In Our Time: S22/09 Crime and Punishment (Nov 14 2019)

this is the BBC hello crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was first published in 1866 he was a sensation the principal crime is raskolnikov's a former student we know early on that he killed an old woman a pawnbroker and her sister with an axe but we don't know why and we don't know how or if he'll be punished the nobles said in st. Petersburg a city where does he ask you to had struggled and been punished for a crime and sentenced to prison eight years in Siberia where he lived alongside criminals and was now rebuilding his life as a writer with me to discuss crime and punishment Arthur a young associate professor in Russian at the school of Slavonic and East European studies University College London Oliver Reddy lecturer in Russian at the University of Oxford research fellow at st. Antony's College and translator of this novel and Sara Hudspeth associate professor in Russian at the University of Leeds to Sara Ann Smith what was dose gaps his background Dostoevsky was born in Moscow and his father was a doctor at Moscow's hospital for the poor so Dostoevsky grew up with an atmosphere of seeing poverty and deprivation all around him and this was a condition that that you know he saw firsthand the suffering of people there poor conditions and so this was obviously something that touched him from an early age he was then sent to st. Petersburg being part of a minor I autocracy so yes his family was of technically of noble status this is according to Czarist Russia's very strictly regimented social ranking system so they were technically of noble status but this didn't mean that they were well-off they did however have a small estate in the country and own their own serfs as well so from that point of view he could be considered at one of the landowning classes what about education you enters in Petersburg to study at the military engineering Academy but this wasn't really his thing it wasn't something that interested him and he very quickly dropped out of that and began to get involved in decent Petersburg literary scene some Petersburg capital at the time was the flourishing cultural center of Russia center of literary activity as well and this this was much more what dist esq wanted to get involved in and so it was at this time that he published his first novel poor folk which was a great success and brought in very early success as a writer you know he was I think he must have been in his in his early 20s I think 24 so yes quite a an impressionable experience for quite a young man made a big impression on him this this very early success what do we know about his own crime and punishment in his involvement in the literary activities isn't Petersburg he became involved with a circle of intellectuals and writers and literary critics who were interested in the French utopian socialist thought that was current at the beginning of the 19th century and these people would get together to talk about Russia's future direction and how the society might be improved and the circle that he was involved in was led by a mikhail petrov Sukie he was the the sort of the organizer the owner of the the place where they would congregate to talk about these ideas now it wasn't really what you would call a political group as such it was just that that was the only kind of venue that people had for talking about socio-political change but what he said at the Sun was construed as a crime and can you tell this is what he said and why it was construed as a crime yes one of the charges that was brought against him was reading a particular documents written by a very prominent literary critic Vasari on velinski bilinski had written an open letter to dusty ask his contemporary the writer nikolai gogol criticizing him for his very reactionary views in his latest piece of work and and because this was this letter was seen as a challenge to the status quo it became it became an offence to read it in it in a public gathering and this was one of the things that Dostoevsky had done in the petrikov ski circle series it was arrested and sentenced to death and there was quite a dramatic almost death scene watched by 3,000 people his hands were tied the guns were I was blind fit and then what indeed yes then at the last minute there was a reprieve from the Tsar whether this was a genuine change of heart or whether this was a stunt designed to have the maximum kind of impact on the on the convicted men because the death penalty was was officially not not allowed in in Russia at the time so there was this dramatic last-minute arrival of a messenger with a commute of the sentence from from death to a hard labor in penal servitude in in Siberia and you went there Oliver idea he stayed there about 8 or 10 years can you tell us what he did in Siberia and how it affected him certainly so he spends the first four of the ten years that he will spend away from st. Petersburg in Homs City and Southwest Siberia he spends he spends four years there in military prison with largely common criminals not of noble status like himself although there were some did that cause problems that didn't just cause problems it undoubtedly caused great suffering for Dostoevsky himself because he saw very directly the the Gulf which he describes by the way in the epilogue crime and punishment between the nobility between the elite of Russian society and the common people to use the phrase that is the usual translation of the Russian word the narrowed of the time and this in a way like so many things in in Dostoyevsky's life is susceptible to both sort of positive and negative interpretation that he was clearly alienated in the in the prison from from other people he was clearly very lonely although paradoxically he also lamented the fact that didn't have any time on his own because they were all stuff together like herrings in a barrel as it was put and the place was filthy in the barracks in this in this prison on the other hand that the positive that he drew from it was that he felt that he saw with his own eyes the naivety perhaps of those socialist utopian I that there could be some sort of merging of the elite and the common people to