Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky) 1866

All You Need Is Air Now

(Pevear and Volokhonsky Translation)

Raskolnikov kills an old woman and her sister with an axe.  He had justified the crime by saying she was a louse, a pawnbroker that everyone hated, even her own sister, and that humanity was better off without her.  Later in the book we learn of an article he wrote when he was enrolled as a student, about great men like Napoleon, who were allowed to break the rules of society, while the normal folks had to follow the rules; “all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood... could help them.”  “People are divided, a lower... serving solely for the reproduction of their own kind; and... those who have the gift or talent of speaking a new word in their environment... people of the first... are by nature conservative... and like being obedient... they even must be obedient, because that is their purpose, and for them there is decidedly nothing humiliating in it.  Those of the second category all transgress the law... he can, in my opinion, allow himself to step over blood—depending, however, on the idea and its scale—make note of that.”  This passage begs the question, who gets to be “chosen”, and what are they trying to accomplish.  Furthermore, it points out the cruelty in belittling those things that “normal” people value.  And, later, the author points out that maybe people should do more living and less proselytizing, more “air”.  “The first category is always master of the present; the second—master of the future.  The first preserves the world and increases it numerically; the second moves the world and leads it towards a goal.  Both the one and the other have a perfectly equal right to exist.”  And there is even a law that keeps the potential destroyers at bay, “In spite of their innate tendency to obedience, by some playfulness of nature that is not denied even to cows, quite a few of them like to imagine themselves progressive people... they quite often fail to notice the really new ones, and even despise them as backward... there isn’t even any need for someone to whip them; they’ll whip themselves, because they’re so well behaved...”  Thus, the “radicals” are not really so radical, even though they like to think they buck obedience in their zeal for progress, and most people will not go around killing other people because they envision themselves the anointed (Raskolnikov reassures Porfiry).  “Generally, there are remarkably few people born who have a new thought, who are capable, if only slightly, of saying anything new—strangely few, in fact... Men of genius—one in millions”, people with “broader independence.”  Until the end, Raskolnikov maintains that he committed no “crime,” and that his weakness was that he allowed it to get to him; thus, the author suggests that perhaps some actions are inherently criminal, against humanity, and cannot be justified for the greater good; our nature does not allow it.  “I decidedly do not understand why hurling bombs at people, according to all the rules of siege warfare, is a more respectable form.  Fear of aesthetics is the first sign of powerlessness!  Never, never have I been more clearly aware of it than now, and now more than ever I fail to understand my crime!” he says in the final chapter. “...should Luzhin live and commit abominations, or should Katerina Ivanova die?” poses Raskolnikov, to which responds Sonya, “Why do you ask about what cannot be?”  These are not hypothetical questions which we should even entertain.  “Why do you ask what cannot be asked?  Why such empty questions?... who put me here to judge who is to live and who is not to live?”  She said it is providence to decide this.  Thus, this is one of Dostoevsky’s main points.  Raskolnikov could not rest until he had confessed.  He later says, “Then I learned, Sonya, that if one waits for everyone to become smarter, it will take too long... and then I also learned that it will never happen, that people will never change, and no one can remake them, and it’s not worth the effort!... it’s their law... a law... he who dares much will be right in their eyes he who can spit on what is greatest will be their lawgiver... thus it has been until now, and thus it will always be.”  Then Raskolnikov reveals, “power is given only to the one who dares to reach down and take it... one only has to dare!... how is it that no man before now has dared or dares yet, while passing by all this absurdity, quite simply to take the whole thing by the tail and whisk it off to the devil.  I... I wanted to dare, and I killed... I just wanted to dare, Sonya, that’s the whole reason!”  This reveals Raskolnikov’s nihilism, at least on the surface, calling it all “absurdity” and he just wanted to grab power.  Raskolnikov drove him to the crime after learning that his sister had committed to marry Lezhin, a rich man, to the end of supporting Raskolnikov; indeed, she and his mother seemed to put all their hopes for life in Raskolnikov himself, greatly angering to him; “... for herself, for her own comfort, even to save herself from death, she wouldn’t sell herself; no, she’s selling herself for someone else!... So long as these beloved beings of ours are happy... convince ourselves that it's necessary, truly necessary, for a good purpose.”  Of others, “Oh, yes, of course, his happiness can be arranged...” speaks to the human desire to make others happy, to run other people’s lives for them, instead of their own. They also see what they want to see, and dismiss his rudeness as attributable to “his great illness” and not his actual disdain (at the time) for the two of them.  Raskolnikov’s mom is someone who does not want to live her own life, tiptoeing about, regarding Razumikhin as “our Providence” and asking, “How should I be with him?” of her own son.  In her motherly denial she says to her son, “if you wanted, you could get everything for yourself at once, with your mind and talent.  It means that for the time being you don’t want to, and are occupied with far more important matters.”  