DATo wrote:I am going to offer a little anecdote that some of you might find interesting. I will be mindful not to include direct spoilers for the sake of those who have not yet read the book but I am sure that those of you who are familiar with the story will know what I am talking about.
I had been reading this book and had finally come to the "moment of decision" and its immediate aftermath. That night I dreamed I had murdered someone for no apparent reason. In the dream I immediately felt the fear of discovery - the paranoia that follows in the footsteps of he who commits a great and heinous crime which is contrary to his true nature. I berated myself for doing something so stupid and yet so profound. It was perhaps the most psychologically realistic dream of my life.
When an author like Dostoyevsky can pen a novel which is so well articulated that the story insinuates itself into one's own subconscious to the extent that the actual feelings of a character are replayed in dreams and experienced with such vicarious realism that the reader wakes in a cold sweat, it is then then that you know that you have been reading the work of a true literary genius.
Very interesting experience. I agree that Dostoyevsky has to be a genius,(maybe a tortured genius,) to so powerfully evoke what must be a human universal: the fear of irredeemable guilt and alienation from the moral community.It's interesting that Raskolnikov suffers even as he anticipates the crime that will set him apart. On the one hand he struggles to justify murder by convincing himself that the ends justify the means and that one who has the courage to place himself above the law for a good that outweighs the evil of such a crime can, indeed, exist outside the moral community. On the other hand, Raskolnikov, cannot proceed with the confidence and resolve of one who is truly above the law.It's most peculiar that we have here a basically decent man with generous tendencies in the clutches of an obsessive idea that seems almost to compel him against his will. A lesser writer, I think, would be hard pressed to make the situation credible.
And then comes, for me, the niftiest part of the narrative, engaging for its awful symmetry: Raskolnikov the wannabe superman after he commits (and bungles terribly ) a horrible murder, becomes the almost pathetic picture of a guilty, terrified little man. In the presence of the wily inspector it's all that R. can do to repress the confession that threatens to leap unbidden to his tongue. It is an impulse as strong as the one that moved him to commit the crime in the first place. At no other point did I so strongly identify with R.
It's tempting to be satisfied with obvious messages: No one no matter however privileged b y some imagined moral overview, "the big picture" that indicates the "greater good, is exempt from the law. Step across the line at peril of becoming a monster banished to the outer darkness. Redemption, if possible, even, can come only at the cost of great suffering, not only one's own but also, perhaps, that of innocent others. Dostoyevsky produces these truisms, of course, but he finds more. How interesting, for example, that the inspector, seeker of truth, the servant of the moral law, is somehow a sinister figure. He does, indeed enjoy, watching Raskolnikov squirm, savors it so much that this reader, at least, cannot help, hopeless as it is, root for the murderer to somehow elude him. At the same time, this reader does very much relish the the excruciating game of cat and mouse and from the safety of his chair becomes both the predator and the prey. Yeah, it takes a genius like Dostoyevsky, artist and master psychologist, to pull off such profound tricks as these.