Crime and Punishment [Mar 01, 2017] Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

"Out of Shakespeare, there is no more exciting reading than Dostoevsky" -- Virginia Woolf. I agree. I would like to add that, in all of Dostoevsky, there is no more exciting reading than "Crime and Punishment." Let me take that a step further. In "Crime and Punishment," there is no more exciting reading than Constance Garnett's translation of THE climactic exchange between murderer Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov and detective Porfiry Petrovitch:" 'Then...who then...is the murderer?' he (Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov) asked in a breathless voice, unable to restrain himself." Porfiry Petrovitch sank back in his chair, as though he were amazed at the question. 'Who is the murderer?' he repeated, as though unable to believe his ears. 'Why, you, Rodion Romanovitch! You are the murderer,' he added, almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction. "Wow! It just doesn't get any better, any more exciting, any more dramatic than that. Better than any other translator, Constance Garnett knocks the reader out of the armchair!! See for yourself. Compare. I could prove my point by quoting from another translation or two. But that would only bore you. And where's the fun in that? Not there. But here. Here in Chapter Two of Part Six of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" AS TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE GARNETT.I don't care whether a translation is true to the original or not. Truth has no place in the world of dramatic fiction. If a translation improves upon the original, so much the better. Shakespeare improved upon Plutarch, did he not? For those who insist on literal translation, I would advocate for interlinear translation, which would allow us Engloids to "read between the lines" of the Russian original.I first read Constance Garnett's translation of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" when I was a student at Boston Latin School, fifty years ago. That translation seems to have gotten better with age. I would like to say the same about my self. But I won't. I can't. Why not? I'll tell you why not! I do not live "in the world of dramatic fiction." That's why not.Cheers! Happy reading!!P.S. For more on Dostoevsky and "Crime and Punishment," please see Joseph Frank's "Dostoevsky: the Miraculous Years, 1865-71," and Mikhail Bakhtin's "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics."P.P.S. Eureka! I have found it!! By "it," I mean the "little fact" that Porfiry tells Raskolnikov he (Porfiry) has, but won't reveal. Part Six, Chapter Two. OK. So. Porfiry refuses to tell Raskolnikov what his "little fact" is. Very well. Be that way. I, by contrast, am not so coy. I will tell my fellow Amazonians what Porfiry's "little fact" is. Porfiry's "little fact" is Raskolnikov's phony "pledge" item: a tightly wrapped-and-tied piece of metal-and-wood that Raskolnikov had made at home. Part One, Chapter Six. Raskolnikov told the pawnbroker it was "a silver cigarette case," handed it to her, and then murdered her. Part One, Chapter Seven. It was found in her hand after the murder. Epilogue. So. There you have it. Porfiry's "little fact" you can "get your hands on." Part Six, Chapter Two. How about that! Bingo!! "Never mind all this psychology stuff," as Porfiry might put it. Raskolnikov's phony "pledge" item in the murdered pawnbroker's hand was physical evidence that placed Raskolnikov right there, right then: at the murder scene, at the time of the murder. Got 'im.SECOND THOUGHTS FROM A DOUBTING THOMAS: We readers of Part One, Chapters Six and Seven, know all about the connection between Raskolnikov and the phony "pledge" item that was found in the pawnbroker's hand after the murder. Epilogue. My guess is that said "pledge" item was the "little fact" that Porfiry mentioned in Part Six, Chapter Two. Be that as it may, I ask myself whether Porfiry would have been able to link that "pledge" item to Raskolnikov -- without the benefit of Raskolnikov's confession!? We readers know that the "pledge" item found in the pawnbroker's hand after the murder was Raskolnikov's homemade decoy. Part One, Chapter Six. It was designed to -- and it did -- absorb all the attention of the pawnbroker. Part One, Chapter Seven. Diverted and pre-occupied with untying and unwrapping the "pledge" item, the pawnbroker became unaware of Raskolnikov as he opened his coat, pulled out his axe, and raised it over her head. Id. After the murder, the "pledge" item was found in the pawnbroker's hand. Epilogue. OK. So. There you have it. The "little fact." Part Six, Chapter Two. The thing "you can get your hands on." Id. That raises this question: Was there anything in, on, or about the "pledge" item that could connect it to Raskolnikov? I don't know the answer to that question. I think I'm so smart. And yet, I'm stumped. I really am. Assuming the "pledge" item found in the hand of the murdered pawnbroker came from the murderer, such a murderer must have known that the pawnbroker made loans secured by "pledge" items. Such knowledge, however, was common knowledge. Everybody knew. But not everybody would be allowed in by the pawnbroker. There were no signs of entry having been forced. So, the pawnbroker must have let the murderer in. Whom would she let in? Someone she knew. A known customer, quite likely. A known customer bearing a "pledge" item. Raskolnikov was the last customer to come forward and claim valuables pawned before the murder. So, in a narrow field of promising suspects (i.e., customers of the pawnbroker), Raskolnikov was the one who stood out. But still! Raskolnikov's delay in coming forward is psychological or behavioral evidence, not physical evidence, not a "thing" that you can "get your hands on." Part Six, Chapter Two. By contrast, the "pledge" item found in the hand of the murdered pawnbroker IS physical evidence. Epilogue. How could Porfiry connect Raskolnikov to that "pledge" item? That is the question. The easy answer is that Raskolnikov's confession made the connection. Epilogue. The more difficult question is this: What if Raskolnikov had not confessed? How could Porfiry have connected Raskolnikov