I Should Have Known
Crime and Punishment Week 20: Book Three, Chapter 6
Welcome to Week 20 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Three, Chapter 6.
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This week’s characters
(I don’t include Raskolnikov in this listing as he’s in most of the chapters)
A conversation, a freak-out and a new character.
Part Three, Chapter 6 Synopsis
Razumikhin and Raskolnikov leave Porfiry’s and head to Bakaleyev’s house, where Dunya and Pulkheria are staying. On the way they discuss the meeting they’ve just had with Porfiry. Just at they arrive at Bakaleyev’s house, Raskolnikov announces that he has an errand to run and heads home on his own for a wee freak. He had a notion that he’d left some evidence behind in the hole in the wall. Next thing, the caretaker is pointing our Raskolnikov to a stranger. Raskolnikov’s like WTF? The stranger leaves and Raskolnikov goes after him to see what’s going on. When he catches up with him, the stranger calls him out as a murderer and then walks off. Raskolnikov’s legs turn to jelly. He makes his way back to his room to carry on with his freak out. Razumikhin eventually calls on him and he pretends to be asleep.
Raskolnikov’s mind is working overtime and he ends up wondering just what it was that possessed him to think he could go through with this crime.
"I should have known," he thought with a bitter smile. "How on earth did I have the nerve to do that, knowing what sort of a person I am, sensing beforehand what sort of a person I am - how could I have taken an axe and covered myself in blood like that? I should have known beforehand... Oh, but I did know beforehand!" he whispered in despair
He goes over and over his motives and finds them to be flawed. He couldn’t step over the line. “I sensed in advance I would say this to myself after I had done it!” He finds himself thinking of Lizaveta and Sonya, “poor gentle creatures with such gentle eyes… Dear, sweet women!”
He falls back asleep and, when he awakes, he’s on the street with no idea how he got there. He sees the stranger beckoning to him. He follows and is led to the building where he committed the crime, although he doesn’t recognise it straight away. It soon becomes apparent to us that he’s dreaming, going over the murder again but in a warped, dreamlike way. He wakes up sweating and sees the stranger standing in his doorway. The stranger steps into the room and introduces himself: Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.
It’s spooky season as I write this and I spent the weekend watching some of the Halloween movies. If you want to see a soulless killer, that’s your franchise. The bogeyman from those movies, Michael Myers, is certainly not having delirious, guilt-ridden dreams after his killing sprees. Although he’s also not killing for any philosophical reasons that we’re aware of. I mean, he might be, but it seems unlikely. What about Napoleon? Do great leaders have dark nights of the soul before campaigns of war? How about business leaders who have to lay off workers or watch business deals go south? I’m personally facing some leadership challenges right now and have been using various tools to deal with it. Don’t worry—there’s no murder involved, but there has been some sleeplessness. Reading literature helps.
What made Raskolnikov think that he could step over? That’s what I find curious. The novel doesn’t really give us an answer to that. Raskolnikov himself is now acknowledging that he doesn’t have what it takes. Why did he think he did? It’s been clear to us since the beginning of the novel that he’d never manage to overcome the guilt.
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
Translation Points
“Smoke and mirrors” - that stood out to me in Cockrell’s translation as being a particularly apt English idiom, so I thought I’d see what the others did.
I like Katz’ ‘passing fancy’ over the floating/fleeting idea. ‘It cuts two ways’ is also pretty decent. It just shows you how many ways there are to skin a cat. Ha ha.
Original - всё мираж, всё о двух концах, одна идея летучая
Garnett - It is all mirage—all ambiguous. Simply a floating idea.
Coulson - it is all ambiguous and illusory, a will-o'-the-wisp
McDuff - it's all a mirage, a conjecture, just a fleeting idea
P&V - it's all a mirage, all double-ended, just a fleeting idea
Ready - it's all a mirage, all double-edged, an idea plucked from the air
Pasternak Slater - it's all fanciful and double-edged; and as soon as they have a fleeting idea
Katz - it's all a mirage, it cuts two ways, merely a passing fancy
Cockrell - it's all smoke and mirrors, all double-edged, just a floating idea
The full paragraph that this is lifted from is included in the comparison spreadsheet. See the link below for that.
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Well analysed! What struck me about this chapter were the many references to death -- Raskolnikov is white as a sheet with dead eyes, the unknown man comes from 'somewhere under the ground' (this is how it's said in my Dutch translation), a black, dark staircase, images that disappear into the darkness etc. Also the mysterious, unknown man seems to have come from nowhere to judge him.
Just as in previous chapters there is a lot of shivering and trembling going on, and R has feverish thoughts.
So tension is rising perceptibly in this chapter and as you say it has a slightly spooky feel to it. It's a rollercoaster read!