In the Epilogue, it says, “she would bring the conversation around to her son, his article, how he had helped the student...” her son was her whole life.  Later Raskolnikov says to Razumikihin, “can’t you see that I don’t want your good deeds?  And who wants to do good deeds for someone who... spits on them?... who only feels seriously burdened by them?”   Previously, “He [Raskolnikov] had entirely given up attending to his daily affairs and did not want to attend to them.”  He later thinks after determining he can try to overcome his life, “Strength, what’s needed in strength; without strength you get nowhere, and strength is acquired by strength—that's something they don’t know... Pride and self-confidence were growing in him every moment... what special thing was it, however, that had so turned him around?  He himself did not know...” but he had felt all of this after a scene where he was helping the orphaned girls and gave the family all of his money (20 roubles, later frivolously wasted on a funeral dinner), which gave him the feeling of life, being needed.  The money he gave also points out that in “helping” someone, you cannot determine what they will do with the help – as with money and friends or family.  Different people attach different values to different things; some people are very bad at planning for the future. “...many poor people turn themselves inside out and spend every last kopeck of their savings, only so as to be ‘no worse than others’ and ‘not to be condemned’ somehow by these others.  It is quite probable that Katerina Ivanova wished... to show... that she had even been brought up for an altogether different lot... such paroxysms of pride and vanity sometimes visit the poorest and most downtrodden people, and at times turn into an irksome and irrepressible need in them.”  Raskolnikov had met Melamadov in a bar, a drunk former official, who was unable to care for his family due to his drunkenness; “destitution is a vice... in poverty you may still preserve the nobility of your inborn feelings... in destitution I am the first to insult myself.  Hence the drinking!”  He said, “Man gets accustomed to everything, the scoundrel!”  He has completely lost all hope, watches his family suffer and his daughter forced to prostitution, yet, does nothing.  His daugher Sonya of teenage years supported his adopted children and wife via prostitution.  He was later killed in the street, inviting much fanfare for the funeral, and the interaction of Sonya, Raskolnikov, Luzhin (who was staying in the same house as the Melamadov family as he was in town to court Dunya), and Semyonovich Semyonovich, a prototypical progressive friend of Luzhin.  Of understanding and helping other people, Razumikhin, Rakolnikov’s best friend, spoke of Zamyotov the police officer, “You won’t set a person right by pushing him away... you progressive dimwits, you really don’t understand anything! You disparage man and damage yourselves...”  Razumikin says Zamyotov is a “good man, only in his own way” but the progressives are always there to accuse everyone of every last wrong thing in human nature, to the point where they are not even showing a love of humanity or a desire to help.  “will there be many good people left?” after the progressives are done.  Later Razumikhin states, “Practicality is acquired with effort, it doesn’t fall from the sky for free.  And we lost the habit of any activity about two hundred years ago... There may be some ideas wandering around... and there is a desire for the good, albeit a childish one... but still there's no practicality...” This in an argument with Pyotr Petrovich, who argues, “passions testify to the enthusiasm for the cause... useful new ideas have been spread... many harmful prejudices have been eradicated and derided...”  In a way, this argument is about the political process, the conflict of visions, conservative vs. Liberal, evolution vs. Revolution; both are needed in a society, as Peterson points out.  Later in an argument about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps vs. Wanting to get rich quickly without effort, Raskolnikov interrupts and states that “...the consequences of what you’ve just been preaching, and it will turn out that one can go around putting a knife in people.” -- as he had done.  What is thus the right balance for a society, between infantilization, “having our food chewed for us”, and being able to accomplish without being driven to desperation.  Razumikhin later said of the progressives,  

“...with them one is always a ‘victim of the environment’--and nothing else! Their favorite phrase!  Hence directly that if society itself is normally set up, all crimes will at once disappear, because there will be no reason for protesting and everyone will instantly become righteous.  Nature isn’t taken into account... nature is not supposed to be!  With them it’s not mankind developing all along in a historical living way that will finally turn by itself into a normal society, but on the contrary, a social system, coming out of some mathematical head, will at once organize the whole of mankind and instantly make it righteous and sinless, sooner than any living process... that’s why they have such an instinctive dislike of history: ‘there’s nothing in it but outrage and stupidity’--and everything is explained by stupidity alone!  That’s why they so dislike the living process of life; there’s no need for the living soul!  The living soul will demand life, the living soul won’t listen to mechanics, the living soul is suspicious, the living soul is retrograde!... And it turns out in the end that they’ve reduced everything to mere brickwork and the layout of corridors and rooms in a phalanstery... your nature isn’t ready for the phalanstery, it wants life, it hasn’t completed the life process yet... you can’t overleap nature with logic alone!  Logic will presuppose three cases, when there are a million of them!  Cut away the whole million, and reduce everything to the one question of comfort!  The easiest solution to the problem!  Enticingly clear, and there’s no need to think!... The whole of life’s mystery can fit on two printed pages!” 

