Crime and Punishment

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Raskolnikow and Marmeladow . Illustration by Mikhail Petrovich Klodt , 1874.

Guilt and Atonement ( Russian Преступление и наказание Prestuplenije i nakasanije ), in older translations also Raskolnikow , in more recent Crimes and Punishment , is the first great novel by Fyodor Dostojewski published in 1866 . While Dostoyevsky was constantly writing further chapters, the novel was published as a feature novel in 12 installments in the monthly Russki Westnik , beginning at the end of January 1866 and ending in December 1866.

title

The Russian original title of the novel, Prestuplenije i nakasanie ( Преступление и наказание ), cannot be exactly translated into German. The most common translation title, guilt and atonement , with its strong moral orientation, does not, however, match the Russian terms, which come more from legal linguistic usage. The translation is more precise than crime and punishment , which in turn does not fully capture the ethical content of the Russian terms. After Alexander Eliasberg in 1921, this title was used by Swetlana Geier, among others, in her widely acclaimed new translation from 1994, Geier mentions the words transgression and rebuke as possible alternatives . In other languages ​​such as English, French, Spanish and Polish, however, the title crime and punishment has always been preferred ( Crime and punishment , Crime et châtiment , Crimen y castigo or Zbrodnia i kara ). In Romanian, the title murder and punishment (Crimă şi pedeapsă) was used. The novel was partly published in German under the name of its main character, Rodion Raskolnikow .

action

Main storyline

The setting of the novel is Saint Petersburg around 1860. The protagonist is the bitterly poor, but above-average talented former law student Rodion Romanowitsch Raskolnikow. The mixture of poverty and arrogance of superiority increasingly separates him from society. Under the impression of a conversation in a pub overheard by him, he developed the idea of ​​a "permitted murder", which seems to underpin his theory "of the 'extraordinary' people who enjoy natural privileges in the sense of general human progress". He sees himself as a privileged person who knows how to maintain calm and an overview even in the situation of a “permitted crime”.

The oppressive, cramped external circumstances stand in the way of this self-claim. Raskolnikov's clothes are ragged and he lives in a room that is cramped like a coffin. The precarious financial situation forces him to turn to that old usurious pawnbroker Aljona Ivanovna to whom his murder plan has long been in effect. For him she is just a stingy and heartless old woman who lives solely to collect ever greater wealth in order to use it for the salvation of her soul - the fortune should go to the church after her death. For Raskolnikow she is the epitome of a "louse", a worthless person whose life the really great people are allowed to ignore.

Arrested in this worldview, the idea of ​​murdering the pawnbroker solidified in Raskolnikow more and more, until he finally, prompted by a letter from his mother about the unjust fate of his sister, came to the compulsive decision to take action. Later he conceals his inner resistance, which accompanies him during the entire execution, with ideological motives. He reports to Sofja Semjonovna Marmeladowa, known as Sonja, a young girl who prostitutes herself because of her family's financial needs : "Back then, I wanted to find out, as quickly as possible, whether I am a louse, like everyone else, or a person." For him, “a man” means: a great man, a Napoleon , whom he cites as an example of such “permitted” ruthlessness.

He visits the old woman under a pretext and kills her with an ax. Her sister Lisaweta, who happened to appear, a mentally retarded person who symbolizes innocence, splits the skull with the ax. Only with great luck can he escape undetected. His nervous tension does not allow him to get hold of the old man's money. As he has to discover, he is not up to his own demands. So after the deed he falls into a feverish twilight state for several days, he is not the person without a conscience that he believed he was. In addition, the murder has changed him: Although Raskolnikov has remained undetected with his crime, as a double murderer, he now feels the social separation all the more painful.

After the murder, he can no longer find peace, even rejecting his own mother. So it does not take long before the investigating judge Porfirij recognizes him as the culprit, although he is unable to prove Raskolnikov's culprit. Both the perpetrator and the investigator are aware of this, even if it is not openly stated. Instead, the intellectual battle between the adversaries escalates into a subtle psychological game, which Raskolnikov, although he could be reassured according to the external status of the investigations, drives more and more into a corner. The believing Sofja Semyonovna, whom he met and later came to love, advised him to finally turn himself in to “pay” for his sins. Raskolnikov, who has already considered going to the police several times and rejected it again, actually surrenders.

