Crime And Punishment Essay, Research Paper

Three notebooks with drafts and notes for Crime and Punishment have been preserved, that is, three manuscript versions of the novel: the first, short version (”the novella”); the second, lengthier version; and the third, final version. These correspond to the three stages of [Dostoevsky's] work: the Wiesbaden stage (the letter to Katkov); the Petersburg stage (from October to December 1865), when Dostoevsky launched his “new plan”; and, finally, the last stage (1866).

All three-manuscript versions of the novel have been published three times. The last two publications, by G. h’. Kogan and L. D. Opulskaya, are on a high scholarly level. These publications of the drafts of Crime and Punishment gives us the opportunity to take a clear look into Dostoevsky’s creative laboratory and at his searching, stubborn grappling with words and with narrative forms.

The Wiesbaden novellas, as well as the second, lengthier version, were still cast in the form of a confession by the criminal: “I am on trial, and I shall tell it all. I shall write down everything. I am writing for myself, but let others read it, too, all my judges, too, if they want to. This is a confession. I shall keep nothing back.” But in the course of the work, when the material of the novel “The Drunkards” merges with the “confession,” and the conception becomes complicated, the earlier form of a confession told by the murderer who had cut himself off from the world and had completely moved inside his “fixed idea” becomes too narrow for the new psychological and social contents. Dostoevsky settles on a “new form”-authorial narration. In November 1865 he burns the first version, the novella.

In the third, final version, a very important entry appears: “Narration by myself, not by him. If it were a confession, it should be too much so, to the last extreme, everything would have to be made clear. So that every moment of the story is clear. NB To be taken into consideration: if told as a confession, at some points it will be immodest, and difficult to imagine for what purpose it has been written. But if told by the author, much naivet and openness are needed. One must assume an author who is an omniscient, infallible being, exhibiting one of the members of the new generation for everybody to see.”

The drafts in the notebooks to Crime and Punishment make it possible for us to trace how long Dostoevsky looked for an answer to the main question of the novel: why did Raskolnikov commit the murders? The answer did not come easily to the author. In the original conception of the novella (letter to Katkov), it was “simple arithmetic”: to kill one worthless, harmful, and rich being, in order to use the money to make many beautiful but poor people happy: “My poor mother, my poor sister. I meant it for you. If it is a sin, I decided to take it on me, but only so that you would be happy”; “to die proudly, having paid with a mountain of helpful good deeds for the trivial and ridiculous crime of my youth.”

In the second, extensive version, Raskolnikov still presents himself as a humanist thirsting to defend the humiliated and injured ones: “I am not a person who would permit a scoundrel to destroy a defenseless, weak creature. I join in, I want to join in.” But the paradoxical idea of for mankind gradually becomes covered over with Raskolnikov’s will to power. Till now, Raskolnikov does not seek power out of vanity. He wants to acquire power in order to devote himself entirely to service to human beings; he wants to use power only for the good of people: “I take power, I acquire the strength, whether force or money, to do harm. I bring happiness.” His prayer after he comes home from the Marmeladovs: meekly: “Lord! If the murder of this blind, stupid old woman, who is of no use to anybody, is a sin, when I had wanted to dedicate myself-to consecrate myself, then condemn me. I judged myself severely, it was not vanity.”

But Dostoevsky penetrates still more deeply into the soul of the criminal and, behind the idea of the good heart, which lost its way, discovers murder for the sake of love of humanity, for the sake of good deeds. He discovers what was for him the most horrible and monstrous idea-the “Napoleonic Idea,” the idea of power for the sake of power, the idea dividing mankind into two unequal parts: the majority-the trembling creatures–and the minority-the masters, called from birth to the mission of ruling over the majority, standing outside the law and having the right, like Napoleon, to transgress against the law and to break the divine order of the world, for the sake of the ends which they require. In the third, final version the “Napoleonic Idea” reaches its full maturity. “Is it possible to love them? Is it possible to suffer for them? Hatred for mankind”; “Lack of love for mankind and suddenly the idea about the old woman”; “The idea of extreme pride, haughtiness, and contempt for this society is expressed in the novel in his character. His idea: to take this society in his power. Despotism-that is his character trait.” “He wants to rule-and does not know by what means. To grasp power as fast as possible and to become rich. The idea of murder came to him full blown. NB Whatever I might be, what I might then do, whether I should be a benefactor of humanity or whether I would suck out its vital juices like a spider, that does not matter to me. I know that I want to rule, and that is enough.” “Listen: there are two sorts of people. The higher natures can step across obstacles.”