him the common people as he saw them were living according to very different rules different codes and this and this was a formative experience for what he would go on tried he also drew other positive lessons I suppose from his time in the prison in that he eventually he convinced himself at least and paps he really did he saw in the people he was sharing these barracks with signs of faith of a very deep-rooted faith that moved him greatly he also saw a creativity a sort of artistic creativity in these criminals some of whom had committed the most horrendous act and one way in which the creativity expressed itself was in language and Dostoevsky there was not allowed books he was only allowed the copy of the New Testament that he was given on the way to Siberia at a forwarding prison but in this New Testament which was which he read from cover to cover all the time kept under his pillow and one can now study the the finger marks on the side which which which which verse is he read most closely he also kept a little notebook in which he wrote down squirreled away some of these phrases and he did he did four years of hard labor in this time that's right he said this is making me stronger so did he did he hated how did how do you did basically affect him when he came back from Siberia four years hard labor four years in ways in in compulsory military service most of it written in a semi Pilate and how did how did it affect him I would preface this all by saying that if we can just go back a tiny bit to the crucial moment after this mock execution he goes back to the some peter and paul fortress before he goes off to siberia and he writes this extraordinary letter to his brother whom we loved very much as elder brother saying and it's an exultant letter saying life is a gift if we only knew every moment could be an eternity of happiness it seems to me that the people talk about some kind of conversion that the states key undergoes in siberia actually something seems to happen before then that that there's some kind of revelation something on rationale perhaps that makes him love life that somehow push pushes him through the very traumatic experiences he has it's not being short not being shot but also realizing that our consciousness that can adapt to the most extraordinary circumstances and even when he comes back from Siberia his life instant Petersburg in the run-up to crime and punishment is in a way no easier he's on the verge of poverty he's suffering from epilepsy a very severe degree one massive attack every three weeks on average he is addicted to gambling his wife first wife dies and he has a great deal of relatives who he used to feed and yet something keeps him going it seems to me that although he's a sort of artist of instabilities always describing crisis he is in a way a sort of stable genius and that stability seems to set in bright after that market mock execution and somehow carry him through the sense that life is a gift as he writes there's a lot of corporate has near-surface very young and let's go straight for the novel what are the crimes are we're reading about the crime who is committing them the crimes are Raskolnikov the this impoverished ex-student he's had to give up his studies because of his because he can't afford to pay food to pay for university and he decides that he is going to kill an old money lender a woman everybody considers evil and he spends the first part of the novel thinking about whether you're whether he can actually do that and eventually he does and it says it described in the most graphic horrific way this this murder with an axe as he splits her head open he then also ends up killing her younger sister half-sister Elizaveta and he steals some of the old lady's money and gets away with it only just so that's it that's that those are the two main crimes of the novel this that one of the just solicitors are observing he goes for a lot of money he gets he's so flustered or whatever the word is it was look he he takes a paltry amount of money he doesn't go for the big loot that's hidden somewhere rather he just runs off with a personal if you do that's exact that's exactly right he ends up taking a few hundred roubles and some bits and pieces of jewelry that he fine some of the plenty of the the moneylenders pledges that she had hidden away but he misses the the the the the bulk of the money that she has hidden somewhere else yeah so he's a he makes a mess of the crimes the mess of the murders and of the robbery but he gets away from the scene of the crime and from then on there's a great deal of him trying to justify explain concept I hope why he did did it and what went on I started with one of the main ways in which he justifies killing this old woman you started up I think she's a wicked or evil or so leading Felicity to think well maybe maybe said you know you go on from that he come he comes up with a number of justifications for the crime and the first one is that this is an evil old woman who is no good to society she's not only no good to society she's a parasite she's a she she destroys people's lives and therefore she deserves to die if she dies then society will be improved by her absence and he goes on from there to sort of develop other elements of this this idea of doing good to society through this murder by suggesting that that by stealing her money he will be able to do also himself do go to society further you beyond beyond just removing her from the scene he will be able to sort of resolve people's poverty and and and and use a bring great wealth into society and set a full pool his destiny is a rather than a pony onic great man absolutely so this this is this is part of a sort of a wider image where he he sees himself as a great man a great man who can oh like Napoleon who can overstep all the obstacles who can wade through fields of blood in order to achieve his destiny the the normal rules of society do not apply to such people and Raskolnikov thinks he's testing whether he is such a person and whether the normal rules don't apply to him if he can do this and kill the kill the old woman get away with it use her money for good then he can show that that is his destiny is this him I