In the epilogue , Raskolnikov's eight-year imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp is designed as an almost physiological, protracted liberation from the past in Petersburg based on the intensive experience of the time. At the end of the novel, he discovers his love for Sofja (who has traveled with him), which is associated with resurrection metaphors in the story. However, the novel does not give a clear answer to the much-discussed question of whether Raskolnikow will ultimately find his way to the Christian faith. The last paragraph suggests a possible continuation of the story, which Dostoevsky never wrote.

Subplots

More closely than in other Dostoyevsky novels, main and subplots are related to one another in terms of personnel and themes. For example, the author has incorporated various parallel or contrasting acts related to Avdotja and Sonja, which complement the guilt and atonement theme:

Sofja (Sonja) feeds her family through prostitution because her father Semjon Sacharowitsch Marmeladow does not carry out his duties as an alcoholic, loses his jobs several times, relocates all valuables and even his uniform, his second wife Katerina and their children Polja, Kolja and Lida repeatedly disappointed by his promises not kept, finally being run over by a carriage while drunk and dying of his injuries. Raskolnikov sees here a paradigmatic and desolate situation for the poor people.

While Sonja's love gives Raskolnikov new courage to live, his sister Avdotja (Dunja) cannot play this redeeming role with the landowner Arkadij Ivanovich Swidrigailow. While she was employed as governess, she was courted by the landlord who fell in love with her and who had hoped for rescue from his sinful life, especially his pedophile and parthenophile inclinations. In his nightmares the 14-year-old girl whom he abused appears to him, who drowned herself after the crime because of the shame she suffered (6th part, 6th chapter). As atonement, he tries to compensate for his inclination with financial benefits. For example, after the rumor has it that his wife Marfa has been poisoned, he becomes engaged to a 15-year-old who fascinates him with her Madonna face after he has received the richly paid blessing from his parents (6/4). He also supports Sonja after Marmeladow's death and his wife Katerina, who was driven mad by her misfortune, and pays for the children to be placed in an orphanage. He wants to achieve Awdotja's affection by telling her the truth about Rodion's crimes, which he learned from an overheard conversation between Rodion and Sonja, and by offering to help him escape abroad if she becomes his wife. She rejects his application (6/5) because she loves Rodion's friend Dmitri Razumichin, and he shoots himself in his hopelessness (6/6). Before making his confession, Raskolnikov seeks a similar way out when he crosses a Neva bridge, but cannot decide to commit suicide and follows Sofja's advice (6/7).

Sofja and Dunja are not only connected through Rodion, but through a second person: the lawyer Pyotr Petrovich Lushin becomes engaged through Marfa Swidrigailowa's mediation - she wants to find a rival in a marriage - to Dunja, who is dependent on him as a poor girl and whose gratitude he expects as the basis of his marriage. When she separates from him, also on the advice of her brother-in-law, who see through her future brother-in-law, he wants to prove her brother's moral depravity, since he helps Sofja's uprooted family despite his own financial problems and her socially ostracized daughter because of her sacrifice for her Relatives adored. Lushin lures Sofja into a trap and accuses her of theft. However, his plot fails because of the testimony of the witness Andrei Lebesjätnikow (5/3). Raskolnikov, who was present at this unmasking, sees his criticism of an immoral, unjust society confirmed, from which he wants his act to be distinguished and which is therefore not entitled to judge him. Such experiences are a major reason why the protagonist long refuses to face justice.

interpretation

Raskolnikov's ideology

Raskolnikow is initially a “quasi-ideological” figure because he puts his ideas and conceptions of being and the world above reality itself. Convinced of his own genius, he published an article in a literary magazine in which he granted extraordinary people rights over ordinary people. His thesis culminates in the assertion that extraordinary people have the right and the moral obligation to use ordinary people for their higher purposes.

Raskolnikov rejects the world because it seems imperfect to him. Only through his own ideal failure due to his conflict of conscience is he finally able, with the help of Sofja, to take a more unbiased look at reality and to discover it for what it is according to Dostoyevsky: more complex, more humane - apart from Raskolnikov - and thus richer than his ideals.

