Crime and Punishment

by Ernest J. Simmons

The twenty-four-year-old Dostoevsky, his head in a whirl, had just left the house of the famous critic, Vissarion Belinsky, a man whose favorable opinion any young author would have prized in the Russia of those days. He had been listening to Belinsky's praise of the manuscript of his first story, Poor Folk. "This is the truth of art!" the enraptured critic had exclaimed as he concluded his comments on the tale. "This is the artist's service to truth! To you, as an artist, truth is revealed and declared; it came to you as a gift. Treasure, then, your gift, be faithful to it, and you will become a great writer."

The youthful Dostoevsky stopped at the corner of the critic's house, looked at the sky, at the bright day, and at the passers-by. With Belinsky's words still running through his head, he asked himself in a state of timid ecstasy: "Am I in truth so great? ... Oh, I shall prove worthy of this praise." Recalling the moment more than thirty years later, he wrote: "Thereafter I never could forget it. This was the most delightful minute in my whole life. When I was serving my term of hard labor it fortified me spiritually every time I recalled it." *

Belinsky's prophecy was to be amply fulfilled. In fact, the young Dostoevsky knocked his head against the stars of success with this first published work, Poor Folk (1846). Most of the critics echoed Belinsky's lavish encomiums. They even compared him to Gogol, who was already among the immortals. A little spoiled by the adulation, Dostoevsky wrote his brother Mikhail at this time: "They find in me a new and original spirit in that I proceed by analysis and not by synthesis, that is, I plunge into the depths, and, while analyzing every atom, I search out the whole; Gogol takes a direct path and hence is not so profound as I. Read and see for yourself. Brother, I have a most brilliant future before me!"

Bumptious as this self-glorification may be, the youthful Dostoevsky had some reason to feel proud, for in Poor Folk, the story of an impoverished copying clerk, he had introduced an entirely new approach in Russian fiction. He was primarily interested in the soul of his hero. And this psychological concentration on the feelings and emotions, on the inner world of men and women, was the method he was to develop in his succeeding works.

2.

Along with sudden literary success came illusions of social grandeur. For his brother's benefit Dostoevsky wrote him of how the well-bred nobles vied with one another for the favor of his presence at their salons and dinners. But the young author cut a sorry figure in this polished Petersburg society. He had been born (1821) into a Moscow family on the lower rung of the middle-class ladder. His rigidly righteous father, a former army surgeon, had ruled the family with a narrow discipline little alleviated by the softer and pious nature of his wife. The family had no pretensions to culture, and as a boy Dostoevsky's education had been quite inadequate. At the age of seventeen he had been sent to a Petersburg military engineering school, where endless dull drill had alternated with the study of mathematics and fortifications. At every opportunity he had escaped from this uninteresting routine into the world of literature and read omnivorously the classics of the West and those of his own country. Hence there had been a certain inevitability about his abandoning an army career, shortly after graduation from the engineering school, and plunging into the more precarious one of writing for a living.

With such a background it was to be expected that the young Dostoevsky would feel shy and awkward in the company of Petersburg high society. He was an intellectual proletarian at heart, and his natural habitat was not the fine homes of the lordly, but the slums and filthy corners of St. Petersburg where he wandered on solitary walks and observed the men and women who people his pages. He soon deserted the salons and turned to writing again in an effort to exploit his first success.

During the next three years after the publication of Poor Folk, Dostoyevsky wrote twelve more pieces. With the exception of Netochka Nezvanova, an unfinished novel, these are all sketches, short stories, or novelettes. Few of them possess literary qualities of a high order, but clearly his art was maturing as he enlarged the scope of his character portrayals. One of these tales, "The Double," his second effort and published in the same year as Poor Folk, was coolly received by the critics. However, "The Double" is the most significant contribution of this group and marks an important advance in the creative art of Dostoevsky. It is the story of a government clerk and his double, who succeeds brilliantly in all those endeavors in which the hero fails miserably. After a final series of events in which the hero is profoundly humiliated while his rival triumphs, the tale ends with the double helping him into a carriage on his way to the insane asylum.

"The Double" is a masterly literary study of the split personality, a type already abumbrated in the hero of Poor Folk. Dostoevsky's clearly defined intentions in the characterization prove his deep concern with this type. He never again pushed the pathological aspects of the split personality so far, but the type was to become something of a constant in more important characterizations in the future.