was just part of the philosophy that is he has taken on from let's say the West from is he he guided by reading he's done those easy easy guided by his impoverishment and his wish to one bound he was free as it were in a broad sense this comes from yes from the reading he's done from the ideas in the air as Dostoevsky put it in the 1860s amongst the young radicals who were thinking about so this utilitarian calculus of doing the greatest the greatest good for the greatest greatest number under which under which idea the the you know individuals can be sacrificed this is just the air skis take on it they're looking at the sacrifice of the individuals to do that greater good but these ideas were very much being under discussion amongst young radicals students like to steer students like Raskolnikov who are sort of thinking about the law about about social reorganization about use transforming the world is dusty ups his take on this that this is a very bad thing to think this is a very bad way to behave this is a bad philosophy absolutely and this is the the real change that overcame him as a result of his his his experience of the deaths the death sentence and the experience of prison your from being this you involved in this youthful radical circle where they were discussing utopian socialist ideas once he has gone through that a whole experience of of imprisonment and he sees life in a completely different way he sees these ideas as profoundly dangerous you he I think it's it's the one at one of the things that's in some ways curiously that he took away from his experience in Siberia and his experience at hard labor is the absolute intrinsic value of every human life thank you Sarah husband not one of the main characters we could call it a facet is the city of self sent Petersburg what does it represent for him because we usually as a pristine place not a bit of it with in this book no indeed that's that's one of the things that's so fascinating about the novel is the the the the backdrop and the atmosphere that the city creates so it was the capital it was designed as peter the great's window on the west on europe the the the the portal through which russia would would westernize and modernize and become more cultured and civilized and we see nothing of that in the text for a start it's hot and of course many readers might initially associate the cold with russia but it you know it's not a cold novel it's a baking hot novel it's that the heat the smell of the pollution in the canals the cramped conditions the the squalor the degradation of the people living around forced into all kinds of desperate acts these descriptions of streets he knew as a boy well he mainly grew up in moscow but he's I mean he was familiar with the same kinda man patterns of poverty and of course he saw them himself as a struggling student and a struggling writer and he himself lived near some of the areas he eventually settled near one of the main centers of action in the novel the Haymarket so this was you know where all kinds of common people would come together and you know and meet and and interact and trade and and do all kinds of business legal and illegal and when Raskolnikov sees this kind of climate and atmosphere and surroundings around him he feels very keenly the problems of society he sees them on his own doorstep and and feels very much his own his own position in that it's worth adding I think that the the conditions inside Petersburg in the 1860s particularly after the emancipation of the serfs what this was a time of real crisis and growth in the city the population of the city increased enormous Lee and particularly in these central areas where there was a poor people of pouring into the city former serfs who was looking coming to the city to look for work we're creating this sort of this this terrible atmosphere and overcrowding that were every real problem call have already that can we build us raskolnikov up a little bit more his sister and mother live in the country they have great hopes with him this is brilliant young son brother of theirs and they come to visit him and how does that meeting proceed again if we could just take it back a tiny bit because before they come to meet him we get a letter that Raskolnikov receives from his mother early in the first part which could be seen as one of the one of the things that happened him the run-up to the medal that somehow push him towards the murder because this letter as you've just already indicated is full of the sense of Raskolnikov you're our great rowdy honors his first name is Aurora you're our great hope you're our everything we're prepared to sacrifice everything for you he reads us nine pages of what could be read as as a sort of pressure really on an emotional pressure from his mother and his sister because his mother's also telling him that his sister's about to enter into a marriage was somebody that clearly assisted doesn't love and at the end of this rascal in order to rescue earth in order to because because the Raskolnikov's had to pull out of his studies as a law student you know a university because he can't pay his fees and we read at the end of this letter that's gonna cause in tears he can barely breathe and so this this this motif of the stifling nests of some petersburg which both sarah's have just discussed is also accentuated by what coming by the messages that are coming to him from the countryside from from from way from where he grew up the countryside is the place in the novel that has everything that's in petersburg doesn't so the countryside is the place of family of proper biological fans countryside is i mean in the sense that the city understood it the countryside is the place of faith of churches which and of course in petersburg the town was full of churches too but they're really written out of the novel because the petersburg is presented as this very westernized imitative in authentic place and so but curiously one would have thought given that some petersburg is treated so negatively in some ways in the novel Yuda thought perhaps the countryside would be there as a positive backdrop but far from it it's somehow making his situation even worse moreover the countryside