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| Translator | Richard, Larissa Pevear & Volokhonsky |
| First Written | 1866 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | Russia |
| Publisher | Everyman's Library |
| ISBN-10 | 0679420290 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0679420293 |
| My Copy | red clothbound hardback. Everyman. |
| First Read | July 06, 2012 |
Crime and Punishment
Raskolnikov's final approach to confessions is stunningly lifelike: the sense of wanting to get it over with, considering turning back, hoping for a last ditch reason to abandon the task, etc. It reminds me viscerally of approaching a high diving board as a kid, or confessing my sing to a real person. And then he's interrupted by some one who just wants to chat! There's so much human drama packed into that scene.
Noted on July 6, 2012
Porfiry Petrovich is always entertaining any time he shows up, but his final confrontation with Raskolnikov is just a masterpiece. The long speech, keeping him right on the edge of knowing whether he's considered a real suspect, is just brilliant. I can imagine this working for any great cop drama, at any time.
Noted on July 6, 2012
Sonya's pity for Raskolnikov when he first confesses to her is just gripping. He's admitting this horrific crime and his vile motives, and she is just overwhelmed with pity for his suffering. It's the kind of reaction I would like to have, but don't.
Noted on July 6, 2012
There's nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is only a hundredth part of a false note in candor, there is immediately a dissonance, and then - scandal. But with flattery, even if everything is false down to the last little note, it is still agreeable and is listened to not without pleasure; crude thought the flattery may be, at least half of it is sure to seem true.
Quoted on July 6, 2012
For a long time, for several years already, he had been having delectable dreams of marriage, but he kept hoarding up money and waited. In deepest secret, he entertained rapturous thoughts of a well-behaved and poor girl (she must be poor), very young, very pretty, well born and educated, very intimidated, who had experienced a great many misfortunes and was utterly cowed before him, a girl who would all her life regard him as her salvation, stand in awe of him, obey him, wonder at him and at him alone.
Quoted on July 6, 2012
We keep imagining eternity as an idea that cannot be grasped, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, imagine suddenly that there wil be one little room there, something like a village bathhouse, covered with soot, with spiders in all the corners, and that's the whole of eternity. I sometimes fancy something of the sort.
Quoted on July 6, 2012
I like it when people lie! Lying is man's only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie- you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that's honorable in its way; well, but we can't even lie with our own minds! Lie to me, but in your own way, and I'll kiss you for it. Lying in one's own way is almost better than telling the truth in someone else's way; in the first case you're a man, and in the second - no better than a bird!
Quoted on July 6, 2012
[everybody always complains about this, no matter the era:]
"It's what your Moscow lecturer answered when he was asked why he forged lottery tickets: 'Everybody else is getting rich one way or another, so I wanted to get rich quickly, too.' I don't remember his exact works,b ut the meaning was for nothing, quickly, without effort. We're used to having everything handed to us, to pulling ourselves up by other men's bootstraps, to having our food chewed for us. Well, and when the great hour struck, everyone showed what he was made of . . . "
Quoted on July 6, 2012