Crime and Punishment (97 page)

1.
V— Prospect on to the square
: The location is Voznesensky Prospect. Anna Grigoryevna in
Reminiscences
recalled that

during the first weeks of our married life, out for a walk with me one day, Fyodor Mikhailovich led me into the courtyard of a certain building and showed me the stone block beneath which his Raskolnikov had hidden the goods he stole from the old woman. This courtyard is situated on Voznesensky Prospect, the second along from Maksimilianov Lane; on its site an enormous building has now been constructed, which at present houses the editorial offices
of a German newspaper. When I asked him: ‘Why did you stray into this deserted courtyard?’ Fyodor Mikhailovich replied: ‘For the purpose that passers-by usually go to secluded spots.’

2.
whether a woman is a human being or not
: The ‘woman question’ was a topic of keen debate in Russia during the 1860s, which saw the publication of articles by Chernyshevsky on the subject (‘Women, their Education and Social Significance’ and ‘John Stuart Mill on the Emanicipation of Woman’ [1860]), as well as works by less well-known foreign authors with titles such as ‘Woman in the Physiological, Pathological and Moral Respect; a Medical, Philosophical and Literary Treatise’.

3.
Radishchev
: Aleksandr Nikolayevich Radishchev (1749–1802), the eighteenth-century Russian radical and social thinker and father of the Decembrists. In his article ‘The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy’ (1860), Chernyshevsky had called Rousseau a ‘revolutionary democrat’.

4.
First Line
: The ‘Lines’ are streets on Vasily Island, running perpendicular to the main thoroughfares. Also, the Third Line, p. 597.

5.
golovka
: Headband.

1.
not Razumikhin
,
as everyone calls me
:
Razum
in Russian means ‘reason’ – to Dostoyevsky's readers of the 1860s the name would have had curiously mixed associations, suggesting a grotesque ‘radicalization’ of the aristocratic name ‘Razumovsky’ into something more consonant with ‘Rakhmetov’, the name of the politically committed hero of Chernyshevsky's
What Is To Be Done?
(1863). ‘Vrazumikhin’, on the other hand, has a more conventionally aristocratic ring.

2.
the merchant Vakhrushin
: The name of the real-life merchant Bakhrushin was known all over Moscow.

3.
Kharlamov
'
s Tenements
…
the Buch ones
: Kharlamov's Tenements were situated near the Haymarket, in Konny Lane, while Buch's Tenements, on the Yekaterininsky Canal embankment, housed a bailiff's office.

4.
Mr Chebarov
: An altered version of ‘Bocharov’, the name of Stellovsky's attorney.

5.
Sharmer
'
s
: The firm of I. G. Sharmer, a well-known St Petersburg tailor from whom Dostoyevsky bought his clothes.

1.
“
Palais de Cristal
”: The name of a hotel-cum-restaurant opened on the corner of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospect in 1862; it seems, however, that Dostoyevsky had in mind another establishment with this name, an inn situated on Zabalkansky Prospect. For the radical utopian socialists in Russia the real Crystal Palace was a symbol of the new social and economic order of which they dreamed (see Dostoyevsky's polemic with Chernyshevsky on this subject in
Notes from Underground and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
). There is a note of irony in the name ‘Crystal Palace’ being applied to the seedy inn in which the nihilist Raskolnikov makes his confession to Zamyotov.

2.
Mikolai
: In the passage that follows, Dostoyevsky uses the demotic forms of the names ‘Nikolai’ and ‘Dmitry’.

3.
Mitrei: A demotic form of ‘Dmitry’; see also
note 2
.

1.
Jouvain manufacture
: Reference to the French glove-maker Xavier Jouvain of Grenoble, who invented a special last that gave his gloves their shape.

2.
That
'
s on Voznesensky
…
Yushin
: According to Anna Grigoryevna, the tenements were situated on the corner of Voznesensky Prospect and Kazan Street.

3.
Go in pursuit
…
one
: Luzhin quotes, inexactly, a Russian proverb: ‘Chase two hares, and you'll catch neither’ (
Za dvumya zaytsami pogonish
’
sya
,
ni odnogo ne poymayesh
’). In his version it sounds most un-Russian, as though it had been translated from French or English.

4.
founded upon self-interest
: Reference to the ideas of Jeremy Bentham.

5.
some obscure
,
financial reason
: Reference to the case of A. Nikitenko, an official at the Russian Embassy in Paris who was murdered by a retired Russian army lieutenant who had been refused financial assistance to enable him to return home.

1.
a flour-dealer
'
s shop
: In the so-called ‘Raspberry Patch’ (Malinnik) on the Haymarket, near Konny Lane, were housed the establishments of Gusarsky (flour-dealer), Konstantinova (public house), Petrova (inn-restaurant) and several brothels.

2.
a side lane
: Tairov Lane. At No. 4 was housed the printing-press of Zhernakov, which published the journal in Nos 6–7 of which Dostoyevsky's translation of Balzac's
Eugénie Grandet
appeared.

3.
a man
…
sentenced to die
: Reference is to a passage from Victor Hugo's novel
Notre
-
Dame de Paris
(1831).

4.
Izler
: Ivan Ivanovich Izler was the owner of a St Petersburg out-of-town artificial spa called ‘Mineral Waters’. During the 1860s the newspapers printed a great many accounts of the comings and goings at his establishment.

5.
Bartola
…
Massimo
…
Aztecs
: In 1865 the St Petersburg newspapers printed numerous stories about the arrival in the capital of a pair of midgets named Massimo (male, aged twenty-six) and Bartola (female, aged twenty-one), who were supposed to be descended from the ancient inhabitants of Mexico, the Aztecs. In St Petersburg they were exhibited by the entrepreneur Moris at No. 16, Malaya Morskaya Street.

