CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
423
where in litera;ture do we find so striking a confirmation of
Nietzsche's idea of the evangelical type as in the figure of
Sonia. What is that type?
It
is one in whom "the incapacity
for resistance becomes morality," who experiences "any resist–
ance, even any compulsion to resist, as unendurable
displeasure
... and finds blessedness (pleasure) only in no longer offering
any resistance to anybody, neither to evil nor to him who is
evil~love
as the only, as the
last
possible way of life." Signifi–
cantly, Sonia's faith is not one that has been attained through
struggle. When Raskolnikov challenges her faith, she answers
with simple pathos: "What should I be without God?" This is
the kind of faith which, as Nietzsche said, "has been there from
the beginning; it is as it were an infantilism that has receded
into the spiritual."6 Plainly, Sonia's faith is of a sort that offers
no solution to Raskolnikov, whose spiritual existence is incom–
mensurable with hers. No wonder that the epilogue to the novel,
in which he finally seems to be preparing himself to accept her
outlook, has struck many readers as implausible and out of
key with the work as a whole.
A few weeks after Dostoevsky's death in January 1881 a
terrorist of the People's Will party by the name of Andrey
Zhelyabov took part in the successful attempt on the life of
Alexander II. He was caught and brought to trial, and this is
what he had to say to the court: "I was baptized in the
Orthodox Church but I reject Christianity, although I acknowl–
edge the essential teaching of Jesus Christ. This essential teach–
ing occupied an honored place among my moral incentives. I
believe in the truth and righteousness of that teaching and I
solemnly declare that fruth without works is dead and that every
true Christian ought to fight for the truth and for the rights of
the oppressed and the weak, and even, if need be, to suffer
for them. Such is my creed." Evidently the blood he shed did
not weigh on Zhelyabov's conscience, for he went to his death
on the gallows calm and impenitent. Raskolnikov, cheated of
Zhelyabov's fate, goes to a Siberian prison in the same state of
