2.1 Whatever can it mean? I’ve never had any business of my own with the police! And why today of all days?
It's Monday again, and we’re getting back into the discussion of the novel. The first chapter after the crime.
Hello! It's Monday again, and we’re getting back into the discussion of the novel. The first chapter after the crime.
List of articles by chapters you can find here
Reading schedule is here.
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1865, July 10th. Raskolnikov wakes up after the murder and can't find peace. He alternates between horror and relaxation, then remembers that he didn't check if there was any blood from the old woman on his clothes. He tries to hide the stolen goods behind the wallpaper in a hole in the wall. He feels satisfied, but then again he is horrified at the thought of being caught. And all the while he has a fever. Why did he get so sick in hot July? Is it his body's reaction to the crime or just a coincidence?
Throughout the entire chapter, we see that Raskolnikov's emotions change every second. From horror, anger, and disgust to joy, laughter, and relief. It's as if he is constantly spinning a wheel and waiting to see which emotion will comes up.
Around 11 a.m., a janitor comes to him with Nastasya and hands him a summons to the police. But it should be understood that he is being summoned only to the police office for his “quarter”, which deals with minor domestic issues.
I use the word quarter here to describe the small administrative unit of the city. Each quarter includes just a few city blocks.
That's why it is located on the 4th floor of an apartment building, practically in just a regular apartment, like you would have maybe a small business office. It’s not a place to which handcuffed criminals are led for interrogation.
The way to the police station
“When he reached the corner of yesterday’s street, he glanced down it in a torment of anxiety, looked at that house—and immediately looked away again.”
The topography given by the author is imperfect. Or rather it doesn’t fully stack up with the real city sometimes. If the moneylender’s house is at the largely agreed-upon location, this house wouldn’t be visible from the spot where Raskolnikov is standing. If we follow his line of sight, a church will be there, blocking the view. But we can assume that Raskolnikov isn’t looking at the house itself, just in its general direction.
The Church of the Ascension of the Lord (Ascension Church) was an Orthodox church in St. Petersburg located on Voznesensky (Ascension) Prospekt (Avenue). It was built by architect Alexander Vist during the Petrine era and reconstructed in 1758-1759 by architect Antonio Rinaldi. In 1936, as part of an anti-religious campaign, the church was demolished.
Here's what this place looks like now. Where the church once stood, there is now a school building.
This place is central to the novel, and I mean it literally, it’s in the very center of that piece of the city map where all the action takes place. And as Dostoevsky lived in this quarter his own day-to-day included this spot with the church as one of the central locations.
Some suggest that when Raskolnikov looks towards the old woman's house, he sees the church AS her house. Thus God is placed as Raskolnikov’s attempted victim. He intends or even attempts to kill God himself. In general, the theme of God's death already appeared in the text before this, in the third chapter in a letter, when Raskolnikov's mother asks if he became fascinated with the fashionable phenomenon of atheism.
And if you take into account the idea that Raskolnikov killed three, and in Orthodoxy, God is triune: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it turns out that Rodion metaphorically killed the complete embodiment of God.
With this novel, we are 15 years away from Nietzsche's statement "God is dead" in 1881, but Dostoevsky is already sowing the seeds of this philosophical idea.
In the police station
Raskolnikov was summoned to the police station for his quarter. Although the old pawnbroker's house was nearby, it was technically in another quarter and belonged to a different precinct. Such police stations mainly dealt with minor administrative matters, such as registering residents. Therefore a lot of times you would see local janitors here bringing their logbooks in and registering residents with the police. This was part of the job of a дворник / dvornik (roughly translated as “janitor”).
These police stations also handled domestic disputes, fights, and minor hooliganism. Anything more serious would be handled by city police stations with cells and armed guards. The type of station where Raskolnikov was summoned was more like an administrative office, with a few clerks sorting through papers.
So, Raskolnikov's house belonged to the police station of the third quarter of the Kazan police department. It was located in a building on the embankment of the Ekaterininsky Canal, house number 67 (see 4 on the map).
The staff of such a station would be small; only three are mentioned in the story.
The chief of police (for this quarter) — captain Nikodim Fomich.
The chief’s assistant — lieutenant Ilya Petrovich, nicknamed "Powder / Gunpowder"
The chief clerk, secretary at the police office — Alexander Grigorievich Zametov.
This is what their uniforms looked like.
The Story of Louise Ivanovna
Louise Ivanovna runs an indecent establishment, a brothel, in this quarter. And she insists that her establishment is a "noble house" with "noble treatment." Because of her profession, she looks overly dressed up and strongly smells of perfume.
Her dialogue is written in quite a complex way, using German words with deliberately incorrect grammar. It's quite difficult to understand her reading the novel in Russian. Perhaps in your translation, her speech was made readable. So, what is Louise's story?
RECOMMENDATION!
I asked
, who analyses different translations and runs a substack on Crime and Punishment, whether he has compared this passage — the speech of Louise, who speaks broken Russian, inserting German words and probably constructing phrases in a German manner. And today he wrote a whole article!I highly recommend reading it, it's extremely interesting. And you will understand why I am starting to like Pasternak Slater's translation less and less. I am already inclined to switch to another translation altogether.
