Fundamental Causes

Crime and Punishment Week 15: Book Three, Chapter 3

Welcome to Week 17 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Three, Chapter 3.

Please bookmark the homepage for the read-along. Here, you’ll find links to everything you need as we read the novel together.

• Crime and Punishment homepage

• Chapter summaries and analysis

• Weekly chat thread for each chapter

• Reading schedule

• Cast of characters page

---

If you enjoy this content and would like to help me to keep it going, please consider a paid subscription.
Thank you. 🙏🏻

---

This week’s characters

Characters in this week’s chapter in the order that they are mentioned:

Zosimov • Nastasya • Pulkheria Alexandrovna • Dunya • Razumikhin

---

There’s a lot in this chapter, mostly dialogue between Raskolnikov and his family. Doctor Zosimov is there and sounds a bit like Jordan Peterson in some of what he says, alluding to the fact that meaning and purpose are required to stave off mental illness. Some of the translations use the word deranged or crazy in Zosimov’s speech. It’s a powerful idea that resonates with me and is a good example of why this book is as relevant today as it ever was. You can almost hear JBP in the background telling Rodion to clean his damn room. Dunya gives back as good as she gets, too and Razumikhin gets caught in the middle. It’s such an interesting chapter. Let’s take a look.

Part Three, Chapter 3 Synopsis

All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022

Raskolnikov is up in bed, face washed, hair combed. When his mother and sister enter the room, Zosimov notices in him not joy but a weary resignation at having to endure the visit. He looks tormented. Zosimov goes on to discuss the fundamental causes that have led to Raskolnikov’s pathological condition.

"I'll tell you why I'm saying that," Zosimov continued, warming to his theme. "It's because your chances of full recovery now depend on yourself, and largely on yourself alone. Now that I'm able to talk to you, I would like to impress upon you the need to eliminate the original, so to speak, fundamental causes that have largely led to your pathological condition, and once you do that you will have been fully restored to health - otherwise it will get worse."

So now we’re getting somewhere. We already touched upon the idea that Raskolnikov may be carrying unaddressed trauma. I’ve mentioned Professor Yuri Corrigan’s thoughts on how Dostoyevsky writes about trauma in three posts already (Poverty Is Not a Crime / Mr Luzhin Can Go to Hell / The Murder). Zosimov in his speech goes on to say that Raskolnikov’s ‘derangement coincided partly with your leaving the university.’ He recommends that Raskolnikov (and, by extension, ALL of us) find ‘something to engage your mind and body […] and therefore work and having a firm aim on which to focus, I feel, would be of immense benefit to you.’

In a recent post, fellow Dostoyevsky analyst

Dana • Dostoevsky Bookclub

posited that Raskolnikov might be suffering mentally from the death of his fiancée, Natalya Yegorovna Zarnitsyna, his landlady’s daughter. That would have been around the time he quit his studies. So far we don’t know much about his his fiancée other than the role she played in the whole issue with the IOU that led to Raskolnikov’s almost being evicted. So was Raskolnikov in love and is now in mourning? Is that the fundamental cause of his pathological condition? Was the murder of Alyona Ivanovna brought about by this condition in an attempt to heal? Or was the murder the result of a temporary loss of wits?

Later, Raskolnikov asks his mother whether she remembers how in love he was. We learned in the last chapter that his mother was not in favour of this match. He feels that he was in love with her out of pity. In fact he says that had she been a hunchback or lame, he might have loved her even more. What’s this all about? Is he going out of his way to love pitiable women? Is it a self-esteem thing? Grandiosity?

There’s a lot of subtext in the conversation that ensues. Pulkheria Alexandrovna has a whole inner monologue about how wonderful Raskolnikov is after he reaches for Dunya’s hand. He goes on about his mood and his illness; Dunya seems to see through it but doesn’t mention her doubts. He states that he remembers everything from the night before, down to the smallest detail, despite having been in a delirious state. Zosimov confirms that this is a common occurrence, ‘rather like a dream’, and goes on to claim that, out of perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people, you may come across only one well-balanced person and, even then, ‘perhaps not a very good specimen.’ What does this mean? That everyone has a cross to bear? That’s certainly how the old saying goes.

The last line that jumped out at me in this chapter was when Raskolnikov was having a go at Dunya, and he says:

Bah! You’ve got … ideals too, I see! […] if you reach a line that you can’t cross, you’ll be sorry — and if you do cross it, you’ll perhaps be even more sorry…

We discussed the crossing of lines in the post on the previous chapter; it’s the central premise of the novel, stepping over the line. But what does he mean for Dunya? Does he mean that her marrying Dunya would be crossing a line? And is the ‘you’ll be more sorry’ referring to how he feels after having committed the murders? That’s what I think anyway.

Luzhin’s Letter

We talked about Luzhin’s letter in the last chapter and asked how we thought Raskolnikov might respond. If you guessed that he would attend the meeting against Luzhin’s express wishes, you’d be right. In fact, Dunya absolutely insists on it. That should make for an interesting encounter!

Translation Points

I’m back with the stepping over, the overstepping. It’s such a vital concept for understanding the novel.

To Dunya: … if you reach a line that you can’t cross, you’ll be sorry — and if you do cross it, you’ll perhaps be even more sorry… (p215)

• Russian - перешагнуть / pere-shagnut’ (lit. over-step)

• Garnett - overstep

• Coulson - overstep

• McDuff - go on

• P&V - cross

• Ready - step over

• Pasternak Slater - cross

• Katz - overstep

• Cockrell - cross

Head over to the Translation Comparison spreadsheet to see all eight translations of the full paragraph.

---

Request a Translation Comparison

Paid subscribers may request translation comparisons for anything that jumps out in whichever translation you’re reading.

Once requested, it will be added to the public translation comparison spreadsheet.

---

Thank you for reading

Thank you for reading with me.

This book group is entirely funded by its readers. If you enjoy my posts, please consider a paid subscription to support me and this work.

Or if you’d rather just buy me a coffee, I’d be very grateful!