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- [00:00]
Oliver Reddy
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- [01:40]
Oliver Reddy
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts thanks for.
- [01:44]
Melvin Bragg
Downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter bcinartime. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky was first published in 1866. It was a sensation. The principal crime is Raskolnikov's, a former student. We know early on that he killed an old woman, a pawnbroker, and her sister with an axe, but we don't know why and we don't know how or if he'll be punished. The novel's set in St. Petersburg, a city where Dostoyevsky too had struggled and been punished for a crime and sentenced to prison eight years in Siberia, where he lived alongside criminals and and was now rebuilding his life as a writer. With me to discuss Crime and Punishment are Sarah Young, associate Professor in Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London Oliver Reddy, lecturer in Russian at the University of Oxford, research fellow at St Anthony's College and translator of this novel and Sarah Hudspeth, Associate professor in Russian at the University of Leeds. To Sarah Hudspeth, what was Dostoevsky's background.
- [02:48]
Sarah Hudspeth
Dostoevsky was born in Moscow and his father was a doctor at Moscow's Hospital for the Poor. So Dostoevsky grew up with an atmosphere of seeing poverty and deprivation all around him. And this was a condition that, you know, he saw firsthand the suffering of people, their poor conditions. And so this was obviously something that touched him from an early age. He was then sent to St. Petersburg.
- [03:17]
Melvin Bragg
I did every something about being part of a minor aristocracy.
- [03:21]
Sarah Hudspeth
So yes, his family was technically of noble status. This is according to Tsarist Russia's very strictly regimented social ranking system. So they were technically of noble status, but this didn't mean that they were well off. They did, however, have a small estate in the country and own their own serfs as well. So from that point of view, he could be considered one of the landowning classes.
- [03:47]
Melvin Bragg
What about his education?
- [03:49]
Sarah Hudspeth
He went to St. Petersburg to study at the military engineering academy, but this wasn't really his thing, it wasn't something that interested him. And he very quickly dropped out of that and began to get involved in the St. Petersburg literary scene. St. Petersburg, the capital at the time, was the flourishing cultural center of Russia, the center of literary activity as well. And this was much more what Dostoevsky wanted to get involved in. And so it was at this time that he published his first novel, Poor Folk, which was a great success and brought him very early success as a writer. How old is, you know, he was, I think he must have been in his. In his early 20s, I think 24. So yes, quite an impressionable experience for quite a young man. Made a big impression on him this very early success.
- [04:44]
Melvin Bragg
What do we know about his own crime and punishment?
- [04:46]
Sarah Hudspeth
In his involvement in the literary activities of St. Petersburg, he became involved with a circle of intellectuals and writers and literary critics who were interested in the French utopian socialist thought that was current at the beginning of the 19th century. And these people would get together to talk about Russia's future direction and how the society might be improved. And the circle that he was involved in was led by Mikhail Petrushevsky. He was the sort of the organizer, the owner of the place where they would congregate to talk about these ideas. Now, it wasn't really what you would call a political group as such. It was just that that was the only kind of venue that people had for talking about socio political change.
- [05:35]
Melvin Bragg
But what Dostoevsky said at the time was construed as a crime. And can you tell listeners what he said and why it was constituted as a crime?
- [05:43]
Sarah Hudspeth
Yes. One of the charges that was brought against him was reading a particular document written by a very prominent literary critic, Visarion Bielinsky. Bielinski had written an open letter to Dostoevsky's contemporary, the writer Nikolai Gorgol, criticizing him for his very reactionary views in his latest piece of work. And because this letter was seen as a challenge to the status quo, it became an offence to read it in a public gathering. And this was one of the things that Dostoevsky had done in the Petrushevsky Circle.
- [06:21]
Melvin Bragg
So he was arrested and sentenced to death. And there was quite a dramatic, almost death scene, watched by 3,000 people. His hands were tied, the guns were there. I was blind. And then what?
- [06:33]
Sarah Hudspeth
Indeed, yes, then at the last minute there was a reprieve from the Tsar. Whether this was a genuine change of heart or whether this was a stunt designed to have the maximum kind of impact on the convicted men, because the death penalty was officially not allowed in Russia at the time. So there was this dramatic last minute arrival of a messenger with a commute of the sentence from. From death to hard labour and penal servitude in Siberia.
- [07:07]
Melvin Bragg
And you went there, Oliver Eddy, and he stayed there about eight or 10 years. Can you tell us what he did in Siberia and how it affected him?
- [07:16]
Oliver Reddy
Certainly. So he spends the first four of the 10 years that he will spend away from St Petersburg in Omsk City in southwest Siberia. He spends four years there in military prison with largely common criminals, not of noble status like himself, although there were some.
- [07:34]
Melvin Bragg
Did that cause problems?
- [07:36]
Oliver Reddy
That didn't just cause problems. It undoubtedly caused great suffering for Dostoevsky himself, because he saw very directly the gulf which he describes, by the way, in the epilogue to Crime and Punishment, between the nobility, between the elite of Russian society and the common people, to use the phrase, that is the usual translation of the Russian word, the narod of the time. And this, in a way, like so many things in Dostoevsky's life, is susceptible to both sort of positive and negative interpretation, that he was clearly alienated in the prison from other people. He was clearly very lonely. Although paradoxically, he also lamented the fact that he didn't have any time on his own because they were all stuffed together like herrings in a barrel, as it was put, and the place was filthy in the barracks. In this prison, on the other hand, the positive that he drew from it was that he felt that he saw with his own eyes the naivety perhaps of those socialist utopian ideas, that there could be some sort of merging of the elite and the common people. To him, the common people as he saw them, were living according to very different rules, different codes. And this was a formative experience for what he would go on to write. He also drew other points, positive lessons, I suppose, from his time in the prison, in that eventually he convinced himself at least, and perhaps he really did. He saw in the people he was sharing these barracks with signs of faith, of a very deep rooted faith that moved him greatly. He also saw creativity, sort of artistic creativity, in these criminals, some of whom had committed the most horrendous acts. And one way in which this creativity expressed itself was in language. And Dostoevsky there was not allowed books. He was only allowed the copy of the New Testament that he was given on the way to Siberia at a forwarding prison. But in this New Testament, which he read from COVID to cover all the time, kept under his pillow, and one can now study the finger marks in the side, which verses he read most closely. He also kept a little notebook in which he wrote down, scribbled away some of these phrases.
