Read Crime and Punishment Online
Authors: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment (96 page)
How it came to pass he himself did not know, but suddenly it was as though something had snatched at him, and he was hurled to her feet. He wept, and hugged her knees. In that first split second she was afraid, and her whole face froze. She leapt
up from where she was sitting and stared at him, trembling. But immediately, in that same instant, she understood everything. Her eyes began to shine with an infinite happiness; she had understood, and now she was in no doubt that he loved her, loved her infinitely, and that at last it had arrived, that moment…
They tried to speak, but were unable to. There were tears in their eyes. Both of them looked pale and thin; but in these ill, pale faces there now gleamed the dawn of a renewed future, a complete recovery to a new life. What had revived them was love, the heart of the one containing an infinite source of life for the heart of the other.
They determined to wait and endure. There were still seven years to go, and until that time was over how much unendurable torment and how much infinite happiness they would experience! But he had recovered, and he knew it, felt it completely with the whole of his renewed being, while she – she, after all, lived only in his life!
That same evening, when the barracks had been locked for the night, Raskolnikov lay on the plank-bed, thinking about her. Throughout that day he had even felt that all the convicts, his former enemies, now looked upon him differently. He had actually begun to talk to them, and they had replied to him in kindly tones. Now this came back to him; but after all, this was the only way it could be: surely everything now must change?
He thought about her. He recalled the way he had constantly tormented her, preying upon the emotions of her heart; he remembered her pale, thin little face, but now these memories caused him hardly any pain: he was aware of the infinite love with which he would make up for those sufferings now.
In any case, what were they, all those torments of the past,
all
of them? The whole thing, even his crime, even his sentence and exile, now seemed to him, on this first impulse, now seemed to him something alien and external, as though none of it had ever happened to him. He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening, or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found his way to a solution of these
questions in a conscious manner; now he could only feel. In place of dialectics life had arrived, and in his consciousness something of a wholly different nature must now work towards fruition.
Under his pillow there was a copy of the New Testament. Mechanically, he took it out. This book was hers, was the same one from which she had read to him of the raising of Lazarus. At the outset of his penal servitude he had thought she would torment him with religion, talk about the New Testament and press books on him. Much to his great surprise, however, she never once even offered him a New Testament. He himself had asked for it not long before he had fallen ill, and she had brought him her copy in silence. Until now, he had never opened it.
Even now he did not open it, but a certain thought flickered through his mind: ‘What if her convictions can now be mine, too? Her feelings, her strivings, at least…’
All that day she too had been in a state of excitement, and at night even suffered a return of her illness. So happy was she, however, so unexpectedly happy that her happiness almost made her afraid. Seven years,
only
seven years! At certain moments during the initial period of their happiness they both viewed those seven years as if they had been seven days. He did not even know yet that his new life had not been given him gratis, that he would have to purchase it dearly, pay for it by a great heroic deed that still lay in the future…
But at this point a new story begins, the story of a man's gradual renewal, his gradual rebirth, his gradual transition from one world to another, of his growing acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality. This might constitute the theme of a new narrative – our present narrative is, however, at an end.
PART ONE
1.
At the beginning of July
…
weather
: The action of
Crime and Punishment
takes place in the summer of 1865, which in St Petersburg was a particularly hot one. ‘Unbearable heat and humidity!’ a contemporary newspaper account read. ‘When one looks at the thermometer it reads 24 – 25 – 26 degrees Réaumur in the shade! At one, at two o'clock in the morning it is scarcely possible to breathe.’
2.
S
—
Lane
…
K
—
n Bridge
: Stolyarny Lane and Kokushkin Bridge. The omission of part of the names here, as elsewhere in the text, was done by Dostoyevsky in order to placate the censor.
3.
a tall
,
five-storey tenement
: Throughout, ‘tenement’ and ‘tenements’ translate the Russian word
dom
(literally ‘house’). These were large stone buildings in St Petersburg acquired in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by private landlords and divided up into separate apartments which were offered for rent. The tenants of the apartments frequently sublet rooms to people even poorer than themselves. Notices advertising vacant rooms and lodgings were posted at the gateways of the tenements, which were usually known and referred to by the owner's name.
