It's all that cuckoo's fault — you know who I mean: I mean her, her!
Crime and Punishment Week 28: Part Five, Chapter 2
Welcome to Week 28 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Five, Chapter 2.
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This week’s characters
(I don’t include Raskolnikov in this listing as he’s in most of the chapters)
Amalia Lippewechsel • Katerina Ivanovna • Sonya • Luzhin
Marmeladov’s funeral feast. Katerina Ivanovna and Amalia Lippewechsel try to outdo each other.
Synopsis
This chapter would work well on the stage, as indeed was the case with the preceding chapter.
Katerina Ivanovna spends ten of the twenty roubles that Raskolnikov gave her on the funeral feast. The most powerful influence here was ‘poor man’s pride’, basically to show off to the guests. She’s worn out from her illness too, and so while not perhaps insane, she’s definitely ‘not in her right mind’, as Sonya describes her. There’s plenty of booze and a decent spread of food for everyone. She gets some assistance from her landlady Amalia Ivanovna, with the latter’s having prepared the food in her kitchen and set out the spread while Katerina Ivanovna was at the cemetery. Katerina’s a bit annoyed at this display of magnanimity, so it feels like there’s some competitiveness going on here. Katerina’s not one for accepting charity, oh no, not she, the daughter of a colonel who was once very nearly a governor. She feels that she’s somehow above her landlady in social status and will tell her so just as soon as the feast is over.
But it turns out that she can’t wait that long.
We go through a list of absentees from the feast. Why is Luzhin not there? And what about Lebezyatnikov? He’d been invited only as a favour and yet has had the audacity not even to show up.
“Don’t blame me if your silver spoons are stolen.”
The whole scene breaks down into a pantomime between Katerina and Amalia. Raskolnikov shows up and Katerina immediately places him on her left, while Amalia is on her right. Katerina fawns over Raskolnikov who, as everybody knows, “was in line for a chair at the local university in two years’ time.”
But we’re told that it’s not pride on Katerina’s part that makes her fawn over people:
We should note at this point that, if ever Katerina Ivanovna started praising someone's wealth or connections, it was never with any ulterior motive or personal calculation: she did it in a completely disinterested way, out of the fullness of her heart, so to speak, simply for the pleasure of being able to praise someone and holding them in even greater esteem.
I’m not quite sure what that explanation is all about, as in the very next scene she does on to trash talk “that contemptible little man”, Lebezyatnikov.
Her cough gets worse as her emotions grow in their intensity and she gets red blotches on her cheeks. Her illness is clearly deteriorating. She calls Amalia a cuckoo at one point, and then soon after that, an old screech owl.
"It's all that cuckoo's fault - you know who I mean: I mean her, her!" Katerina Ivanovna said, indicating the landlady. "Just look at her, goggling away, sensing we're probably talking about her, but unable to grasp what it is. Pouf, what an idiot! Ha-ha-ha!... Cough-cough-cough! And look at her flaunting her bonnet like that! Cough-cough-cough.”
[…]
"Once again she hasn't the faintest idea what I'm on about - not the faintest! Sitting there with her mouth open... just like an owl, a veritable owl, a screech owl with new ribbons, ha-ha-ha!"
See Dana’s excellent artwork for this chapter in which Amalia is drawn with owl feathers. 👇🏻
The chapter ends with Luzhin’s appearing at the door.
The whole chapter feels like like a pantomime or a farce. Katerina Ivanovna is suffering from her reduced circumstances of illness and poverty but does all that she can to keep her head up in spite of all that’s happening around her.
Is that something you admire?
How else might she have acted?
What’s Amalia’s deal?
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
Translation Points
I picked a phrase pertaining to Katerina’s state of mind.
Russian - Сверх того Сонечка весьма основательно про нее говорила, что у ней ум мешается.
Garnett - Moreover Sonia had said with good reason that her mind was unhinged.
Coulson - Besides, Sonechka had good grounds for saying that her mind was disturbed.
McDuff - Then again, Sonya had with good reason said of her that her mind was growing confused.
P&V - Moreover, Sonechka had quite good grounds for saying of her that her mind was becoming deranged.
Ready - Sonechka, moreover, had every reason to say that Katerina Ivanovna was unhinged.
Pasternak Slater - Furthermore, Sonechka had quite rightly said of her that her mind was becoming deranged.
Katz - In addition, Sonechka had solid grounds for saying that her mind was deranged.
Cockrell - When, moreover, Sonya said she wasn’t quite right in the head, she had every reason for saying so.
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I think the bit about Katerina being honest in her praise is plain irony. It can hardly be serious, can it? 🤔