Meanwhile, the young Dostoevsky was delving into dangerous plots that had nothing to do with literature. The reactionary regime of Nicholas I provoked opposition among the youth of the day, and Dostoevsky was drawn into this orbit of discontent. By 1847 he had become a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of liberals who met every Friday evening to discuss the evils of poverty, abuses of Church and State, and Utopian schemes for the regeneration of society. Several members, among them Dostoevsky, formed a more secret group, known as the Durov Circle, because they felt the need for more serious discussion and even for action. They obtained a printing press and planned to produce contraband articles of political and social significance. This was a most hazardous business, for the government regarded illegal printing as a major crime against the State.

Early in the morning of April 23, 1849, Dostoevsky was aroused from his sleep by the police and packed off to prison, and many of his comrades in the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested at the same time. A special Commission of Inquiry of the Tsar carried out an extensive investigation. Though Dostoevsky testified to the harmless nature of his activities, he and fourteen other members of the Circle were condemned to be shot. The story is well known of how Nicholas I allowed all the grisly preparations for the executions to be gone through with maddening punctilio before a courier dashed up with the tsar's commutation. Dostoevsky never forgot the harrowing experience he underwent that cold December morning as he stood on the platform in Semenov Square waiting to be shot, and the memory of it haunted the pages of his later novels. He was sentenced to four years at hard labor in Siberia, and thereafter to service in the ranks as a common soldier.

Dostoevsky later described the harsh existence of his Siberian prison at Omsk in his brilliantly realistic book, The House of the Dead (1862). Filth, lice, cockroaches, stench, chains, severe labor and the hatred of lowborn fellow convicts were his unvarying lot. Further, he dates his first epileptic seizures, which were to pursue him throughout most of his life, from this time. His prison experience, however, had a positive and important influence on the development of both his thought and creative art. However inconsequential his offense may have seemed to him, he willingly accepted his harsh punishment as an atonement for his crime and as a purification of his conscience. This frame of mind led him to a heightened respect for the established order of things in Russia, to an increased devotion to the teachings of Christ, and a strong belief in the saving grace of the Orthodox Church. In the end he even began to perceive wonderful qualities in his fellow-convicts — rough peasants, cutthroats, and bandits — these "common people" of his native land. In short, prison defined and deepened his creative process, taught him the doctrine of salvation by suffering, and provided him with rich material for a continued analysis of the souls of the insulted and injured.

After his release from prison, Dostoevsky served as a private in the army in the little frontier garrison town of Semipalatinsk, and was finally raised to an officer's rank as a result of the rewards dispensed by Alexander II on the occasion of his coronation in 1856. The next year he married a frail blonde widow who had a young son by her first husband. She was already ill with tuberculosis, and the union turned out to be an unhappy one. With these new responsibilities, Dostoevsky strove to return to his writing, for he needed money. In 1859 he brought out a novelette, The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants, and a short story, "Uncle's Dream," neither of which added much to his fame. After many futile efforts, he at last received government permission to resign from the army and return to St. Petersburg. Toward the end of 1859, just ten years after he had set out in chains for Siberia, he arrived in the city he loved, a free man.

3.

The literary world of the capital had virtually forgotten the young writer who had been acclaimed thirteen years before upon the appearance of Poor Folk. Dostoevsky not only had his reputation as an author to recover, but he desperately needed to find the means of eaming a livelihood for himself and family. Publishing a magazine suggested itself as a possible source of income, and in 1861 the first issue of Time appeared with Dostoevsky as editor and his brother Mikhail as business manager. The magazine quickly achieved success, largely because of Dostoevsky's astuteness in steering a middle course between the prevailing extremes of radical and conservative thought. Part of Time's popularity, however, must be attributed to the fact that he used it as a medium for publishing his fiction in serial form. In its pages appeared his first full-length novel, The Insulted and Injured (1861), and The House of the Dead (1862), works which did much to bring him once again to the attention of the public.

In rather affluent circumstances for the first time, Dostoevsky, in 1862, felt able to fulfil an old ambition — to go abroad and visit the countries of Western Europe. What he observed on his travels deeply antagonized him and fed the conviction that he later formulated of both the spiritual superiority of Orthodox Russia to the West and the curious messianic mission of his country to save the socialistically-minded, spiritually-enervated nations of Western Europe from ultimate self- destruction. The account of his trip which he published in Time, "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" (1863), reflects this growing belief in its earliest form.

In 1863, however, some months after Dostoevsky's return, an unfortunate article on the Poles brought about the suppression of his magazine. This misfortune soon left him deeply in debt, but in the midst of his troubles he borrowed money from the "Fund for Needy Authors" and went abroad again to keep a rendezvous with Polina Suslova, a handsome devotee of the new type of emancipated Russian woman, with whom he had fallen passionately in love, and also to try his fortune at the gaming tables of Wiesbaden. His luck with both was execrable. He returned home to revive his review under the name of Epoch (1864), but it got off to a bad start and lasted only a short time. Before its demise, he published in it his remarkable piece Notes from the Underground (1864), one of the most penetrating psychological studies of a "double" or split personality in any literature, and a long step in the direction of certain of the great characters in the novels that followed.

