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p “But that is the beginning of a new
story, the story of the gradual renewal
of a man. ..”

p From the very first line of Crime and Punishment the reader feels that something terrible, something irreparable is going to happen. This “something” is on Raskolnikov’s mind all the time, day and night.

p Nastasya asks Raskolnikov why he has stopped giving lessons.

p “Teaching children is very badly paid. What can you do with a few copecks?" he says reluctantly, as if in answer to his own thoughts.

p “I suppose you want a fortune straight off?”

p He looks at her strangely and pauses for a moment.

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p “Yes, I do,” he answers firmly.

p And here are the last lines of the novel:

p “He did not even know that the new life would not be his for nothing, that it must be dearly bought, and paid for with great and heroic struggles yet to come...

p “But that is the beginning of a new story, the story of the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration, of his gradual transition from one world to another, of how he learned to know a hitherto undreamed-of reality. All that might be the subject of a new tale, but our present one is ended.”

p And perhaps this “gradualness” is the answer to those who would like to get "a fortune straight off”, while the last line shows the tact and honesty of the writer who has the courage to admit that he does not yet know how to pass on to the "new life”.

p Many of Dostoyevsky’s heroes are fired by the idea of accomplishing a heroic deed "straight off”, "in one day”, “now”. This idea is actually born of despair.

p Dostoyevsky thus describes Alyosha Karamazov: "He was a young man and, like many of his contemporaries, was honest by nature. He demanded the truth, sought it everywhere and believed in it. And when he thought he had found it he demanded immediate participation in it with all the power of his indomitable spirit. He dreamed of doing something heroic, doing it now, sparing nothing, not even his life. What these young men fail to understand is that sacrificing one’s life is perhaps the easiest sacrifice of all. To many of them, to spend five or six years of 192 their restless youth in studying, in order that they may become stronger and thus better serve truth and the cause which they love and are prepared to carry out, is too great a sacrifice to make. Alyosha chose the path the others feared to take, but with the same burning, impatient desire for heroism.” This "impatient desire for heroism" in the name of mankind is alive in Raskolnikov, too. It was only temporarily overshadowed by his desire to get a "fortune straight off”.

p It is sometimes said that for Dostoyevsky moral self-education and self-perfection are a mystical process, something that takes place outside the social context and is opposed to perfection in the general, social sense. There is some truth in this.

p But it is true only of one aspect of Dostoyevsky’s thinking on the subject. There is another, at times dominant aspect, which consists in a demand for strict moral discipline, with regard to himself above all, and to others, particularly those who call themselves ideologists. Dostoyevsky wrote: "In my view, it is possible to correctly sense and comprehend things all at once. But it is impossible to become a man all at once. That requires time and discipline. And disciplinestrict discipline-is what some of our contemporary thinkers would have none of. Instead, they proclaim laws, formulate rules whose application would presumably make everybody happy without their having to make the slightest effort. But even if this ideal could be realized, when people are undisciplined and immature, no rule, not even the most elementary, could be enforced. And it is only through strict self-discipline and constant endeavour to improve oneself can one 193 become a man, a citizen.”

p By "some of our contemporary thinkers" Dostoyevsky meant first of all, his enemies, the socialists. However, his criticism applied to only some of them.

p It did not, for example, apply to Hertzen who, as a revolutionary and a socialist, opposed thoughtless revolutionarism which could only compromise socialism and the revolution, who knew that "foul means must inevitably leave their imprint on the results”, that "great upheavals cannot be brought about by whipping up base passions”, that "force cannot compensate for immaturity”; who "fostered in himself a revulsion to wanton bloodshed" (this revulsion was part of his dialectics as "the algebra of the revolution”); who called for the repudiation of "abortive attempts at liberation”; and who, like Dostoyevsky, understood the "moral and intellectual immaturity" of people, including many ideologists, and also advocated self-perfection, specifically the self-perfection of the revolutionaries, the socialists (“I have not seen free people anywhere, and therefore I cry out: Stop! Let’s begin by liberating ourselves!”).

p Nor did Dostoyevsky’s criticism apply to Chernyshevsky who, while ridiculing Christian idealization of the people, warned against idealization of the revolution. Chernyshevsky was a sober-minded revolutionary and a passionate socialist thinker, and he pointed to the need to understand and avoid the fatal combination observed by Montaigne: "Frankly, I have often noticed a peculiar combination of high-sounding theories and low morals.”

p In speaking about the “immaturity” of the 194 masses and about the "scurrying thinkers”, Dostoyevsky actually supported rather than rejected the views of Saltykov-Shchedrin. The latter could have told Dostoyevsky about many things of which Dostoyevsky was ignorant, thus making him appear as one of the "scurrying thinkers”. For Shchedrin’s knowledge of life was immense, and this at times drove him to despair. His sarcasm was born of the same cause as Dostoyevsky’s lamentations, and had no more illusions about the possibility of making people happy without effort or self-discipline than Dostoyevsky.

p Dostoyevsky must have known the views and ideas of his contemporaries, and so that his criticism was grossly unfair. Differing with them on some questions he tried to make the differences cover all questions. He was blinded by the same intolerance which he saw in others, and which he exposed so ruthlessly.

p Another thinker to be mentioned here, whose ideas were most likely unknown to Dostoyevsky (who would have rejected them anyway even if he had known them, owing to his intolerance) was Karl Marx, who wrote at twenty-five: "Until now philosophers have had on their desks the key to all riddles, and the foolish uninitiated world has had nothing else to do but open its mouth and catch the roasted partridges of absolute science.”

