Philip Rahv
DOSTOEVSKY IN
"CRIME AND PUNISHMENT"
When thought is closed in caves
Then love shaU show its roots in deepest hell
-William Blake
Is this the type of narrative nowadays called a
psycho-thriller? Yes, in a sense it is, being above all, in its
author's own words, the psychological .account of a crime.
The crime is murder. But in itself this is in no way exceptional,
for the very same crime occurs in nearly all of Dostoevsky's
novels. Proust once suggested grouping them together under
a single comprehensive title: The Story of a Crime.
Where this novel differs, however, from the works follow–
ing it is in the totality of its concentration on that obse&<;ive
theme. Virtually everything in the story turns on Raskolnikov's
murder of the old pawnbroker and her sister Lizaveta, and
it is this concentration which makes the novel so fine an
example of artistic economy and structural cohesion. Free of
distractions of theme and idea, and with no confusing excess
or over-ingenuity in the manipulation of the plot, such as
vitiates the design of
A Raw Youth
and reduces the impact of
The Idiot, Crime and Punishment
is the one novel of Dos–
toevsky's in which
his
powerful appeal to our intellectual
interests is most directly and naturally linked to the action.
The superiority of this work in point of structure has been
