaac of Kiev. St Isaac's hagiographer repeatedly compares their appearance to a sudden burst of illumination, ‘like the sun' (
BT
).

3
6
.
kiss the earth you've polluted
: The image may be traced to the Old Testament and to Russian folk culture, with its ancient practice of kissing and even eating the earth on making a vow, and its mythological image of
Mat'-Syra Zemlya
or Mother Damp Earth (
BT
). The latter, following the Christianization of Russia, became popularly linked with the image of the Virgin Mary. Dostoyevsky's readers might also have been reminded of the ‘native soil' philosophy (
pochvennichestvo
) that he and fellow-minded writers had been elaborating since
1861
(see Part Three, note
1
).

3
7
.
tubercles on the brain
: Tikhomirov argues that Lebezyatnikov's comment probably reflects ‘superficially understood information about “tubercular inflammation of the membranes of the brain” (i.e., tubercular meningitis)', which he has misapplied to Katerina Ivanovna (
BT
).

3
8
.
Tenez-vous droite
: ‘Straighten up' (French).

3
9
.
Petrushka
: The Russian version of Punch and Judy. A staple of fairgrounds, Petrushka had begun to flourish on city streets as well. Dostoyevsky, who took a great interest in street theatre and music, once described the character of Petrushka as ‘a kind of Sancho Panza or Leporello, but a completely Russified, popular character'. As Boris Tikhomirov
notes, it is precisely the popular quality of
Petrushka
that Katerina Ivanovna, with her aristocratic taste, wishes to distance herself from (and also, perhaps, the fact that the roguish Petrushka is given to mocking seekers of justice and truth).

4
0
.
‘Little Farm'
: See Part One, note
25
.

4
1
.
‘The Hussar
 . . .
‘Cinq sous'
: ‘The Hussar Leaning on his Sabre', based on words from Konstantin Batyushkov's poem ‘Separation' (
1814
), is sung by prostitutes in Krestovsky's
Petersburg Slums
(
BT
). ‘
Cinq sous
' (‘Five pennies') is the refrain from a beggars' song in
Grâce de Dieu
, a melodrama known to theatregoers in Moscow and St Petersburg from the
1840
s onwards (
PSS
,
BT
).

4
2
.
Marlborough . . . reviendra
: The first lines of a popular French folk song (‘Marlborough is off to war / And doesn't know when he'll return'). The song mockingly describes a page giving (mistaken) news of the death in battle of the Duke of Marlborough (
1650–1722
) to his widow. It gained particular popularity in Russia after
1812
, ‘since its ironic story of Marlborough's unsuccessful campaign [in the War of the Spanish Succession] was taken as an allusion to the defeat of Napoleon' (
BT
).

4
3
.
Cinq sous . . . ménage
: ‘Five pennies, five pennies / To set up our home' (French).

4
4
.
pas de basque
: A ballet step performed either close to the floor (
glissé
) or with a jump (
sauté
).

4
5
.
Du hast Diamanten . . . du mehr?
: ‘You have diamonds and pearls [...] You have the most beautiful eyes, / Girl, what more could you want?' (German). Lines from a poem by Heinrich Heine (
1797–1856
), though the original has
Mein Liebchen
(‘My darling') where Dostoyevsky has
Mädchen
(‘Girl').

4
6
.
In the midday heat . . . Dagestan
: The opening words of Mikhail Lermontov's poem ‘Dream' (
1841
), set to music many times by Russian composers.

PART SIX

1
.
political conspirator
: Work on this part of
Crime and Punishment
, in the latter part of
1866
, coincided with the public hanging in St Petersburg of Dmitry Karakozov (
1840–66
), who had tried to shoot Tsar Alexander
II
in April that year. Also due for public execution was Nikolai Ishutin (
1840–79
), to whose revolutionary circle Karakozov had belonged; Ishutin was spared at the last moment by an unexpected pardon
from the Tsar – as Dostoyevsky himself had been seventeen years earlier (
BT
). On Karakozov and his significance for Dostoyevsky see Claudia Verhoeven,
The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity and the Birth of Terrorism
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2009
).

2
.
I went to see B—
—: The illustrious physician Sergei Botkin (
1832–89
), who diagnosed Dostoyevsky's own pulmonary malady as he was beginning work on
Crime and Punishment
(
BT
).

3
.
A hundred rabbits . . . English proverb has it
: A characteristic piece of mystification and misquotation on Porfiry's part, for no such English proverb exists. A ‘French proverb' quoted in one of Ivan Turgenev's letters has been cited as one inspiration (
SB
), but there appears to be a common source: the
Procès de Madame Lafarge
(Pagnerre: Paris,
1840
), an account of the trial of Marie Lafarge (
1816–52
), who was eventually convicted for the murder of her husband by arsenic. The pioneering trial hinged on forensic evidence and chemical tests, and ‘
l'affaire Lafarge
' was followed in the daily press by a gripped and divided French society. One of the defendant's lawyers, Maître Paillet, criticized the preference of the Ministère Publique for generalities rather than hard facts. In support of his position, he invoked the words of the Attorney-General at the Court of Appeal, Monsieur Dupin, who had recently made the following ‘picturesque' criticism of the Ministère Publique: ‘
avec vos trente-six petits lapins blancs vous ne ferez jamais un cheval blanc
' (‘your thirty-six little white rabbits will never make a white horse');
Procès de Madame Lafarge
, p.
433
. The case furnishes an interesting and complex precedent for both Porfiry and Dostoyevsky, given the latter's suspicion of any legal system in which only ‘hard facts' – or white horses – hold sway.