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PHILIP RAHV
first of all regard the ideas as dramatic motivation goes with–
out saying; but that should not deter us from also accepting
them as given on the level of thought. "I killed not an old
woman but a principle," declares Raskolnikov. What is that
principle and why does he want to kill it? The answer to such
questions has been much simplified or, worse, still, credulously
taken for granted.
From the Christian standpoint Raskolnikov is easily enough
perceived to be a kind of Lazarus whom Sonia strives to raise
from the dead. Yet if he comes forth from the tomb it is only
after experiencing the ecstasy and terror of having touched for
one moment the secret springs of freedom and power. "What,
then, is to be done?" asks Sonia. This is indeed the fateful
question which reverberates throughout the whole of Russian
literature and to which all the leaders of Russian thought, from
Chaadayev to Lenin, sought to provide an answer. Raskolnikov,
too,
accepts the challenge. "Break what must be broken," he
replies, "once and for all, and take the suffering on oneself. ...
Freedom and power! Over all trembling creation and
all
the
antheap! ... That is the goal, remember that!" No wonder
that though apparently renouncing that goal in yielding to
Sonia's entreaties that he save himself through penance and
submission, he nevertheless remains essentially unrepentant to
the end. At the very least it can be said that he remains so
deeply divided in his mind as to give himself up more because
of .confusion and despair than because of any real change of
heart. About his regeneration we are told only in the epilogue,
when at long last the pale sickly faces of the murderer and
the saintly prostitute become "bright with the dawn of a new
future." But this happy Siberian aftermath is the beginning
of something altogether new and different.
As
the author ob–
serves in the last paragraph of the text, it "might be the sub–
ject of a new story but our present story is ended."* We, as
*
It might indeed have been the subject of a new story. However, Dos-