- [09:41]
Melvin Bragg
And he did four years of hard labor in this time.
- [09:45]
Oliver Reddy
That's right.
- [09:45]
Melvin Bragg
He said, this is making me stronger. Did he hate it? How did it basically affect him when he came back from Siberia? 4 years hard labor, 4 years, 4.
- [09:56]
Oliver Reddy
Years in compulsory military service, compulsory military service in Semipalatinsk. How did it affect him? I would preface this all by saying that if we can just go back a tiny bit to the crucial moment after this mock execution. He goes Back to the St. Peter and Paul Fortress before he goes off to Siberia, and he writes this extraordinary letter to his brother, whom he loved very much, his elder brother, saying it's an exultant letter saying, life is a gift. If we only knew every moment could be an eternity of happiness. It seems to me that people talk about some kind of conversion that Dostoevsky undergoes in Siberia. Actually, something seems to happen before then, that there's some kind of revelation, something irrational perhaps, that makes him love life, that somehow pushes him through the very traumatic experiences he has in some not being shot, not being shot, but also realizing that our consciousness sort of can adapt to the most extraordinary circumstances. And even when he comes back from Siberia, his life in St. Petersburg in the run up to crime and punishment, is in a way no easier. He's on the verge of poverty. He's suffering from epilepsy, very severe degree, One massive attack every three weeks on average. He is addicted to gambling. His wife, first wife dies and. And he has a great deal of relatives who he needs to feed. And yet something keeps him going. It seems to me that although he's a sort of artist of instability, he's always describing crises. He is in a way, a sort of stable genius. And that stability seems to sort of set in right after that mock execution and somehow carry him through the sense that life is a gift. As he writes.
- [11:30]
Melvin Bragg
There's a lot to cope with, hasn't he? Sarah Young let's go straight for the novel. What are the crimes that we're reading about? Who is committing them?
- [11:40]
Sarah Young
The crimes are Raskolnikov, this impoverished ex student. He's had to give up his studies because of his. Because he can't afford to pay to pay for university. And he decides that he is going to kill an old money lender, a woman everybody considers evil. And he spends the first part of the novel thinking about whether, you know, whether he can actually do that. And eventually he does. And it is described in the most graphic, horrific way this, this murder with an axe as he splits her head open and he then also ends up killing her younger sister, half sister Elizabethta. And he steals some of the old lady's money and gets away with it, only just so that's, that's. Those are the two main crimes of.
- [12:31]
Melvin Bragg
The novel that one of the just so listeners are up to. He goes for a lot of money. He gets. He's so flustered, or whatever the word is it'll be. He takes a paltry amount of money. He doesn't go for the big loot that's hidden somewhere or other. He just runs off with a person, if you.
- [12:50]
Sarah Young
That's exactly right. He ends up taking a few hundred rubles and some bits and pieces of jewelry that he finds some of the moneylenders pledges that she had hidden away, but he misses the bulk of the money that she has hidden somewhere else. So he's a. He makes a mess of the crimes, the mess of the murders and of.
- [13:11]
Melvin Bragg
The robbery, but he gets away from the scene of the crime. And from then on there's a great deal of him trying to justify, explain why he did it and what. Let's start out with one of the main ways in which he justifies killing this old woman. You start up as anxious, wicked or evil or so leading the listener to think, well, maybe, maybe Sadiq. You go on from there.
- [13:34]
Sarah Young
He comes up with a number of justifications for the crime. And the first one is that this is an evil old woman who is no good to society. She's not only no good to society. She's a parasite. She destroys people's lives and therefore she deserves to die. If she dies, then society will be improved by her absence. And he goes on from there to sort of develop other elements of this idea of doing good to society through this murder, by suggesting that by stealing her money he will be able to also himself do good to society. Further, beyond just removing her from the scene, he will be able to sort of resolve people's poverty and bring great wealth into society and also fulfill his.
- [14:24]
Melvin Bragg
Destiny as a rather Napoleonic great man.
- [14:27]
Sarah Young
Absolutely. So this is part of a sort of a wider image where he sees himself as a great man like Napoleon, who can overstep all the obstacles, who can wade through fields of blood in order to achieve his destiny. The normal rules of society do not apply to such people. And Raskolnikov tests whether he is such a person and whether the normal rules don't apply to him. If he can do this and kill the old woman, get away with it, use her money for good, then he can show that that is his destiny.
- [15:05]
Melvin Bragg
Is this him or is this part of a philosophy that he has taken on from, let's say, the West? Is he guided by reading he's done, or is he guided by his impoverishment and his wish to one bound he was free, as it were?
- [15:19]
Sarah Young
In a broader sense, this comes from. Yes, from the reading he's done, from the ideas in the air, as Dostoevsky put it in the 1860s amongst the young radicals who were thinking about this utilitarian calculus of doing the. The greatest good for the greatest, greatest number, under which idea the individuals can be sacrificed. This is Dostoevsky's take on it, looking at the sacrifice of the individuals to do that greater good. But these ideas were very much being under discussion amongst young radicals, students like Dostoevsky, students like Raskolnikov, who are sort of thinking about the law, about social reorganization, about using, are transforming the world.
