DOSTOEVSKY: OTHER INTERESTING NOTES:

Serge Mandeville :

Ok , here’s my opinion on Svidriga ¯lov. My name is Serge, and I am currently working on a stage adaptation of Crime and Punishment with a Russian man named Igor Ovadis. First of all, Raskolnikov’s murder is not a bad choice, it is not a choice at all, it is his destiny. We can ask ourselves what does the title mean? What is the crime and what is the punishment? To us the crime is having thought what he thought and the punishment is committing the crime. His resolution to kill the old woman is very chancy, at no point is it a firm resolution. In the first part of the novel, just before the murder, Raskolnikov remembers the events which led him to such an idea. First of all the time when he goes to a bar, right after having met Aliona Yvana for the first time, he sees how disgusting she is, and he goes to the bar and here’s two men speaking of the idea that that woman is useless and harmful, that one should kill her, take all her money that she planned on giving to a monastery, and redistribute it among the needy. This recollection occurs just after the moment when by total coincidence, Raskolnikov hears Lisavetha speaking to a buyer who invites her at seven o’clock the next day. He then is condemned to kill at seven o’clock. He asks himself: ‘why did I see her now, why did I come here where I had nothing to do. What coincidence is at work? I would answer, destiny.

When he goes to look for the axe for the murder in the superintendent’s garage, ‘a ray of light fell upon the axe, making it shine’ much as the mushrooms in Alice in Wonderland saying : ‘Eat me, eat me’ but in this case it would be, ‘Use me, kill with me! And during the murder, it is a Vaudeville scene. When Koch comes knocking at the door, Raskolnikov holds it shut. When he starts to come out just at that moment , two painters come out screaming. He dives back into the room, like the lover back into the closet, finally he is able to hide in the empty room where the painters were working while Koch and the other go back up.

John Silver says:

Dostoevski’s use of dreams in Crime and Punishment reveals his view of Raskolnikov’s extraordinary and ordinary man theory. His theory is that there are some people who are able to transgress nature, law and God to achieve ‘the destruction of the present reality for one that is better.’ Raskolnikov wants to know if he is one of these Extraordinary Men, capable of acting as a superman without feeling guilt. Dostoyevski describes the dreams of this man and another similar to him, Svidrigailov, to examine the flaws in this theory. The theory will never succeed, because when Raskolnikov knows no limits to his freedom he immediately loses it, becoming lost in a dream world of impotence and weakness. Raskolnikov becomes like Svidrigailov, who dreams of a dead girl and the rape of a five year old. Through the dreams of both men Dostoevski reveals a sickness and disease that will inevitably end in a devastating plague.

Raskolnikov’s first dream is of his childhood, when he witnessed an old mare being beaten to death by the crazy drunk Mikolka. The dream represents the struggle in Raskolnikov between his past, as the young boy who cares deeply for humanity, and his future unfeeling extraordinary self who is ‘in a frenzy of rage because he was unable to kill her with one blow.’ Dostoevski is revealing the life of an Extraordinary Man; a drunk, greedy, immoral, and undeniably evil man incapable of feeling or experiencing compassion. After this dream, Raskolnikov murders the old moneylender ‘almost mechanically’. The evil Mikolka has won, and plunges Raskolnikov into an abyss of violence, fever and delirium.

In Raskolnikov’s dream reliving the murder of the old moneylender, Dostoevski exposes the effects of the Extraordinary Man on Raskolnikov. The theory relates the need for power and control over his body and mind, yet he has neither. He is subjected to the weakness and inertia that he thought he could overcome by committing the murder. As Raskolnikov strikes the old moneylender again and again without effect, he dreams that ‘the bedroom door opened the merest slit, and in there were more people laughing and whispering.’ These people are signs of the guilt that Raskolnikov has repressed into the subconscious which has inevitably surfaced in his dreams. Raskolnikov has alienated himself from himself; he does not know who these nameless people are even though he has clearly created them himself. Raskolnikov is human and being human means that he must feel guilt and suffering to live. When Raskolnikov tries to transcend these feelings, he only reveals the limits that can be reached in having freedom. Without this limit Raskolnikov will die.

