In 1865 appeared the novel by which he is widely known, “Crime and Punishment,” in which Dostoievsky's first great antinomian hero, Raskolnikov, a repentant nihilist, is introduced to the reader. He believes that he has a special right to live, to rebel against society, to transgress every law and moral precept, and to follow the dictates of his own will and the lead of his own thought. Such a proud, arrogant, intellectual spirit requires to be cleansed, and inasmuch as the verity, the essence of life, lies in humility, Dostoievsky makes his hero murder an old pawnbroker and his sister and then proceeds to put him through the most excruciating mental agony imaginable. At the same time his mother and sister undergo profound vicarious suffering, while a successor of Mary Magdalene succours him in his increasingly agonised state and finally accompanies him to penal servitude. Many times Raskolnikov appears upon the point of confessing his crime from the torments of his own conscience, but, in reality, Svidrigailov, a strange monster of sin and sentiment, and the police officer, Petrovitch, a forerunner of Sherlock Holmes, suggest the confession to him, and between the effect of their suggestion and the appeal of Sonia, whose love moves him strangely, he confesses but does not repent. He does not repent because he has done no sin. He has committed no crime. The scales have not yet fallen from his eyes. That is reserved for the days and nights of his prison life and is to be mediated by Sonia's sacrificial heroism.
It is interesting to contemplate Dostoievsky at the state of development when he wrote “Crime and Punishment,” or rather the state of development of his idea of free will. Raskolnikov has the same relation to Stavrogin of “The Possessed” and to Kirillov, the epileptic of the same book, as one of the trial pictures of the figures in the Last Supper has to Leonardo's masterpiece. Dostoievsky apparently was content to describe a case of moral imbecility in its most attractive way, and then when he had outlined its lineaments, to leave it and not adjust it to the other groupings of the picture that was undertaken. It would seem that his interest had got switched from Raskolnikov to Svidrigailov, who has dared to outrage covenants and conventions, laws and morality, and has measured his will against all things. Svidrigailov knows the difference between good and evil, right and wrong; indeed he realises it with great keenness, and when he finds that he is up against it, as it were, and has no escape, he puts the revolver to his temple and pulls the trigger. Death is the only thing he has not tried, and why wait to see whether eternity is just one little room like a bathhouse in the country, or whether it is something beyond conception? Why not find out at once as everything has been found out? Svidrigailov is Dostoievsky's symbol of the denial of God, the denial of a will beyond his own.
“If there is a will beyond my own, it must be an evil will because pain exists. Therefore I must will evil to be in harmony with it. If there is no will beyond my own, then I must assert my own will until it is free of all check beyond itself. Therefore I must will evil.”
Raskolnikov represents the conflict of will with the element of moral duty and conscience, and Svidrigailov represents its conflict with defined, deliberate passion. This same will in conflict with the will of the people, the State, is represented by Stavrogin and Shatov, while its conflict with metaphysical and religious mystery is represented by Karamazov, Myshkin, and Kirillov. Despite the fact that they pass through the furnace of burning conflicts and the fire of inflaming passions, the force of dominant will is ever supreme. Their human individuality, as represented by their ego, remains definite and concrete. It is untouched, unaltered, undissolved. Though they oppose themselves to the elements that are devouring them, they continue to assert their ego and self-will even when their end is at hand. Myshkin, Alyosha, and Zosima submit to God's will but not to man's.
“Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov” are the books by which Dostoievsky is best known in this country, and the latter, though unfinished, was intended by him to be his great work, “a work that is very dear to me for I have put a great deal of my inmost self into it,” and it has been so estimated by the critics. Indeed, it is the summary of all his thoughts, of all his doubts, of all his fancies, and such statement of his faith as he could formulate. It is saturated in mysticism and it is a vade mecum of psychiatry. It is the narrative of the life of an egotistic, depraved, sensuous monster, who is a toad, a cynic, a scoffer, a drunkard, and a profligate, the synthesis of which, when combined with moral anæsthesia, constitutes degeneracy; of his three legitimate sons and their mistresses; and of an epileptic bastard son who resulted from the rape of an idiot girl.
The eldest son, Dimitri, grows up unloved, unguided, unappreciated, frankly hostile to his father whom he loathes and despises, particularly when he is convinced that the father has robbed him of his patrimony. He has had a rake's career, but when Katerina Ivanovna puts herself unconditionally in his power to save her father's honour he spares her. Three months later, when betrothed to her, he has become entangled in Circe's toils by Grushenka, for whose favour Fyodor Pavlovitch, his father, is bidding.
The second son, Ivan, half brother to Dimitri, whose mother was driven to insanity by the orgies staged in her own house and by the lusts and cruelties of her husband, is an intellectual and a nihilist. He is in rebellion against life, but he has an unquenchable thirst for life, and he will not accept the world. To love one's neighbours is impossible; even to conceive of it is repugnant. He will not admit that all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, and he insists “while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures.” He does not want forgiveness earned for him vicariously. He wants to do it himself. He wants to avenge his suffering, to satisfy his indignation, even if he is wrong. Too high a price is asked for harmony; it is beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. “And so,” he says to his younger brother, the potential Saint Alyosha, “I hasten to give back my entrance ticket. It's not God that I don't accept, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.”
Dostoievsky speaks oftener out of the mouth of Ivan than of any of his other characters. When some understanding Slav like Myereski shall formulate Dostoievsky's religious beliefs it will likely be found that they do not differ materially from those of Ivan, as stated in the chapter “Pro and Contra” of “The Brothers Karamazov.” He sees in Christ the Salvation of mankind, and the woe of the world is that it has not accepted Him.
The third brother, Alyosha, is the prototype of the man's redeemer—a tender-minded, preoccupied youth, chaste and pure, who takes no thought for the morrow and always turns the other cheek, and esteems his neighbour far more than himself. At heart he is a sensualist. “All the Karamazovs are insects to whom God has given sensual lust which will stir up a tempest in your blood,” said Ivan to Alyosha when he was attempting to set forth his philosophy of life. But this endowment permits him the more comprehensively to understand the frailties of others and to condone their offences. The monastic life appeals to him, but he is warded off from it by Father Zosima, the prototype of Bishop Tikhon, in “Stavrogin's Confession,” whose clay was lovingly moulded by Dostoievsky, but into whose nostrils he did not blow the breath of life. This monk, who had been worldly and who, because of his knowledge, forgives readily and wholly, is a favourite figure of Dostoievsky, and one through whom he frequently expresses his sentiments and describes his visions. His convictions, conduct and teaching may be summarised in his own words:
“Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don't fret. If only your penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.”