Porfiry Tells Raskolnokov That He Has Read
by Deborah A. Martinsen
As we all read and reread, blog, twitterize, and talk over Criminal offense and Penalty in this 150th anniversary of its publication twelvemonth, I take been struck yet again past the novel's focus on ethics, its tight structure, and how the two piece of work together. To illustrate this observation, I volition cite iii passages – from the novel's beginning, middle, and terminate.
Passage one (Pt 1): On the novel's offset page, Raskolnikov wonders "what practice people fear most? A new step, a new give-and-take of their own." The narrator thus signals that Raskolnikov prizes originality, peculiarly theory. The surrounding paragraph makes it articulate that he is anxious about the gap between theory and action. (Attentive readers will note that in the grade of the outset folio, the narrator moves from an outsider omniscient stance, to partial insider condition using free indirect discourse – paraphrasing Raskolnikov'due south thoughts, to total insider condition using direct discourse to quote Raskolnikov's thoughts verbatim in this passage.)
Passage ii (Office three, Ch 5): As Raskolnikov discusses his article on crime with Porfiry and Razumikhin, he claims that only extraordinary people have the gift or talent to utter "a new word." Five pages later, Porfiry asks him: "when you lot were composing that little article of yours, well, information technology's but inconceivable – heh, heh! – that you didn't besides think of yourself as being at to the lowest degree a teeny bit 'extraordinary' as well, as also having a new give-and-take to utter, in your agreement of those terms…Wouldn't you say, sir?" Porfiry thus voices our suspicion, putting another motive for murder on the table. In between these two fragments of the conversation, Razumikhin identifies Raskolnikov's new discussion, his contribution to a electric current argue on natural law: "what is truly original most information technology all – and truly belongs to you solitary, to my horror – is that, in the terminate, yous let bloodshed as a affair of conscience, and, if you'll alibi me, you're actually quite fanatical about it… This, then, must exist the principal idea of your article. But the permission to shed blood as a thing of conscience, well…it's more than terrifying, to my mind, than whatsoever official permission, whatever legal permission…" Raskolnikov notes that the idea is "only hinted at," but now nosotros know that a new word signifies a theory, then nosotros have some other theoretical justification for the crime.
Dostoevsky undercuts Raskolnikov's preoccupation with originality (the "new word") in a number of ways. First, Raskolnikov himself is a literary cliché: a young man from the provinces who comes to the big metropolis and lives off his family unit. Second, in Part 1 (Ch half-dozen), readers see that the "strange idea" in Raskolnikov's head (killing the sometime pawnbroker and using her money for social skillful) is actually a commonplace discussed in taverns! Finally, as many of Dostoevsky's readers would accept known, much of Raskolnikov'due south theory about extraordinary people comes correct out of Louis Napoleon'southward History of Julius Caesar, an 1865 literary sensation that was a veiled apology for himself and his uncle.
Passage 3 (Epilogue, Pt 2): As Raskolnikov mechanically takes the Gospels out from under his pillow, he realizes that he had asked Sonya to bring it to him, simply he had not even opened it yet: "Nor did he open it now, but a thought flashed in him: 'Can her convictions not be my convictions now? Her feelings, her aspirations, at least…'"
In his inimitable fashion, Dostoevsky has moved the chat from abstract theory – "a new word" – to incarnated Gospel truth ("In the commencement was the Word," John ane.one). Moreover, Dostoevsky debunks the utilitarian calculus with which he has been polemicizing throughout the novel. In the Dostoevskian universe, calculation is the worst sin. In Crime and Punishment, Luzhin is the greatest villain. Luzhin enthusiastically embraces utilitarianism (Pt 2, Ch 5): "If hitherto, for example, I have been told to 'love my neighbor' and I have done so, and then what was the upshot? . . . The result was that I ripped my sheepskin in ii, shared it with my neighbour and we both ended up half-naked . . . But science says: love yourself before loving anyone else, for everything in this world is founded on self-interest. Dearest yourself and your affairs will have care of themselves, and your coat will remain in one slice. . . . it is precisely by profiting myself and no one else that I thereby profit everyone, equally it were, and enable my neighbor to receive something more than a ripped coat" (a nineteenth-century joint of trickle-downwards economics and the prosperity gospel). A few pages later, Raskolnikov claims that Luzhin'southward "theory in action" would justify murder: "Take what yous were preaching only at present to its conclusions, and one could stab people…." In brusque, Dostoevsky creates a powerful parallel between his sympathetic axe-murderer and the novel's most despicable character. Just as Raskolnikov exposes the weaknesses of Luzhin's theory by taking it to its logical conclusion, Dostoevsky exposes the weaknesses of Raskolnikov's theory. He thus demonstrates that theories have consequences. Information technology matters which "word" we follow.
Deborah A. Martinsen is Associate Dean of Alumni Education and Adjunct Acquaintance Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she teaches classes on Dostoevsky, narrative, and globe literature. She is the author of Surprised past Shame: Dostoevsky'southward Liars and Narrative Exposure (2003; in Russian 2011), and has most recently co-edited Dostoevsky in Context (2015) with Olga Maiorova. She was President of the International Dostoevsky Guild (2007-13) and Executive Secretary of the North American Dostoevsky Society (1998-2013). She is also a managing editor of Dostoevsky Studies.
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Source: https://bloggerskaramazov.com/2016/08/11/d-and-raskolnikovs-new-word/
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