Everybody is familiar with
those famous "Russian dolls", the "matriochkas" (or,
more correctly, matriochki)… figures of decreasing size, which fit
into each other. Obviously they are subject to multiple symbolic meanings. I
personally see in them an image of the various levels of consciousness which
exist in the human being. Inner unity is seldom reached in a man; his will is
often divided, his consciousness obscured or torn. Dostoevsky has made of this
complexity of the human heart one of the essential features of his novels. It
is particularly evident in the figure of the "double", whether in a
single character – like Goliadkin, in The Double – or in two characters
who are like flip sides of the same being – like Mychkin and Rogozin, in The
Idiot.
But it seems to me that the
brilliant Fyodor has made use of another literary device to express the
interlocking nature that can characterize human consciousness. This is
particularly the case of souvenirs buried in the memory, souvenirs that an event
or a word can trigger and bring to life. When opened, a Russian doll reveals
another; so it is with Dostoevsky – the heart of a character, once opened,
shows him in a new light. The attentive reader of Dostoevsky's great novels
will no doubt have noticed how often the author begins to tell a "story in
the story." It may be narratives spoken by one of his characters, or a
revealing dream, or still a vast digression, as a close-up shot of an event
whose detailed account is not essential to the coherence of the novel, but
which opens it up to new meanings.
After a long period during
which I "abandoned" my favorite author, I wish to return to those
"Russian dolls" concealed in Dostoevsky’s novels. To open the series,
here is a remarkable passage(*) from the first of the
"great" novels of his maturity, Crime and Punishment.
In the hours preceding his
crime, Raskolnikov is agitated. He walks randomly. The idea of going home
disgusts him. He enters a tavern, grabs something to eat and drinks a glass of
vodka, something he has not done in a long time. He finally decides to go back
home, but on the way, completely exhausted, he leaves the road, enters the
bushes, and falls asleep on the grass. Then, he "has a frightful dream."
The narrative of this dream
covers seven or eight pages. Rodia Raskolnikov sees himself, at seven years
old, in a small town walking with his father. They go to the cemetery where his
grandmother and his younger brother, who died at the age of six months, lie. On
their way, they pass a tavern where people celebrate and get drunk. In front of
the tavern, there is a large cart, to which powerful draft horses are usually
harnessed.
 |
| Raskolnikov, by Ilya Glazounov |
But it is a puny, old mare
that is harnessed here. Drunken peasants come out of the tavern and the whole
gang pile into the cart, with a barrage of shouting and laughter, then of whips
on the back of the poor animal, by three raging men. The child sees it all. “Father,
father, he cried, father, what are they doing? Father, they are beating the
poor horse!” The father exhorts him not to look at these drunkards and
tries to draw him away, “but the boy broke free from his hand, and ran over
to the little horse”. But the relentless abuse of the frail mare that falls
and tries to rise again continues mercilessly, with the ongoing outburst and
laughter and with a kind of murderous hatred. The executioners eventually
complete their deadly play wielding iron bars. “… the poor boy is
beside himself, he cries out and fights his way through the crowd to the sorrel
nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kisses it, kisses the eyes
and kisses the lips…. Then he jumps up and flies in a frenzy with his little
fists out at Mikolka [the driver]”. But his father seizes him and takes him
far from the crowd. “Father! Why did they… kill… the poor horse! he sobbed,
but his voice broke and the words came in shrieks from his panting chest”.
It is then that Raskolnikov
wakes up. It is as if the dream has stirred his consciousness. While for
several weeks he had planned the murder of the usurer, whom he considered a
worthless being, he is now "broken". “Good God! he cried, can it
be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the
head, split her skull open… that I shall (…) steal and tremble; hide, all
spattered in the blood… with the axe… Good God, can it be?” And he
persuades himself that he “will not do it”.
Basically, by recounting
Raskolnikov's dream, Dostoevsky wants us to understand that this man is neither
some kind of beast nor a monster. His crime will be the result of an
ideological fit. Rodia would be the victim of this monstrous cynicism which had
developed within a fringe of the Russian intelligentsia, engendered by
nihilistic notions that Dostoevsky would depict in The Demons.
After his dream,
Raskolnikov was convinced that he would not be capable of murder: “I knew
that I could never bring myself to it, No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it!”
But everything changed after the chance meeting with Lizaveta, the sister of
the usurer, a few words of whom with a merchant catch him by surprise. “He
had learnt, he had suddenly quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day at
seven o’clock Lizaveta, the old woman’s sister and only companion, would be
away from home and that therefore at seven o’clock precisely the old woman
would be left alone (…) he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more
freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably
decided”. Here then is the man, however capable of compassion and to whom
violence is repugnant, who in a flash will become an assassin. Mystery of the
human heart...
Fiodor
(*) Crime
and Punishment, 1st part, chapter 5. English translation by
Constance Garnett, on www.planetpdf.com.
