270
PARTISAN REVIEW
Filled with grief past consolation,
Dark of face, erect, and tall,
He passes on with gait unhurried,
Through the village, through the town.
But never word passed e'en his lips,
A book, an icon at his side,
Strong chains of iron round his hips,
To overcome his sinful pride.
This poem uses Russian peasant imagery to express the conversion of
the sinner, and there is no doubt that Dostoevsky believed the Russian folk
character in particular to be more amenable to such transformations than
the people of other nations; but we may disregard the nationalistic slant of
his ideas, which play little or no role in his artistic creations. Indeed, the
intellectually sophisticated and highly cultivated characters of his novels
undergo the same moral mutations as the untutored Vias. What is com–
mon to both is the struggle of moral conscience to live up to the "perpet–
ual eternal ideal" of the love-ethic of Christ, despite the impossibility of
ever truly accomplishing this endless task here on earth. All of Dosto–
evsky'S best works depict this struggle without flinching at portraying evil,
but its manifestations are, if not balanced, then certainly mitigated by the
torments of conscience unleashed in the psyche of his main characters.
Let us open
Crime and Punishment
and look at the commission of
the murder by Raskolnikov-a murder motivated, or so at least he
believed, by "humanitarian" motives.
Because she was so short the axe struck her full on the crown of the
head. . . . Then he struck her again and yet again with all his
strength, always with the blunt side of the axe and always on the
crown of the head. Blood poured out as if from an overturned
glass.... Her wide-open eyes looked ready to start out of their
sockets, her forehead was wrinkled, and her whole face convul–
sively distorted.
Or let us look at the murder of the simple-minded Lizaveta, who comes
into the room by accident.
When she saw him run in, she trembled like a leaf and her face
twitched spasmodically; she raised her hands to cover her mouth,
but no scream came. . .. He flung himself forward with the axe;
her lips writhed pitifully, like those of a young child when it is just
