In middle school, I decided that I wanted to read all of the classics. To kick things off, I grabbed a copy of Jane Eyre from my English classrom and read it all the way through… and I absolutely hated it. For years and years, I used the opening sentence as an example of writing that I just could not enjoy: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day”. My takeway from the experience was almost entirely that I just wasn’t built for the classics.
It’s nagged at me ever since that I just wasn’t cultured enough to enjoy these great works of literature. I’m older and ostensibly wiser these days, and decided it may be time to give them another shot. In that pursuit, I kicked off my year by reading Crime and Punishment.
I’ll start by saying that I was not immediately hooked. I wasn’t completely turned off by the book, but for the first 100+ pages I was just trying to get through the prose. The blunt introduction to madness was a little jarring in a good way, but even through the actual crime I wasn’t fully sold on actually enjoying the book. The tension built slowly but surely, and at some point I found myself excited for the next scene.
By the time Ras is sitting in a pothouse, laughing about being a potential murder, I was hooked. My favorite moments were the meetings with Porfiry, where each moment seemed to be full of tension, and the fun philosophical intrigue throughout. I am a fan of Napoleon myself, and I thought it was neat how the concept of being ‘great’ led to Ras’s problems - especially after the decision that regretting the regret was his ‘real’ problem.
My translation made a special note of the diminuitive second person, or at least that’s what I _think I remember the translation note saying_, form that Dotya takes with Svidrigailov near the novel’s climax was a fun tidbit, too. I love the idea of something so simple yet so powerful being lost in translation.
Overall, I’m very happy with my decision to have read Crime and Punishment. It wasn’t at all a stuffy, boring book and I even think I’ll end up giving it another read through one day in the future.