is associated with one of the darkest characters in the novel siddig i love ya Cherie on there's a connection with Sonya a young woman who becomes a prostitute to salvage her family's fortunes can you tell us about her Sonia is one of the novel's most important characters because she partly because of what she what she what she represents and in that is in part because Raskolnikov sees a connection between her and his sister this terrible marriage that his sister might be about to undertake Raskolnikov sees as being basically no better than prostitution and therefore he sees the his sisters sort of starting it down on the same road that Sonia has taken but she becomes Sonny becomes really important we indeed right from the start when Raskolnikov first meets her father and he talks about his daughter going down this road becoming a prostitute in order to feed her feed her family her father's an old drunk he's a civil servant who's lost his job and has really destroyed the family Sonya has made the decision to become a prostitute and and thereby you rescue in a very small way her family connection between Raskolnikov and Sonya some some some people suggest that she was a very unconvincing prostitute she is I think that's very fair to say she's a very very problematic character she's basically she is not I mean she was criticised by Vladimir Nabokov for being a sort of golden hearted prostitute a cliche she's not that at all that that implies what used to be called a goodtime girl she isn't that she's she's a child she's an innocent the fact that she is a prostitute just doesn't fit I mean in the most basic terms you cannot imagine her doing her job what Olivia what it leaves you in with a real quandary because you have to be able to she has to be convincing for the novel to work I think for me what this means is that Susan Cummings she isn't on one level I think you to think about it in in a slightly different way in that she is both she is both an embodied character you she is a sort of a real character but she's also a projection she's what Raskolnikov needs he needs that combinate the combination that she represents of sin and redemption she needs that sort of sense of innocence that she represents and the compassion that she brings the fact the fact that she will you she will show him compassion regardless of his sin and those are the things that she has in her character because of the the road she has taken so she's she's almost like a dream figure as well as being a real character Sara Hudspeth and her schooling up becomes tormented by what he's done meanwhile we meet spirit guy love and we told has done far worse thing is but he seems on trouble what part does he play so svidrigaïlov in the novel is almost like the the counter points to Sonia Raskolnikov is attracted and fascinated by by both these characters in in equal measure and svidrigaïlov represents another another possibility for for Raskolnikov svidrigaïlov is a man about whom in the novel we hear lots of rumors of a problematic moral activity of possibility that he might have sexually abused a servant girl that he might be responsible for his wife's death none of these rumors are confirmed but nevertheless there is this atmosphere that surrounds him of of unpleasantness what we do know about Raskolnikov about svidrigaïlov is that any decision that he takes is motivated only by what pleasure it brings him that's how he decides what he's going to do he is able to do both good things in that he rescues Sonya's orphan brothers and sisters and provides for them and it ultimately pays Sonya out of her position of prostitution or he may do bad things in that we we see towards the end of the novel that he has prepared to force himself to rape Raskolnikov's sister dunia although he holds himself back at the last moment so we know that he is capable of both kinds of act but to him it seems that there is no distinction it's about what what what gives him pleasure whether it's a good act or a bad act and essentially this reduces the distinction between good and evil - to a meaningless nothing so ultimately for such a guy love life whole ends up holding no meaning at all and this is one reason I think why why he ends up committing suicide these are essential already that these not only characters but they're embodying philosophies different ways of thought different ways of thinking about life and death and good and bad certainly they do in overall I would say that the novel seems to where the real dilemma is I read it in the novel between emotions of good and bad is on the one hand there is ideas of good and bad that come down from traditional morality that are original you mean Christian Christian morality that in which which would which would promote ideas of humility of obedience and there is this more modern idea of the need to emancipate the individual so that the individual can fulfill themselves can fulfill their talents something which Raskolnikov feels is young people of his time gifted people like him are unable to do and to me that this is the fascinating collision in the novel where I don't think the author is taking either side because the author away wants both at the end of it when people say or a Skolnick of his redeemed whatever this is it that a that's not true there's no indication that he's redeemed at the end there's no indication that after the last line of the novel Raskolnikov won't go back to the same kind of talking that we've had hitherto and this is because that's why the novel is so beautifully poised I think that on the one hand rose Dostoevsky clearly is a person who for whom the New Testament in particular was and Christ was an absolute model of selflessness which Sonia embodies on the other hand the cesky thinks life is there to be lived and to be lived as fully as possible then we have the policeman hurry who who is convinced from early on that Raskolnikov's done it and examines him in in more psychological she can't use torturous Hanukah he is part of the psychological play what he does he absolutely and it's really psychological torture as you as you as you just suggested and it's the scenes with the three main dialogues with porphyria because as the