Thus, in the creative process, in Dostoevsky’s bringing the conception of Crime and Punishment to its maturity, in the character of Raskolnikov, two contradictory ideas clashed: the idea of love for people and the idea of contempt for them. The notebooks with drafts for the novel show the torments Dostoevsky went through as he looked for a way out: either to drop one of the two ideas, or to keep both. In the second, extended version there is the entry: “The main anatomy of the novel. After the sickness and so forth. Put the line of the action definitely on a real footing and get rid of all indefiniteness; that is, in one way or another make clear the whole murder and make his character and relationships clear.” But the disappearance of one of the two ideas would have significantly simplified and impoverished the concept of the novel, and Dostoevsky decides to combine both ideas, to show a man in whom, as Razumikhin says about Raskolnikov in the final text of the novel, “two antithetical characters take each other’s place in turn.”

Dostoevsky also agonized as he struggled to find a conclusion to the novel. One of his notes reads: “The ending of the novel. Raskolnikov goes to shoot himself.” But that was the ending only for the “Napoleonic idea.” The writer also sketches in an ending for the “idea of love,” when Christ himself saves the repentant sinner: “A vision of Christ. He asks the people for forgiveness.”

But what will be the end of a man uniting in himself both antithetical principles? Dostoevsky understood very well that such a man will accept neither the authorial judgment, nor the juridical one, nor that of his own conscience. Raskolnikov acknowledges only one court over himself, the “Supreme Court,” the court of Sonya Marmeladova, that same Sonya in whose name he had raised the axe, that same humiliated and injured Sonya, one of those women who had always suffered, ever since the earth has existed.

After he has killed the old women, Raskolnikov not only does not experience repentance, but believes in his theory more than ever. Even when he goes to the police station in order to turn himself in, he does not think that there is anything for him to repent of. Despite his conviction that he was right, he goes and denounces himself, and accepts punishment for his crime, which, in his opinion, he had not committed. Something higher than the considerations of reason wins over his will. This struggle between the conscience protesting against the bloodshed and reason justifying the bloodshed is what constitutes the spiritual drama of Raskolnikov. And when the conscience (the moral instinct which Raskolnikov cannot understand) finally conquers, and Raskolnikov is already languishing in prison, his reason still does not surrender, but refuses to acknowledge that it had been mistaken.

Even his confession in his opinion proved not that his theory was false, but that he himself was not one of those great people who can break moral laws: “I spent so many days tormenting myself: would Napoleon have gone [to confess], or not? I felt clearly that I was not Napoleon . . .” This is what rips Raskolnikov to pieces: he turned out to be an ordinary human being subject to the moral law.

He wanted to have “freedom and power, but mainly power over all trembling creatures, over the entire anthill!” He was to have received that power after he had freed himself from the moral law. But the moral law showed itself to be stronger than he, and he lost . . . . Only in prison, literally on the last page of the novel, a revolution took place in Raskolnikov’s soul: he was born into a new life. The moral sense won. Such was Raskolnikov’s tragedy. Conscience and nature turned out to be stronger than theory, in spite of its logical invulnerability.

What did the error of Raskolnikov’s theory consist in? Raskolnikov wanted to base it on logic, to rationalize something which in its very essence does not permit such a logical grounding, such a rationalization. He wanted to find a fully rational morality and by way of a logical path arrived at its full rejection. Raskolnikov sought proofs of the moral law through the path of logic and did not understand that the moral law does not require proofs, for it receives its supreme sanction not from the outside, but from within itself. Why does the personality of each human being represent something sacred? No logical reason can be adduced, but such is the law of human conscience, a moral law. It is not without a purpose that Dostoevsky wrote in his preparatory materials for the novel, “There is only one law, the moral law.”