Dostoevski creates Svidrigailov’s dreams with the intention of showing the results of Raskolnikov’s theory. Svidrigailov’s dreams represent the life of a man without moral grounding, without the need to repent or expiate his crimes. Dostoevski believes that it is not possible to be immoral on one level of life, committing crime to ‘move the world and lead it towards a goal,’ without being immoral on all levels of life. Raskolnikov is at heart a good man and wants to do good, but his theory relies upon the elimination of the attributes that made him a good man. Dostoevski reveals in Svidrigailov’s dreams the effects of the theory on himself and those around him. Svidrigailov dreams of a young girl whom he had raped and who has committed suicide. Dostoevski makes it clear that Svidrigailov does not commit crimes for the purpose of advancing his society, he merely uses his immorality to commit miserable crime for the sake of committing crimes. Svidrigailov has said he ‘was speaking the truth… when I said we were birds of a feather,’ and it is evident that Raskolnikov theory will lead him to Svidrigailov’s destructive immorality. Svidrigailov’s final and fatal dream is of the greatest crime from which there can be no salvation. The rape of a five year old girl is for Dostoevski the embodiment of all that is evil in Raskolnikov’s Extraordinary Man theory. Dostoevski challenges the reader with the stark, insane and horrifying reality of an Extraordinary Man let loose on society. Svidrigailov almost immediately after the dream kills himself, thus the Extraordinary Man has reached the peak of his immorality and died from it.

Raskolnikov’s final dream is the culmination of Svidrigailov’s and Raskolnikov’s previous dreams, with Raskolnikov dreaming that ‘the entire world had fallen victim to some strange, unheard of and unprecedented plague.’ Everyone pursues dialectics that are perceived as disease and plague. Everyone kills their old moneylender. Everyone becomes an Extraordinary Man, because ‘never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and in unswerving possession of the truth as those who became infected.’ Famine, fire and death dominate because just as Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, ‘people killed one another in a kind of senseless anger… gashing and stabbing, biting and eating one another.’ When these people catch the ‘plague’, they are incapable of coherent thought or emotion, resulting in the most brute and primitive behaviour. If ever there was a theory that could spell the end of the world, Dostoevski tells us that this is it in all its horror. There are some, like Sonia and Dunya who are immune, but as more Raskolnikovs are created they pass on their plague to others. Dostoyeski raises an awareness of a corrupt, despicable and lethal theory that Raskolnikov has embraced. When Raskolnikov finds salvation he feels that ‘in place of dialectics life had arrived,’ but his illness and the theory had almost claimed his life, as it claimed Svidrigailov’s, in this apocalyptic dream.

‘Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov is a tragic character. He revels in the ideas of greatness, however, they are nothing more than theories because he lacks the necessary proponents to act on them. His logic concerning the ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ man proved to be one of his most wretched sources of torment. It truly is terrible, he was great enough to understand greatness, yet sadly he was too ‘ordinary’ to achieve greatness.

Raskolnikov was not an evil man. He was, of course, a murderer, but he did have an extreme sense of right and wrong. That was why he was so tormented by his conscience. It is quite surprising that a man with such sensitivities could have committed such a brutal crime. He plotted the killing over quite a time span. He did question himself along the way, but he began to feel as if the murder of Alyona Ivanova was his duty. What good did she do? Why did one as wretched as her deserve to live? He was not the only one who felt this way. In Part One, Chapter Six, he hears others share his hatred for the old woman. Why should she live? Afterall, she was a ‘ stupid, meaningless, worthless, wicked, sick old crone, no good to anyone and, on the contrary, harmful to everyone.’ He thought of all the good he could do with what Alyona Ivanova had. Even in his crime, Raskolnikov thought of others. His was convinced, killing the ‘old crone’ was like doing a favor for all of mankind. While he felt it necessary for her to die, what made him think he had to do it? The fact is that Raskolnikov had no right to decide who should live or die, and in spite of his delusion of greatness, he was nothing but an ordinary man.

There is one character in Crime and Punishment who is a unparalleled example of the ‘extraordinary man’ theory held by Raskolnikov. This man lacks any inkling of moral consciousness. This man lives only to gratify his own carnal desires. This man rejects all notions of culpability. This man is none other than Svidrigailov Arkady Ivanovitch . He is capable of practically any evil. Unlike Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov does not have a conscience. He is an admitted child molester. He raped a young girl, who later killed herself. He also has committed at least two murders that readers are made aware of. One victim being a servant of his, and the other being his overbearing wife, Marfa Petrovna. His life with Marfa was not a favorable one to begin with. He was a ‘kept’ man, maybe we can even had male prostitution to his list of offenses. Svidrigailov and Marfa even had come to an agreement that allowed him to have extramarital affairs, provided Marfa was made aware of the encounters and that he did not become involved with someone in high social standing.