- [16:08]
Melvin Bragg
Is Dostoevsky's take on this that this is a very bad thing to think, this is a very bad way to behave? This is a bad philosophy?
- [16:16]
Sarah Young
Absolutely. And this is the real change that overcame him as a result of his experience of the death sentence and the experience of prison, from being this involved in this youthful radical circle where they were discussing utopian socialist ideas. He once he has gone through that whole experience of imprisonment and he sees life in a completely different way, he sees these ideas as profoundly dangerous. I think it's one of the things that in some ways, curiously, that he took away from his experience in Siberia and his experience at hard labor is the absolute intrinsic value of every human life.
- [17:02]
Melvin Bragg
Thank you, Sarah. Husbid. Now, one of the main characters, we could call it that, is the city itself, St. Petersburg. What does it represent for him? Because we usually see it as a pristine place. Not a bit of it in this book.
- [17:16]
Sarah Hudspeth
No, indeed, that's one of the things that's so fascinating about the novel is the backdrop and the atmosphere that the city creates. So it was the capital. It was designed as Peter the Great's window on the west, on Europe, the. The portal through which Russia would westernize and modernize and become more cultured and civilized. And we see nothing of that in the text. For a start, it's hot. And of course, many readers might initially associate the cold with Russia, but it's not a cold novel, it's a baking hot novel. It's the heat, the smell of the pollution in the canals, the cramped conditions, the squalor, the degradation of the people living around, forced into all kinds of desperate acts.
- [18:06]
Melvin Bragg
These are descriptions of streets he knew as a boy.
- [18:09]
Sarah Hudspeth
Well, he mainly grew up in Moscow, but he was familiar with the same kind of patterns of poverty. And of course, he saw them himself as a struggling student and a struggling writer. And he himself lived near some of the areas he eventually settled, near one of the main centers of action in the novel, the Haymarket. So this was, you know, where all kinds of common people would come together and, you know, and meet and interact and trade and do all kinds of business, legal and illegal. And when Raskolnikov sees this kind of climate and atmosphere and surroundings around him, he feels very keenly the problems of society. He sees them on his own doorstep and feels very much his own position in that.
- [19:04]
Sarah Young
It's worth adding, I think, that the conditions in St. Petersburg in the 1860s, particularly after the emancipation of the serfs, this was a time of real crisis and growth in the city. The population of the city increased enormously, and particularly in these central areas where there was poor people pouring into the city. Former serfs who was coming to the city to look for work were creating this sort of. This terrible atmosphere and overcrowding that were a real problem.
- [19:37]
Melvin Bragg
Oliver Reddy, can we build Raskolnikov up a little bit more? His sister and mother live in the country. They have great hopes of him, this brilliant young son, a brother of theirs, and they come to visit him. And how does that meeting proceed again?
- [19:57]
Oliver Reddy
If we could just take it back a tiny bit, because before they come to meet Him. We get a letter that Raskolnikov receives from his mother early in the first part, which could be seen as one of the things that happened to him in the run up to the murder that somehow push him towards the murder. Because this letter, as you've just already indicated, is full of the sense of, Raskolnikov, you're our great Rodionis, his first name is Rodia. You're our great hope, you're our everything. We're prepared to sacrifice everything for you. He reads this nine pages of what could be read as a sort of pressure, really on him, emotional pressure from his mother and his sister, because his mother's also telling him that his sister's about to enter into a marriage with somebody that clearly his sister doesn't love. And at the end of this, Raskonovich, in order to rescue the family, in order to. Because Raskolnikos had to pull out of his studies as a law student at the university because he can't pay his fees. And we read at the end of this letter, Raskolnikovs in tears, he can barely breathe. And so this motif of the stiflingness of St. Petersburg, which both Sarahs have just discussed, is also accentuated by what's coming, by the messages that are coming to him from the countryside, from where he grew up. The countryside is the place in the novel that has everything that St. Petersburg doesn't. So the countryside is the place of family, of proper biological families. Countryside is. I mean, in the sense that the understood it. The countryside is the place of faith, of churches, which. And of course, St. Petersburg at the time was full of churches too, but they're really written out of the novel because St. Petersburg is presented as this very Westernized, imitative, inauthentic place. And so. But curiously, one would have thought, given that St. Petersburg is treated so negatively in some ways in the novel, you would have thought perhaps the countryside would be there as a positive backdrop, but far from it, it's somehow making his situation even worse. Moreover, the countryside is associated with one of the darkest characters in the novel, Svidri Gailov.
- [21:44]
Melvin Bragg
Yeah, Sarah Young. There's a connection with Sonia, a young woman who becomes a prostitute to salvage her family's fortunes. Can you tell us about her?
- [22:00]
Sarah Young
Sonja is one of the novel's most important characters because she. Partly because of what she represents, and that is in part because Raskolnikov sees a connection between her and his sister, this terrible marriage that his sister might be about to undertake. Raskolnikos sees as being basically sort of no better than prostitution. And therefore he sees his sisters sort of as starting down on the same road that Sonia has taken. Sonia becomes really important indeed right from the start when Raskolnikov first meets her father and he talks about his daughter going down this road, becoming a prostitute in order to feed her family. Her father's an old drunk, he's a civil servant who's lost his job and has really destroyed the family. And Sonia has made the decision to become a prostitute and thereby rescue in a very small way her family.
