Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics) | Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics) | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Lost in translation?

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Crime and Punishme...

	Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Pocket, 2004 - 704 pages average customer review:based on 464 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Delectably Disturbing

This book is amazing, truly one of Dostoyevsky's greatest works. Dostoyevsky has an amazing talent for creating characters. Great authors can be recognized by their ability to create characters that the reader can identify with. However Dostoyevsky is not a great author, great is to meek a word; he creates characters that the reader identifies with so completely that, as a reader you 'Become' his character! This is a must read for any reader!
Crime and Punishment follows the endeavers of Raskolnikov as he attempts to transcend humanity. We are taken along a psychological journey of life itself, that begins first and foremost with death.

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Lost in translation?

The title translated into German used to be 'Schuld und Suehne' which translates into 'Guilt and Attonement'. The book appears now with the new translated title of 'Verbrechen und Strafe' which translates into 'Crime and Punishment'. What was the author really thinking by almost excusing the crime? Are we now less forgiving?

The Crime is Clear: The Punishment Less Clear: The Motivation Least Clear

Those who read CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Dostoevsky often approach it thinking that it is standard detective story, sort of a Russian Sherlock Holmes. What they discover almost from the first is that the identity of the criminal is revealed, so this is not a novel of suspense or of a brilliant police detective. The focus they further learn is not on the "crime" of the title, nor is is very much on the "punishment" either. Instead, in the endless self-rationalizations of the murderer-protagonist Raskolnikov, they learn Dostoevski squarely places dramatic interest on an uneasy stasis between Raskolnikov's motive for the killing of two women and his need to suffer as atonement for those killings.

In order to draw the reader into the mind and plot, Dostoevski needed to ensure the primacy of his theme of the need for obsessive suffering. He accomplishes this by centering the story on the murder of the two women. Everything in the story either leads up to or follows it. The reader quickly learns a great deal of information so that by the end of the first few chapters, he has placed himself in the shoes and the mind of Raskolnikov. Ironically, although Raskolnikov tells the reader that his motivation was no more than to see if he could place himself so godlike above the law that he not fear the consequences of that law, the reader learns, slowly and painfully as does Raskolnikov, that the real motivation is not what he tells himself so bluntly. Does Raskolnikov kill for the money? To eliminate what he sees as social parasites that society would benefit from in their removal? Or can there be other reasons, hidden even from him? Complicating his constant self-examination as to motive lay Dostoevski himself. As a writer, Dostoevski was concerned for the salvation of the Russian soul, one that he saw as threatened by a western reliance on rational pragmatism that, in criminal matters in any case, required a convincing and single rationale that could totally explain and explicate any crime. Such an approach might work in Western democracies, but the Russian soul needed a call for order and justice that transcended logic and reason. This call was historically rooted in "rodina," an almost mystical love for the Russian motherland. And for one to gain this heightened sense of unity with Russian soil and Russian values, one had to suffer to expiate crime. Thus the need for Raskolnikov not only to suffer, but first he had to earn the right to suffer. The crime is then seen as less important than the punishment, both of which are ultimately weighed as still less important than any needed suffering. When Raskolnikov can endure no further suffering, he confesses, and his confession is proper expiation for his crime. His punishment of a lengthy prison term in Siberia is almost anti-climactic. He will emerge from prison a man who has learned that the act of sin can lead the way to redemption for that sin but only if one pays the price before the jury returns with a verdict. In CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Dostoevski makes this point as starkly as anyone else has.

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Simply, the masterwork.

As an avid reader of Dostoevsky, this book was that which inspired me to pursue him completely, this book is widely recognized as one of his two masterworks (the other being The Brothers Karamazov). His philosophy is simply splendid, the plot is perfect. I believe that this is not a book which you can read just once and fully understand all the nuances of the philosophy. You cannot read this book without full concentration either. Simply put, this book is an essential (truly) to any reader, or to anyone remotely interested in philosophy.

On the nature of great literature

Crime and Punishment is my favorite book, but that's not what I want to say here. What I must say is simply this: you are not required to read this book, and you are certainly not required to *like* this book, but to dismiss it, to disrespect the fantastic amount of painstaking artistic labor that Dostoeyevsky put into his masterpiece is both ignorant and wrong.

On a side note, I do recognize that some people actually *are* required to read Crime and Punishment for their course work. I find this deeply regrettable; I probably would have hated it too if I hadn't read it by choice.

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