4.

Domestic calamities and sorrows ushered in the period of the great novels. In 1864, Dostoevsky's wife and beloved brother Mikhail died. Debts overwhelmed him as he strove to support his shiftless stepson and the penniless family of his deceased brother. He wrote furiously at Crime and Punishment to pay off his creditors. A servant employed to watch over him in case he had an epileptic seizure complained that the master had murder on his mind and walked the floor all night muttering to himself. The novel was published in 1866 and took the country by storm. During a few weeks of the next year he produced the short novel, The Gambler, in order to pay off a pressing obligation which he had contracted with a shyster publisher.

Much of this rapid work might well have been impossible if it had not been for the assistance of a devoted young stenographer, Anna Snitkina. She was in awe of the great novelist and also in love with him. When Dostoevsky finally realized the state of her affections, he promptly married her (1867). It was the most fortunate event of his life, for Anna was able to appreciate his genius without criticizing his human weaknesses. She dedicated her whole existence to him, bore his children, gave him a happy family life, and later published his works so successfully that he was relieved of financial worries.

Shortly after the marriage, the couple went abroad, largely to escape the importunities of relatives and creditors, and they remained in Western Europe for four years. It was a difficult period of hand-to-mouth existence as they traveled from one city to another. Again and again Dostoevsky gambled away the advances he received, but his young wife uncomplainingly put up with this mania, his epilepsy, and general irritability as he worked away at The Idiot (1868-69) and The Possessed (1871). His long stay abroad increased his hostility to the West, and he yearned to return to Russia. Finally, a large advance from his publisher in 1871 made this possible.

Dostoevsky now settled down to regular writing and to the contentment of a happy family existence. He edited The Citizen (1873-74), a conservative weekly, to which he contributed a column, "The Diary of a Writer," which he later continued with much success as a separate publication. By the time that his novel A Raw Youth appeared in 1875, he was nationally regarded, along with Turgenev and Tolstoy, as one of the country's leading literary figures. Socially prominent families were flattered to have him as their guest at evening gatherings, and they listened with rapt attention to this grimly serious man with the lofty forehead and deep-set eyes which seemed always to be turned inward on some mystic vision of celestial happiness as he read selections of his works with thrilling effectiveness. The liberalism of his youth had long since passed and his conservative political opinions now recommended him to the favor of the tsar and important government officials. But the dualism of his nature, the struggle between good and evil in his soul so poignantly reflected in his fiction, still continued and was most brilliantly dramatized in the search for God in his last great novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1880). That same year he delivered his famous address at the unveiling of the Pushkin statue in Moscow, a speech which embodied his profound conviction of the mission of universal service of the Russian people. The next year (1881) he died at the height of his fame, and a grateful nation paid tribute to his genius in an impressive public funeral.

5.

Dostoevsky once wrote in a notebook: "They call me a psychologist. This is not true. I am merely a realist in the higher sense of the word, that is, I depict all the depths of the human soul." It is this "higher realism" which is at the bottom of his surprising originality, for he creates a kind of fourth dimension of his own in realism which concerns the souls of men and women. Though he had hit upon this approach in his very first story, Poor Folk, the wonderful artistic possibilities of the method were not fully realized until the publication, twenty years later, of Crime and Punishment, perhaps the most popular of all his great novels.

The inner life, the labyrinthine pattern of human motivations of a complex individual has rarely been so profoundly and convincingly analyzed in fiction as in the case of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. When Dostoevsky was planning the novel, he wrote his publisher that he intended it to be a psychological account of a crime committed by a young man who "had submitted to certain strange 'incomplete' ideas which float on the wind...." And he added that in his novel he would consider the idea "that the legal punishment inflicted for a crime intimidates a criminal infinitely less than lawmakers think, partly because he himself morally demands it."

It is often imagined that Dostoevsky, always writing in haste to meet a deadline and frequently under the compulsion of the need for money, had little regard for the severe discipline demanded by great art. However, he has left behind him a series of notebooks which contain a large amount of material that has important bearing on the composition of his novels. A study of these notebooks, filled with rough drafts, preliminary sketches of characters and scenes, and many corrections and observations extending to the minutest details of a work, provides proof positive of the infinite pains he took with everything that made for artistic perfection.

