The Reprieve
Crime and Punishment Week 14: Book Two, Chapter 7
Welcome to Week 14 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Two, Chapter 7.
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This week’s characters
Characters in this week’s chapter in the order that they are mentioned:
Marmeladov • Katerina Ivanovna • Mrs Lippewechsel • Sonya • Nikodim Fomich • Razumikhin • Zosimov
Part Two, Chapter 7 Synopsis
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
There’s been an accident on the street; someone’s been run over by a carriage. There’s a crowd around the body. It distracts Raskolnikov from his mission of confessing his crime at the police station. He approaches the crowd and gets a glimpse of the body. It’s Marmeladov. Uh oh. Raskolnikov announces to the police that he knows him and springs into action. He’s gone from a man who’s ready to give up to a man with a purpose. He helps a group to carry Marmeladov to his apartment.
Meanwhile we’re given a description of the domestic scene taking place at Marmeladov’s. Katerina Ivanovna is talking to 10-year-old Polyenka as she’s getting her younger brother ready for bed. He’s been ill all day. The youngest child, Lida, dressed in rags, watches from the screen waiting her turn to be changed for bed. The door to the apartment is open to fumigate the room from the billowing tobacco smoke coming in from the other rooms. Katerina Ivanovna’s health has deteriorated and she’s coughing a lot.
The group carrying Marmeladov arrives at the apartment and puts Marmeladov on the sofa. Raskolnikov explains to Katerina Ivanovna what happened, saying that everything will be all right and that he’ll pay for everything. He sends for a doctor. Katerina Ivanovna sends Polya off to fetch Sonya, at which point a bunch of other lodgers from the apartment streams into the room. Katerina Ivanovna screams at them to get out and show some respect.
Mrs Lippewechsel comes in as the crowd is dispersing and an argument ensues about her patronymic. She insists it’s Ivanovna, where Katerina Ivanovna calls her Ludwigovna. I’m not sure what this detail in the novel is about. Any ideas? Katerina Ivanovna rants at Mrs Lippewechsel to leave them in peace before a coughing fit stops her. At this point, Marmeladov recovers consciousness and is a very bad way. He calls for a priest. The doctor comes in. Stinking of gin. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist 😁)He takes a look at Marmeladov and says that ‘he’ll die any minute.’
The priest comes and takes confession, such as it is, while Katerina Ivanovna and the children pray. More of the building’s residents come by to gawk, but without crossing the threshold into the room. Polyenka comes back and announces to her mother that Sonya is on her way. She appears and we get a description of her clothing, dressed, as she is, for her work as a prostitute.
Sonya didn't come into the room, but stopped right in the doorway with a confused expression, seemingly unaware of what was going on. She forgot she was wearing a fourth-hand gaudy silk dress, looking so out of place here, with its absurd, overlong train and her immense crinoline taking up the entire doorway, and her light-coloured little shoes and her parasol, which she had brought with her even though it was totally unnecessary at night, and her ridiculous little straw hat with its fiery flame-coloured feather. From under this childishly tilted hat a thin, pale and frightened little face, with its mouth open and frozen with terror, peeked out. Sonya was a short, thin, rather pretty fair-haired girl, about eighteen years old, with striking light-blue eyes. She was staring intently at the bed and at the priest - she too was out of breath from running so fast. Finally she became aware of some whispering and talking from a few people in the crowd. She lowered her eyes, took a single step forward into the room and stood there, not moving from the doorway.1
Katerina Ivanovna has a bit of a rant at the priest about the unfairness of it all and how he shouldn’t be asking her to forgive her husband because he was a drunk, but then admits that she has in fact forgiven him. “Marmeladov was in his death throes.” He was asking for Katerina Ivanovna’s forgiveness. Then his eyes fall upon Sonya. He gets agitated, tries to sit up and falls off the sofa, face down. Ouch! He cries to Sonya for forgiveness, she runs to him and he dies in her arms.
Katerina Ivanovna worries how she’ll pay for the funeral. Raskolnikov assures her that he will pay for everything. As Raskolnikov leaves, he bumps into Nikodim Fomich. They have a brief exchange and Nikodim Fomich comments that Raskolnikov has blood on him.
"But look at you: you've got blood on you," remarked Nikodim Fomich, noticing several fresh bloodstains on Raskolnikov's waistcoat in the light of his lantern.
"Yes, that's right, I've got blood on me... I'm covered in blood!" Raskolnikov said, giving him a peculiar look. Then he smiled, gave him a nod and walked on down the stairs.
Blood is certainly a recurring theme throughout the novel. I can’t help but think back to when Nastasya explains that it was the blood singing in his ears when he had that awful dream that someone was being beaten up on the landing outside his room at the end of 2-2.