book develops we get three main chapters with each of these characters we've been talking about well three long dialogues with Sonya three long dialogues of poetry and then also conversations with sweet guy love and what's interesting here is that this is a novel that seems to be a novel about deeds right it seems to be a novel about bloody murders it seems to be a novel about prostitution actually it's a novel about words the only things the change in this novel change as a result of dialogue of communication and in in in the nor in those conversations with fury the language of the novel reaches a maximal level of ambivalence the two characters constantly trying to understand what as Polly says every stir Raskolnikov every word you use seems to have another word hidden behind it and all of the key words of the novel one has to and I felt this as a translator trying to understand what these two codes were saying I understood what the words were but what tone were they said in was it a tone of mockery or was it a tone of sincerity and that's what that's what so befuddles the Raskolnikov in these conversations with poor feeling poor feet is the kind of actor Raskolnikov is a very bad actor and that's why put really gets the better of him and he's unable to tell what put feed is intentional because he can't read poor feed his speech very young and he arranged there's a chimp I just kept straight for this was my Shimano video to my user again to make him likable he is a likable looking young young man and he does a likable thing what do you read this is another very very important aspect of the novel I think that we always remain on his side regardless of what he's done and I think that's in part because we were seeing so much so so much through his eyes that we see the dilemmas he goes through constantly we see we see that he is actually going through torture even though even if he won't admit it to himself so that's part of the reason I think and also he doesn't want to he doesn't want to admit it to anybody else that he did it this is very true yes escaping yes but I mean another part of it I think is that everybody else is drawn to him and and other people see him as an attractive figure in one way or another even though they sort of that even if they do suspect they that he's done something terrible Porfiry sees him as an attractive figure in many ways even though he doesn't know he understands already what he's done if I can just come in brief and well two points actually one that he doesn't want to admit in a way he does really want to admit he again and again after the first part he keeps almost spilling the secret but it doesn't but on a question of on the question of likability I think here this is this this this this relates to actually a big change in the novel in the first part we're very much in Raskolnikov's mind in his consciousness we see here why how this novel began actually is a first-person narrative it eventually changed to a third-person attribute we're absolutely in his consciousness and the various ploys that Dostoevsky uses such as the dreams such as the letter from the mother all make us feel more sympathetic towards Raskolnikov after the crime actually the novel broadens out into something a bit more typically 19th century in which we get a much better idea of other characters including for example Raskolnikov's best friend Razumikhin and by bringing in these other characters in a subtle way to serve he makes us look at Raskolnikov more critically because it as when we can lived in exactly the same conditions as Raskolnikov in the end is emphasized their flats their rooms rather are identically poor and their dresses identical about and yet Razumikhin who's also falling out of university is somehow managing to make an ends meet by teaching by doing translations and and so that that is a way in which we reflects badly on Raskolnikov arguably Sarah what brings her schooling off to the point of confession I think it's the the complete isolation that his has forced him into that's part of the torture that that Sarah was alluding to that that he's going through throughout the clip the course of the novel it's the sense that the moment that he the the axe falls on his two victims he he destroys and cuts off not just their life but his own ability to to engage in in human relations this is felt most probably obviously with his with his mother and his sister he finds it very difficult to be in their presence to talk to them to to touch them he struggles as well with his friends Razumikhin to be to be around him and it's that the sense that he can relate to no one anymore apart from just about Sonya really there's an epilogue which some people already find unsatisfactory they have found you've already said no he isn't redeemed it's a sort of almost happy-ever-after epilogue i some people see it but you don't see it like that it's actually quite a lot in this onion gone to Siberia and together so there she's working with the prisoners she so she's debating herself in a way she hasn't done before the novel proper ends with his actual confession we then move to Siberia all of a sudden the upload although it's quite short it's quite rich and the first it's in two chapters the first chapter just takes us to Siberia what we get is a sudden change of pace totally we suddenly move out of this stifling San Petersburg atmosphere and that in itself is a very effective artistic move reader stone takes a deep breath interestingly then the narrator goes back and narrates what happened at the trial etc the crucial bit that people stumble on in the epilogue it seems in terms of their appreciation of the novel and often criticized is the second part in which yes Raskolnikov sort of falls at Sonja's feet yes there's a love scene to my mind an extremely beautiful and affecting one one that just a us cares entirely earned through the conversations between the two that have led to this point where speech gives way to silence they had we read that they wanted to speak but they could not my point - in a way reiterated in a different way why it's so poised is that we end on this moment of silence in a way and of connection finally Raskolnikov this egg owest