Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - VI
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why do ye not groan? ... They sacrifice everything
with their mild and quiet looks.”
Yet far more than the murder of Lisavieta, which had
not been wished for, the fear of being arrested tortured
him, and the system of dissimulation and denial and
lying, in which he involves himself. His reason is not
solid enough to endure it, and, until he confesses, he is
continually on the verge of insanity. In an epilogue
which takes place in Siberia, Dostoyevski then suffers
Raskolnikof’s defiant and yet troubled nature to be at
once dissolved in tenderness and strengthened in spirit
by the faithful, enduring love of Sonya. Raskolnikof
is an “infidel,” but Sonya a believer. Even before
Raskolnikof has recognized his guilt, there is an
affecting scene where Sonya reads aloud to him from the New
Testament, — a scene where a tallow candle in the
battered candlestick in the poor room at once shines upon
a murderer, a fallen woman, and the gospel between
them, — a truly Christian scene, stamped with genius.
In the epilogue, for which Dostoyevski has plainly wished
to make use of his experiences in Siberia, his religious
convictions, direct and doctrinal, make their appearance.
As I have heard a young Russian lady express it, we
very often in reading Dostoyevski have a feeling that the
characters which he has created are more profound than
the author himself. He was not capable of
understanding the scope of his own work.
If we should now study the subordinate characters
only approximately with the same care with which the
character of the chief person has been examined, we
shall find that they, almost without exception, ten in
number as they are, stand on a level with the hero by
the force and truth with which they are drawn, and that
all stand in some relation to him. There is no
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