Sonya stayed in a separate place due to being a prostitute, where she roomed next to Svidrigailov, a lecherous man who had lusted after Dunya, leading to his wife setting him up with Luzhin.  “Why should I give up women, if I’m so fond of them? At least it’s an occupation.” In retort to Reskolnikov, “Well, call it depravity if you wish!  You and your depravity!... there’s at least something permanent, even based on nature, and not subject to fantasy... something that abides in the blood like a perpetually burning coal, eternally inflaming, which for a long time, even with age, one may not be able to extinguish so easily.” It is later learned his wife, Marfa Petrofka, died, and it was suspected it was her husband.  Regarding his wife, “I had enough swinishness in my soul, and honesty of a sort, to announce to her straight off that I could not be completely faithful to her.  This admission drove her into a frenzy...”  He tried not to dote on Dunya, but Marfa herself loved her much, “And will you believe that Marfa Petrovna at first even went so far as to be angry with me for my constant silence about your sister, for being so indifferent to hear ceaseless and enamored reports... I don’t understand what she wanted!”  In the end, Svidrigailov wound up not being a terrible guy, helping Sonya and the orphaned children with money; he blew his brains out due to the meaninglessness of his life, having been a professional skirtchaser and marryer of money, needing no actual profession.  He said, “The healthy man, naturally, has no call to see [ghosts], because the healthy man is the most earthly of men... as soon as a man gets sick... the possibility of another world at once begins to make itself known...” Svidrigailov said of Roskilnakov being surprised at their chance meeting, “Even if they secretly believe in miracles, they won’t admit it! And now you say it ‘may’ only be chance.  They’re all such little cowards here when it comes to their own opinion, you can’t imagine, Rodion Romanych!” This passage reveals how little people trust themselves, and how much people who are not “believers” do not want to “believe” in anything remotely divine.  “And when a girl’s heart is moved to pity, that is, of course, most dangerous for her.  She’s sure to want to ‘save’ him then, to bring him to reason, to resurrect him, to call him to nobler aims, to regenerate him into a new life and new activity” Svidrigailov said of him and Dunya. He later says to Dunya, “You’ve obviously forgotten how in the heat of propaganda you were already inclining and melting...” which she denies.  Had Dunya been born in an earlier time, “She would undoubtedly have been among those who suffered martyrdom, and would have smiled... she would have chosen it on purpose... demands to endure some torment for someone without delay, and if she doesn’t get this torment, she may perhaps jump out the window.”  Thus, as with Porfiry and the painter and suffering, some people want to be martyrs.  Svidrigailov says the best way to win someone over is flattery, being much better than candor, “There’s nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.  If there is only the hundredth part of a false note in candor, there is immediately a dissonance, and then--scandal.  But with flattery, even if everything is false down to the last little note, it is still agreeable and is listened to not without pleasure... and however crude the flattery may be, at least half of it is sure to seem true...”   Roskolnikov boils the scoundrel down to the heart of the matter, saying, “In short, it’s this monstrous difference in age and development that arouses your sensuality!  Can you really get married like that?” to which comes an affirmative reply about hoodwinking oneself in life.  Even Svidrigailov can see of the progressives, “The people are drinking, the educated youth are burning themselves up in idleness, in unrealizable dreams and fancies, crippling themselves with theories...” This is not life, not air.  He also well explains the motivations of Roskilikov for killing, “A single evil and a hundred good deeds!  Of course, it’s also offensive for a young man of merit and measureless vanity to know that if he had, for example, a mere three thousand or so, his whole career, the whole future in terms of his life’s purpose, would shape itself differently—and yet the three thousand aren't there.  Add to that the vexations of hunger, cramped quarters, rag, and a lively sense of the beauty of his social position, as well as that of his sister and mother.  But above all vanity, pride and vanity... he seems to have imagined that he, too, was a man of genius... he suffered greatly, and suffers still, from the thought that though he knew how to devise the theory, he was unable to step over without hesitation and therefore is not a man of genius.  Now that, for a vain young man, is truly humiliating.”  Dunya is mad that Svidrigailo denies him remorse of conscience, which he clearly has, if at least on a subconscious level, from the level to which he is perturbed.  This begs the question what excessive vanity could drive people to do, if their social position suffered greatly enough.  “It’s disastrous to be broad without special genius... we have no especially sacred traditions, except for what someone somehow pieces together from old books... But they are mostly scholars and, you know, they're all dunces in their way... I myself am an idler and I keep to that.”  Thus, for everyone in society to try and become a Renaissance man, so to speak, to try to look into the depths of existence, is perhaps a dangerous thing...?  Before he goes off to kill himself, he says to Sofya, “Why do you so rashly take such contracts and obligations upon yourself, Sofya Semyonovna?It was Katerina Ivanova who was left owing to the German woman, not you; so just spit on the German woman. You can’t survive in the world that way.”  “Dostoevsky’s uniqueness lay not in the exposure of social injustice, but in the exploration of the complex and contradictory impulses which made up human nature” -Preface.  Of Luzhin, Dunya’s suitor, Roskolnikov said, “And I say that you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you are casting a stone.” regarding Sonya, the prostitute, who supported her family with her “sin”; he is a hypocrite cloaking himself with “virtue”.  Luzhin, “... without supposing even the possibility that the two poor and defenseless women [Dunya and her mom] could get out from under his power.  Vanity contributed much to this conviction, as did that degree of self-confidence which is best called self-admiration.  Having risen from insignificance, Pyotr Petrovich had a morbid habit of admiring himself, highly valued his intelligence and abilities, and sometimes, alone with himself, even admired his own face in the mirror.  But most of all in the world he loved and valued his money, acquired by labor and various means; it made him equal to all that was higher than himself.”  He worried of how progressives liked to “expose” people and “what exactly was it that one got exposed for nowadays?” The progressive Semyonovich “subscribed himself to progress and ‘our younger generations’ out of passion.  He was one of that numerous and diverse legion of vulgarians, feeble miscreates, half-taught petty tyrants to make a point of instantly latching on to the most fashionable current idea, only to vulgarize it at once, to make an instant caricature of everything they themselves serve, sometimes quite sincerely.”  Things such as fighting would be “unthinkable in the future society”, says Semyonovich, and he is exasperated at the non-dialectical thinking of normal people, “I’ve insisted several times that this whole question cannot be explained to novices except at the very end, once he’s already convinced of the system, once the person has already been developed and directed... I’m ready to clean out any cesspits you like!  There isn’t even any self-sacrifice in it!  It’s simple work, a noble activity, useful for society, as worthy as any other, and certainly much higher, for example, than the activity of some Raphael or Pushkin, because it’s more useful!” - this is his raging after speaking about a commune and how society ought to be, disregarding that it is a fact some people do not want to clean cesspits for the great good of society.  “This ‘cesspit question,’ in spite of all its triviality, had served several times before as a pretext for quarrels and disagreements between Pyotr Petrovich and his young friend.  The whole stupidity lay in the fact that Andrei Semyonovich really got angry, while Luzhin was just letting off steam.”  He didn’t like private philanthropy because it “does not eradicate evil at the root, but even nourishes it still more”.  Semyonovich tells Raskolnikov that one should be able to reason their way out of wanting to cry, of having a mistaken view of things, but Raskolnikov says “Life would be too easy that way.”  Sonya said of her mother, “She wants justice... she’s pure.  She believes so much that there should be justice in everything, and she demands it... She herself doesn’t notice how impossible it all is that there should be justice in people, and it vexes her... Like a child” “She was naturally of an easily amused, cheerful, and peaceable character, but continual misfortunes and failures had made her wish and demand so fiercely that everyone live in peace and joy and not dare to live otherwise, that the slightest dissonance in life, the least failure would at once send her almost into a frenzy...” Thus, again, the childish desire for justice, whatever that is.  One time her stepmother, Katerina Ivanova, wanted one of her necklaces, but Sonya said to her “what for?”  “I should never have said that to her.  She just looked at me, and she took it so hard... because I refused...”  One should not try to take away from others those things which might bring them joy.  Sonya prayed to God, “And what would I be without God?”, said the girl who had to prostitute herself to save her family; is some amount of human suffering inevitable?  Raskolnikov recognizes the social position of a murder and a prostitute, saying to Sonya, “you destroyed a life... your own... you can’t endure it, and if you remain alone, you’ll lose your mind, like me... so we must go together, on the same path...”  