4.
Zimmerman
'
s
: Zimmerman was a well-known St Petersburg hat manufacturer in whose shop Dostoyevsky himself once bought a hat.
5.
the Canal
: Dostoyevsky refers to the Yekaterininsky (Catherine) Canal as
kanava
– literally ‘the ditch’, or open sewer. For clarity's sake I have opted for ‘the Canal’, but the reader should bear in mind the negative associations.
6.
sukhar
': Kind of rusk.
1.
poddyovka
: Man's long-waisted coat.
2.
have you ever
…
on the hay barges?
: The hay barges on the Neva were a favourite overnight resting-place for St Petersburg's tramps and down-and-outs.
3.
Mr Lebezyatnikov
: Dostoyevsky discussed the connotations of this name in his draft sketches of the novel: ‘Lebezyatnikov, cringing, acquiescence… the epitome of fawning’. Later he noted: ‘Nihilism – the lackeydom of thought’. Lebezyatnikov also makes an appearance in Dostoyevsky's short story ‘Bobok’ (1873).
4.
yellow card
: Reference to the system of licensed prostitution that existed in St Petersburg. Prostitutes carried a special yellow-coloured passport.
5.
that which was hid is now revealed
: Allusion to Matthew 10:26: ‘for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known’ (Authorized Version).
6.
danced with the shawl
: A privilege awarded for distinction in private boarding-schools for girls.
7.
half
-
shtof of vodka
: A
shtof
, or ‘shtoff,’ measured approximately 1.2 litres.
8.
Lewes
’
Physiology
:
Physiology of Common Life
(1859–60) by George Henry Lewes. Dostoyevsky owned the second edition of the Russian translation of this work (1876), which enjoyed great popularity among female nihilists during the 1860s, along with the writings of Buckle, Darwin, Moleshott, Focht, Büchner and other positivist and/or materialist philosophers.
9.
can a poor but honest
…
by honest work
: The question of female labour was much discussed in Russian intellectual circles during the 1860s. In particular, see N. G. Chernyshevsky's novel
What Is To Be Done?
(1863).
10.
drap-de-dames shawl
:
Drap-de-dames
was a fine cloth used by ladies. Anna Grigoryevna Dostoyevskaya, the writer's second wife, describing her first visit to his apartment in 1866, recalled: ‘I rang the bell and the door was immediately opened by an old servant-woman with a green checked shawl thrown about her shoulders. So recently had I read
Crime and Punishment
that I found myself wondering whether this shawl might have been the prototype of the
drap-de-dames
shawl that played such an important role in the Marmeladov house-hold.’
11.
Kapernaumov
: Kapernaumov's name has ambiguous connotations: ‘Mr Capernaum’ might seem a fitting name for Sonya's
landlord – but the word
kapernaum
was also nineteenth-century St Petersburg slang for a brothel.
12.
‘
The Little Homestead
’: Khutorok, a popular setting by Klimovsky of a ballad by Koltsov.
1.
two lots in weight
: A
lot
was a Russian weight equivalent to 12.797 grams.
2.
the gospozhinki
: In Orthodox Russia weddings are usually held in the period from Christmas to Shrovetide (
myasoyed
), when meat can be eaten. The
gospozhinki
are days of fasting, the duration of which is 1–15 August, and which are followed by the Feast of the Assumption and another meat-eating period (
osenniy myasoyed
) that lasts until 14 November.
3.
V— Prospect
: Voznesensky Prospect.
1.
Schöne Seelen
: Literally ‘beautiful souls’ (German). A translation from the French ‘
belles âmes
’.
2.
St Anne
'
s Ribbon
: The Order of St Anne, awarded for prowess in state service. There were four grades of the award – Luzhin has the fourth and lowest.
3.
K— Boulevard
: Konnogvardeysky (Horseguards) Boulevard.
4.