A predicament arose when Svidrigailov attempted an affair with Avdotya Romanova Raskolnikov, also know to us as Dunya and our hero’s sister. I am still not quite sure whether or not anything improper happened between Svidrigailov and Dunya. Marfa went about town and defamed Dunya’s name, only later to recant all accusations. I not sure if I believe all that. It seems to me that Svidrigailov Arkady Ivanovitch is too enamoured with Dunya. It makes me think that at one time they may have had something together. That would explain why Svidrigailov dislikes Luzhin. The dislike of Luzhin and a love for Dunya are two things that Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov most definitely have in common, however one is a genuine love and the other is lecherous.

Raskolnikov has ‘doubles,’ or characters in Crime and Punishment who represent some part of Raskolnikov ´s personality: for instance, we clearly see how much Svidrigailov has in common with him, or how much Razumikhin there is in Raskolnikov. Almost every character in the book is connected to Raskolnikov, and has some affect upon his personality. His soul is the place where all these characters merge.

This is the reason why Raskolnikov despises Svidrigailov. He represents the dark side of Raskolnikov. Svidrigailov is the murderer, Svidrigailov is the callous criminal, and Svidrigailov is the extraordinary man, all of which lie within Raskolnikov. He abhors Svidrigailov because represents what Raskolnikov hates himself for being. In this point, I believe Raskolnikov is guilty of a offense that we have all committed at some point in time. We detest others often because they represent something we detest within ourselves. ‘He’s a madman,’ in Chapter One of Part Four, Raskolinikov thinks of Svidrigailov. This is the same opinion that one is lead to have about Raskolnikov himself.

I don’t believe that Raskolnikov is a crazy man. However, I must admit that I did doubt his sanity in the beginning of the novel. Raskolnikov seems to even acknowledge his own derangement at the start of Crime and Punishment . In Chapter One of Part One, he his pondering the manner in which he spends his time now that he has chosen to withdraw from his fellow man, ‘ I babble because I don’t do anything. I’ve learned to babble over this past month lying in a corner day in and day out, thinking about… cuckooland.’ While Raskolnikov does most assuredly have some inner issues, he is not a lunatic.

In some ways, I feel that I identify with Raskolnikov. He is at a crucial period in his life. He is trying to determine what his role in life should be. He is not content wallowing in the existence that he currently calls a life. He longs for more. Yet, while he knows he needs to do more of something, he doesn’t know what that something is. Also, he seems to be searching for love and approval. Uncertainty can be a scary thing, but great things can come from it. Everyone has some time in their life when the question what their purpose of living really is. He is nothing more than a basically good person, who just made a bad choice. The term ‘bad choice’ may see, to be an understatement seeing that he did commit a murder, but it was just a lapse of sound judgement. It could happen to anyone. No one can say what they would do if they were placed in the position that Raskolnikov was. Despite the fact I believe Raskolnikov was a good boy gone wrong, he still deserved to be punished.

After the brutal crime, Raskolnikov underwent more suffering than he could have ever expected to experience. If he had been fully aware of the torment that he would face, I do not believe he would have committed homicide. He served as his own judge and jury. He found himself guilty and began to punish himself long before anyone else even suspected him. This is the most important difference between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov.

Part of Raskolnikov wanted to confess immediately. Yet the rest of him was controlled by fear and cowardice. This was the worst thing that he could do to himself. The mindgames and inward conviction he was feeling must have been terrible. When he made his initial confession to Sonya, it seems to me that his torment was slightly curtailed and when he finally admitted his sins to the world, the pain was even less of a burden.

Dunya and Raskolnikov ´s Redemption –

Usually, we only think about the role Sonya plays in Raskolnikov ´s redemption. But I think the key to Dunya’s influence over Raskolnikov is not direct, but rather indirect. Some characters have a positive influence on Raskolnikov, others have a negative one. Under positive influence I understand those characters whose presence in the book makes him think: `I should act this way`, `I should follow his example.` The most important one is of course Sonya – but we still have Razumikin and Dunya, although Dunya’s role here is still of minor importance compared to the one I will assign to her. The characters with a negative influence are the ones who make Raskolnikov think ‘I should not act this way`, `here’s an example of what I should not be.` The most important ones are Luzhin and Svidrigailov, both of whom greatly influence Raskolnikov. So each character in Crime and Punishment is sort of a parameter of behavior to Raskolnikov – he uses them to situate himself, to evaluate himself.

