Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best selling autobiographies .txt) đ
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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âAnd there,â said Razumihin, âwerenât you mad then? You gave your last penny to the widow for the funeral. If you wanted to help, give fifteen or twenty even, but keep three roubles for yourself at least, but he flung away all the twenty-five at once!â
âMaybe I found a treasure somewhere and you know nothing of it? So thatâs why I was liberal yesterday.... Mr. Zametov knows Iâve found a treasure! Excuse us, please, for disturbing you for half an hour with such trivialities,â he said, turning to Porfiry Petrovitch, with trembling lips. âWe are boring you, arenât we?â
âOh no, quite the contrary, quite the contrary! If only you knew how you interest me! Itâs interesting to look on and listen... and I am really glad you have come forward at last.â
âBut you might give us some tea! My throatâs dry,â cried Razumihin.
âCapital idea! Perhaps we will all keep you company. Wouldnât you like... something more essential before tea?â
âGet along with you!â
Porfiry Petrovitch went out to order tea.
Raskolnikovâs thoughts were in a whirl. He was in terrible exasperation.
âThe worst of it is they donât disguise it; they donât care to stand on ceremony! And how if you didnât know me at all, did you come to talk to Nikodim Fomitch about me? So they donât care to hide that they are tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my face.â He was shaking with rage. âCome, strike me openly, donât play with me like a cat with a mouse. Itâs hardly civil, Porfiry Petrovitch, but perhaps I wonât allow it! I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly faces, and youâll see how I despise you.â He could hardly breathe. âAnd what if itâs only my fancy? What if I am mistaken, and through inexperience I get angry and donât keep up my nasty part? Perhaps itâs all unintentional. All their phrases are the usual ones, but there is something about them.... It all might be said, but there is something. Why did he say bluntly, âWith herâ? Why did Zametov add that I spoke artfully? Why do they speak in that tone? Yes, the tone.... Razumihin is sitting here, why does he see nothing? That innocent blockhead never does see anything! Feverish again! Did Porfiry wink at me just now? Of course itâs nonsense! What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset my nerves or are they teasing me? Either itâs ill fancy or they know! Even Zametov is rude.... Is Zametov rude? Zametov has changed his mind. I foresaw he would change his mind! He is at home here, while itâs my first visit. Porfiry does not consider him a visitor; sits with his back to him. Theyâre as thick as thieves, no doubt, over me! Not a doubt they were talking about me before we came. Do they know about the flat? If only theyâd make haste! When I said that I ran away to take a flat he let it pass.... I put that in cleverly about a flat, it may be of use afterwards.... Delirious, indeed... ha-ha-ha! He knows all about last night! He didnât know of my motherâs arrival! The hag had written the date on in pencil! You are wrong, you wonât catch me! There are no facts... itâs all supposition! You produce facts! The flat even isnât a fact but delirium. I know what to say to them.... Do they know about the flat? I wonât go without finding out. What did I come for? But my being angry now, maybe is a fact! Fool, how irritable I am! Perhaps thatâs right; to play the invalid.... He is feeling me. He will try to catch me. Why did I come?â
All this flashed like lightning through his mind.
Porfiry Petrovitch returned quickly. He became suddenly more jovial.
âYour party yesterday, brother, has left my head rather.... And I am out of sorts altogether,â he began in quite a different tone, laughing to Razumihin.
âWas it interesting? I left you yesterday at the most interesting point. Who got the best of it?â
âOh, no one, of course. They got on to everlasting questions, floated off into space.â
âOnly fancy, Rodya, what we got on to yesterday. Whether there is such a thing as crime. I told you that we talked our heads off.â
âWhat is there strange? Itâs an everyday social question,â Raskolnikov answered casually.
âThe question wasnât put quite like that,â observed Porfiry.
âNot quite, thatâs true,â Razumihin agreed at once, getting warm and hurried as usual. âListen, Rodion, and tell us your opinion, I want to hear it. I was fighting tooth and nail with them and wanted you to help me. I told them you were coming.... It began with the socialist doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the abnormality of the social organisation and nothing more, and nothing more; no other causes admitted!...â
âYou are wrong there,â cried Porfiry Petrovitch; he was noticeably animated and kept laughing as he looked at Razumihin, which made him more excited than ever.
âNothing is admitted,â Razumihin interrupted with heat.