- [23:07]
Melvin Bragg
What's the connection between Raskolnikov and Sonia Sample? Some. Some people suggest that she's a very unconvincing prostitute.
- [23:14]
Sarah Young
She is, I think that's, that, that's. That's very fair to say. She's a very, very problematic character. She's basically. She is not. She was criticized by Vladimir for being a sort of golden hearted prostitute, a cliche. She's not that at all. That, that implies what used to be called a good time girl. She isn't that. She's. She's a child, she's an innocent. The fact that she is a prostitute just doesn't fit. I mean, in the most basic terms, you cannot imagine her doing her job.
- [23:47]
Melvin Bragg
So where does that leave you?
- [23:49]
Sarah Young
It leaves you in with a real quandary because you have to be able to. She has to be convincing for the novel to work. I think for me, what this means is that.
- [23:58]
Melvin Bragg
But you've said she isn't convinced.
- [23:59]
Sarah Young
She isn't on one level. I think you need to think about it in a slightly different way in that she is both an embodied character, she is a sort of a real character, but she's also a projection. She's what Raskolnikov needs. He needs the combination that she represents of sin and redemption. He needs that sort of sense of innocence that she represents and the compassion that she brings. The fact that she will show him compassion regardless of his sin. And those are the things that she has in her character because of the road she has taken. So she's almost like a dream figure as well as being a real character.
- [24:44]
Melvin Bragg
Sarah Hudspeth Raskolnikov becomes tormented by what he's done. Meanwhile, we meet Svidrigailov, who we're told has done far worse things, but he seems in trouble. What part does he play?
- [24:55]
Sarah Hudspeth
So Svidrigailov in the novel is almost like the counterpoints to Sonia. Raskolnikov is attracted and fascinated by both these characters in Equal measure. And Svidrigailov represents another possibility for Raskolnikov. Svidrigailov is a man about whom in the novel we hear lots of rumours of problematic moral activity, of possibility that he might have sexually abused a servant girl, that he might be responsible for his wife's death. None of these rumours are confirmed, but nevertheless there is this atmosphere that surrounds him, of unpleasantness. What we do know about Raskolnikov, sorry about Svidrigailov, is that any decision that he takes is motivated only by what pleasure it brings him. That's how he decides what he's going to do. He is able to do both good things in that he rescues Sonia's orphaned brothers and sisters and provides for them, and it ultimately pays Sonia out of her position of prostitution. Or he may do bad things in that we. We see towards the end of the novel that he is prepared to force himself to. To rape Raskolnikov's sister Dunya, although he holds himself back at the last moment. So we know that he is capable of both kinds of act. But to him it seems that there is no distinction. It's about what gives him pleasure, whether it's a good act or a bad act. And essentially this reduces the distinction between good and evil to a meaningless nothing. So ultimately, for Svidrigailov, life ends up holding no meaning at all. And this is one reason, I think, why. Why he ends up committing suicide.
- [26:53]
Melvin Bragg
Is there a sense, Oliver, that these not only characters, but they're embodying philosophies, different ways of thought, different ways of thinking about life and death and good and bad?
- [27:04]
Oliver Reddy
Certainly they do. Overall, I would say that the novel seems to where the real dilemma, as I read it in the novel, between notions of good and bad is on the one hand, there is ideas of good and bad that come down from traditional morality that are traditional.
- [27:21]
Melvin Bragg
You mean Christian morality?
- [27:22]
Oliver Reddy
Christian morality which would promote ideas of humility, of obedience. And there is this more modern idea of the need to emancipate the individual so that the individual can fulfill themselves, can fulfill their talents. Something which Raskolnikov feels young people of his time, gifted people like him, are unable to do. And to me, this is the fascinating collision in the novel where I don't think the author is taking either side, because the author, in a way, wants both. At the end of it, when people say Raskolnikov is redeemed or whatever, a that's not true. There's no indication that he's redeemed at the end. There's no indication that after the last line of the novel, Raskolnikov won't go back to the same kind of talking that we've had hitherto. And this is because that's why the novel is so beautifully poised. I think that on the one hand, Dostoevsky clearly is a person for whom the New Testament in particular was, and Christ was an absolute model of selflessness, which Sonia embodies. On the other hand, Dostoevsky thinks life is there to be lived and to be lived as fully as possible.
- [28:23]
Melvin Bragg
And we have the policeman Porphyry, who is convinced from early on that Raskolnikov's done it and examines him in more psychological ways. He can't use torture and so on. He is part of the psychological play.
- [28:40]
Oliver Reddy
Porphiri is a absolutely. And it's really psychological torture, as you just suggested. And it's the scenes with the three main dialogues with Porphyri. As the book develops, we get three main chapters with each of these characters we've been talking about. Well, three long dialogues with Sonia, three long dialogues with Porphyry, and then also conversations with Svidri Gailov. And what's interesting here is that this is a novel that seems to be a novel about deeds, right? It seems to be a novel about bloody murders. It seems to be a novel about prostitution. Actually, it's a novel about words. The only things that change in this novel change as a result of dialogue, of communication. And in those conversations with Porfiri, the language of the novel reaches a maximal level of ambivalence. The two characters constantly trying to understand what, as Porphyridi says, Raskolnikov, every word you use seems to have another word hidden behind it. And all of the key words of the novel, one has to. And I felt this as a translator trying to understand what these two characters were saying. I understood what the words were, but what tone were they said in? Was it a tone of mockery or was it a tone of sincerity? And that's what so befuddles Raskolnikov in these conversations with Porphyri. Porphyri is a kind of actor. Raskolnikov is a very bad actor. And that's why Porphyri gets the better of him. And he's unable to tell what Porphiri's intentions are, because he can. He can't read Porphyri's speech.