No matter what the origin of this law may be, it exists in the soul of man, as a reality, and it does not allow itself to be broken. Raskolnikov tried to breach it, and he was defeated. Everyone is bound to be defeated in this way if he possesses the moral sense, and breaches the moral law, the law of human conscience.

Naturally, he who lacks the moral sense is able to shed blood with absolute calm, without feeling any pangs of conscience. Svidrigaylov commits his crimes without feeling any tragedy in his soul. Those who possess no conscience do not need to ask themselves whether they have the right to kill another human being; they do not need any moral justification for their actions. But Raskolnikov is a human being with a conscience, and conscience avenges itself on him for his flouting of the moral law.

The moral law proclaims that every human personality is a supreme sacred entity. Countless numbers of unnoticeable transitional stages exist between the highly moral person and the criminal: at which of these points does a human personality cease to be sacred?

In the image of Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky refutes the rejection of the sacredness of the human personality. He proves through the entire contents of the novel that any human personality is sacred and untouchable and that all people are equal in this regard.

All, even the most ideal criteria of goodness, truth, and reason, fade before the greatness and significance of the reality of the human being, before his spirituality.

The idea of the supreme value and sacredness of the human personality found a powerful expression and defense in Crime and Punishment. The thought of the untouchability and sacredness of any human personality plays the main role in understanding the ideological meaning of the novel. If one were to summarize this ideological meaning briefly, one could do it through the biblical prohibition, do not kill. One cannot kill a human being. The famous revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote about Dostoevsky, for a good reason: “Exactly in the same way in which Hamlet’s mother’s crime ripped apart all links between human beings for Hamlet, so for Dostoevsky `the times were out of joint’ when he faced the possibility that a human being could be allowed to kill another human being. He does not find peace; he feels the responsibility for this horror rests on him and on each of us.”

That is why in the third, final version of the novel, there appears the following entry: “The Idea of the Novel. 1. Orthodox (Pravoslavnoe) Views, what does Orthodoxy consist of. There is no happiness in comfort, happiness is brought by suffering. Such is the law of our planet. `This immediate knowledge, which is experienced through the process of living, is such a great joy that we can pay for it with years of suffering. Human beings are not born to happiness. Human beings earn happiness, and always through suffering. There is no injustice in this, for knowledge and awareness of life (which are felt immediately, by the body and spirit, i.e., through the whole process of life) are acquired by experience pro and contra, which one must pull through on one’s own.”‘

The idea of Orthodoxy was to be expressed in Raskolnikov’s having a “vision of Christ,” after which lie was to repent. “But,” as Y. Karyakin writes, “instead of the ready-made scheme, a different solution won out: ‘Sonya and love for her broke him down.’ (Cf. in the novel: “Love resurrected them.”)

In the drafts we read:

NB The last line of the novel.

The ways in which god finds man are inscrutable.

But Dostoevsky concluded the novel with different words, which are an example of the victory of the artist over his prejudices and, at the same time, express the doubts which tormented Dostoevsky . . . . The contradictions in him are so scorching that all traditional faith burns away in their fire. Of course, if conscience comes from god, then atheism is amoral. But what if the revolt against god originates in conscience, in the name of man? What if conscience does not accept any theodicy, that is, no exculpation of god for the evil which exists in the world? Does this mean that the highest morality and atheism are compatible? That is the chief question which draws and frightens Dostoevsky. Many times he answered: they are incompatible, but then there is the incontrovertible fact that Dostoevsky really had doubts until the day he died whether God existed, but he never doubted conscience. He did not translate the words “conscience,” “love,” and “life,” as the word “religion,” but rather he translated the word “religion” as the words “conscience,” “love,” and “life.” The artistic world that he created turns around the human being, not around God. The human being is the only sun, and in this world, he must be the sun!