Thus, the inescapably social nature of humanity.  “Yes, he felt once again that he might indeed come to hate Sonya... Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? Why was it so necessary for him to eat up her life?”  Porfiry said to Raskolnikov, “Human nature is a mirror, sir, the clearest mirror!” as man “poking his nose where no one has asked him, starting conservations about things of which he ought, on the contrary to keep silent... “  Porfiry reveals he knows about the painter being not the actual criminal, and how it is desire for suffering that caused him to submit, his own lack of meaning, “Do you know, Rodion Romanych, what ‘suffering’ means for some of them?  Not for the sake of someone, but simply ‘the need for suffering’; to embrace suffering, that is, and if it comes from the authorities—so much the better.”  Thus, he confessed to the crime because he had nothing else, no other purpose in his life.  When Porfiry is narrowing in on Roskolnikov, he says, “he killed, and yet he considers himself an honest man, despises people, walks around like a pale angel”, thus, the subjective nature of goodness.  “I know belief doesn’t come easily—but don’t be too clever about it, just give yourself directly to life, without reasoning; don’t worry—it will carry you straight to shore and set you on your feet...  It’s good that you only killed a little old woman.  If you’d come up with a different theory, you might have done something a hundred million times more hideous!.. Have you turned coward before the great fulfillment you now face?... go and do what justice demands.  I know you don’t believe it, by, by God, life will carry you.  And then you’ll get to like it.  All you need Is air now, air, air!” -Porfiry.  “Who am I?  I’m a finished man, that’s all.  A man who can, perhaps, sympathize and empathize, who does, perhaps, even know something—but completely finished... Become a sun and everyone will see you.  The sun must be the sun first of all...” -Porfiry.  Then Porfiry reveals why he knows Raskolnikov will not run away, when it is not yet arrested, “A peasant would run away, a fashionable sectarian would run away—the lackey of another man’s thought--because it is enough to show him the tip of a finger and... he’ll believe anything for the rest of his life.  But you no longer believe your own theory—what would you run away on?.. You need a life and a definite position, the proper air, and would that be any air for you?  You’d run away, and come back on your own.  It’s impossible for you to do without us.” Rasknikov’s entire meaning is tied up in this place, he has nothing else, he has no belief; he is in his own prison.  In his last days, Raskolniokov tried “to flee from a clear and full understanding of his situation; some essential facts, which called for an immediate explanation, especially burdened him; but how glad he would have been to free himself... to forget which, however, would in his situation have threatened complete and inevitable ruin.”  Thus, sometimes people do not want to know, because if they did, it would be their end.  At the book’s end, when he goes to turn himself in, the police officer present says, in contrast to the nihilists, which are “spreading around”, “Duty is one thing, and... what is another?...You thought I was going to say pleasure—no, sir, you’ve guessed wrong!  Not pleasure, but the feeling of a citizen and a human being, the feeling of humaneness and love for the Almighty.  I may be an official person and acting in the line of duty, but I must always feel the citizen and human being in myself, and be accountable for it... Zamtoyov... He’d go and cause a French-style scandal in some disreputable establishment, over a glass of champagne or Don wine... Why insult noble persons the way that scoundrel Zamyotov does?”  Thus, the author closes with humanism, in the face of nihilism; people can find meaning here in being human, the love of humanity, and not being an a-hole who engages in fighting.  “Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more.  Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than others.”  In one of his final visions in the hosptial prison,   “...never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakeable in the truth as did these infected ones.  Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakeable.  Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad.  Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone... They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good.”  Thus, reason lead to chaos, in his dream.  In the ending, “he could not think long or continuously of anything, could not concentrate his mind on anything; besides, he would have been unable to resolve anything consciously just then; he could only feel.  Instead of dialectics, there was life, and something completely different had to work itself out in his consciousness.”  Thus, people are looking to hard for answers, looking too hard for theories certainty, when they should instead embrace living.