I first encountered Crime and Punishment in the classic translation by Constance Garnett and loved it for Dostoyevsky's careful balance of character and philosophy. Dostoyevsky's genius lies in his ability to create simultaneously a psychological novel and a novel of ideas. Though each character represents a certain philosophy of life, they never become lifeless or stereotyped. Instead, each is a memorably developed and psychologically deep person, who could easily carry a story in their own right. Dostoyevsky's genius is in the perfect counterpoint between conflict of personality and conflict of philosophy between each of these fascinating people. Dostoyevsky also specializes in garnering the reader's interest and sympathy for the most unlikely characters. This is a novel, after all, with an ax murderer as the protagonist.
However, until I read this new translation of Dostoyevsky, I never realized that besides psychologist and philosopher, Dostoyevsky was also a masterful stylist. Pevear and Volokhonsky succeed in faithfully translating the literal meaning of the original Russian, while still capturing the vivid liveliness of Dostoyevsky's prose. The heat of a St. Petersburg summer night fairly radiates off the page in the first part, while his descriptions of Raskolnikov's cramped bedroom gave me claustrophobia.
Admittedly, this is no beach-read thriller. The Russian names can be confusing, and Dostoyevsky's manages to be both dense and long-winded. Nontheless, this is one of the greatest works of fiction ever written that should be read both as a "classic book" and as a gripping psychological exploration of crime.
While at first he escapes, as the novel reads on it becomes clear that he hasn't. He's got her money, true, but what to do with it was another matter. Should he give it to the needy, as planned? Should he keep it for himself? Or should he not use it at all?
And while this goes on, things aren't made any better when he steps out of his anti-socialism with the arrival of his sister, his widowed mother, and the Marmeladovs, a family consisting of the wastrel, self-pitying father, the consumptive mother, three young children, and a daughter, Sonya, who's a prostitute.
It only becomes worse as he gets caught into their problems. His father being dead, his family has no money; his sister is being pursued by her perverted employer (and is engaged to a rich man she neither loves nor cares for -and whom her brother despises- to support her family). He doesn't want his sister to sell herself to keep bread on the table, the way Sonya does, to support her family.
So what does he do? Does he confess? Turn himself in?
To me, the book wasn't so much about crime and punishment, but about redemption. It's not tragic, either, but more about rebirth.
Not dated, the "superman" idea or being beyond good and evil is as relevant in his day as in ours, and there are many dimensions, and points of view (Nietzsche claimed that Dostoevsky was the only person he'd ever learnt from). A lot less religiosity than Dostoyevsky's other works (the Idiot, the Brothers Karamazov), and both a suspense, a thriller and a love story. Kind of. (Didn't know whether Sonya loved him or whether is was that "Christian Love" typical of Dostoevsky -note Myshkin, Alyosha, etc)
There's also a point that no one, no matter how strong their sense of purpose, their ideals and the reasons to back up their actions, can commit a crime without answering to it at some point in their life -this or the next. Guilt tortures him, his conscience racks him day and night. At times, he wants to turn himself in, but at others, he keeps on telling himself that he was in the right, that he didn't commit a crime. Paranoia eats him up, and even more so in sight of police.
Throughout the book, Raskolnikov isn't a very likeable person, though he has the reader's sympathy. He'd saved kids from a burning building. Supported a fellow student and his father in university. He wants everyone to live better. He doesn't want his sister to have a loveless marriage, and helps her break it off. Upon receiving some money from his mother, he gives it to the Marmeladovs when the father dies, for the funeral. And he's drawn to Sonya, someone worse off than he is, but is still so kookily religious and even accepting of it.
For all the crime he committed, Raskolnikov is, at heart, a decent, compassionate man, and just as human as the ones he set himself apart from. All that is keeping him from loving and being loved is his doubt and self-disgust.
It is only when he finally confesses (crime) and gets sent to labour camp (punishment) that he can love and be loved, having "atoned" for his crime.