âI am not wrong. Iâll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them is âthe influence of environment,â and nothing else. Their favourite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organised, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, itâs not supposed to exist! They donât recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! Thatâs why they instinctively dislike history, ânothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,â and they explain it all as stupidity! Thatâs why they so dislike the living process of life; they donât want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul wonât obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of India-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and wonât revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalansteryâit wants life, it hasnât completed its vital process, itâs too soon for the graveyard! You canât skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! Thatâs the easiest solution of the problem! Itâs seductively clear and you musnât think about it. Thatâs the great thing, you mustnât think! The whole secret of life in two pages of print!â
âNow he is off, beating the drum! Catch hold of him, do!â laughed Porfiry. âCan you imagine,â he turned to Raskolnikov, âsix people holding forth like that last night, in one room, with punch as a preliminary! No, brother, you are wrong, environment accounts for a great deal in crime; I can assure you of that.â
âOh, I know it does, but just tell me: a man of forty violates a child of ten; was it environment drove him to it?â
âWell, strictly speaking, it did,â Porfiry observed with noteworthy gravity; âa crime of that nature may be very well ascribed to the influence of environment.â
Razumihin was almost in a frenzy. âOh, if you like,â he roared. âIâll prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed to the Church of Ivan the Greatâs being two hundred and fifty feet high, and I will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even with a Liberal tendency! I undertake to! Will you bet on it?â
âDone! Letâs hear, please, how he will prove it!â
âHe is always humbugging, confound him,â cried Razumihin, jumping up and gesticulating. âWhatâs the use of talking to you? He does all that on purpose; you donât know him, Rodion! He took their side yesterday, simply to make fools of them. And the things he said yesterday! And they were delighted! He can keep it up for a fortnight together. Last year he persuaded us that he was going into a monastery: he stuck to it for two months. Not long ago he took it into his head to declare he was going to get married, that he had everything ready for the wedding. He ordered new clothes indeed. We all began to congratulate him. There was no bride, nothing, all pure fantasy!â
âAh, you are wrong! I got the clothes before. It was the new clothes in fact that made me think of taking you in.â
âAre you such a good dissembler?â Raskolnikov asked carelessly.
âYou wouldnât have supposed it, eh? Wait a bit, I shall take you in, too. Ha-ha-ha! No, Iâll tell you the truth. All these questions about crime, environment, children, recall to my mind an article of yours which interested me at the time. âOn Crimeâ... or something of the sort, I forget the title, I read it with pleasure two months ago in the Periodical Review.â
âMy article? In the Periodical Review?â Raskolnikov asked in astonishment. âI certainly did write an article upon a book six months ago when I left the university, but I sent it to the Weekly Review.â
âBut it came out in the Periodical.â
âAnd the Weekly Review ceased to exist, so thatâs why it wasnât printed at the time.â
âThatâs true; but when it ceased to exist, the Weekly Review was amalgamated with the Periodical, and so your article appeared two months ago in the latter. Didnât you know?â
Raskolnikov had not known.
âWhy, you might get some money out of them for the article! What a strange person you are! You lead such a solitary life that you know nothing of matters that concern you directly. Itâs a fact, I assure you.â
âBravo, Rodya! I knew nothing about it either!â cried Razumihin. âIâll run to-day to the reading-room and ask for the number. Two months ago? What was the date? It doesnât matter though, I will find it. Think of not telling us!â
âHow did you find out that the article was mine? Itâs only signed with an initial.â
âI only learnt it by chance, the other day. Through the editor; I know him.... I was very much interested.â
âI analysed, if I remember, the psychology of a criminal before and after the crime.â
âYes, and you maintained that the perpetration of a crime is always accompanied by illness. Very, very original, but... it was not that part of your article that interested me so much, but an idea at the end of the article which I regret to say you merely suggested without working it out clearly. There is, if you recollect, a suggestion that there are certain persons who can... that is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them.â
Raskolnikov smiled at the exaggerated and intentional distortion of his idea.
âWhat? What do you mean? A right to crime? But not because of the influence of environment?â Razumihin inquired with some alarm even.
âNo, not exactly because of it,â answered Porfiry. âIn his article all men are divided into âordinaryâ and âextraordinary.â Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, donât you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?â
âWhat do
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