- [30:04]
Melvin Bragg
SARAH Young he remains. There's an attempt by Dostoevsky, straightforward, as was mentioned by a little bit earlier, to make him Likable. He is a likable looking young man and he does likable things. What do you make of that?
- [30:21]
Sarah Young
This is another very important aspect of the novel, I think, that we always remain on his side, regardless of what he's done. And I think that's in part because we're seeing so much through his eyes, that we see the dilemmas he goes through constantly. We see that he is actually going through torture, even if he won't admit it to himself. So that's part of the reason, I think.
- [30:52]
Melvin Bragg
And also he doesn't want to admit to anybody else that he did it.
- [30:56]
Sarah Young
This is very true, yes, Escaping punishment. But I mean, another part of it, I think, is that everybody else is drawn to him and other people see him as an attractive figure in one way or another, even though they, you know, sort of. Even if they do suspect they. That he's. He's done something terrible. Porphyry sees him as an attractive figure in many ways, even though he's. He doesn't, you know, he understands already what he's done.
- [31:21]
Oliver Reddy
If I can just come in briefly, two points, actually. One that he doesn't want to admit, in a way, he does really want to admit. Again and again after the first part, he keeps almost spilling the secret, but.
- [31:32]
Melvin Bragg
He doesn't spill it.
- [31:32]
Oliver Reddy
He doesn't. But on the question of likability, I think here this is. This relates to actually a big change in the novel. In the first part, we're very much in Raskolnikov's mind, in his consciousness. We see here how this novel began, actually as a first person narrative. It eventually changed to a third person narrative, but we're absolutely in his consciousness. And the various ploys that Dostoevsky uses, such as the dream, such as the letter from the mother, all make us feel more sympathetic towards Raskolnikov. After the crime, actually, the novel broadens out into something a bit more typically 19th century, in which we get a much better idea of other characters, including, for example, Raskolnikov's best friend, Razumihen. And by bringing in these other characters in a subtle way, Dostoevsky makes us look at Raskolnikov more critical because Razumhikin lives in exactly the same conditions as Raskolnikov, and it's emphasized their flats, their rooms, rather are identically poor and their dress is identically bad. And yet Razumukin, who's also falling out of university, is somehow managing to make ends meet by teaching, by doing translations. And so that is A way in which we reflect badly on Raskolnikov, arguably Sarah.
- [32:40]
Melvin Bragg
What brings Raskolnikov to the point of confession?
- [32:44]
Sarah Hudspeth
I think it's the complete isolation that his crime has forced him into. That's part of the torture that Sarah was alluding to that he's going through throughout the course of the novel. It's the sense that the moment that the axe falls on his two victims, he destroys and cuts off not just their life, but his own ability to engage in human relations. This is felt most probably, obviously with his. With his mother and his sister. He finds it very difficult to be in their presence, to talk to them, to touch them. He struggles as well with his friend Razumhikin, to be around him. And it's the sense that he can relate to no one anymore, apart from just about Sonia, really.
- [33:32]
Melvin Bragg
There's an epilogue which some people already find unsatisfactory. They have found you've already said no isn't redeemed. It's a sort of almost happy ever after epilogue, as some people see it. But you don't see it like that.
- [33:45]
Oliver Reddy
There's actually quite a lot in this.
- [33:46]
Melvin Bragg
Sonia's gone to Siberia there, and together in Siberia, she's working with the prisoners, so she's activating herself in a way she hasn't done before.
- [33:54]
Oliver Reddy
The novel proper ends with his actual confession. We then move to Siberia. All of a sudden, the epilogue, although it's quite short, it's quite rich. And the first, it's in two chapters. The first chapter just takes us to Siberia and what we get is a sudden change of pace, totally. We suddenly move out of this stifling St. Petersburg atmosphere. And that in itself is a very effective artistic move. Reader TAKES a DEEP BREATH Interestingly, then, the narrator goes back and narrates what happened at the trial, etc. The crucial bit that people stumble on in the epilogue, it seems, in terms of their appreciation of the novel and often criticize, is the second part in which, yes, Raskolnikov sort of falls at Sonia's feet. Yes, there's a love scene, to my mind, an extremely beautiful and affecting one, one that Dostoevsky has entirely earned through the conversations between the two that have led to this point where speech gives way to silence. We read that they wanted to speak, but they could not. My point, in a way, reiterate it in a different way. Why it's so poised is that we end on this moment of silence in a way and of connection. Finally, Raskolnikov, this egoist, essentially it's finally now accepting another human being and therefore accepting himself. But we suspect that Raskolnikov, when this silence comes to an end, his consciousness will go back to its familiar patterns. There was a famous quote in a Russian biography that said, we know Raskolnikov too well to believe this pious lie about the epilogue. To me, that's a misreading. We know him too well to believe that he's going to remain humble and meek for the rest of his days. No, there is a. There is a different life ahead. We just don't know what it is.
- [35:26]
Sarah Young
And there is also, at that very point, there's a reference to his great Podvig that lies ahead and this sort of extraordinary feat that he still faces, and that's very ambiguous. That could still mean the sort of. The great feat of a great man.
- [35:45]
Melvin Bragg
Is Siberia presented as superior to St. Petersburg?