And also, Cams has a whole file that he fills out as he reads. There is a lot of interesting stuff for those who are interested in translations and their comparison.
Here is a summary of what Luisa said and what she did at the police station:
Louise Ivanovna tries to explain to the lieutenant that she is not to blame for the scandal that occurred yesterday and tells her version of the events. According to her, one of the clients of her establishment drank too much, then climbed onto the piano and started playing it with his feet. The woman called for help from the janitor, Karl. The drunk client punched the janitor and a lady named Henrietta, and also slapped Louise herself five times. After that, the client opened the window and started screaming like a pig. Janitor Karl tried to pull the troublemaker away from the window and ended up tearing his tailcoat. The drunk client demanded 15 rubles for the torn tailcoat, but she paid him only 5 rubles. The rowdy visitor turned out to be a writer or journalist by profession and threatened the hostess that he would publish a satirical article about her establishment in all the newspapers.
After hearing Louise Ivanovna's version, Ilya Petrovich, the assistant police chief, warns her that this should be the last scandal in her "noble establishment" and that next time he will send her to prison.
Listening to this story, we read about Raskolnikov's somewhat abnormal reaction — he laughs wildly. This once again indicates that he cannot control his emotions and thoughts.
“But he soon realized what was going on, and began to be amused at the whole scene. He listened with enjoyment, tempted to laugh and laugh and laugh… All his nerves were on edge.”
Rodion at the police
After waiting, Raskolnikov finds out that he was summoned for his overdue rent payments. And it's not surprising, as he has been living without paying for 4 months and is still somehow upset that he is not given lunch. Although Nastasya still brought him soup and tea these days. We learn that Raskolnikov once promised to marry the daughter of Praskovya Pavlovna, his landlady. But a year ago his betrothed passed away. It is unclear how much her death influenced Rodion's behavior and thoughts; we can imagine it was a big blow for him.
At the police station, they speak to him quite politely and even help him draft a response letter to the rent payment complaint. Rodion's mood and emotions fluctuate again from the horror that everyone might know he is a murderer to the desire to confess everything immediately. He does not know what he fears more: that they will find out about his crime or that it will remain a secret forever. What do you think weighs on him more: the planned and purposeful murder of the old woman or the sudden killing of the innocent Lizaveta?
The prototype of the police chief, Nikodim Fomich (we know only his name and patronymic Fomich - the son of Foma, his last name is never mentioned in the novel), was a real inspector of this police department with whom Dostoevsky settled a delicate matter on June 6, 1865, regarding the forthcoming audit of his property, and he resolved it. His name was Lieutenant Ivan Nikolaevich Pikar.
Pikar was generally a well-known policeman. He gained notoriety in St. Petersburg because he uncovered a gang of daring robbers - "touring artists" who had arrived from Danzig and had already committed several audacious robberies in the capital. It is an amazing coincidence that the headquarters of these robbers, where they gathered and stored their loot, was in the very same house where Dostoevsky had been living since 1864 on Malaya Meshchanskaya Street. It is the street between the Raskolnikov’s house and the police office.
For several weeks, the house was turned upside down, surveillance and ambushes were conducted from there. Lieutenant Pikar arranged sudden searches in the apartment of the criminals, on the stairs, and in the attic, discovering more and more evidence. It is exactly here that Dostoevsky could have become acquainted with inspector Ivan Pikar, observed him closely and even participated in the questioning of a witness. Unfortunately, no reliable documents about the interrogations of Dostoevsky have been preserved, but he might’ve played a role in catching the criminals, as he often worked at night and could’ve noticed a lot of the nighttime activities in the street outside.
And so the fainted Raskolnikov at the end of the chapter comes to his senses and again begins to worry that everyone around knows about his crime. He is ill and wanders home, sick with worry.
“A search, a search, they’ll do a search right now!’ he repeated to himself as he hurried home. ‘The villains! They suspect me!’ And his former terror returned, enfolding him from head to foot.”
Here we will leave it until Thursday. Enjoy reading! Share your thoughts, questions, ideas.
Which details of the chapter did you like and which did you not?
I’ve found myself drawn to the idea that Rodion’s true punishment for his crime is his loss of reason…not something that man can do to him, although he certainly fears that. Tolstoy writes, “The conviction that all his faculties, even memory, and the simplest power of reflection were failing him, began to be an insufferable torture. ‘Surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely it isn’t my punishment coming upon me? It is!’”
“Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces... his reason was clouded....”
He sees that he is losing his ability to reason, and that disability could (will?) be the thing that results in his capture since he will be unable to hide the evidence of his guilt.—the blood.
🩸🩸🩸I can’t help but be reminded of our dear Lady Macbeth’s famous cry of, “Out, damned spot!” Like Lady Macbeth, Rodion’s stain of blood is not on his clothing, but his soul. And I fear it will have the same impact as if his pants were, indeed, soaked. 🩸 🩸🩸
I like the idea of the church standing in the way, the giant eye of God staring him down. There's a lot here about being perceived, by society, by God, your own conscience.