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On the Structure of Crime and Punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edward Wasiolek
Edward Wasiolek*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Illinois
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Extract

The publication by I. I. Glivenko of Dostoevski's notebooks, in part in 1924 and in full in 1931, and the consequent re-evaluation of his novels have disposed rather conclusively of the opinion, long held and still occasionally repeated, that Dostoevski, though prophet, philosopher, and psychologist, was not a craftsman; that under the pressure of debts, bad economic habits, and unscrupulous publishers—all true conditions—he patched his novels together as best he could—all untrue.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , March 1959 , pp. 131 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

1 Krasnyi Arkhiv, Vol. vii (1924), and Iz Arkhiva F. M. Dostoevskogo, Prestuplenie i nakazanie (Moscow and Leningrad, 1931).

2 Poetika Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1925).

3 Tvorcheski put' Dostoevskogo, ed. N. L. Brodski (Leningrad): Vinogradov, “Siuzhet i arkhitektonika romana Dostoevskogo ‘Bednye liudi v sviazi s voprosom o poetike Naturalnoi shkoly,” pp. 49–103; Skaftymov, “Tematischeskaya kompozitsiya romana ‘Idiot’,” pp. 131–185; Davidovich, “Problemy zanimatel'nosti v romanakh Dostoevskogo,” pp. 104–130.

4 Published in Moscow under the direction of the “Akademiya Khudozhestvennykh Nauk, Literaturnaya Sektsiya”: Petrovski, “Kompozitsiya ‘Vechnogo muzha’,” pp. 115–162; Dunlin, “Ob odnom simvole v Dostoevskogo,” pp. 163–198.

5 Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo (Leningrad).

6 V tvorcheskoi laboralorii Dostoevskogo (Moscow).

7 Studies in Prose and Verse (New York, 1922), p. 169.

8 PMLA, LXX (Dec. 1955), 979–996.

9 CE, xvii (Dec. 1955), 143–150.

10 “Svidrigaylov is desperation, the most cynical. Sonia is hope the most unrealizable. (These must be expressed by Raskolnikov himself.) He is passionately attached to them both” (Iz Arkhiva F. M. Dostoevskogo, p. 216).

11 The division of the novel into 6 parts and an epilogue does not correspond to the parts as serialized when first published in Russki Vestnik in 8 installments (Jan., Feb., April, June, July, Aug., Nov., and Dec.) in 1866. In the following year the first edition of Crime and Punishment appeared in 6 parts. Although it contained many stylistic changes and a few speeches were shortened, there were no major changes; and what is important to this paper, the order and proportion of parts remained unchanged. It is with these proportions that I am concerned here and on which my proof depends, although, for the convenience of the reader, I speak of 6 parts, as they appeared in the first edition and as they appear now in all editions.

12 The precise definition of Raskolnikov's attempted plan would involve us in the knotty problem of his motivations, which I am not attempting to analyze in this article. Whether the motivation is one of false altruism or of Napoleonic amoral expression of will-to-power, the essential drive, no matter how defined, is to place one's own will and reason above the accepted law, whether civil or religious.

13 Dostoevski's desire to balance the picture of false rebirth against that of true rebirth is even clearer in his notebooks, where he originally planned to have Raskolnikov see a vision of Christ (Iz Arkhiva, p. 70).

14 Crime and Punishment, trans. David Magarshack (Baltimore: Penguin, 1951), p. 194.

15 In the notebooks Raskolnikov is also explicitly linked with the mare seen in childhood. He is both victim and victimizer: “Trembling all over, no longer from fever but from weakness (like a certain beaten horse which I saw in my youth), I undressed and lay down on the couch, pulling up over me my great coat” (Iz Arkhiva, p. 33).

16 Iz Arkhiva, p. 70.