More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
“Lord,” he prayed, “show me my path—I renounce that accursed . . . dream of mine.”
The dream or the act?
In spite of all his agonizing inward struggle, he never for a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his plans.
He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into laughter—not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.
A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him—he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him.
When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times—generally on his way home—stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marveled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless.
It struck him as strange and grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him . . . so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now—all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all. . . . He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his
...more
What struck Zametov afterward as the strangest part of it all was that silence followed for exactly a minute, and that they gazed at one another all the while.
Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd, and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose.
“And why should they compensate me? Why, he was drunk and threw himself under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in nothing but misery. He drank everything away, the drunkard! He robbed us to get drink, he wasted their lives and mine for drink! And thank God he’s dying! One less to keep!” “You must forgive in the hour of death, that’s a sin, madam, such feelings are a great sin.”
Marmeladov was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face of Katerina Ivanovna, who was bending over him again.
Sonia with a faint cry ran up, embraced him and remained so without moving. He died in her arms.
A cry of joy, of ecstasy, greeted Raskolnikov’s entrance. Both rushed to him. But he stood like one dead; a sudden intolerable sensation struck him like a thunderbolt. He did not lift his arms to embrace them, he could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their arms, kissed him, laughed and cried. He took a step, tottered and fell to the ground, fainting.
“Don’t be too sure,” he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile. A silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the forgiveness, and all were feeling it.
I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word.
Raskolnikov could not see clearly, but he fancied that he was again smiling the same smile of cold hatred and triumph.
Pyotr Petrovitch belonged to that class of persons, on the surface very polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but who, directly they are crossed in anything, are completely disconcerted, and become more like sacks of flour than elegant and lively men of society.
“To my thinking, you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones.”
“Good heavens!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Razumihin could not sit still on his chair. “Aren’t you ashamed now, sister?” asked Raskolnikov. “I am ashamed, Rodya,” said Dounia. “Pyotr Petrovitch, go away,” she turned to him, white with anger. Pyotr Petrovitch had apparently not at all expected such a conclusion. He had too much confidence in himself, in his power and in the helplessness of his victims. He could not believe it even now. He turned pale, and his lips quivered.
For a minute they were looking at one another in silence. Razumihin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov’s burning and intent eyes grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his soul, into his consciousness. Suddenly Razumihin started. Something strange, as it were, passed between them. . . . Some idea, some hint, as it were, slipped, something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides. . . . Razumihin turned pale.
“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity,” he said wildly and walked away to the window. “Listen,” he added, turning to her a minute later. “I said just now to an insolent man that he was not worth your little finger . . . and that I did my sister honor making her sit beside you.”
“It was not because of your dishonor and your sin I said that of you, but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? Tell me,” he went on almost in a frenzy, “how this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side with
...more
Could be talking aboit his own sin
“And he that was dead came forth.” (She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were seeing it before her eyes.)
The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book.
He seemed to become more playful and good-humored which maddened Raskolnikov.
The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night.
He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.
It must be noted that when Katerina Ivanovna exalted anyone’s connections and fortune, it was without any ulterior motive, quite disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of adding to the consequence of the person praised.
Pyotr Petrovitch stole a glance at Raskolnikov. Their eyes met, and the fire in Raskolnikov’s seemed ready to reduce him to ashes.
In the same way he stared at her and almost with the same childish smile.
Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever. . . . But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I.
He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved.
Sometimes he walked out of the town on to the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near him.
How do I regard you? I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer!
A sly smile came into Svidrigaïlov’s face and grew broader and broader. Each knew that he was seen and watched by the other. At last Svidrigaïlov broke into a loud laugh.
You give yourself away too much, Rodion Romanovitch.
He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took from between the pages a little water-color portrait on ivory. It was the portrait of his landlady’s daughter, who had died of fever, that strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at the delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave it to Dounia.
“But why are they so fond of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! Nothing of all this would have happened.
To the question what led him to confess, he answered that it was his heartfelt repentance.