p The young revolutionary and thinker began with the question of the relationship between theory and the masses: "... theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. . . 195 Theory is only realized in a people so far as it fulfils the needs of the people. . . .Will theoretical needs be directly practical needs? It is not enough that thought should seek to realize itself; reality must also strive towards thought.” Marx wrote this in 1843. At that time Dostoyevsky, who was twenty-two years old, was reading Schiller, translating Balzac and planning his future novel Poor Folk. Six years later he was sentenced to penal servitude. And in 1880 he wrote: "Be humble, proud man!. . . The truth is not in things but in yourself, in your self-improvement.” "Be humble, proud man" was a reactionary exhortation against the revolution. But as a warning to the idlers and smatterers of his time who dreamed of becoming the “saviours” and “teachers” of humanity, whose pride was akin to that of Aleko or Raskolnikov, it was sober and realistic ( Dostoyevsky borrowed the words "proud man" from Pushkin. "Leave us, proud man" are the words with which the Gypsies drove Aleko from their camp.)

p Dostoyevsky laid emphasis on "individual good”, often opposing it to "common good”. His Utopian and reactionary views consist not so much in a defence of "individual good" as in a contraposition of individual good" to "common good" and thus also to social revolutionary practice. On the other hand, his defence of "individual good" was sincere and basically humanistic: "some kind, magnanimous and really intelligent people will tell you that doling out help by a lonely hand is a sad and thankless business, that it is important to destroy the roots of evil by disseminating good. Then there are others who are also good people but too much involved with theory. 196 They will bring you whole volumes of proof, quite genuine, too, that the good one person does is of no help to society, forgetting that it does help in individual cases, that it makes you better and sustains love among people. Well, fools and rascals will at once jump to the conclusion that there is no point in helping anybody, that this is progress, their sole idea being to line their own pockets with money. This is how they think...”   [196•*  The same idea is expressed by Prince Myshkin in The Idiot: "He who repudiates individual charity repudiates the very nature of man and deprives him of human dignity. However, the question of individual freedom and the question of public charity are not mutually exclusive. There will always be individuals doing good because doing good is what any individual needs, because this is how he can influence other individuals.” These words are all the more significant since the speaker is often a prey to misanthropic feelings (his illness is partly responsible for this). Prince Myshkin talks about "individual charity" after he has saved a man who was a total stranger to him. And then he tells the story of an old general who spent much of his life helping convicts and who thus earned their love: "You never know what seed was sown in the minds of those convicts by that old general whom they never forgot afterwards! You never know what role a man can play in the life of a person to whom he has endeared himself. . . By planting a seed, by giving your charity and your good name you also give part of your own personality in exchange for a part of another man’s 197 personality: in this way you enter into a communion with each other. . . On the other hand, all your thoughts, all the seeds you have sown, which you may forget afterwards, will take root in someone else who will then pass them on to the next man. How can you know what part you will play in the future destinies of mankind? But if the knowledge and experience of this work finally enable you to plant a seed of tremendous importance and to leave behind great ideas for the benefit of the world, then. . .”

p This participation in "common good" begins with "individual charity”, according to Dostoyevsky. Expressed in general terms and in an exhortational tone, this idea might seem trite and even repulsive. But in his writings Dostoyevsky was able to express this thought in such a way that it comes to his heroes and his readers alike as a revelation. Among the questions to which Raskolnikov at first had no answer when he was in the prison camp was this one: Why did the convicts like Sonya so much? It turned out that they grew to like her for her human feelings (just as the convicts came to like the old general). And when Raskolnikov had finally rid himself of his "accursed idea”, he was rewarded with "the most unexpected discoveries" and his former enemies ceased to be enemies.

p In the works of Dostoyevsky we find many sermons which he himself did not always follow. At times he was acutely aware of their naivete, their powerlessness to uproot evil and implant good. What is self-improvement but a greenhouse for raising “clean-cut”, “elect” people? But how can they change the “dirty” world without interfering in its affairs, and without themselves 198 getting “mucked”? Dostoyevsky found no answer to this question although he put a spotlight on it.

p His thought that neither the individual nor humanity as a whole can become perfect all at once, can get a "fortune straight off”, is not an empty or naive one. It is rooted in a concrete and active, and, what is most important, sober and stern humanism which was alive in Dostoyevsky not thanks to, but in spite of his sermons. Above all else he advocated man’s self-improvement for the sake of earthly life.

p Raskolnikov’s picture of the plague that brought death and ruin to the world ends with these words: "In the whole world only a few could save themselves, a chosen handful of the pure, who were destined to found a new race of men and a new life, and to renew and cleanse the earth; but nobody had ever seen them anywhere, nobody had heard their voices or their words.” One could, if one wished, read into these words the miracle of the immaculate conception and the birth of a new breed of people. But it would be more correct to interpret them as an admission of the groundlessness and utopianism of such a hope. Dostoyevsky knew only too well that “ cleancut” people came from “unclean” ones. He ardently wished that all people would be included in the "new race”, that there would be neither the “elect” nor the “unprivileged”, that the "new race of men”, all mankind, would be happy here on earth.

p The religious “anti-trichinae” failed to provide an antidote to the evils of the world. Such an antidote is to be sought only in man’s work to " recreate himself”.

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This process of re-creation and of overcoming self-deception is examined in detail in A Raw Youth. There the hero, Arkady Dolgorukov, speaks about his desire to learn to tell the truth and about the great efforts he exerts to achieve this end, and tells how by writing down his past experiences he succeeds in re-creating himself and becoming a different man.

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