- [35:49]
Sarah Young
Absolutely. I mean, as Oliver said, you have this complete change of pace, of atmosphere. We're out of the stifling, close, claustrophobic center of Petersburg. We have a sort of vast vista across. Across the landscape. There is air, one thing that Raskolnikov can never breathe in Petersburg, in Siberia, there is air, there is sky. He can breathe. And it's also important because this is the place where he finally comes into contact with the, you know, the common people, the peasant convicts. And, you know, as Oliver said previously, these are the people who Dostoevsky himself was imprisoned alongside in Siberia. And they. They play only a small part in the epilogue. They're very. As. As in Dostoevsky's own experience, there is a. They see a huge gulf between themselves and Raskolnikov as a member of the elite. They see him as somebody who is an atheist, who doesn't believe in God, who. Who shouldn't be there as a member of the elite because he doesn't belong with them, and they reject him completely. And that sense of that gulf is at the same time as Sonia is working with the prisoners, she's supporting all the prisoners, not just Ras Golnikov, and they love her. So she has that connection. He doesn't. And that is the sort of. The core of what he faces.
- [37:20]
Melvin Bragg
Oliver, you want to come in? Then I want to get.
- [37:21]
Oliver Reddy
Just briefly that indeed, the other convicts don't accept him, but they're also a bit baffled by him because they say, what is gentry? What does a nobleman like you doing with an axe? Right? He commits the murders with an axe, which is, you know, a symbol of the necessary object in the peasant Lockhart and Log House in Russia. So. And there are other ways in the novel in which Dostoevsky seems to be suggesting that Raskolnikov has deep folk roots. Right. So there's another character, the character.
- [37:45]
Melvin Bragg
So he's allowed to use an axe.
- [37:46]
Oliver Reddy
So the character, the character, right. The character who first confesses to his crime is a Raskolnik, which means a schismatic, going back to the schism in the Russian Orthodox church in the 17th century between the official church and the Old Believers. And so Raskolnik, Raskolnikov. There's a suggestion that something, if only Raskolnikov could get to know himself better, he would be connected to this old religious past of seeking God, I assume.
- [38:13]
Melvin Bragg
Sarah Hudspeth. It's a dark novel and there are an attempt to. To find humor in it. I don't see the point. It's a dark novel. I mean, there's not. You could. There's a strain to find bits of.
- [38:25]
Sarah Hudspeth
Humor in, but it is a dark novel. But I think the whole of Dostoevsky's outlook on life is that the tiny bits of light shine all the more brightly for the darkness. So the darkness is absolutely necessary to understanding the light. And he does provide moments of light relief. This comes partly through Raskolnikov's friend Rasulmikin, who is extremely likable, but also kind of bumptious and awkward and clumsy and makes a fool of himself over liking Raskolnikov's sister. There's also the kind of painful humor of the ridiculousness of the human condition. This was, I think, something where, where Dostoevsky liked to indulge in quite sort of dark black humour, of people who painfully feel the ridiculousness of their situation, of their mediocrity, and who are desperate to rise above it and make ridiculous fools of themselves in struggling to do so.
- [39:31]
Melvin Bragg
You wanted to come in just to.
- [39:33]
Oliver Reddy
Say I think it is a very comic novel. I think it has a deeply comic basis partly for the reasons Sarah Hudspeth has just given, reasons which go back, by the way, to Nikolai Gogol, which he was mentioned before in connection with his punishment.
- [39:49]
Melvin Bragg
Where is the comedy?
- [39:51]
Oliver Reddy
I mean, where is the comedy? The comedy lies. It's everywhere. And it's not there as a. It's not there as an add on, it's not there as something to fill in between the tragic scenes. It's actually there. It's the comedy of somebody who wants to commit a crime but doesn't believe he can. And for a Long time. Can't and can't persuade himself that he'll ever be able to. When he eventually does, it's thanks to a sort of chain of coincidence and then the comedy of somebody who wants to be punished. He does want to be punished, clearly. Raskolnikov, he wants the letter of the law to come down on him.
- [40:19]
Melvin Bragg
But you have to use the word comedy for this.
- [40:21]
Oliver Reddy
Don't you think that's.
- [40:23]
Melvin Bragg
I don't know. I mean, I'm asking you, you're the expert.
- [40:26]
Oliver Reddy
No, I do think it's comic. And that's why the first scene where Raskolnikov goes in to see the investigation, of course, is eventually going to be the reason that he gets punished. The first words that the investigator uses is a line from Nikolai Golgol. And Raskolnikov goes into that scene laughing. So there's something, maybe comedy. Not in the sense of.
- [40:43]
Melvin Bragg
That could be hysteria.
- [40:44]
Oliver Reddy
It is partly hysteria, but it's laughter. It's laughter. The element of laughter, let's put it that way, which covers so many different spheres of comedy, but there is also.
- [40:52]
Sarah Young
A very comic element. For example, in the funeral meal scene after Marmoladov dies Sonia's father. And we have this dreadful scene in which all this drunken poor people in the household gather together for this funeral meal and everything descends into sort of abuse and hysteria. And people are shouting at each other. The landlady gets. Gets punched in the face. Dostoevsky was an absolute master of the comedy of embarrassment. And these. These are scenes which are sort of horrific to read in some ways, but they are very, very funny.
- [41:36]
Melvin Bragg
That puts me in my place. I. Sure. I'm reading it at the time with that. With that in mind. Being punished. Yeah. A wedding. Break up a wedding. Okay, fine.
- [41:45]
Oliver Reddy
I think that this is a part of the same question of how Dostoevsky has been received in our culture, but also in Russian culture, as. As indeed, the portraits of him are tests from his lifetime, such as a portrait you can see on the BBC website for this program are of a very gloomy, dark man. And I think a lot of the things we've said show that Dostoevsky is far from. Far from being that. And in fact, people find great sustenance in his writing as well as comedy. And we.
- [42:09]
Melvin Bragg
Near the end. Sorry, we're near the end now, Sarah. It was published about the same time, almost recited the same time as Tolstoy's War and Peace. Did they. Do you think the two raced together?
