Crime and Punishment in Read a book from each country

Nov 05, 2016 Meg rated it it was amazing

Shelves: translation, 19th-century, literary, character-main-murderer, classics, theme-tragedy, structure-interesting, characters-wonderfully-horrible, language-russian, literature-of-eastern-europe

This book is monumental.

I was preparing myself for a possible slog when I picked up Crime and Punishment, and was maybe even a bit discouraged thinking that I'd not have the stamina to finish it. But I was pleasantly surprised, in a similar way I have been with other unexpectedly engrossing 19th century books such as Madame Bovary, The Count of Monte Cristo, and the best of the Bröntes. C&P belongs to that special category of classics which express an intensity, vividness, and emotional resonan This book is monumental.

I was preparing myself for a possible slog when I picked up Crime and Punishment, and was maybe even a bit discouraged thinking that I'd not have the stamina to finish it. But I was pleasantly surprised, in a similar way I have been with other unexpectedly engrossing 19th century books such as Madame Bovary, The Count of Monte Cristo, and the best of the Bröntes. C&P belongs to that special category of classics which express an intensity, vividness, and emotional resonance undiminished by the passage of time. It's not a book you need to be wary of starting for fear of dullness or difficulty. I wish I'd known earlier that it's so accessible a read.

General consensus is correct in declaring Dostoyevsky king of psychological insight. His Raskolnikov is brilliantly human, full of exquisitely shaded and shifting contrasts and conflicting impulses and desires. He's wrenched between poles of extremity throughout the story, lapsing and re-lapsing between pride and humility, violence and gentleness, rationality and irrationality, self-absorption and generosity. He's a dynamic, enigmatic character that's made a big impression on me.

I kind of have to marvel at the structure and the parallelism in C&P that springs from and supports the conflicting impulses of Raskolnikov's personality and psychology. All the supporting characters can be seen to represent different facets of his personality, and play roles in drawing him along or pushing him back along polarities. Of course, the supporting characters are alive as well; Dostoyevsky is uniformly gifted at writing characters.

Ideas wise, I don't think I'm entirely convinced by some conclusions: I still am not quite certain what to make of the fact that it's actually Raskolnikov's axe-murdering rampage ("I murdered myself, not her!") that is what ultimately sets him on the path to redemption/goodness--it was an act of dynamism presented as necessary to get him out of a ideological and moral stagnation, a murder necessary for rebirth, horrendous as the act itself was. On the other hand, I liked that Dostoyevsky positively demolished the notion of the "greater good" that I find particularly odious, i.e. the idea that many good deeds can somehow cancel out one bad deed, as if life where some accounting book where each act can be assigned a (+) or (-) value. However, I also went in to the book already quite opposed to the notion of suffering as a type of virtue and/or key to one's moral and spiritual salvation-- I really don't believe there is anything inherently noble in suffering or that there is a grand rationalization/ "plan" behind why people suffer. Though I suppose since Dostoyevsky actually did spend years suffering greatly while serving a sentence of hard labor in Siberia, he's got a point of view backed by lived experience. It's only that I get irritated by the suggestion that suffering is good whenever I encounter it.

I think that's mainly why I disliked the epilogue, even if it is structurally completes Raskolnikov's character arc. It felt extraneous and overtly pushes a vision of heavy-handed Christian morality and regeneration. I sincerely wish the book had ended with (view spoiler), so I will do my best to try to imagine it did and forget the epilogue.

One thing I especially liked about this book is that Dostoyevsky is not afraid to write about murders, sudden deaths, unlikely coincidences, dastardly designs, scandals, love affairs, guns, blood, tears, etc. C&P being considered Great Serious Literature, I have to wonder where the modern notion that (melo)drama must be lowbrow comes from. I think I've officially run out of patience for modern lit books with no plot as I can see that there is not actually much basis for it within our literary tradition.

Having read and liked C&P, my first ever Russian novel, I feel so flushed with success I'm thinking extravagantly of trying one of Tolstoy's doorstoppers next; maybe I'll have another pleasant surprise in store for me.
...more

14 likes · Like · see review