Alright just one more for tonight. Read this sometime ago but really want to write something on it.
In many ways we can see elements in Raskolnikov that mirror Dostoevsky's own life, yet there are key criticisms of his protagonist, and the ideas that he is a vivid representation of, that Dostoevsky raises, none too subtly. The word itself appears a couple of times in the text, but it is the notion of 'nihilism', that Dostoevsky puts the bulk of his literary heft behind, in extrapolating on its effects, and eventually denouncing it. Raskolnikov himself is its sword bearer, reducing Orthodox doctrine to a commodity of comfort for the 'ordinary' folk, as dichotomised in his published article. For those like his mother who cannot come up with any kind of original idea that might contribute to the progress of humanity, as if the incapacity were in their nature.
Yet though Raskolnikov is at the centre of the author's impassioned discourse against nihilism, the reader cannot but witness Raskolnikov's increasingly fevered monomania and experience genuine compassion. That he comes to condemn himself having realised after committing the deed of murder that he had not the strength to be like a Napoleon, or a Ubermensch with deference to the Nietzchean concept, that he comes to view his actions as absurd - "'Would a Napoleon go crawling under an old woman's bed?' they'd ask. 'Go on, don't be so stupid!", evokes a reader's sympathy for a man who finds himself irrevocably entrapped by the error of his intellectual and moral convictions. Also revealing is the love he bears for his mother and sister, his loyalty to them from start (where he prohibits Dunya from marrying Luzhin) to end (where he pacifies his mother in a Godly way, fulfilling his obligations as a son despite his complete complete denial of religion).
And that puts him some distance above the pallid indifference and pure ignorance that Dostoevsky weaves into his fabric of Russian society. Dostoevsky's portrait of St. Petersburg, a city befouled by debauchery in the drinking dens and disrepair in the ungoverned lives of the poor, is a setting almost hopelessly suffocating, constantly aggravating Raskolnikov's frustrations and suspicions. In the same way it drove Marmeladov to drunken incapacitation, Sonya to the depths of prostitution, Katerina Ivanovna to consumption and insanity. There is considerable evidence that all 3 individuals are in possession of a certain nobility of character, and yet in Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg all (with the exception of Sonya) succumb to the conventions of immorality, ignorance and cynical self-preservation. A striking scene significant in this respect is that of Marmeladov's funeral, where Amalia Ivanovna and Luzhin, in conspiring maliciously and criminally against Sonya, each reveal the utter dearth of moral relevance where the structures of society have all but broken down. It is no wonder that Kafka later claimed to have been inspired by Dostoevsky, all in the spirit of claustrophobia.
What intensifies the depth of feeling, the dislocation and the overall sense of a whirlpool in a storm, is the ease with which all the characters are provoked into hate, agony, fury or some other extreme of emotion, introducing a disturbing sense of desperation which permeates throughout. That coupled with the enduring image of death, introduced in the very first chapter, and perpetuated throughout the rest of the text, a motif that serves as an appropriate foil for the author's central concern, nihilism.
Yet emerging from this giant, headache inducing mess of negativity are some clear beams of insight, communicated through conversations between Raskolnikov and Dunya, and the intense psychological struggles between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich. A stroke of genius is a dream had by Raskolnikov in Chapter 2 of the Epilogue, in which he dreams of a world where an intelligent virus spreads the world over, and "never had people considered themselves so intelligent, and in possession of the truth as did those who became infected. Never had they believed so unswervingly in the correctness of their judgements, their scientific deductions, their moral convictions and beliefs."
I think increasingly I'm becoming suspicious of grand theories that posit any kind of ultimate truth. With regards to the book itself, it is easily one of my favourite ever, a work that encompasses so much of the 19th century, predicting and warning against the ideological struggles (and for what) of the 20th century. Emotionally, complex and involving. Intellectually, a showpiece.
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