- [42:21]
Sarah Hudspeth
Certainly. They were literary rivals. Rivals who held a great amount of respect for each other, but also disagreed on a number of things, but who never met in person in order to talk through those disagreements. Their disagreements were played out through their own writings, their own commentaries on their writings, their letters to mutual acquaintances and editors, and reviews of each other's works in sort of literary magazines. So they were competitors, but at the same time recognized in each other same similar kind of values. And in fact, when Dostoevsky passed away and Tolstoy learned of it, he acknowledged that in actual fact he hadn't realized quite how much Dostoevsky meant to him and was and was deeply affected by it.
- [43:17]
Melvin Bragg
Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Sarah Hudspeth, Sarah Young, Oliver. Ready. Next week we turn to the Crusader states at the height in the 12th century and the queen of Jerusalem medicine. Thank you very much for listening.
- [43:30]
Sarah Young
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [43:37]
Sarah Hudspeth
Yeah, I'd like to talk about Lujin, who is the character that Raskolnikov's sister Dounia is projected to marry. And I think he plays quite an important role in the novel because he provides us with a template of a down and out bad character. He's an absolute villain. So we have Svidrugailov, who is this very kind of ambiguous and mysterious character, but Louisian, it's impossible to like him. There is nothing, nothing at all to like about him. And I think this is really important because it adds to that idea of the nuances, the poised nature of this debate about good and evil that Oliver referred to, because I think that the natural human temptation is to want to see bad guys as all out bad guys, as something different from us. But when we see Luzhin contrasted with Sidi Gailov and with Raskolikov, who we have to admit is, you know, is, is a, is a bloody, violent murderer, we realize that it just isn't as simple as that. We can't just say that evil is something that is over there and that is, is different and separate from us. It is something much, much more complicated. And one reason why I find Sidi Gailov a much more terrifying character is because he has those ambiguities and the aspects about him that are appealing and are attractive.
- [45:04]
Oliver Reddy
And curiously, I found just on that point about Svidri Galilev, I found, going back to my reactions as I was translating it, I found Svidri Gailov also a terrifying character in the sense that his language is somehow neutral. It's Somehow emotionless. When he speaks, it's speech, and it's very fluent speech, and yet there's sort of no human content that one can derive from it very clearly. He is indeed, in a way, but he dominates the second half of the novel, and people often forget this. He appears in what seems to Raskolnikov a dream at the end of part three, but from part four onwards he's right there. And curiously, in Russia at the moment, where, for example, in the theater there's a play that's been going on in Moscow for the last couple of years by a brilliant director from Lithuania who's done eight different versions, or something like that of Crime and Punishment. And this last one takes Svidrigailov as the main character, which tells us that crime punishment is not just about Raskolnikov. Similarly, Borisakunin, the detective novelist, did a novel where Porfiri is the main character. It's not true that we're always in Raskolnikov's mind. For example, there's a great scope of other human experience that's covered in this novel.
- [46:18]
Sarah Young
And certainly since Fedrugailov, it really takes over from Raskolnikov. Indeed, in the final part of the novel, we spend several chapters following Sidrigailov around before he commits suicide. So we really do sort of. This is really the only time in the novel where the focus is taken completely away from Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov is generally present, even if there are other characters around him. And I think this question of how Sidri, Galov and Luzhin in particular, and how we compare them to Raskolnikov in this question of good and evil, it is, I think, absolutely central to how we look at the novel.
- [46:54]
Oliver Reddy
Can we just go back briefly to another character, Sonja, who you were talking about, almost wanted to come in before, but when you were talking about how, in a way, she seems not fully palpable character in some way, at least one. We can't imagine her doing the deeds that her profession demands that she does. I have to say I didn't. I don't necessarily feel that as a reader in the. Dostoevsky sort of in a way goes out of his way. Yes. Not to show the actual profession, but he does show her in the clothes that she wears when she goes out on the street. We get the account of her father talking about the hygiene checks that prostitutes have to go through at the time. It seems in a way that for somebody like Sonia, for whom she would see this job as her cross to bear, her suffering to bear. Justified by the fact that she's helping her family. And clearly Sonia is a problematic character, as we've all said, and readers do come to the novel and feel that there's something that is. If Dostoevsky is using her as a cipher. But then we also forget that in the same novel there's another woman character we haven't mentioned yet, Madame Eladov's wife, who's there as a very defiant character, who, when Madame Elad of the alcoholic dies and a priest comes and says, you know, we should. We should forgive, we should accept at the hour of death, says, you know, why should I forgive? Why should I accept? God has given me this awful life of looking after all these children. My husband's now a colleague not looking after us. So if the criticism about the novel is one of how women are represented, I think there are arguments definitely on both sides. What do you think?
- [48:19]
Sarah Young
I would agree on? Katerina Ivanovna, Mameladov's wife, is a sort of. A really sort of interesting example of somebody who does rebel in a very different way to other rebellions we see in the novel. And Dostoevsky in general, and I'm necessarily have a problem with the depiction of women as a whole. I do find Sonia difficult. I mean, in a way, I think Sfidrigailov also has this sort of element of being sort of disembodied and embodied at the same time. The fact that he, as one of you said, he comes out of a dream.
- [48:54]
Oliver Reddy
Perhaps this is part of the genre of fantastic realism.
- [48:58]
Sarah Young
This is not a sort of standard realist novel. So we can accept these sorts of ideas that the dream world, this world of projection and psychology is as important as the. As the concrete.