As we know, Raskolnikov loathes both Luzhin and Svidrigailov, he hates them – their cynicism, their amoralism, their modernity. He despises Luzhin’s utilitarian morals, he discusses with him in the beginning of the book. This despise he feels for them is one of the forces that impels him to change – because through murder, he became himself a Luzhin, a Svidrigailov. Now he has to accept punishment, to cease being like them.

And Raskolnikov’s despising of these two characters comes mainly from his love and admiration for his sister. Since he sees how cruel and inhuman they were to Dunya, he hates them, and their moral system. So in a way it’s out of his love for Dunya, too, that he decides to repent. His love towards her causes his hatred towards them that causes his hatred towards himself, that causes him to repent. This is what I called ‘indirect influence’.

If we imagine a little oppressor-victim scheme, we see that Dunya is Luzhin’s victim, then Svidrigailov’s; but we also see that the old woman is Raskolnikov’s victim. Although he feels no sympathy for the old woman, he does like Dunya; thus he manages to identify the two victims, and arrives at the categorical imperative of respect for every human being, no matter how ugly, evil, or useless he is.

Some other notes picked up here and there:

First and foremost Fyodor Dostoevsky believed that there was a God. He did struggle with his belief but he was a member of the Orthodox Church and he never left it. He did have some ideas that were contrary to the teachings of the church, but he never, ever, spoke out against it or tried to divide it. He remained to the end of his life under the obedience of the church and he lived his life accordingly. His books, while they did contain other social elements, were primarily about the inner struggle of those who are seeking truth. These struggles take many different forms but they are all about the same thing. ‘Is there a God? What is truth? How can I be saved?’ The answer that Fyodor Dostoevsky gives to these questions is ‘Jesus Christ.’ IF people are going to try and interpret Dostoevsky’s work without fully understanding his deep Orthodox Christian soul, they are simply going to be scratching at the surface of what Dostoevsky was saying in his novels. Yes, he was a social writer. Yes, he was a political writer, but most importantly, he was a spiritual writer.

Dostoevsky on Crime and Punishment:

In a letter to M.N.Katkov, written on September 1865, Dostoevsky talks about his coming novel:

‘It’s a psychological account of a crime. The action is topical, set in the current year. A young student of lower middle class origin, who has been expelled from the university, and who lives in dire poverty, succumbs – through thoughtlessness and lack of strong convictions – to certain strange, incomplete, ideas that are floating in the air, and decides to get out of misery for once and for all. He resolves to kill an old woman, the widow of a titular council, who lends money for interest. The old crone is stupid, deaf, sick, and she charges Jew rates; she is wicked, and makes the life of her younger sister, whom she treats as a servant, wretched. ‘She’s good for nothing,’ ‘What does she live for?’ ‘Is she of any use at all?’ and so on. These questions disorient the young man. He decides to kill and rob her in order to bring happiness to his mother, who is living in the provinces, and to wrest his sister, who is living as a companion in the house of some landowners, from the lewd demands of the head of the household, demands that may lead to her perdition. He also wants to finish his studies and to go abroad, and, afterward, for the rest of his life, to be honest, firm, and steadfast in the performance of his ‘humanitarian duties toward mankind’, which certainly would ‘expiate his crime’, if one can actually call a crime his act against a stupid, deaf, vicious, sick old crone who herself does not know why she is living and who may die anyway in a month or so.

‘Despite the fact that such crimes are very difficult to carry out, i. e., the criminal practically always leaves behind glaring clues, evidence, etc., behind them, and leave too much chance, which almost always leads to their discovery, he, by sheer accident, carries off the execution of his enterprise quickly and successfully.

‘Afterward, almost a month goes by before the final catastrophe. He is not, and cannot be suspected. And it is just at this point that the entire psychological process of crime unfolds itself. Insoluble problems arise before the murderer; unsuspected and unforeseen feelings torment his mind, divine truth and human law take their toll, and he ends up being driven to give himself up. He is driven to this because, even though doomed to perish in penal servitude, it will make him one with the people again, and the feeling of being cut off and isolated from humanity that he had experienced from the moment he had committed the crime had been torturing him. The law if truth and human nature won out [illegible words]. The criminal himself decides to accept suffering and expiate his deed. However, it is rather difficult for me to make my idea completely clear.

‘Besides this, my story contains the suggestion that the legal penalty imposed for the commission of a crime frightens the offender himself less than the lawmakers think, partly because he himself demands it morally.

