More useful than Raphael or Pushkin
Crime and Punishment Week 27: Part Five, Chapter 1
Welcome to Week 27 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Five, Chapter 1.
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This week’s characters
(I don’t include Raskolnikov in this listing as he’s in most of the chapters)
Luzhin • Lebezyatnikov • Sonya
A whole chapter set in Luzhin and Lebezyatnikov’s apartment, in which they have a long play-like discourse about progressive ideas. Luzhin was once Lebezyatnikov’s mentor. It feels a bit like a discussion between a present-day conservative and a liberal, which just goes to show that it was ever thus.
Synopsis
Luzhin is annoyed. He made the mistake of telling Lebezyatnikov, with whom he was sharing lodgings, all about the meeting of the previous night. The landlord of the apartment he’d rented and decorated for Dunya charges him the full penalty for breaking the lease, and the furniture supplier keeps his deposit. He’s under the illusion that his mistake was not being generous to Dunya and her mother. He wishes he’d showered them with gifts and money so that they would, in the end, not be able to refuse him. What a manipulative man he is.
He has an invitation to Marmeladov’s wake, but so too do Lebezyatnikov and Raskolnikov. While Luzhin is not at all fond of him, he had heard that Lebezyatnikov was one of the leading progressives in St Petersburg and so might be of use; Luzhin felt himself to be out of touch in that regard.
The two men have a conversation about the impending wake for Marmeladov. Luzhin brings up the alleged assault of Katerina Ivanovna by Lebezyatnikov (mentioned in Part One, Chapter 2), to which Lebezyatnikov responds that he was simply defending himself. He then goes on to espouse some of the progressive ideas of the day, of equality between the sexes and against violence of any form. He exclaims that he won’t be attending the feast, but if he were it would be only to laugh at it all.
“Yet it’s a shame there won’t be any priests… I would definitely go if there were.”
There’s a long discussion regarding Sonya and her profession. Lebezyatnikov denies the allegation that he’d made sexual advances towards Sonya and he sounds pretty convincing. He goes on to discuss some of the progressive ideas of the day, for example the kissing of a woman’s hand, or whether ‘a member of the commune has the right to enter the room of another member, whether belonging to a man or a woman, at any time… and it was decided that he or she does have that right…’ A footnote here explains that Dostoyevsky has taken this idea from Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel of 1863, What Is to Be Done? This was a progressive novel that Lenin read numerous times as a teenager and was influenced by. Dana points out in her essay on this chapter that the progressive ideas of the 1850s would have been quite shocking to Dostoyevsky after having spent ten years in exile and in the armed forces. Imagine going into exile in 2010 and coming back out in time for the culture wars and the pandemic? Ideas can move quickly!
There’s an interesting point in the discussion where Lebezyatnikov is going through his philosophy and talks of being useful or doing honourable work such as cleaning out a cesspool.
Anyway, can you please tell me what you find so shameful and disgusting about a cesspool, for example? I would be quite ready and willing to be the first to clean out any cesspool you want! It's not a question at all of self-sacrifice! It's honourable work, something that needs to be done for the benefit of society as a whole, as valuable as anything else, and certainly much more so than the activity of some Raphael or Pushkin, because it is more useful!"
Maybe Raphael and Puskhin did clean cesspools at some point in their career, but I’m sure glad they engaged in their artistic endeavours as well!
Luzhin asks Lebezyatnikov to go and fetch Sonya, which he does. He gives her a ten rouble note to help the family and asks her not to tell Katerina Ivanovna where it came from. I’m not quite sure what he’s up to here. I suspect all will be revealed in the next couple of chapters.
Q: What’s Luzhin’s game with the secret donation to Sonya?
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
Translation Points
I’ve chosen a phrase that has some interesting choices of vocabulary for three words. The first in the original Russian (неудачи) literally means ill-luck or bad luck. Have a look at how the seven different translations have dealt with it. It’s followed by two words, which Cockrell has translated as tetchy and annoying. In the Russian, one of these words is an adjective (злы) and the other is a reflexive verb (привязываетесь).
The full phrase whence this sentence is lifted is available to read on the comparison spreadsheet.
Russian - Это вы от вчерашней вашей неудачи так злы и привязываетесь
Garnett - “It’s your ill-luck yesterday that makes you so ill-humoured and annoying
Coulson - 'It's because things went badly for you yesterday that you are so captious and spiteful,'
McDuff - 'You're simply aggressive and in a bad temper because of the rebuff you received yesterday,
P&V - "It's because of your failure yesterday that you're so angry and carping
Ready - 'You're still cross about yesterday's setback - that's why you're so tetchy,'
Pasternak Slater - 'You're just getting so angry and spiteful because things went wrong for you yesterday,
Katz - It's because of your bad luck yesterday that you're so mean and you're pestering me
Cockrell - "You're so tetchy and annoying because of what happened yesterday, aren't you?"
It’s remarkable to note quite how different these translations are. Which is your favourite?
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