420
PHILIP RAHV
psychological theory at all but a theory of men as subjects and
objects of history. Hegel's world-historical individual-such as
Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon, the very names invoked by
Dostoevsky's protagonist-performs the grandiose tasks set for
him by the
Weltgeist
irrespective of moral considerations; he can
do no other, for, as Hegel puts it, "the history of the world moves
on a higher level than that of morality." These heroes may
"treat other great and even sacred interests inconsiderately-a
conduct which subjects them to moral reprehension. But so
mighty a figure may trample down many an innocent flower,
crush to pieces many things in its path." Thus as the subject
of history he rides roughshod over its mere objects or victims.
Dostoevsky gives us a parody-version of Hegel's theory of two
types of men by abstracting it from its historical logic.
This
en–
ables him to entangle Raskolnikov in what is in truth a comedy
of mistaken identity: an obvious victim of the historical process
-a small man in search of personal security and happiness–
laughably taking himself for its hero. In this sense he is no
better than a clown, and he does indeed laugh at himself from
time to time. "One sudden idea made him laugh. Napoleon,
the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman,
a pawnbroker with a red trunk under her bed.... It's too
inartistic. A Napoleon creep under the old woman's bed! Ugh,
how loathsome!"
However, though Raskolnikov refuses the historical action
of the politicaJ rebel, and, instead of throwing a bomb at a
general or even the Czar himself, he crushes the skull of "an old
woman with an axe, there is still something in his deed, for all
its weird abjectness and ugliness, which in some sense comes
through to us as a protest against the Petersburg misery and the
ethics justifying it. One cannot but agree with Alberto Mor–
avia's statement in his essay "The Marx-Dostoevsky Duel" that
though "Raskolnikov had not read Marx and regards himself
as a superman beyond good and evil, he was already, in
embryo, a people's commissar."6 Moravia is one of the very few