‘I have seen that myself in even the most backward individuals in the crudest circumstances. I would like to show that this feeling is present in an educated man of the new generation, so that the idea would be more striking and more tangible. Several recent occurrences have convinced me that there is nothing terribly unusual about my subject, namely the fact that my murderer is well educated and is even a young man with praiseworthy inclinations. Last year in Moscow, I heard of a student who, expelled from the university after the Moscow student disorders, decided to break into a post office and kill a postal employee. There is also considerable violence in our newspapers that the extreme inconstancy of our principles has resulted in horrible acts. (The seminary student who made a pact with a young girl to kill her, killed her in a barn, and was picked up one hour later while he was eating his lunch, and other things.) In brief, I am convinced that my subject will in a way explain what is happening today.’

Notes on THE EPILOGUE (and other ideas)

‘Some argue that the ending was ‘tacked on’ so as not to offend the proper audience that he was addressing in the journal in which he published C&P. On a pragmatic point, I think that D . may have been concerned about getting something past the censors or accepted by a conservative crowd if there was no Russian-Christian oriented ending. Certainly Sonya’s relationship to Christ makes the ‘resurrection’ palatable, but is it in line with the 500 pages of material D. had just presented to the reader?

‘Even in the epilogue, Raskolnikov is portrayed in insolent fashion, utterly indifferent to the religiousness of the convicts, at best agnostic in his beliefs, and hostile toward Sonya. Where in such a portrayal do we see those glimmers of convulsions and guilt that wracked him earlier in the novel? Nowhere. Here instead we see a man who has grudgingly accepted his punishment and has recognized that even in doing so, he is being whipped by the Russian people for being an aristocrat (drawing on themes from House of the Dead). What emerges in the epilogue is the painful and — for D.– frighteningly recurrent prospect that there may very well be no reconciliation between peasant and aristocrat, a divide he was vividly aware of and spent much of his artistic life (if not all) trying to bridge.

And what we have at the ending of C&P is an abstraction. Nothing of the psychological or philosophical content of C&P has suggested that the ending is necessary, or that the ending is possible. The ideas developed within Underground and C&P are not fulfilled in this prospect, and it was not until the weightier and later novel of Karamozov that the final reconciliations begin. What we have at the ending of C&P is what D. fervently hopes for: a radical can be fully reconciled to the people and to Christ through the offering of true Christian sainthood, and we (as well as D.) can rest confidently in the narrator’s affirmation that ‘this is a future story, to be told another time, a story of redemption, struggle, etc.’ all will at last be well, both between Raskolnikov and Christ and Raskolnikov and Christ’s people (for one by definition necessarily requires the other). The fact that Rakolnikov in the epilogue was clearly not at peace with the latter argues strongly against his epiphany with Sonya (the former). D. at this point had not discovered the solution to his worrisome problem; he had only discovered that it was indeed necessary, but had not discovered the channels through which such an outcome would flow from the hopeless predicament of a mock superman to the salvific joy within suffering for Christ.

‘And yet… When Raskolnikov falls to his knees before Sonya and weeps, it seems almost like a premonition of the theory expounded in the Brothers Karamazov. ‘Bear in mind that you can be no man’s judge. For a criminal can have no judge upon earth until that judge himself has perceived that he is every bit as much a criminal as the man that stands before him, and that for the crime of the man that stands before him he himself may be more guilty than anyone else.’ It is the first time he acknowledges his guilt, and so he can be forgiven and begin to live again.

‘It ´s sometimes difficult for us to understand why Raskolnikov, all of a sudden, changes his mind, and from a Nietzschean atheist, who defends the moral of the super-man, becomes a believer. Dostoevsky himself recognizes the explanation he ´s giving is not sufficient. It ´s not just the feeling of being cut off from Humanity, since Raskolnikov was already cut off before. Raskolnikov had no friends, talked to no-one, only Razumikin stood by him.

So, there still remains the problem – how can a super-man, who is never felt remorse, all at once become a believer… and masochistically accept, need, suffering?

First of all, R. ´s being a super-man is only half the truth – only half of him is it. One cannot forget there are actually two Raskolnikovs: one of them kills the old woman, but the other one helps Sonya and her family, talks to Marmeladov, gives money to Katernia Marmeladova. Raskolnikov is capable of charity, of pity – see how he despises Lujin, how he hates Svidrigailov – because they have a lot in common with his corrupt side.