essentially it's finally now accepting another human being and therefore accepting himself but we suspect that Raskolnikov when the silence comes to an end his consciousness will go back to his familiar patterns there was a famous quote in in a Russian biography that said we know Raskolnikov too well to believe this pious lie about the AppLocker to me that's a mystery ting we know him too well to believe that he's going to remain humble and meek for the rest of his days no there is a there is a different life ahead we just don't know what it is there is also at that very point there's a reference to his his great pod vague that lies ahead and this this sort of extraordinary feat that he still faces and that's very unbiblical mean the sort of the great feat of a great man the Siberia presented as a superior doesn't mean he's very absolutely I mean as Oliver sadly you have this complete change of pace of atmosphere we're out of the stifling close claustrophobic centre of Petersburg we have a sort of US Vista across across the landscape there is air one thing that you Golikov could never breathe in Petersburg in some way in Siberia there is air there is sky he can breathe and it's it's it's also important because this is this is the place where he finally comes into contact with the the common people the peasant convicts and you as Oliver said previously to you these are the people who Dostoevsky himself was imprisoned alongside in Siberia and they they play only a small part in the epilogue they're very as in dusty as Keys own experience there is you they see a huge gulf between themselves and Raskolnikov as a member of the elite they see him as somebody who is an atheist who doesn't believe in God who who shouldn't be there as a member of the elite because he doesn't belong with them and they reject him completely and that that sense of that gulf is at the same time as sonja is is working with the prisoners she's supporting all the prisoners not just Raskolnikov and they love her so she has that connection he doesn't and that is the sort of the core of what he faces all of you to come and then I want to just briefly that indeed the the the other convicts don't accept him but they're also a bit baffled by him because they say what is Gentry what does a nobleman like you doing with an axe writing commits the murders was an axe which is you know a symbol of the a necessary object in the peasant Lockhart and Locke house in so and there are other ways in the novel in which this turski seems to be suggesting that Raskolnikov has deep folk roots right so there's another character the code allowed you to know so the quor'toth of character right the character who first confesses to his crime is a rascal Nick which means a schismatic going back to the Schism in russian orthodox church and 17th century between the official church and the old believers and so Raskolnikov as kholokov there's a suggestion that something if only Raskolnikov could get to know himself better he would be connected to this old religious past of seeking God I assume so Hudspeth the it's a dark Knoll and that means there's an attempt to find humor in it I don't see the point it's a dark novel I mean there's not there's a strain to find bits of humor in but it is a dark novel but but they I think the whole of dusty us keys outlook on on life is that the the lights the tiny bits of light shine all the more brightly for the darkness so so the darkness is absolutely necessary to understanding the light and he does provide moments of light relief there there is this comes partly through Raskolnikov friend Razumikhin who is extremely likable and but also kind of bumptious and awkward and clumsy and and makes a fool of himself over over liking Raskolnikov sister there's also the kind of kind of painful humor of the ridiculousness of the of the human condition this was so I think something we're weird SES key liked to indulge in in in quite sort of dark black humor of of people who painfully feel the ridiculousness of their situation of them idiocracy and who are desperate to rise above it and make ridiculous fools of themselves and struggling to do so you wanted to come in just to say I think it is a very comic novel I think it as a deeply comic basis partly for the reasons Sara Hudspeth has just given reasons which go back by the way to Nikolai Gogol for which we was mentioned before in connection with the comedy I mean where is the comedy the comedy lies everywhere and it's not there as a it's not there as an add-on it's not there as some something to fill in between the tragic scenes it's actually there that it's the comedy of somebody who wants to commit a crime but doesn't believe he can and for a long time can't compensate himself that he'll ever be able to when he eventually does it's thanks to a sort of chain of coincidence and said in the comedy of somebody who wants to be punished he does want to be punished clearly Raskolnikov he wants the letter of the law to come down on him who were commonly foolish don't you think that's I don't know you're the expert no I do think it's comic and that's why that the first the first scene where Raskolnikov goes in to see the investigator of course is eventually going to be the reason that he gets punished that the first words that the investigator uses is a line from Nikolai Gogol and Raskolnikov goes into that scene laughing so there's something maybe a comedy not in the sense of what could be hysteria it is partly hysteria but it's laughter it's lost that the element of laughter let's put it that way which covers so many different spheres of cognitive but there is also a very common chemical element for example in the in the funeral meal scene whenever after mom a lot of dies Sonya's father and we have this dreadful scene in which all this drunken poor people in the household gather together for for this funeral meal and everything descends into sort of abuse and hysteria and people are shouting at each other the the landlady gets gets punched in the face you just esq is an absolute master of the comedy of embarrassment and these these are scenes which are sort of horrific to read in some ways but they are very very funny that puts me in my