Spiders in Every Corner
Crime and Punishment Week 21: Part Four, Chapter 1
Welcome to Week 21 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Four, 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)
This is an interesting chapter that is wholly a discussion between Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov in Rodion’s room. It’s the first time the two men have met each other and the first time Svidrigailov has appeared as an active character.
So who is Svidrigailov? He was the rogue who had made advances towards Dunya while she was employed at his home as a housemaid. We learned all about that incident in chapter 1.3 in Pulkheria’s letter to her son.
Svidrigailov’s wife, Marfa Petrovna, died suddenly of a stroke. The circumstances were suspicious, but Dostoyevsky leaves it to the reader to decide whether Svidrigailov had anything to do with it.
He’s also the unnamed man who appeared at the end of chapter 3.4 when he follows Sonya home. They’ve never met, but they are neighbours. It seems too much of a coincidence that Svidrigailov would have rented a room next door, doesn’t it?
See Dana’s excellent post for a discussion on the background of the name Svidrigailov
Svidrigailov’s rant here is a bit troubling. He says that everyone loves being insulted, women in particular. And he used the whip on Marfa Petrovna only twice in seven years. Well that’s alright then!
He then tells the story of how he and his wife first got together. She paid off a debt to get him out of debtors’ prison but held the debt over him just in case. She eventually presents him with the papers she’s holding over him, setting him free. We don’t know what compelled her to do that. She’s older and more well-to-do than her husband. What did she see in his indebted man? It’s not made clear, but we can’t help but feel that there’s some manipulation going on on Svidrigailov’s part.
Svidrigailov then asks Raskolnikov whether he believes in ghosts. He claims that Marfa Petrovna has visited him three times since she died, and each time he was wide awake. He believes that ghosts appear only to those who are ill, I suppose pointing out that he himself is not particularly well. And when he asks Raskolnikov if he believes in an afterlife, he goes on to describe his own idea of eternity as being a small room, like the village bathhouse, with spiders in every corner, and says that if he were creating an afterlife, he’d create exactly that. It’s a pretty dark vision to be sure and it makes Raskolnikov shudder. I’ve used this descriptive passage as the text for my translation comparison this week. See below.
Svidrigailov soon gets to the point of his visit, which is to offer ten thousand roubles to Dunya and to inform her that Marfa Petrovna has left her three thousand roubles in her will. There are to be no strings attached, other than that he would like to see her and make the offer to her in person. The offer is on the condition that Dunya will reject Luzhin’s proposal of marriage; with the money, she will be no worse off than if she were to accept it. Svidrigailov notes that Dunya agreed to the marriage as a financial sacrifice for her family, which, of course, is exactly what Raskolnikov himself believes.
He wants to get all this in order before he goes ‘on a journey’. Sounds a bit cryptic. Where d’you think he’s going? When Raskolnikov asks him to clarify, he replies that it’s complicated and then jokes that he might actually stay and get married. He then picks up his hat and coat and leaves, asking Raskolnikov to pass on his message to Dunya.
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
What are we to make of Svidrigailov? The Russian reader of the day would have picked up on the nuance of his character from the name Dostoyevsky chose for him. The text doesn’t explicitly call him out as a bad guy, but what kind of decent man would imagine eternity as a grimy, spider-ridden bathhouse?
Translation Points
Let’s take a look at Svidrigailov’s idea of the afterlife, filled, as it is, with spiders.
‘People persist in representing eternity as an idea, as something beyond our comprehension, something enormous, absolutely vast! But why does it always have to be something vast? What if, instead, you were to imagine a little room, something like a village bathhouse blackened with smoke, with spiders in every corner, and there you'd have your eternity. That's the way I sometimes picture it, at any rate.’
— Cockrell, p273
Visit the translation comparison spreadsheet to see the other seven translations I have, as well as the original Russian.
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This Svidrigailov gave me the impression of a devil, trying to tempt Raskolnikov with his stories and brazenness and offers of money, and - I think - trying to get him to confess that he (Raskolnikov) also sees ghosts (connected to the murders he committed of course). Svidrigailov, though apparently quite crazy, is probably not someone to underestimate.