Welcome to Week 7 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part One, Chapter 7.
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This week’s characters
Characters in this week’s chapter in the order that they are mentioned. Raskolnikov isn’t mentioned because he’s mentioned in almost every chapter.
Alyona Ivanovna • Lizaveta Ivanovna
Part One, Chapter 7 Synopsis
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
So, here we are at the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the murder scene. We left Raskolnikov at Alyona Ivanovna’s door just as the bolt was drawn.
Alyona Ivanovna seems nervous, but at this point, she doesn’t recognise Raskolnikov. He holds the door open lest she pull it closed again, then pulls it towards him, dragging Alyona Ivanovna with the door; she jumps back in fright.
Raskolnikov attempts to sound casual when he greets her, but his voice breaks.
He offers her the ‘pledge’ and we get this scene:
The old woman gave it a quick glance, but then immediately fixed her eyes on her uninvited visitor. It was a malevolent, searchingly suspicious look. A minute passed. He seemed to see something akin to mockery in her expression, as if she understood perfectly what he was up to. He felt thrown off balance, almost unnerved — so unnerved, in fact, that he felt that, if she were to go on looking at him like that for another thirty seconds without saying anything, he would leave straight away.
Imagine how long that minute must have felt for Raskolnikov. Interestingly, in the very opening line of Prof. Yuri Corrigan’s book, Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self, he has this to say:
Dostoevsky was fascinated by the dynamics of human closeness. His characters are known for their participation in convulsive, irrational, and even supernatural forms of intimacy that often surpass the bounds of love or friendship in any traditional sense. In the midst of a dramatic scene, they suddenly freeze and gaze into each other’s eyes silently for extended periods of time; they echo and adopt each other’s ideas and intonations; they sense each other’s presences within themselves; and, in apparent violation of the rules of psychological realism (to which Dostoevsky continually professed his faithfulness), they seem to possess access to each other’s private thoughts, feelings, and memories.1
It’s as if Alyona Ivanovna knows why he’s there and is psyching him out to see whether he’ll stay and see the job through or turn on his heels and bolt. We already know Raskolnikov's psychological state, and we know he feels he’s being pulled along by fate. Which force is the stronger? Is Alyona Ivanovna also a fatalist?
The murder happens quite quickly. It’s violent and is described in gory detail. Raskolnikov goes through Alyona Ivanovna’s pockets and seems perfectly calm as if the violence has steadied his frayed nerves, although his hands are still shaking. He’s described as ‘clear-headed’.
Another bit of telegraphing:
Later he was to remember just how careful and attentive to detail he’d been, trying the whole time to make sure he didn’t get smeared with blood anywhere…
Raskolnikov goes through the box under the bed and begins stuffing his pockets, only to be disturbed by a sound from the other room. Lizaveta has come home. Raskolnikov rushes through with the axe and kills her as well, not with the butt of the axe this time, but with the blade.
He’s overwhelmed by fear after this and feels that there’s no way he can return to stealing artefacts from the strongbox in the bedroom.
He recovers his senses long enough to wash his hands and scrub the blood off the axe and then suddenly notices in horror that the door to the apartment is open. He closes it and bolts it from the inside - a move that will have consequences.
It’s a very tense scene that follows, with Koch and Pestryakov coming to the door and concluding that someone must be home because the door is bolted from the inside. The whole scene plays out, with Raskolnikov eventually managing to sneak out and get away.
So, he gets away physically, but does he get away mentally? I think we already know the answer to that. What we don’t know is how it’s all going to play out and whether he’ll get caught. The punishment began way before he committed the crime, with his fever dreams and poor physical health. I can only imagine that it’s going to ramp up, now that the deed is done.
Translation Points
I’ve chosen the passage quoted above when Raskolnikov and Alyona Ivanovna are in that long period of silence. Click the button to see how it’s rendered in all eight translations.
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Corrigan, Yuri. Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) . Northwestern University Press. Kindle Edition.
P.S. Am I the only one to comment? Or am I looking in the wrong place??
Dostojevski has written this nerve wrecking chapter in such a way that the reader has to identify with Raskolnikov. We want him to escape. The murder of Lizaweta is cruel - we really don't care to be drawn into that, and yet we understand R has to do it if he wants to get away unseen from the scene. And so we sink deeper and deeper in this messy business. Well done Dostojevski!