to the "pledge" item found in the murdered pawnbroker's hand? By other physical evidence? By psychological and/or behavioral evidence? By something else? By some other way? I wonder.I also wonder whether Porfiry's "little fact" might be the stone under which Raskolnikov hid what he had stolen from the pawnbroker. Raskolnikov told Zametov about the stone; Zametov told Porfiry; and Porfiry asked Raskolnikov to leave a note about the stone if he decided to commit suicide. Such a note would give Porfiry a "thing he could get his hands on," together with Raskolnikov's own handwriting connecting him to it.Oy! All this writing, all this thinking, all this reading, all this . . . What, in the end, what does all this come down to? I am left guessing, wondering, thinking, writing. What if Porfiry's "little fact" was something other than the "pledge"? something other than the stone? something else entirely? something I did not write down? something that did not even occur to me? What then? Who knows? Who can say? I, for one, cannot say. For, I do not know. I want to know. But I do not know. I am left wondering. To this day, this hour, this moment, that is all I can do. I can only wonder. And THAT, to my way of thinking, is not a bad state of mind to be in. Not bad at all. Good, actually. Even wonderful. Yes. Of course. Now I see it clear and say it plain: It is wonderful to wonder!PENULTIMATE PARAGRAPH: By continually referring to Alyona Ivanova not by her name, but as "the pawnbroker," I took away her identity, her personality, her life. I did not intend to do so. Nor would I want to do so. And yet, I did do so -- unintentionally, inadvertently, not knowing what I did. Unfortunately, this is one of those contexts in which a person is identified not by who they are (Alyona Ivanova) but by what they do (pawnbroker). So, please. Help me out here. Do me a favor. When you read "pawnbroker," think "Alyona Ivanova."ULTIMATE PARAGRAPH: Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov deserved the death penalty. Alyona Ivanova and her step-sister Lizaveta did not. Their lives were infinitely more valuable and virtuous than his. They did not coldly and calculatedly butcher two innocent defenseless old ladies. He did. They did not deserve to die. He did.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky generally seemed to write books set in the quirky period of time sandwiched in between serfdom and the Communist Revolution in Russia somewhere in the late 19th century. It is a point in time which most people living today could not personally attest to or even have much knowledge about yet it seems oddly familiar in many ways to modern society.It is hierarchical with various classes having obvious advantages over the others yet it wasn't overly strict like a caste system from which one was cemented into a position in society and could not escape. It also had a strong bureaucracy which society seemed to value and hold in somewhat high regard due to an appreciation of the benefits it provides to a society in need of order and discipline while at the same time chafing at the ways in which it stifled creativity and personal freedom.Against that backdrop this book paints a portrait of a young man who commits a robbery and murder which he argues about for a fair portion of the book within his own mind as he lurches back and forth between despising himself and feeling justified in doing it "for the greater good." There is also a fair amount of characters in this book who push and pull the main character from various directions as he processes what he has done and how he really feels about it and someone much smarter than me has probably analyzed if these characters had any symbolic meaning or not, but they seem like an odd mix.The main character is a university student driven to crime by desperation mixed with intellectually inspired notions of class warfare. He meets a man at a tavern who is an alcoholic and befriends him early in the book only to later meet the mans daughter and develop a relationship with her. The woman is somewhat similar to the main character in that she is badly conflicted as well in that she professes to be a Christian yet makes a living as a prostitute due to her family being so desperately poor. She becomes a sort of moral voice for the main character. The main character's sister also appears in town and there is a whole subplot about how she is going to marry a wealthy man to help her family while at the same time being pursued/blackmailed by another man who is obsessed with her only to reject them both for an idealistic third man. There is also a detective who joins the cast at some point and suspects the main character of his crime even though he has little real evidence. He thereafter engages in a psychological game with the main character to break him into confessing.The story also has odd similarities to Doctor Zhivago and the Tell tale Heart. Edgar Allen Poe wrote the Tell tale Heart in the 1840's and FD didn't write this story until the 1860's while Doctor Zhivago was written sometime in the early 1950's but whether any are similar to another intentionally or due to mere coincidence is beyond my knowledge. I am just noting that because I kept thinking about it while I read it and so many of the characters reminded me of characters from there.In any event, the real theme of this book seems to be the conflict between faith and reason. The main character knows things he is doing (or has done) are wrong, but justifies many of them intellectually and politically only to feel conflicted about them. In the end though the book is really about a journey through the process of faith and reason while at the same time offering a commentary of what the author must have perceived as a rise in intellectual and political thoughts and actions at the expense of morality and truth. Perhaps he divined the coming Revolution or maybe the book is not that deep. I really am somewhat uncertain but I know that I enjoyed reading it and each time I read it I end up thinking more deeply about what the author means, what he was thinking and if he was trying to say something I am not yet grasping. All of these to me are good signs that a book is worthy of reading and enjoying.