place also I wasn't I'm reading it out of time when that went not in mine being pushed yeah I'm waiting and breakable warning okay fine I think that this is a part of the same question of how the states keys been received in our culture but also in Russian culture as as indeed the portraits of him attest from his lifetime such as a portrait you can see on the BBC website for this program or of a very gloomy dark man and I think a lot of the things we've said to show that ascetic is far from far from being that and if had people find great sustenance in his writing as well as comedy and it was published about the same time or suicide at the same time as Tolstoy's war and peace did they do you think the two raced together certainly they were literals rivals who held a great amount of respect for each other but also disagreed on a number of things and but who never met in person in order to talk through those disagreements disagree with their disagreements were played out through their own writings their own commentaries on their writings their letters to mutual acquaintances and editors and comment you know reviews of each other's works in in in sort of literary magazines so so this they were they were competitors but at the same time recognized in each other same similar kind of values and in fact when Dostoyevsky passed away and Tolstoy learns of it he acknowledged that in actual fact he hadn't realized quite how much dusty Eskie meant to him and was and was deeply affected by it well thank you very much thank you Sarah Hudspeth Sarah young Oliver ready next week return to the Crusader States at the height in the 12th century in the Queen of Jerusalem many saw and thank you very much for listening and the inner time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests yeah I'd like to talk about lusion who is the character that that Raskolnikov sister dunia is projected to marry and I think he plays quite an important role in the novel because he provides us with a with a template of of a down-and-out bad character he's a he's an absolute villain so we have svidrigaïlov who is this this very kind of ambiguous and mysterious character but lusion it's impossible to like him there is nothing nothing at all to like about him and I think this is really important because it adds to that idea of the the nuances the the poise nature of this debate with about good and evil but that that Oliver referred to because I think that the natural human temptation is to want to see bad guys as as all at all out bad guys as as something different from us but when we see Luzon contrasted with sigilyph and with Raskolnikov who we have to admit is you know it is a is a bloody violent murderer we realize that it just isn't as simple as that we can't just say that evil is something that is over there and that is different and separate from us it is something much much more complicated and was one reason why I find such a guy love a much more terrifying character is because he has those ambiguities and the aspects about him that are appealing and are attractive and curiously I found just on that point about su-30 Gulliver found going about my reactions as I was translating it I found speed read I loved also a terrifying character in in the sense that his his language is somehow neutral it's some emotional emotionless when he speaks it's speech and it's very fluent speech and yet there's sort of no human content the one can derive from it very clearly he has indeed in a way but he dominates the second half of the novel and people often forget this you know he appears in in in what seems to Raskolnikov a dream at the end of part three but from part 4 onwards he's right there and a curiously in Russia at the moment where for example in the theatre there's a play that's been going on in Moscow for the last couple of years by a brilliant direct from the thigh Rainier he's done eight different versions or something like that of crime and punishment and this last one takes we do legal off as the main character which tells us that crime function is not just about Raskolnikov similarly Boris our kun and the detective novelist did a novel we're put here he's the main care it's a it's it's not true that we're always in Raskolnikov's mind for example there's a great scope of other human experience that's covered in this novel and certainly this Vidigal of it really takes over from Raskolnikov indeed in the final part of the novel we see we spend we spend several chapters following such a girl of around before he commits suicide so so we really do sort of you this is the really the only time in the novel whether focuses can take him completely away from Raskolnikov Russell because generally present even if there are other characters around him and this this this I mean I think this question of the the the your house friedrich i love an allusion in particular and in how we compare them to Raskolnikov in this question of good of a good and evil it is I think absolutely central to how we look at the novel can we kiss go back briefly to another character Sonya he was talking about almost wanted to come over for words when you were talking about how in a way she seems not fully palpable characters I'm a released one we can't imagine her doing the deeds that her profession demands that she does I have to say I didn't I don't necessarily feel that as a reader in the stuff she sort of in a way goes out of his way yes not to show not to show the actual profession but he does show her in the clothes that she wears we get to the when she goes out on the street we get the account of her father talking about the hygiene checks the procedures have to go through at the time it seems in a way that for something like Sonya for whom she would see this job as her cross to bear her suffering to bear justified by the fact that she's helping her family and I am clearly Sonja's a problematic characters as we've all said and the readers do come to the novel and feel that there's something that is if da Sisk is using her as a cipher but then we also forget that in the same novel there's another woman character we haven't mentioned yet madam allow dogs wife who's there is a very defined character who when