Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

311 Pages·2008·1.38 MB·English

by  Harold Bloom

Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
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Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Bloom’sModern Critical Interpretations: Crime and Punishment
©2004 by Infobase Publishing
Introduction © 2004 by Harold Bloom
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crime and Punishment / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7910-7579-6
1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881. Prestuplenie inakazanie.
I. Bloom, Harold. II. Series.
PG3325.P73C75 2003
891.73'3dc21 2003006758
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Contributing Editor: Pamela Loos
Cover design by Terry Mallon
Cover: © The State Russian Musuem / CORBIS
Printed in the United States of America
IBT EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
Editor’s Note vii
Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
The Intellectual Problem II 5
A.D. Nuttall
Characteristics of Genre and
Plot Composition in Dostoevsky’s Works 33
Mikhail Bakhtin
Crime and Punishment: Psychology on Trial 87
Harriet Murav
In Defense of the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment 105
David Matual
The Resurrection from Inertia in Crime and Punishment 115
Liza Knapp
Mediating the Distance: Prophecy and Alterity in
Greek Tragedy and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment 145
Naomi Rood
How Dostoevsky Inscribes “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in a
Killer’s Heart. The Decalogue Taboo Internalized: The Itof “It” 169
Olga Meerson
The Art of Crime and Punishment 193
Victor Terras
vi CONTENTS
The Religious Symbolism of Clothing in 215
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
Janet Tucker
Beyond the will: Humiliation as
Christian necessity in ‘Crime and Punishment’ 231
Henry M.W. Russell
Towards an iconography of ‘Crime and Punishment’ 243
Antony Johae
The Other Lazarus in Crime and Punishment 257
Linda Ivanits
Chronology 279
Contributors 283
Bibliography 285
Acknowledgments 289
Index 291
Editor’s Note
My introduction centers upon Raskolnikov’s quest for metaphysical freedom
and power, a quest he does not so much repudiate as simply abandon.
Raskolnikov’s failure to repent, together with the extraordinary
consciousness of Svidrigailov, is rightly seen by A.D. Nuttall as calling the
Christian design of the novel into question.
Carnivalization, the great subject of the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin,
is seen by him as creating Dostoevsky’s characteristic genre.
Harriet Murav follows Bakhtin but adds the idea that Crime and
Punishmentis a critique of any psychology of motives.
The novel’s Epilogue, which seems a weakness to many critics (myself
included), is defended by David Matual as an inevitable component in
Raskolnikov’s supposed transformation.
Liza Knapp, analyzing Dostoevsky’s implicit metaphysics, finds an
identity between inertia and death in the novelist’s vision.
In Naomi Rood’s reading, Crime and Punishment is akin to prophetic
element in the tragedies of Sophocles.
Olga Meerson explicates the nature of taboo in relation to Raskolnikov,
while Victor Terras sets forth Dostoevsky’s mastery of montage.
The spiritual emblem of clothing in the novel is mapped out by Janet
Tucker, after which Henry M.W. Russell studies the Christian need for
humiliation, in Dostoevsky’s view.
Antony Johae uncovers the iconography of dreams in Crime and
Punishment, while Linda Ivanits concludes this volume by discussing its use
of the two Lazaruses in the New Testament, the one resurrected by Jesus and
the other who is scorned by the rich glutton but who goes to Abraham’s
bosom in the afterlife.
vii

HAROLD BLOOM
Introduction
Rereading Crime and Punishment, I am haunted suddenly by a recollection of
my worst experience as a teacher. Back in 1955, an outcast instructor in the
then New Critical, Neo-Christian Yale English department dominated by
acolytes of the churchwardenly T.S. Eliot, I was compelled to teach Crime
and Punishment in a freshman course to a motley collection of Yale legacies
masquerading as students. Wearied of their response to Dostoevsky as so
much more Eliotic Original Sin, I endeavored to cheer myself up (if not
them) by reading aloud in class S.J. Perelman’s sublime parody “A Farewell
to Omsk,” fragments of which are always with me, such as the highly
Dostoevskian portrayal of the tobacconist Pyotr Pyotrovitch:
“Good afternoon, Afya Afyakievitch!” replied the shopkeeper
warmly. He was the son of a former notary public attached to the
household of Prince Grashkin and gave himself no few airs in
consequence. Whilst speaking it was his habit to extract a greasy
barometer from his waistcoat and consult it importantly, a trick
he had learned from the Prince’s barber. On seeing Afya
Afyakievitch he skipped about nimbly, dusted off the counter,
gave one of his numerous offspring a box on the ear, drank a cup
of tea, and on the whole behaved like a man of the world who has
affairs of moment occupying him.
Unfortunately, my class did not think this funny and did not even enjoy
the marvelous close of Perelman’s sketch:
1