Do you remember the dream Raskolnikov has in the begining, in which as a child, watches a mule being beaten to death by some peasants in his home village. This dream reveals us, through symbols, Raskolnikov ´s double personality and guilt. The mule being beaten to death is the old lady, murdered. The men beating the mule are Raskolnikov ´s evil side, responsible for the murder. His good side, which tried to prevent him from killing the old woman, in the dream is represented by the child, who revoltedly watches the brutal act.

In fact, the end of the book is exactly this inversion – Sonya manages to help the child, (R. ´s good side) who was powerless in the dream and in reality, to take over. She just helps him switch the balance of things in his personality. So there ´s no radical change in his ways – he only makes a choice, bad side against good side.

There is something else too: even though the author likes to make sure Raskolnikov never felt any remorse, this is only partially true. Raskolnikov doesn ´t feel any conscious remorse, but they appear in his unconscious (through his dream, which shows us his guilt complex), and through his actions. See: why doesn ´t he use any of the things he has stolen? Why does he move like a sleep-walker, why does he faint, why does he fall in delirium several times?

And most of all: why does he approach Porfiry so many times, with the urge to confess? Why does he feel the need to confess? This is a proof of Raskolnikov ´s remorse, he is waiting for that thing which can give him absolution, for understanding. And both the people he confesses to, Porfiry (?) and Sonya, tell him that full absolution can only come through his suffering, through punishment.

But one cannot only look for answers inside Raskolnikov himself. I do think Svidrigailov has great influence over Raskolnikov ´s decision to give himself in. See, Svidrigaliov is R. ´s evil side, he is the one R. despises most – but in the end of the book, both are in a similar situation. Both oppressed by a guilt complex, see they have only one choice: either committing suicide, (Raskolnikov thinks about it several times when he crosses the Neva), or giving in. Fleeing is no longer an alternative, for they have fled for long, without finding the peace, the light concsiousness they wanted.

Svidrigailov tries to find a way to redeem his faults, his sensuality, his presumable child abuse, which is alluded to us in his dream – that would be Dunya. The scene in which Dunya tries to murder him, and in which he has the chance to rape her, proves that he loved her. He wanted her to save him, freely, the same way Sonya saves R. – through unconditional love. Since he doesn ´t get what he needs, he dies. Even though he says he would go to America, he finds it impossible with a heavy conscience – his crime demands punishment.

Raskonikov sees that it was impossible for Svidrigailov to flee, for he had this oppressive guilt, asking for a punishment. It ´s the urge to be punished for his crime, it ´s mascochism: and it has to be satisfied. R. sees in himself the same situation – he cannot flee, he has to be punished, either through suicide, or through prison.

One must also consider the role Marmeladov plays in the story. He explains very well, that everyone needs a ‘place to go to’, ‘somewhere to turn’. This somewhere to turn is Sonya (Sonya -> Love -> God). Svidrigailov has nowhere to turn, since he doesn ´t have Dunya, and as consequence never will meet God.

Do not forget Sonya ´s role also – she ´s not only a representative of Christian Sanctity, but she summarizes in her being the anguishes of a suffering Humanity. She symbolizes the people, the simple people, in their sufferings, and in their unending ability to forgive and to love. >From the moment Raskolnikov starts loving Sonya, he starts loving a whole humanity, his neighbours, in a Christian way. It ´s Sonya who shows him, through love how low, his pride really was – for she has none of it, and is infinitely superior than him.

DISCUSS:

# In the first drafts of the novel, Raskolnikov at the end would kill himself, just as Svidriga ¯lov did. This would have been a darker conclusion but more logical. Agree?

# What’s the significance of the story of the Raising of Lazarus in C&P?

# What are Dostoevsky’s unanswerable questions which must be answered?

# What is the ‘Crime’ and what is the ‘Punishment?’

FURTHER READING:

There are some brilliant Dostoevsky websites. Use your search engine to track them down, and follow the links. You might like to try this one first:

http://www.egroups.com/list/dostoevsky/

Two good books:

Judith Gunn, Dostoyevsky: Dreamer and Prophet, Lion, 1990

Hutterian Brethren (Ed.) The Gospel in Dostoevsky, Plough Publishing House, 1988.

[Note: these represent a ‘pot-pourri’ of ideas culled from many sources. Don’t reproduce this article without this rider: the ideas here do not necessarily represent the opinions of their collator, nor of the many who supplied them, some of whom have not been acknowledged because their names have long since been divorced from the notes]

Rowland Croucher

February 1999