The materials of the notebooks connected with the planning of Crime and Punishment print up to a book of over two hundred pages in Russian and testify to the fact that he slaved mightily over this novel. The notes plainly indicate that among the many difficulties he struggled with in the planning of the story, the "idea" of the novel and the character of Raskolnikov gave him the greatest trouble.

For Dostoevsky the "idea" behind the novel he was writing was of paramount significance. If all there was to Crime and Punishment was the story of a murder, it would simply be another detective tale, an early and rather successful forerunner of the modern crime novel. Obviously, there is something else in this book which gives it a transcending importance in world literature. For the chief figures of his great novels are often embodied ideas. The struggle of these intellectual heroes for a faith, for a way out of the dilemma of life, usually takes the form of an idea which represents a solution of the character's spiritual existence.

However, the notes on Crime and Punishment and the novel itself suggest that Dostoevsky did not easily hit upon the "idea" which Raskolnikov represents, for the total personality of this extraordinary character evaded him at first. Raskolnikov is apprehended at a moment when he is rebelling against all that life had meant for him. He may be exceptional, but the fact of rebellion is real, and hence he often does exceptional things.

In the letter, already mentioned, which Dostoevsky wrote his publisher concerning the plan of the novel, he is quite definite about the reason why Raskolnikov commits the murder. The original motive might almost be described as an altruistic one: with the plunder stolen from the old pawnbroker, he will remedy the poverty-stricken situation of himself and his family and then atone for his sin by living an honorable life and helping mankind. And in the novel, it is true, Raskolnikov is portrayed as possessing many admirable human qualities.

The characterization of Raskolnikov, however, is hardly well under way in the novel before we are introduced to a new motive for the crime which is suggested in the unusual article the hero writes. In the article he explains that mankind may be divided into two categories, one composed of ordinary people, the meek and submissive ones who serve only to reproduce their kind, and the other composed of the extraordinary people, the Napoleons of the world who transgress the law and seek the destruction of the present for the sake of something better. Raskolnikov, dominated by a kind of satanic, despotic pride, commits the murder to convince himself that he is one of these extraordinary people. It is clear from the novel and the notes that both motives for the crime and both sets of traits in the character of the hero fused in Dostoevsky's mind. In fact, neither the reader nor Raskolnikov ever knows precisely why the crime was committed. And after the murder the hero himself feverishly racks his brains for some justifiable motivation, as he analyzes now one, now another compelling trait of a nature perplexed in the extreme.

This prevailing conflict in the character of Raskolnikov was enforced by the artistic necessity in Dostoevsky's creative process which literally obliged him to portray the split personality, and this fact accounts for the author's initial confusion in conceiving the personality of his hero. Razumihin's description of his friend leaves no doubt as to Raskolnikov's ambivalence. He is morose, gloomy, and proud, says Razumihin, but he also has a kind heart and a noble nature; "in truth, it is exactly as though he were alternating between two opposing characters."

In short, Raskolnikov's feelings, philosophy, cares and agitations identify him with the long series of "double" characterizations of Dostoevsky. Unlike most of them, however, Raskolnikov decides to act. He projects his dualism into society in general, a natural psychological manifestation of the split personality. On one side is unlimited self-abasement, on the other unlimited power. Raskolnikov sees no hope of harmonizing this fundamental opposition, and he therefore tries to take his place among the strong, self-willed members of society by murdering the old pawnbroker. The act was a conscious fulfilment of an unconscious desire to resolve his ambivalence.

6.

The murder solves nothing unless it be to convince Raskolnikov that he was never intended to be a superman. He now fulfils the author's original intention of morally demanding punishment for his crime. But Dostoevsky attempts to resolve his dualism, largely through the agency of Sonia, to whom Raskolnikov first confesses his murder. She tells him what he must do to expiate his sin. But almost to the very end of the novel his dualism pursues its relentless path. It is difficult for him to accept either way out as a solution: the meekness and submission of Sonia, or the self-will and desire for power of a Svidrigaïlov, for he is drawn to both of them. In a real sense both these characters represent the extreme poles of his dualism, a fact which Dostoevsky indicates in a brief observation in one of his notebooks, which clearly suggests the whole pattern of dualism in the characterization of Raskolnikov. He writes: "Svidrigaïlov is desperation, the most cynical. Sonia is hope, the most unrealizable. (These must be expressed by Raskolnikov himself.) He is passionately attracted to them both."

