Crime and Punishment (Wordsworth Classics)
by Dostoevsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: DostoevskyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09-29
ISBN: 1840224304
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Book Reviews of Crime and Punishment (Wordsworth Classics)
Book Review: Pevear and McDuff Translations are Better
Summary: 5 Stars
Welcome to the glittering world of dyschronic post-modernist criticism, which has enabled me to recognize that 'Crime and Punishment', published in 1866, was written as a prescient refutation of the Objectivist philosophy expressed in Ayn Rand's novels 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. Without the wonders of dyschronicity, we'd have to mention that 'Atlas Shrugged' wasn't published until 1957 and Ayn Rand wasn't born until 1905. However, surely the fact that Dostoyevsky and Rand died almost exactly 100 years apart will be recognized as a signifier.
The most cogent advocate of Randian Objectivism in 'C&P' is the scurvy Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, the suitor for Dunya's hand, who speaks for himself in his first face-to-face encounter with Raskolnikov: "Love yourself before all others," he says, " for everything in the world is founded on self-interest. If you love only yourself, you will conduct your enterprises in a proper manner..." and by implication, good things will trickle down to the rest of us. As the most single-minded Objectivist, please note, Luzhin is the only character in the novel who is unambiguously a swine. Even the erratic, half-crazy Svidrigailov falls short of perfect obedience to Randian morality, compromising the order of things by last-minute acts of charity.
The scene in the tavern, early in the novel, when Raskolnikov overhears other young 'intellectuals' discussing the logic of justifying a 'crime' by weighing it against the heroic benefits that may result from its success - to whit, the murder of the old-lady usurer in order to gain the capital to achieve a great destiny, the very crime Raskolnikov has been meditating - is not only a parallel to scenes in Rand's work, but it is, I swear, exactly word-for-word a transcript of a discussion I heard in a Harvard dining hall in 1963 between David Friedman (the anarcho-capitalist son of Milton Friedman) and some friends, and that conversation, believe it or not, was repeated verbatim at a drinking session in the Bohemian Grove in 1982, the speakers being Dick Cheney and acquaintances. Remarkable, I'd say! The convergence of libertarianism and neo-liberalism (aka neo-conservatism) is to be found in Ayn Rand.
Hostile as Raskolnikov is the the scurrilous Luzhin, his own ethical premises, as expressed in the article he had written months before the action of the novel, are also pure Objectivism. "...an extraordinary person has a right... not an official right of course, but a private one, to allow his conscience to step across certain obstacles, and then only if the execution of his idea, which may be the salvation of all mankind, requires it." For the benefit of anyone who hasn't actually read 'Crime and Punishment', the entire 700 page novel is constructed to teach Raskolnikov the error of his assumptions, so that by the time he reaches Siberia he can accept the humble Sonya's notions of suffering and redemption. Yes, readers, I warn you that Dostoyevsky's answer to Objectivism, and to proto-communism for that matter, is... oh, you'd best read it for yourself.
One thing I didn't notice, the first time I read C&P some 50 years ago, was how entertaining it is. That's right, entertaining! What a gallery of vivid characters! What a sensory feast of description, albeit chiefly description of filth, poverty, and depravity! What scorching, sardonic wit with which the principal characters taunt each other! Long and dark it is, but C&P is also an elegantly constructed fiction, a book that was immediately 'popular' and has deservedly stayed popular. Why, Ayn Rand herself declared it to be one of the novels that most influenced her, though that can be taken as evidence that Ms. Rand wasn't a particularly insightful reader. The only portion of the novel which fails, IMHO, is the epilogue, and I have an explanation for the problem; the Tsarist secret police compelled Dostoyevsky's editor to falsify a semi-happy ending in epilogue format as a condition for allowing the publication of such a dire portrayal of Russian life.
Compare C&P, if you will, with English novels of the mid 19th Century - Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, Gaskell. The English are all about manners and mores. The Russia of C&P was a world of philosophical and social ferment, far more 'modern' in its intellectual daring. I'm not sure the average Anglo-American reader has caught up yet.
Summary of Crime and Punishment (Wordsworth Classics)
Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder. From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime. The result is a tragic novel built out of a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world's harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality.Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Dostoyevsky's penetrating novel of an intellectual whose moral compass goes haywire, and the detective who hunts him down for his terrible crime, is a stunning psychological portrait, a thriller and a profound meditation on guilt and retribution.
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