Autobiographical reminiscences

In the 1840s, Dostoevsky was initially close to atheist, social revolutionary ideas and circles. Arrested for this and sentenced to death, he was taken to a Siberian prison camp and then had to do military service. In this prison camp Dostoevsky came into possession of a New Testament , which he now carefully studied. After his imprisonment, the change from atheistically doubting revolutionary to Christian took place . Raskolnikov's change is the image of this change of Dostoyevsky.

The characters Marmeladow and his wife Katerina Ivanovna have the features of Dostoyevsky's first wife Marija Dmitrijewna Dostojewskaja and her first husband Alexander Ivanovich Isayev.

Meaning of the names

As in other Dostoevsky's novels, the roots of the names used in the novel often have a speaking meaning :

  • Raskol nikow from расколоть = to split up, to crack ( see the Raskolniki , here to translate specifically " schismatics ", called Russian Old Believers)
  • Semjon Sachar Ovich jam ow of jam and сахар = sugar
  • Lusch in from луженый = tinned
  • Rasum ichin from разум = mind
  • Lebes jatnikow from лебезить = to curl
  • Capernaum ow: tailor with whom Sofja Semjonovna lives; refers to the strength of faith of the Captain of Capernaum

History of origin

Dostoyevsky began work on Guilt and Atonement in the late summer of 1865 while abroad, when he found himself in a precarious financial situation due to his gambling addiction . Before this trip abroad, he had signed a contract with his publisher, which guaranteed him the exclusive rights to a three-volume edition in return for an advance payment of 3,000 rubles and which also obliged Dostoyevsky to submit a new novel by November 1, 1866. If Dostoyevsky had not met this deadline, his publisher would have been entitled to publish all works for the next nine years without paying a fee. Since the completion of Guilt and Atonement did not succeed during this time, Dostoevsky interrupted the work on the novel in the meantime to insert the shorter novel The Gambler, which he completed within 26 days. After this interruption, he turned back to guilt and atonement , which he completed in late 1866.

The first sketches on guilt and atonement date from September 1865 and differ significantly in some points from the final version. So Dostoyevsky initially used Raskolnikov as a first-person narrator , only later did he switch to a narrative perspective in the third person. The entire group of figures around Sofja and Marmeladov's family has not yet appeared, nor are the characters Svidrigajlow and Porfiry and thus the “psychological duel” between Raskolnikov and the examining magistrate. The murderer poses in the original form of the manuscript simply because he cannot withstand the psychological pressure; There is no evidence against him. Raskolnikov's motives for the murder also changed in the course of the work on the manuscript: in the initial version he is only concerned with stealing money to support his family, while the connection with political ideas only emerges in the further course of Dostoyevsky's work. The resulting inconsistencies in the explanation of Raskolnikov's motives can still be found in the published final version.

Musical arrangements and dramatizations

Leo Birinski wrote the tragedy Raskolnikoff based on Dostoyevsky's novel around 1910. It was printed around 1912 by the Drei Masken-Verlag in Munich . The premiere took place on April 9, 1913 in the Princely Court Theater in Gera . Other German-language performances: Residenz Theater Berlin (October 18, 1917), Wiener Kammerspiele (December 7, 1917). Translations: Croatian (1916, Osijek ), Slovenian (1922, Maribor ), Czech (2007, Praha ).

Emil von Reznicek settled in 1925 and 1930 two of the novel composition for Raskolnikov - overtures encouraging.

In 1926 the opera Delitto e castigo , composed by Arrigo Pedrollo and texted by G. Forzano, was premiered.

Giovacchino Forzano wrote a musical drama based on Dostoyevsky's novel, which was translated into German by Walter Dahms in 1929 . The music comes from Arrigo Pedrollo .

An opera Raskolnikoff was written in 1948 by Peter Sutermeister . The music comes from his brother, Heinrich Sutermeister .

Between 1955 and 1956 Giselher Klebe set Dostojewski's description of Raskolnikov's first dream to music for soprano, solo clarinet and orchestra. The composition was premiered in 1956 with the title Raskolnikows Traum at the summer courses for new music in Darmstadt .

