The Art of Crime and Punishment

If only he could have grasped all the difficulties of his situation, its whole desperation, its hideousness and absurdity, and understood how many obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he might have to overcome and commit in order to get out of there and get back home, it is quite possible that he would have left it all and turned himself in, and this not even out of fear for himself, but solely out of horror and revulsion for what he had done.
- Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

What is the genius of Crime and Punishment? Undoubtedly, it bends well to produce results to the conventional literary tools of criticism: there is irony, satire, individualization, social theory. All of these make a book great, given, of course, that it is, above all, well-written. But the art of Crime and Punishment goes above and beyond that. It is a feeling one gets when reading the novel, of fear, of obsession, of truth, that has been novelized so explicitly yet sublimely that it is difficult to stop and say about any emotion, "Here, right here is the genius". It is beyond realizing the extent of Dostoevsky's imagination, for how do you call what is real and penetrable the work of imagination? Imagination should be a thing of fancy and lofty idea(l)s, like a house of cards made of clouds; it is fantasy. But Dostoevsky does not imagine - he merely captures the purity of emotion and translates it into the fiction of a young former student, Raskolnikov. That is the sense I get no matter how many times I read Crime and Punishment; how can Raskolnikov be an evil man? His psychology has been traced at every step and turn of thought, and articulated with such precision that he appears normal. He is normal, apart from experiencing an intensity of emotions that are, presumably, the results of suppressed guilt and dividing opposites.

And there is something almost fantastical and surreal about Sonya's love for him. The harlot serves as an instrument for divinity, the pure harlot redeems an anguished convict. There is little more one can say about this strange but perfect relationship without delving into technicalities which automatically ruin the sublimity and pathos that comes out of every meeting between these two. I have asked myself this question many times: why Sonya, what about her? and I suppose (because I cannot be sure, such is the vacillation that this text inspired in me) it is her impossibly beautiful character, her ultimate goodness, her purely instinctive sacrifice, her quiet, shy yet knowing demeanor, pale skin and big eyes, her abject poverty. It is a beautiful mix.