At this time of transition, during the first years following the Emancipation, men’s ideas, too long repressed, were in a state of vertigo, of chaotic confusion. Some were buoyed up with the wildest hopes; others felt the bitterness of disenchantment, and many disappointed enthusiasts embraced Nihilism, which was taken up at this time by romance writers as well as by politicians. Dostoyevski abandoned his purely artistic ideals, withdrew from the influence of Gogol, and consecrated himself to the study of this new doctrine.
From 1865, our author experienced a series of unfortunate years. His second journal was unsuccessful, failed, and he was crushed under the burden of heavy debts incurred in the enterprise. He afterwards lost his wife, as related above, and also his brother Alexis, his associate in his literary labors. He fled to escape his creditors, and dragged out a miserable existence in Germany and Italy. Attacks of epilepsy interrupted his work, and he only returned home from time to time to solicit advance pay from his editors. All that he saw in his travels seems to have made no impression upon him, with the exception of an execution he witnessed at Lyons. This spectacle was retained in his memory, to be described in detail by characters of his future romances.
In spite of his illness and other troubles, he wrote at this time three of his longest novels,—“Crime et Châtiment,” “l’Idiot,” and “Les Possédés.” “Crime and Punishment” was written when he was at the height of his powers. It has been translated, and can therefore be criticised. Men of science who enjoy the study of the human soul, will read with interest the profoundest psychological study which has been written since Macbeth. The curious of a certain type will find in this book the entertaining mode of torture which is to their taste; but I think it will terrify the greater number of readers, and that very many will have no desire to finish it. We generally read a novel for pleasure, and not for punishment. This book has a powerful effect upon women, and upon all impressionable natures. The writer’s graphic scenes of terror are too much for a nervous organization. I have myself seen in Russia numerous examples of the infallible effect of this romance upon the mind. It can be urged that the Slav temperament is unusually susceptible, but I have seen the same impression made upon Frenchmen. Hoffmann, Edgar Poe, Baudelaire, all writers of this type, are mere mystics in comparison with Dostoyevski. In their fictions you feel that they are only pursuing a literary or artistic venture; but in “Crime and Punishment,” you are impressed with the fact that the author is as much horrified as you are yourself by the character that he has drawn from the tissue of his own brain.
The subject is very simple. A man conceives the idea of committing a crime; he matures it, commits the deed, defends himself for some time from being arrested, and finally gives himself up to the expiation of it. For once, this Russian artist has adopted the European idea of unity of action; the drama, purely psychological, is made up of the combat between the man and his own project. The accessory characters and facts are of no consequence, except in regard to their influence upon the criminal’s plans. The first part, in which are described the birth and growth of the criminal idea, is written with consummate skill and a truth and subtlety of analysis beyond all praise. The student Raskolnikof, a nihilist in the true sense of the word, intelligent, unprincipled, unscrupulous, reduced to extreme poverty, dreams of a happier condition. On returning home from going to pawn a jewel at an old pawnbroker’s shop, this vague thought crosses his brain without his attaching much importance to it:—
“An intelligent man who had that old woman’s money could accomplish anything he liked; it is only necessary to get rid of the useless, hateful old hag.”
This was but one of those fleeting thoughts which cross the brain like a nightmare, and which only assume a distinct form through the assent of the will. This idea becomes fixed in the man’s brain, growing and increasing on every page, until he is perfectly possessed by it. Every hard experience of his outward life appears to him to bear some relation to his project; and by a mysterious power of reasoning, to work into his plan and urge him on to the crime. The influence exercised upon this man is brought out into such distinct relief that it seems to us itself like a living actor in the drama, guiding the criminal’s hand to the murderous weapon. The horrible deed is accomplished; and the unfortunate man wrestles with the recollection of it as he did with the original design. The relations of the world to the murderer are all changed, through the irreparable fact of his having suppressed a human life. Everything takes on a new physiognomy and a new meaning to him, excluding from him the possibility of feeling and reasoning like other people, or of finding his own place in life. His whole soul is metamorphosed and in constant discord with the life around him. This is not remorse in the true sense of the word. Dostoyevski exerts himself to distinguish and explain the difference. His hero will feel no remorse until the day of expiation; but it is a complex and perverse feeling which possesses him; the vexation at having derived no satisfaction from an act so successfully carried out; the revolting against the unexpected moral consequences of that act; the shame of finding himself so weak and helpless; for the foundation of Raskolnikof’s character is pride. Only one single interest in life is left to him: to deceive and elude the police. He seeks their company, their friendship, by an attraction analogous to that which draws us to the extreme edge of a dizzy precipice; the murderer keeps up interminable interviews with his friends at the police office, and even leads on the conversation to that point, when a single word would betray him; every moment we fear he will utter the word; but he escapes and continues the terrible game as if it were a pleasure.
The magistrate Porphyre has guessed the student’s secret; he plays with him like a tiger with its prey, sure of his game. Then Raskolnikof knows he is discovered; and through several chapters a long fantastic dialogue is kept up between the two adversaries; a double dialogue, that of the lips, which smile and wilfully ignore; and that of the eyes which know and betray all. At last when the author has tortured us sufficiently in this way, he introduces the salutary influence which is to break down the culprit’s pride and reconcile him to the expiation of his crime. Raskolnikof loves a poor street-walker. The author’s clairvoyance divines that even the sentiment of love was destined in him to be modified, like every other, to be changed into a dull despair.
Sonia is a humble creature, who has sold herself to escape starvation, and is almost unconscious of her dishonor, enduring it as a malady she cannot prevent. She wears her ignominy as a cross, with pious resignation. She is attached to the only man who has not treated her with contempt; she sees that he is tortured by some secret, and tries to draw it from him. After a long struggle the avowal is made, but not in words. In a mute interview, which is tragic in the extreme, Sonia reads the terrible truth in her friend’s eyes. The poor girl is stunned for a moment, but recovers herself quickly. She knows the remedy; her stricken heart cries out:—
“We must suffer, and suffer together … we must pray and atone … let us go to prison!…”
Thus are we led back to Dostoyevski’s favorite idea, to the Russian’s fundamental conception of Christianity: the efficacy of atonement, of suffering, and its being the only solution of all difficulties.