We learn from the notes that at one time Dostoevsky contemplated suicide for Raskolnikov as the logical solution of his dilemma. One could well argue that the actual solution in the Epilogue is difficult to accept artistically or psychologically. By patience and suffering in prison he learns selflessness and eventually loses his pride. Through the ministrations and unselfish example of Sonia, he experiences love. The implication is that the meekness and submissiveness in his dualistic nature triumphed in the end.

The Epilogue, however, rounds out the central "idea" of the novel. For the dream of Raskolnikov on the eve of his conversion symbolizes the catastrophe which had resulted from the hero's distorted thinking. It will be recalled that Dostoevsky had described Raskolnikov to his publisher as a young man who had submitted to "certain strange 'incomplete' ideas." His obvious intention was to represent his hero as one of the younger generation who subscribed to the socialist ideas which his creator deeply distrusted. Raskolnikov, like the socialists, had to learn that he could not order his life on a self-willed plan of reason. Instead of living life, he had substituted reason for life, which had led him to commit a horrible crime, a crime of the intellect. Happiness cannot be achieved by a reasoned plan of existence but must be earned through suffering. This is the central idea of the novel which the character of Raskolnikov embodies.

7.

The story of art, however, is not merely the story of an idea. Dostoevsky realized that the central problem of human thought is the relation between the world and man. For man lives in the world, and even if he would, he cannot escape the consequences of his relations to the world. Nor can art, in the larger sense escape these consequences. Dostoevsky was thoroughly alive to this central problem of man's thought, and his inspired probings into the relations between man and the world are reflected not only in the treatment of Raskolnikov, who holds the center of the stage in Crime and Punishment, but in a number of the scarcely less interesting characters who surround him.

The most striking of these is Sonia Marmeladov, an outstanding representative of Dostoevsky's impressive series of meek characters and one of the most remarkable of his female creations. It is a tribute to Dostoevsky's genius that he is able to breathe the breath of real life into a character whose nature is so passive and submissive. Although she reminds one of an allegorical personification of some abstract virtue in a medieval morality play, Sonia transcends her allegorical significance through the sheer force of the novelist's art. She stands as a kind of living universal symbol of crushed and suffering humanity that bears within itself the undying seeds of joyous resurrection.

Sonia's stepfather, old Marmeladov, is an unforgettable creation who takes his place, if a lesser one, among that memorable company of strange, exaggerated, off-center heroes of world literature to which belong Don Quixote, Parson Adams, Uncle Toby, and Micawber. For like all these creations, Marmeladov never fails to strike us as funny, even ridiculous, but the ridiculous is never far removed from an abiding pathos that compels our pity. Under the verbiage, pomposity, and unintentional humor of his inimitable confession to Raskolnikov in the tavern there is revealed a man sunk to the very bottom of ignominy in an unequal, hopeless struggle to preserve his human dignity.

In that mysterious character Svidrigaïlov, who appears to symbolize the baser aspects of Raskolnikov, one has the eerie feeling of coming to grips with a human phantom. He belongs to those few powerful figures in Dostoevsky's novels who may be appropriately described as "self-willed," utterly cynical men, enemies of society, with peculiarly instinctive criminal natures. Svidrigaïlov has descended all the way to the social bottom, and there can be only one solution for his impasse with life — death.

For Raskolnikov and even Svidrigaïlov, Dostoevsky never fails to reveal a certain sympathy, but for Luzhin, the would-be suitor of Dounia, the author has only scorn. Luzhin has nothing of the largeness, generosity, intense passion, or that impulsiveness, which Dostoevsky admired in real men and women as well as in his imaginary creations.

And in this rich gallery of portraits are other highly successful characterizations — the ineffably human mother of Raskolnikov, his lovable sister, Dounia, and that perfect match for her, Razumihin, and the clever police investigator, Porfiry, who seems to be endowed with Dostoevsky's own searching, dialectical method.

It is not difficult, of course, to find faults in Crime and Punishment as a work of art, but they are minor ones — overdone melodramatic effects, and the inordinately compressed action and time sequence which forced the author into an excessive use of coincidence. Such blemishes, however, are of little consequence measured against the total impact of the novel. From start to finish the reader is gripped by the compelling, high seriousness of the drama of Raskolnikov as it is cast against a background of throbbing life. The intensity of the step- by-step revelation of his plan, the unforgettable description of the murder, and then the equally absorbing psychological analysis and disintegration of all the rational factors that had driven him to kill — this story never loses its hold on the reader's imagination and emotion. And over all there shines that spiritual glow, so characteristic of Dostoevsky's famous novels, a glow that illumines the darkest recesses of the minds of the proud and humble, the criminal and the morally debased and inspires them to seek a deeper meaning in life through suffering to ultimate salvation.

Copyright © 1994 Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-679-60088-4