Crime and Punishment
Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had
not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his
career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things,
there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had
to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you
understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there had
been no other means? Wouldn’t he have felt a pang at its being so far
from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I
worried myself fearfully over that ‘question’ so that I was awfully
ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would
not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck
him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there
was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way,
he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it!
Well, I too... left off thinking about it... murdered her, following
his example. And that’s exactly how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes,
Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that’s just how it
was.”
Sonia did not think it at all funny.
“You had better tell me straight out... without examples,” she begged,
still more timidly and scarcely audibly.
He turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands.
“You are right again, Sonia. Of course that’s all nonsense, it’s almost
all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcely
anything, my sister happened to have a good education and was condemned
to drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was a
student, but I couldn’t keep myself at the university and was forced
for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in ten
or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or
clerk with a salary of a thousand roubles” (he repeated it as though it
were a lesson) “and by that time my mother would be worn out with grief
and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while my
sister... well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it’s a hard
thing to pass everything by all one’s life, to turn one’s back upon
everything, to forget one’s mother and decorously accept the insults
inflicted on one’s sister. Why should one? When one has buried them to
burden oneself with others--wife and children--and to leave them again
without a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman’s
money and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother,
to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leaving
it--and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up
a completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence....
Well... that’s all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did
wrong.... Well, that’s enough.”
He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his head
sink.
“Oh, that’s not it, that’s not it,” Sonia cried in distress. “How could
one... no, that’s not right, not right.”
“You see yourself that it’s not right. But I’ve spoken truly, it’s the
truth.”
“As though that could be the truth! Good God!”
“I’ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful
creature.”
“A human being--a louse!”
“I too know it wasn’t a louse,” he answered, looking strangely at
her. “But I am talking nonsense, Sonia,” he added. “I’ve been talking
nonsense a long time.... That’s not it, you are right there. There were
quite, quite other causes for it! I haven’t talked to anyone for so
long, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now.”
His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an
uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen
through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too
was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow
comprehensible, but yet... “But how, how! Good God!” And she wrung her
hands in despair.
“No, Sonia, that’s not it,” he began again suddenly, raising his head,
as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were
roused him--“that’s not it! Better... imagine--yes, it’s certainly
better--imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive
and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let’s have it all out
at once! They’ve talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just
now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that
perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed
for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food,
no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I
turned sulky and wouldn’t. (Yes, sulkiness, that’s the right word for
it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You’ve been in my den, you’ve seen
it.... And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp
the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn’t
go out of it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days together,
and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing
nothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I
went all day without; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At
night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for
candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies
an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and
thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strange
dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy
that... No, that’s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept
asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid--and I
know they are--yet I won’t be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one
waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.... Afterwards I
understood that that would never come to pass, that men won’t change and
that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it.
Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia,... that’s so!...
And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will
have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their
eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he
who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now
and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!”
Though Raskolnikov looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer cared
whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he
was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too long without
talking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become his
faith and code.
“I divined then, Sonia,” he went on eagerly, “that power is only
vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only
one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first
time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever
thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is
that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to
go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted
_to have the daring_... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the
daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!”
“Oh hush, hush,” cried Sonia, clasping her hands. “You turned away from
God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!”
“Then Sonia, when I used to lie there in the dark and all this became
clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?”
“Hush, don’t laugh, blasphemer! You don’t understand, you don’t
understand! Oh God! He won’t understand!”
“Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil
leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!” he repeated with gloomy insistence. “I
know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all
over to myself, lying there in the dark.... I’ve argued it all over with
myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how
sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it
and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don’t
suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a
wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn’t suppose that
I didn’t know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether
I had the right to gain power--I certainly hadn’t the right--or that if
I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn’t
so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his
goal without asking questions.... If I worried myself all those days,
wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly
of course that I wasn’t Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that
battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder
without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn’t
want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn’t to help my mother I did
the murder--that’s nonsense--I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and
power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it;
I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a
benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in
my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn’t have cared at that
moment.... And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It
was not so much the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it all
now.... Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder
again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led
me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse
like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or
not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling
creature or whether I have the _right_...”
“To kill? Have the right to kill?” Sonia clasped her hands.
“Ach, Sonia!” he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort,
but was contemptuously silent. “Don’t interrupt me, Sonia. I want to
prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me
since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such
a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come to you
now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to
you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman’s I only went to
_try_.... You may be sure of that!”
“And you murdered her!”
“But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to
commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went!
Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself
once for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that killed that old
woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!” he cried in a
sudden spasm of agony, “let me be!”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands as
in a vise.
“What suffering!” A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.
“Well, what am I to do now?” he asked, suddenly raising his head and
looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.
“What are you to do?” she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had been
full of tears suddenly began to shine. “Stand up!” (She seized him by
the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) “Go at once,
this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the
earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say
to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.
Will you go, will you go?” she asked him, trembling all over, snatching