Svidrigailov
: The name ‘Svidrigailov’ was already familiar to Dostoyevsky's contemporaries of the 1860s. In 1861, for example, the newspaper
Iskra
ran a column on ‘fops up to no good in the provinces’: Borodavkin (‘a fop in the pedigree of Pushkin's Count Nulin’) and ‘his levrette Svidrigailov’. The latter was characterized as follows:
Svidrigailov is a functionary of
certain
, or, as is said,
particular
, or, as is again the expression,
multifarious
errands… He is, if you like, a fixer… a man of obscure origins, with a sordid past; a repulsive individual, loathsome to the fresh, honest gaze, insidious, creeping into the soul… Svidrigailov has a finger in every pie: he is the president of some new committee, brought into being especially for him, he is involved in the produce fair business, he knows a trick or two in the horse trade, he is everywhere… if it is necessary to dream up some piece of chicanery, to transmit some piece of gossip to the right quarters, to play some dirty trick… to that purpose there is available a certain talented man – Svidrigailov; if in return for a post or a business favour one needs to extort a large friendly bribe from someone; if one needs to acquire a pretty
governess… Hm! For such ends there exists the most keen-witted factotum, the most efficient intermediary – Svidrigailov… And this base, creeping, eternally grovelling individual, who offends against every kind of human dignity, flourishes: builds house after house, acquires horses and carriages, throws poisonous dust in the face of society, at the expense of which he grows fat, swells up like a sponge in soapy water…
5.
a cigarette
: The smoking of cigarettes in the street was made legal in St Petersburg on 4 July 1865; before then it had been prohibited by public statute.
6.
a certain percentage has to go off down that road
: Reference to the essays in ‘social statistics’ (based on the ideas of the Belgian astronomer and statistician Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874)) by the popular economist A. Wagner, which had been appearing in the Russian press.
1.
his tired eyes found the leafy coolness agreeable
: Raskolnikov has crossed the Little Neva by way of the Tuchkov Bridge. This was one of Dostoyevsky's own favourite walking-places in summer.
2.
kut
'
ya
: A kind of sweet rice gruel eaten at funeral meals.
3.
armyaks
: An armyak (or ‘armiak’) is a peasant cloth coat.
4.
a kichka
…
koty
: A
kichka
was a Russian festive headdress worn by married women. Koty are warm fur slippers.
5.
K— Lane
: Konny Lane.
1.
Yusupov Park
: On Sadovaya Street, opposite Catherinehof Prospect. The only park in Spasskaya, one of the most densely inhabited quarters of the town, and possessing a handsome fountain; during the daytime in summer it was usually full of artisans and members of the lower middle classes.
2.
men who are being led to the scaffold
…
along the way
: There is an echo here of Victor Hugo's
Le Dernier Jour d
'
un Condamne
(1829), one of Dostoyevsky's favourite stories – and, of course, of the writer's own experience of death-sentence and reprieve.
1.
the Gambrinus
: The Gambrinus beer-parlour was situated on Vasily Island. It was owned by a brewing company of the same name, which was derived from the legendary Flemish king and patron of brewers, who was supposed to have invented beer.
1.
sein Rock
…
gedruckt
…
get it in all the newspapers
: His coat… printed (German). One contemporary feuilletonist wrote:
The morals and manners of our literary backyard are becoming less and less civilized. One has occasion to hear the most outrageous things concerning the public accusers of various inns, restaurants and the like. They pop up everywhere, eating, drinking, receiving gifts and boasting that if everything is not to their taste they will deliver a public accusation forthwith – if, that is to say, they are not given the bribes they request or are asked for money in exchange for the wine they have imbibed and the food they have consumed.
2.
I shall give you the zu Hundert treatment
: A military expression, meaning ‘I'll make you run the gauntlet.’
3.
Nikodim Fomich himself
: In June 1865, pursued by his publisher Stellovsky, Dostoyevsky had received a summons to report to the police bureau in Stolyarny Lane in connection with the inventory of his property for non-payment of promissory notes. It seems probable that the district police official who was placed in charge of Dostoyevsky's case served as the prototype for Nikodim Fomich.