So I had gotten through my life without reading Crime and Punishment or anything else by Dostoevsky, but I always wondered what I was missing. And in college my girlfriend - who was brilliant - loved Dostoevsky, so I figured I should read Crime and Punishment. Well, I set out to finish what I started, and though I'm not a bad reader, I did find it very hard to get through this. I am happy to have read it - I understand what Dostoevsky is about - but I'm not motivated to read others. There are many long, insane internal rants - did I forget to mention these rants are long - really long? - which, you know, I get - that's how people are. That's what actually goes through people's heads, and Dostoevsky captures that. But from cover to cover it seemed just filled with unrelenting and unreasonable unpleasantness, and required determination to get through, instead of depending on a driving curiosity to find out what comes next. But Dostoevsky is highly regarded by so many, you really should read at least one book by Dostoevsky - and it probably should be this one. Though I love the idea of reading The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov - I'm just not sure I can muster up the same determination again. Because, you know, I have other things to get done in this life.

Like many seemingly busy men I'd say when I retire I'll read such and such. Lately I've read interesting but not weighty novels.So I've started reading the "Russians" Turgenev, Tolestoy and now Dostoyevsky. And wondered what took me so long.

One of the best stories out there about the human condition . A must read for those who enjoy like good literature .

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Currently I am on page 190, as you can see by looking at that red page/bookmarker in one of the photos that I have posted . I got this novel in 512 rupees , as of my experience till 190 is really good I have read 190 pages in 2 days approx , it's interesting story and hits you hard by psychological point of views I mean if your every thought of committing crime or I would say if you have watched crime petrol or some crime movie then we always wonder that why din this fool did this or did that to hide his crime he could easily get away from trouble...but in this book even if you thought of 100 things then 80 things this writer has introduced already and remember I am on page 190 ... I am sure it gonna shock me more ... I dunno what gonna happen in the end of the story ...btw name of the characters are so complex and hard to pronounce as they are Russian names and somehow it's confusing too ... So I would suggest that after reading 100 or 150 pages .. open Google and write down character names so that you can see whenever you are confused who the hell this guy is .. because I got confused many times and then I had to open Google and check the character ..... Guys go for this book and like my review .. maybe someday I will be famous on youtube ..as a book reviwer and then you all would feel proud that you have liked my post way before anyone else ...

Dostoevsky writes a magnificent book, written skillfully and in a professional manner, the story tells about the danger of the pursuit of an idea and the dealings with the truth of it later showing how one person never gets away with anything and that actions have consequences.

I’m still a new to reading novels, so my opinion may change in the future, but I have say that for one of my first novels to read I feel like I’ve read a master piece!How the characters in the novel are written, makes them feel real and connectable to.The description of the characters, their personalities and the places where events happened is very likable as well.The way I can hear the characters’ thoughts made me sometime feel like I was the person living and thinking that way, as if I were them! onetime I even felt almost going crazy as one of the characters was going crazy!It is in the psychological genre and it does a great job at it, but I would advise to stay away from it if you’re not fond of that genre.As a last note, as a non English native speaker the novel was a little hard to read(I needed to use the translator a couple of times).TLDR;I felt like I read a master piece.It was enjoyable, makes you feel like you are the character him/her self, the way the characters and their thoughts are presented is fantastic and makes them connectable to and makes the reader able to understand them.I liked it a lot, I definitely recommend it to anyone into the psychological genre.