THE FIRST MARKS THE zenith of Dostoyevsky’s talent, judging even from translations alone. To men of science devoting themselves to the study of the human soul, it is of interest as containing the most perfect description of criminal psychology since that of Macbeth; those of an inquisitive nature, to whom, like Perrin Dandin, torture is always a pleasurable pastime, will find it excellent and quite to their taste. I fancy, however, that to most readers it will seem disgusting, and will not be read to the end.
Dostoevsky
One generally looks to a novel to give one pleasure and not to make one sick, otherwise to peruse Crime and Punishment would be taking an intentional risk, for it leaves an immoral taint behind. It is, moreover, highly dangerous for the female reader or for any impressionable nature. Every book is a duel between the writer, who aims at forcing on us a truth, a fiction, or a terror, and the reader, who defends himself with indifference of with his reason. As a fact the author’s power of frightening the reader is far superior to the power of resistance in the average nervous system. The latter is often overcome, and suffers inexpressible agony. If I permit myself to be so dogmatic, it is because of the many cases I have seen in Russia to this effect, as a result of reading that novel. Perhaps I shall be reminded of the special sensitiveness of the Slav temperament, but I can assure my reader that I have observed the same in France, where many have suffered in the same way. Hoffmann, Edgar Poe, Baudelaire, all the well-known writers in the “alarming” style whom we know of, are but a joke to Dostoyevsky. In their fiction the author’s cunning if appreciated; in Crime and Punishment one realizes that the author is quite as much terrified as we are by the character which he has drawn of himself.
The plot is a very simple one. A man conceives the idea of committing a crime. He matures it, carries it out, for some time escapes the clutches of the law, but is moved to give himself up, and expiates his crime. For once the Russian author has kept to the European custom of observing continuity of action. The drama, purely psychologic, deals throughout with the struggle between the man and his ideas. The characters and the scenic accessories are of no interest beyond their actual influence on the criminal’s settled purpose.
The first part, showing the conception and growth of the idea, is carried out with a truthfulness and exactness above all praise. The student, Raskolnikoff, a Nihilist in the true sense of the word, intelligent, without principles, broken down by misery and want, dreams of a better state of things. On his way back from having pawned a piece of jewellery at a miserly old woman’s, the following vague thought passes through his brain, without his considering it of much importance: “An intelligent man possessed of the money this woman has, would be successful in anything. All that is required is to suppress this useless and noxious old thing.”
It is but one of those small beginnings or larvæ of an idea, which have at least come once into every mind, or, during a feverish nightmare, through the words of a popular song, such as “Let us kill the Mandarin.” But they can only gather thought or come into action with the assent of the will. This is to be seen to become stronger page by page, and eventually becomes an obsession. All the sad circumstances of that life by which Raskolnikoff is surrounded are brought in to further his object, and, in a mysterious way, are made to justify the “criminal intent.” The plasticity of the force behind the man is placed before us in such a striking manner that we see it as one of the moving actions in the drama, like one of the “Fates” in one of the ancient tragedies. She takes the criminal by the hand to the moment when the axe falls on both the victims.