madame a lot of the alcoholic dies and a priest comes and says you know we should we should forgive we should accept at the hour of death says you know why should I forgive why should I accept God has given me this awful life of looking after all these children my husband's now calling not looking after us so if the criticism about the novel is one of her women are represented I think their arguments on definitely on both sides what do you think I would agree on Catalina development mama Lara's wife is a sort of a really interesting example of somebody who does repel in a very different way to other rebellions we see in in the novel and in Dostoevsky in general and III don't necessarily have a problem with the depiction of women as a whole I do find Sonya difficult I mean in a way I think it's fatigue I love also has this sort of element of being sort of disembodied and embodied at the same time the fact that he as one of you said he comes out of a dream the poses is part of the genre fantastic this is not a sort of standard realist novel so we can accept these sorts of ideas that the dream world did there's a project world of projection and psychology is as important as the concrete can I just turn the for a while but you didn't talk about when we scarcely touched on in the in the discussion well I think listeners just to say some things about dusty uh Turkey himself I mean he when you came back from Serbia quickly got into enormous debt partly he took on his brother's debt he don't know him dead brothers dead he was oppressed by that he lost children he and his epilepsy Brittany Reese goodness knows with that what sort of state was here when it was writing this coming we'd like to talk about him a little he was he was under if I if I may he was under immense pressure because one of the things he'd done in his in his desperation as a struggling writer was to enter into a really punitive publishing contract with an unscrupulous editor called stenov ski who would demanded his next work from him in an unrealizable timescale which if he wasn't able to meet that deadline then Dostoevsky would would be signing over his royalty rights in perpetuity thereafter to this sterile ski so he was he was writing under tremendous pressure but in actual fact he managed to get himself out of that you're talking about the gun bruise right yes that's right so so this is this is how he ended up meeting his second wife he hired a young stenographer to whom he wanted to be able to dictate his works in order to produce them more quickly and what he did was to take the the shorter novel the gambler in order to meet this publishing deadline and then give him more space to actually work on crime and punishment but the this this this sense of pressure he was under which was very very very genuine and I think was also sort of compounded by the fact of living in Petersburg in this very tense crowded atmosphere overcrowding that we've talked about earlier he also I think took home the pressure voluntarily in fact he sought it out partly through the gambling which are some point you he was described as a problem gambler but at some point he didn't in the 1870s he just gave up gambling altogether without apparent problem so there's whether he was actually a problem gambler either is a question and then he took on all these debts which he didn't necessarily need to do you might say that he's he's felt felt responsible for his family but at the same time it wasn't an absolute obligation I do see a stepson yes after his you know continuing to look after this reprobate set stepson who he had no real responsibility for and I think there was a sense of him taking on those pressures and actually in wet in a way thriving under those pressures at the same time I'm sure none of us would want to that contributed to the to the to the myth that surrounds Dostoevsky is writing that he would that he wrote too quickly that you rushed because clearly what we see with crime and punishment certainly is and we have it in the notebooks people have studied all of this there if he if he wrote a draft which she wasn't happy with he would promptly start again and he did say several times that's why he ended up building up this incredible pressure partly because he was so late finishing crime and punishment that the window he had to write the gambler became shorter and shorter as it translator I'd again off the novel I felt that the criticisms of the stoic and stylistic grounds are greatly exaggerated indeed false simply false that he simply works with different aesthetic means in this novel but the the artistry of it is extraordinary as good as anything like took so strongly against him has he had great supporters as we must have oh yeah of course he's had great supporters but why did those two take against him too much Nabokov shares that many themes with the state excuse after writing the Russian saying only neighbors argue influence but there's also just a general approach to cliche in a way because the service is always writing about crises in people's lives the fact is crises in people's lives tend to be quite similar to each other at certain points and one is inevitably dealing with with you know it's not like Lepidoptera it's not like butterflies and Ibaka's they Oh every butterfly is different or whatever they are they are interested in different they are both wonderful writers a bit interested in different aspects of existence but from Nabokov's point of view his writing is all about the war against cliche is what a name is puts it right that at the end of every sentence in a way the reader should step back and think this is something entirely fresh and new has happened in this sentence Dostoevsky is using language to certain extent to move us to change our stew yeah to it to affect us emotionally much more so these are writers were simply doing different things but their themes were quite similar so no book was interested in the da ball he's interested in murder crime time here comes with producer [Music]

Channel: In Our Time

Views: 2,986

Rating: 4.7600002 out of 5

Keywords: BBC, Radio, Four

Id: tmPgddKuPm8

Length: 51min 59sec (3119 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2019