Three Scenes from Crime and Punishment

Translator’s Note:

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1865) has long been considered the quintessential Russian novel. There are at least six English-language versions of it in print and available in paperback, including a 1992 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Pevear and Volokhonsky have enjoyed a great deal of popular success with their renditions of the great Russian classics; of late, however, scholars have begun to criticize their work. Among the issues raised are the hazards of an excessive literalism, insufficient awareness of humor and irony, and the downplaying of rhetorical eloquence.

Below are three excerpts from a work-in-progress: a new translation of Crime and Punishment that seeks to improve on existing versions, especially the most recent, and to arrive at something like an “equivalent” work in English that will render the immediacy, poignancy, and emotional impact of Dostoevsky’s extraordinary novel for today’s readers.

The first selection is from Part I, Chapter 2, and includes Marmeladov’s “sermon” in the tavern. After “rehearsing” the crime he is about to commit, Raskolnikov drops in at a tavern where he encounters the down-and-out and already inebriated Marmeladov, who relates his life story and then launches into a deceptively amusing but unexpectedly eloquent introduction of the novel’s sublime religious theme.

The next excerpt is from Part I, Chapter 5, and contains an exceptionally memorable account of the first of the hero’s five dreams, an account of the peasant Mikolka beating his poor nag in front of a tavern in the little town where a young Raskolnikov is out walking with his father. This allegorical “pilgrimage” through the harsh, cruel secular world toward the little church and peaceful cemetery resonates deeply with the novel’s epilogue.

The third and final selection is from Part III, Chapter 5, and comprises Raskolnikov’s first interview with the examining magistrate Porfiry Petrovich. It is a vivid depiction of a contest of intellectual equals who spar and parry brilliantly in one of the wittiest, most entertaining, and most deeply disturbing scenes in the book.

—M.R.K.

Marmeladov’s “Sermon”

Marmeladov wanted to fill his glass again, but there was nothing left. The bottle was empty.

“Why should anyone feel sorry for you?” demanded the tavern keeper, who’d turned up next to them once more.

There was a burst of laughter and even some cursing. The listeners laughed and cursed, while those who weren’t listening joined in, enjoying the sight of this retired civil servant.

“Sorry? Why feel sorry for me?” Marmeladov cried suddenly, standing up, his arms outstretched, now genuinely inspired, as if he’d been waiting for precisely those words. “Why feel sorry, you ask? No, there’s no reason to feel sorry for me! I should be crucified, nailed to a cross, not pitied. But crucify me, oh judge, crucify me, and then, having done so, feel sorry for me! I myself will come and ask to be crucified, since it’s not enjoyment I seek, but sorrow and tears! Do you think, oh, shopkeeper, that your bottle’s afforded me any pleasure? Sorrow, sorrow’s what I sought in its depths, sorrow and tears, and I found them and tasted them; but He who has pitied all men and who has understood everyone and everything, He will take pity on us; He and no one else; He is the judge. He will come on that day and He will ask: ‘Where is the daughter who sacrificed herself for her wicked and consumptive stepmother and for a stranger’s little children? Where is the daughter who pitied her earthly father, an obscene drunkard, and was not disgusted by his beastliness?’ And He will say: ‘Come forth! I have already forgiven thee . . . I have forgiven thee once . . . Thy sins which are many are forgiven, because thou hast loved much . . . ’ And He will forgive my Sonya, He will; I know that He will forgive her . . . Just a little while ago when I was with her, I felt this in my heart! And He will...