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R AH V
repeatedly remarked upon, but what has not been sufficiently
noted is its extraordinary narrative pace. Consider the move–
ment of Part I, for instance.
In
this
comparatively short sec–
tion (coming to eighty-four pages in Constance Garnett's
translation), we get to know the protagonist fairly well, to
know the conditions of crushing poverty and isolation under
which he lives and the complex origins of his "loathsome
scheme"; we see him going through a rehearsal-visit to the
victim's flat; we listen to Marmeladov's sermon in the pot–
house, to the recital of his domestic woes, including the cir–
cumstances that forced his daughter Sonia to become a prosti–
tute; we witness the drunken old man's homecoming and the
hysterical violence with which he is received by his wife; then
we read with Raskolnikov the long letter from his mother,
learning a good deal about his family situation; we dream with
him the frightful dream, looking at once to the past and to the
future, of the beating to death of the little mare; finally, after
several more scenes of the strictest dramatic relevance, we are
brought to a close-up of the double murder, probably the most
astonishing description of its kind in fiction, and watch the
murderer returning to his lodgings where, after putting back
the axe under the porter's bench, he climbs the stairs to sink
on his bed in blank forgetfulness.
Thus in this first section of seven chapters a huge quantity
of experience is qualitatively organized, with the requisite
information concerning the hero's background driven into place
through a consummate use of the novelistic device of foreshort–
ening, and with the swift narrative tempo serving precisely as
the prime means of controlling and rendering credible the
wild queerness of what has been recounted. For this wild queer–
ness cannot be made to yield to explanation or extrinsic analysis.
To gain our consent-to enlist, that is, our poetic faith-the
author must either dramatize or perish, and for full success he
must proceed with the dramatic representation at a pace pro–
ducing an effect of virtual instantaneousness. To have secured
