Raskol means Split: Before and After
Crime and Punishment Week 9: Book Two, Chapter 2
Welcome to Week 9 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Two, Chapter 2.
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This week’s characters
Characters in this week’s chapter in the order that they are mentioned:
Raskolnikov • Razumikhin • Praskovya Pavlovna • Ilya Petrovich • Nastasya
Part Two, Chapter 2 Synopsis
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
“But what if there’s been a search already? What if I find them there right now?”
Raskolnikov is worried. He’s just left the police station, having become quite ill upon overhearing the police officers’ discussing the murder after his questioning about his debt to his landlady. He goes straight home and pulls out the stolen goods from the hole in the wall and stuffs them into his pocket. He’s panicking and wants to get rid of the evidence as quickly as possible. He ponders the river and the canal and even goes to the islands, whereupon he stumbles on an abandoned courtyard with building materials lying around. There’s a sign on the fence bearing an interesting inscription written in chalk. I’ll cover in the translation points section below. He buries the loot under a large stone block and is then overcome with a ‘barely containable feeling of joy… And he burst out laughing’. Manic laughter? Relief?
At this point we get another temporal shift:
Yes, he was to remember that laugh later — a nervous, shallow, noiseless laugh that continued uninterrupted as he crossed the square.
Now we get inside Raskolnikov’s head as he wonders why he didn’t even look in the purse. What about this grand gesture of stepping over for the benefit of mankind? He’s not even looked at the stolen goods and almost threw them into the canal. “It’s all because I’m so ill,” he eventually concluded moresely. “I have exhausted myself, torn myself to shreds…” Does this mean that his constitution simply isn’t strong enough to see his plan through? He’s done the murder, as if led by fate, but now the consequences are making him ill. He’s not a great man after all. But we knew that, didn’t we? How could Raskolnikov not see it? Delusion? We’re reminded now of his mental state when he met Marmeladov in the tavern, when his glorious desire for human connection was snuffed out in an instant.
With each passing moment he found he was becoming more and more consumed by a new overpowering sensation: a seemingly uninterrupted physical revulsion for everything he came across and all his surroundings - a persistent, spiteful feeling of loathing. He found everyone he met vile: their faces, the way they walked, every movement they made—everything was vile about them. Had anyone started talking to him, he would have spat at them, maybe even bitten them...
That’s a pretty rough state to be in. It sounds like untreated mental illness, doesn’t it? That’s the feeling I get anyway.
He finds himself at Razumikhin’s without really remembering how he got there, and goes up to his door. Razumikhin seems pleased to see him and comments on how ill Raskolnikov looks. He offers him some translation work and he takes it at first, but then returns and leaves without a word. Razumikhin is a bit taken aback by his strange behaviour.
Once back on the street, he’s whipped by a passing coachman for walking in the middle of the road and almost getting run over. A passing elderly woman and a younger woman, presumably her daughter, mistake him for a beggar and give him 20 copecks. He finds himself looking out over a view that’s described in quote poetic language for Dostoyevsky, but only so that he can later tell us that this view, which used to charm Raskolnikov on his way home from classes, now left him cold.
There wasn't a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the water was almost blue, which is very rare for the Neva. Glittering in the sunlight was the cupola of the cathedral, whose outline can never be so clearly seen as from this particular vantage point, standing on the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel: every one of its ornaments stood out clearly in the pure air. The pain from the whip had eased, and Raskolnikov had already forgotten about it. A certain rather alarming but not absolutely clear thought was totally occupying his mind at the moment. He stood there for a long time looking intently into the distance. He was particularly familiar with the spot where he was standing. When still at university, more often than not, while on his way home, he would stand precisely here, perhaps hundreds of times, staring intently at this truly magnificent view, each time marvelling at the vague, rather mysterious impression it made on him. As a view it left him inexplicably cold: the gorgeous scene filled him with a blank, numb sensation. Each time he found himself astonished at his rather depressing and enigmatic reaction. Not trusting himself, however, he kept putting off trying to understand the reason for it until later. He recalled these memories and uncertainties with extreme vividness, and he felt it was no accident they were coming back to him now. It struck him as being very strange and eerie that he had stopped precisely on the very same spot, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts as he had before.1
It’s really quite a powerful scene that illustrates the Raskolnikov of before and after, another split in his character with the murder’s being the point of the split, or raskol’. He throws the coin into the river, and then we get this chilling line:
He felt as if at that moment he had taken a pair of scissors and cut himself off from everybody and everything.
He gets home and sinks into oblivion. He’s awoken by a scream. At this point we don’t know he’s dreaming. It’s the sound of his landlady’s being beaten out on the stairs by Ilya Petrovich. Nastasya comes in with soup and he questions her about the beating. She tells him there was no beating and that it’s the blood: “Nobody came. It’s the blood singing in your ears: when it’s got no way out, it starts coagulating, like, in your insides, and you begin to see things… How about a bite to eat, then?”
He asks for a drink, takes a sip and then sinks, once more, into oblivion.
It’s a powerful chapter that moves the story along quickly. We follow his panicked attempts at hiding the evidence; we’re introduced to Razumikhin, whom we’ve heard about but not met; there’s the before and after scene, with the views over the river as a plot device, then the paranoia and delirium take over to the point of unconsciousness. A great man, he is not.
Translation Points
STOPPING OF CARTS HERE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN
This is a super interesting piece of translation: how to deal with Russian that’s deliberately misspelt. The original text is written in chalk on the fence: Сдесь становитца воз прещено. The example given above is how Roger Cockrell rendered it, also choosing to use all caps. I’m not entirely sure where he got ‘carts’ from, but he wasn’t the only translator to do that. McDuff has a very similar translation:
STOPPING OF CARTS PROHIBBITED.
Here are the other six from the eight translations I’m reviewing.
Garnett - “Standing here strictly forbidden.”
Coulson - Rubbitch must not be shot hear.
P&V - NO LOIDERING HEAR
Ready - No toiletering
Pasternak-Slater - Standing Hear Stricly Forbiden
Katz - FOR BIDDEN TO STOPP HEAR
Which translation do you prefer?
I’ve included a few more translation points from this chapter in the comparison spreadsheet.
Video of this week’s analysis
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Roger Cockrell translation, p110
I'm slowly catching up. I found this chapter difficult to read. It's getting harder to identify with Raskolnikov or even to like him. He seems to suffer from a raging fever combined with severe mental illness, but somehow that doesn't soften my heart for him.
That scene at the bridge (where he looks at the beautiful view across the Newa to the palace) - it's a 'before and after' scene where R cuts all ties with society, but I think it also means that even when something is clear and obviously beautiful and enjoyable, R finds it hard to see it in a straight and positive way, like other people do. He finds the view 'unclear and unfathomable'. There's a gap between him and other people, and now there's also a gap within himself (before and after the murder).
It made me feel he's really drifting away from sanity and humanity in this chapter.
No comment! I'm terribly behind. But I will catch up!