The next scene is an important one in explaining Raskolnikov’s state of mind. I said at the beginning that he’d gone from feeling like a condemned man to a man with purpose. Well, as he leaves the building, we get this from the author:
He went quietly down, without hurrying, in a kind of delirious state and, although unaware of it, totally immersed in a new and compelling sensation of life and power that had flooded his being. It was a sensation that could be compared to the one experienced by someone who has been condemned to death and who has suddenly been given a reprieve.*
The asterisk leads to a footnote that explains that Dostoevsky himself had faced a firing squad and been granted a reprieve at the last minute. They do say write what you know! It happened on 23 December 1849 after Dostoevsky was arrested as part of the Petrashevsky circle during the reign of Nicolas I. He had his sentence commuted to eight years of hard labour in Siberia, which was later reduced to four. I just love the line, ‘a new and compelling sensation of life and power that had flooded his being.’ It’s that sense of meaning and purpose that was so lacking and that is now flooding his being, service to others, stepping out of one’s own head. It’s just so relatable!
Polyenka follows Raskolnikov out and down the stairs. He asks her to pray for him alongside her family and she agrees that she will pray for him always.
Raskolnikov is now buzzing with life.
"That's enough," he asserted decisively and solemnly, "away with all the mirages, the fictitious fears, the phantoms!... There is life! I was alive just now, wasn't I? My life didn't end with that old woman's death, did it? May God rest her soul and all that... but that's enough now, madam... it's time to leave me in peace! It's now time for reason and light... and for will-power, and for strength... and we shall see! It's time now to measure up and fight!" he added, as if he were addressing some dark force and challenging it to a duel. "And there I was agreeing I could live on a tiny square foot of space!
He’s not sure why he’s feeling so good. For me it’s meaning and purpose. He’s helping Marmeladov’s family, doing something altruistic.
He remembers that Razumikhin had invited him to Pochinkov’s house for a party and decides he’s going to go. He stops by just to say hello, whereupon Razumikhin says he’d like to walk Raskolnikov home and get some fresh air. The doctor, Zosimov, gives Raskolnikov some powder to take and declares that he’s looking much better. Razumikhin shares with Raskolnikov that Zosimov had asked him to quiz Raskolnikov and report back to him because he believed that Raskolnikov might actually be insane or close to it. He based this diagnosis on the conversation that Raskolnikov had had with Zamyotov at the Crystal Palace in the last chapter. Razumikhin goes on to say that Ilya Petrovich had had his doubts about Raskolnikov when he fainted at the police station, and that Porfiry, the magistrate leading the investigation and Razumikhin’s cousin, wishes to meet him.
They arrive at Raskolnikov’s building and are surprised to see a crack of light coming through the door of his room. Upon opening the door they are greeted by Raskolnikov’s mother and sister, Pulkheria Alexandrovna and Dunya. Raskolnikov faints.
A different Raskolnikov
And there we leave Part Two. The whole chapter presents a different Raskolnikov from the sick and whiney murderer that we’ve come to know in this part of the book, right up until the end when he faints upon seeing his mother and daughter.
1. How do you think having his mother and daughter in town is going to affect him? 2. Has the death of Marmeladov changed Raskolnikov for the better? 3. How do you see his relationship with the Marmeladov women? Are his motives for wanting to help them pure?
Translation Points
I’ve chosen Raskolnikov’s monologue about reason and light and will power and strength. It’s such a positive passage and Lord knows there are few of those in Part Two!
I’m curious about Coulson’s missing out the translation of жить на аршине пространства. We have a square of space (Garnett), an arshin of space (McDuff)—a literal translation—, a square foot of space (P&V), one square yard (Ready), six feet of earth (Pasternak Slater), one square yard of space (Katz), a tiny square foot of space (Cockrell). It’s just not there in Coulson’s translation. Weird.
We did come across the old Russian units of measurement before, particularly versts. It’s interesting to see how different translators deal with this concept.
Does reading the English word arshin take you out out of the text?
Do arshins and versts make the translation feel more like you’re reading a Russian novel?
The other seven translations are in the comparison spreadsheet.
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Cockrell, p174d
I am not sure what to think of this chapter. There seems to be a constantly flowing movement between life and death, between strength and weakness, hope and desperation. The blood on Marmeladow is a bad sign, but on Raskolnikow it seems a good thing: it seems to cheer him up, to make him feel alive again and powerful, even or especially when he meets Fomitsj on the stairs.
The prospect for the little girl is rather hopeless, but hugging Raskolnikov gives her new hope and him as well. Wasn't that a strange scene?
And finally we have Raskolnikov, in a good mood, feeling better, until he sees his mother and sister, and then he faints. Again: from strength to weakness. I don't know where this will lead. I'll just have to hurry with the next chapter.