In 1962, Bayerischer Rundfunk, in coproduction with Hessischer Rundfunk and Südwestfunk, produced and broadcast the radio play adaptation by Leopold Ahlsen with Oskar Werner as Raskolnikov , directed by Hermann Wenninger .

In 1971, Bernard-Marie Koltès created a piece based on the motifs of the protagonist of the novel, Procès ivre , which premiered in the same year in Strasbourg at the Théatre du Quai under Koltès.

Frank Castorf dramatized the novel in 2005 at the Volksbühne Berlin .

For the Salzburg Festival 2008 Andrea Breth staged a four-hour theatrical version at the Salzburg State Theater under the title “Crime and Punishment” with Jens Harzer in the role of Raskolnikov (world premiere July 26, 2008).

Film adaptations

Radio plays

Translations into German

The titles of the respective translations refer to the first edition. Later editions of the same translation were given different titles.

  • Wilhelm Henckel as Raskolnikow , after the 4th Russian edition, 1st German edition, 3 vols., Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1882
  • Wilhelm Henckel as Raskolnikow , after the 5th Russian edition, 2nd German edition Leipzig: Friedrich, 1887 on this a review from 1887 [1]
  • Hans Moser (ca.1888) as Raskolnikow's Schuld und Atonement
  • Paul Styczynski (ca.1891) as guilt and atonement
  • EK Rahsin (1906) as guilt and atonement ISBN 3-492-04002-0
  • Adam Kotulski (ca.1907) as Raskolnikow or: Guilt and Atonement
  • Michael Feofanoff (ca.1908) as Rodion Raskolnikoff
  • Hermann Röhl (1912) as guilt and atonement ISBN 3-15-002481-1
  • Alexander Eliasberg (1921) as a crime and punishment
  • Gregor Jarcho (1924) as a crime and punishment
  • Bernhard Dedek (1925), translation and editing, as Raskolnikow. Crime and Punishment
  • Werner Bergengruen (1925) as guilt and atonement ISBN 3-7175-2118-7
  • Valeria Lesowsky (ca.1930) as Raskolnikow (Guilt and Atonement)
  • Alexander Eliasberg (1948) as guilt and atonement
  • Fega Frisch (1952 or earlier) as guilt and atonement
  • Richard Hoffmann (before 1960) as guilt and atonement ISBN 3-538-06910-7
  • Benita Girgensohn (1963) as guilt and atonement
  • Swetlana Geier (1964) as Raskolnikov - Guilt and Atonement
  • Brigitte Klaas (1980) as guilt and atonement ISBN 3-442-07531-9
  • Margit and Rolf Bräuer (1994) as Debt and Atonement ISBN 978-3-7466-6102-5
  • Swetlana Geier (1994) as crime and punishment ISBN 3-250-10174-5 and ISBN 3-596-12997-4

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ in Letter # 273 of February 18, 1866 to Baron Wrangel, Dostoyevsky wrote: “Two weeks ago the first part of my novel appeared in the first January issue of 'Russki Wjestnik'. It is called: 'Crime and Punishment'. I have heard many delighted comments about it. ”David A. Lowe (Ed.): Dostoevsky Letters . tape 2, 1860-1867 . Ardis, Ann Arbor 1990 (Letter # 273, February 18, 1866). ; Letter # 273 partly also in German in René Fülöp-Miller, Friedr. Eckstein (ed.): Raskolnikoff's diary . With unknown drafts, fragments and letters from “Raskolnikoff” and “Idiot”. Piper, Munich 1928, p. 120 .
  2. ↑ and atonement places, here access to Raskolnikov's "shack". Accessed on August 18, 2020
  3. ^ Kenneth A. Lantz: The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia . Greenwood Press, 2004, ISBN 0-313-30384-3 , pp. 103-106 . ( limited online version in Google Book Search)
  4. ↑ Maximillian Braun: Dostojewskij - The Complete Works as Diversity and Unity , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen (1976), p. 105 f.
  5. ^ Maximillian Braun: Dostojewskij - The Complete Works as Diversity and Unity , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen (1976), p. 117 ff.
  6. ↑ Andrea Breth, Fyodor Dostojewskij: Crime and punishment. Theater version, Ammann-Verlag, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-250-10901-3 .

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