- [49:08]
Melvin Bragg
Can I just turn for a while. Which we didn't talk about. Well, we scarcely touched on in the. In the discussion, but I think our listeners will be interested just to say some things about Dostoevsky himself. I mean, when he came back from Siberia, quickly got into enormous debt. Partly he took on his brother's debt, he took on dead brother's death, he was oppressed by that. He lost children. He had this epilepsy every three weeks. Goodness knows what that. What sort of state was he when he was writing this? Can we like to talk about him a little?
- [49:39]
Sarah Hudspeth
He was under. If I. If I may, he was under immense pressure because one of the things he'd done in his. In his desperation as a struggling writer was to enter into a really punitive publishing contract. With an unscrupulous editor called Stalovsky, who had demanded his next work from him in an unrealizable timescale, which, if he wasn't able to meet that deadline, then Dostoevsky would be signing over his royalty rights in perpetuity thereafter to this Stalovsky. So he was writing under tremendous pressure, but in actual fact, he managed to get himself out of that.
- [50:17]
Melvin Bragg
You're talking about the gambler he's writing.
- [50:18]
Sarah Hudspeth
Yes, that's right. So this is how he ended up meeting his second wife. He hired a young stenographer to whom he wanted to be able to dictate his works in order to produce them more quickly. What he did was to dictate the shorter novel the Gambler, in order to meet this publishing deadline and then give him more space to actually work on Crime and Punishment.
- [50:39]
Sarah Young
But this sense of pressure he was under, which was very, very, very genuine, and I think was also sort of compounded by the fact of living in Petersburg in this very tense, crowded atmosphere, overcrowding that we've talked about earlier. He also, I think, took on the pressure voluntarily. In fact, he sought it out partly through the gambling, which at some point he was described as a problem gambler, but at some point in the 1870s, he just gave up gambling altogether, without apparent problem. So whether he was actually a problem gambler is a question. And then he took on all these debts, which he didn't necessarily need to do. You might say that he's felt responsible for his family, but at the same time, it wasn't an absolute obligation. I do see a sense.
- [51:28]
Sarah Hudspeth
Thank you, stepson.
- [51:29]
Sarah Young
And looking after his. Continuing to look after this reprobate stepson who he had no real responsibility for. And I think there was a sense of him taking on those pressures and actually, in a way, thriving under those pressures.
- [51:42]
Oliver Reddy
At the same time. I'm sure none of us would want to contribute to the myth that surrounds Dostoevsky's writing, that he wrote too quickly, that he rushed, because clearly what we see with Crime and Punishment certainly is, and we have it in the notebooks people have studied all of this, that if he wrote a draft which he wasn't happy with, he would promptly start again, and he did so several times. That's why he ended up building up this incredible pressure, partly because he was so late finishing Crime and Punishment, that the window he had to write the Gambler became shorter and shorter. As a translator again of the novel, I felt that the criticisms of Dostoevsky and stylistic grounds are greatly exaggerated, indeed false. Simply false that he simply works with different aesthetic means in this novel. But the artistry of it is extraordinary, as good as anything.
- [52:30]
Melvin Bragg
Why do you think so? Do I think Nabokov took so strongly against him? And has he had great supporters as well? He must have had. He has had great support and support. Of course he's had great supporters. But why did those two take against him so much?
- [52:41]
Oliver Reddy
Nabokov shares many themes with Dostoevsky in the Russian saying only neighbors argue and.
- [52:47]
Sarah Young
The anxiety of influence.
- [52:49]
Oliver Reddy
But there's also just a general approach to cliche in a way, because Dostoevsky is always writing about crises in people's lives. The fact is, crises in people's lives tend to be quite similar to each other at certain points, and one is inevitably dealing with, you know, it's not like lepidoptery, it's not like butterflies. Nabokov or every butterfly is different or whatever. They are interested in different. They're both wonderful writers. They're both interested in different aspects of existence. But from Nabokov's point of view, his writing is all about the war against cliche, as Martin Amos puts it, right, that at the end of every sentence, in a way, the reader should step back and think, this is something entirely fresh and new has happened in this sentence. Dostoevsky is using language to certain extent to move us, to change us, to affect us emotionally much more so. These are writers who are simply doing different things, but their themes were quite similar. So Nabokov was interested in the double, he's interested in murder, crime.
- [53:41]
Melvin Bragg
And here comes the producer, Simon.
- [53:44]
Sarah Young
Anyone want tea or coffee?
- [53:46]
Melvin Bragg
I'd like a cup of tea, please.
- [53:48]
Oliver Reddy
Likewise. Thank you.
- [53:49]
Sarah Young
Four teas. Great. Thank you very much.
- [53:50]
Sarah Hudspeth
In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is.
- [53:52]
Sarah Young
Produced by Simon Tillotson.
- [53:54]
Caitlyn Jenner
Hi, everybody, I'm Caitlyn Jenner and I am a guest on Simon Mundy's Don't Tell Me the Score podcast. We talked about everything, the Olympics, trans issues, and all the lessons that I have learned along the way. I really enjoyed recording the podcast and I hope you enjoy listening to it. You can hear it on BBC Sounds. Just search for Don't Tell Me the Score.
- [54:20]
Oliver Reddy
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
- [54:23]
AM PM Advertiser
Hmm. It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [54:26]
Sarah Hudspeth
Could you be more specific when it's cravenient? Okay.
- [54:29]
AM PM Advertiser
Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
- [54:37]
Sarah Hudspeth
I'm seeing a pattern here.
- [54:38]
AM PM Advertiser
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [54:39]
Sarah Young
Crave, which is anything from AM pm.
- [54:42]
AM PM Advertiser
What more could you want? Stop by AM PM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience. Am, pm too much good stuff.