6.
fire at Peski
…
fire at St Petersburg Side
: Peski was the name of one of the more remote, outlying districts of St Petersburg, situated on Suvorov Prospect. The St Petersburg Side was also a district of the capital separated from the rest of the town by the River Neva. Revolutionary students were suspected of starting the fires, which caused widespread death and destruction.

7.
Assez causé
: One of Dostoyevsky's favourite expressions. The words are those of Balzac's Vautrin.

8.
an-orangeing-and-a-lemoning
: This expression, like several others in the original Russian text of this passage, is taken from Dostoyevsky's
Siberian Notebook
, in which he recorded the idioms he heard in use among the convicts with whom he had lived during his term of penal servitude at Omsk.

9.
Schiel
'
s Tenements
: There were several ‘Schiel's Tenements’ in St Petersburg – these were probably the ones on the corner of Malaya Morskaya Street and Voznesensky Prospect, where Dostoyevsky had lived from 1847 to 1849.

1.
a Rubinstein
: The Russian composer and pianist Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein (1829–94).

2.
kulebiakis
: Pies with meat, fish or cabbage stuffing.

1.
the queen who mended her stockings in prison
…
triumphs and entrances
: Reference to Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France.

1.
the Mitrofaniyev Cemetery
: The Mitrofaniyev Cemetery in St Petersburg was opened in 1831 during a cholera epidemic. Poor civil service clerks, soldiers, tradespeople and artisans were buried there.

1.
I say
…
on the exchequer
: Quotation from Gogol's
The Government Inspector
, Act I, scene i.

2.
a prey to one
'
s surroundings
: This phrase (Russian
sreda zayela
) was much in vogue among Russian liberal intellectual circles during the late 1850s and early 1860s, as an explanation of the phenomenon of the ‘superfluous man’, as described by I. S. Turgenev in many of his stories and novellas.

3.
phalanstery
: Phalansteries were the communal palaces dreamed of by the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier (1772–1837).

4.
sagenes
: A sagene, or
sazhen
', was equivalent to 2.134 metres.

5.
to step across
: The Russian word is
pereshagnut
’, closely related to
perestupat
’ (‘to step over’, ‘to transgress’), which in turn is related to the Russian word for ‘crime’ –
prestuplenie
. To a Russian reader the connection is immediately clear.

6.
the New Jerusalem
: the origins of the expression ‘New Jerusalem’ are in Revelation 21:1–3:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

The Saint-Simonists and other utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century interpreted this vision as the coming of an earthly paradise or new Golden Age. It was one of the articles of faith of the Petrashevist movement to which Dostoyevsky had belonged in the 1840s.

7.
The truly great
…
time upon earth
: Paraphrase of a remark by Fourier concerning Julius Caesar.

1.
J
'
apporte ma pierre
à l
'
édifice nouveau
: The expression ‘
apporter sa pierre a l
'é
difice nouveau
’ is frequently encountered in the writings of Fourier's pupil Victor Considerant (1808–93).

2.
how well I understand
… ‘
trembling
’
mortals must obey
: The allusion is to the Koran and in particular Pushkin's lines from the cycle ‘Imitations of the Koran’ (1824):

Dostoyevsky owned a copy of M. Kasimirski's French translation of the Koran (1847) from which K. Nikolayev made his Russian translation (1864–5).

1.
beneficent glasnost
: Glasnost or ‘public accountability’ is not a new phenomenon in Russia. It was on occasion favoured by the Tsars as a way of attempting to defuse public discontent. The ‘era’ referred to by Svidrigailov lasted for a short time some five years before the writing of
Crime and Punishment
, when Alexander II relaxed the grip of the censor sufficiently to allow gentle criticism of those with power and authority.

2.
“
The Indecent Act of The Age
”: The title of a controversial article by M. L. Mikhailov, an ardent supporter of women's emancipation, in which he condemned a feuilleton that had appeared in the journal
The Age
under the signature of the poet and translator I. I. Veynberg, attacking the wife of a provincial civil service official for having taken part in a literary–musical soiree in Perm which had involved the reading of an ‘immoral’ episode from Pushkin's
Egyptian Nights
.

3.
Dussot
'
s
: Fashionable restaurant on Bolshaya Morskaya Street.

4.
the pointe
: Reference to the fête ground on Yelagin Island. The newspapers often carried reports of the fetes at the ‘Château des Fleurs’.

5.
the North Pole now
: In 1865 the St Petersburg newspapers announced an expedition ‘for the Attainment and Investigation of the North Pole of the Terrestrial Globe’.

6.
Berg
: Well-known St Petersburg entrepreneur who ran amusements and side-shows in the city's parks.

7.
the litiya
: Russian Orthodox liturgical term. In this context, it means a short requiem mass.

8.
the Vyazemsky
: The ‘Dom Vyazemskogo’ or ‘Vyazemsky Laura’ near the Haymarket, a large building that served as an overnight resting-place for the city's down-and-outs, and was also used as a place of lodging by men who worked in the inns and drinking establishments.

1.
at the same time
: Razumikhin's publishing plans are reminiscent of those entertained by Dostoyevsky himself in the 1840s, when together with his brother Mikhail he planned to issue a Russian translation of the complete works of Schiller.

1.
where Sonya lived
: Now No. 63, Griboyedov Canal.

2.
the Row
: A special St Petersburg building containing a row of goods stores.

3.
the seventh verst
: Reference to a lunatic asylum situated seven versts from the capital. To send someone ‘to the seventh verst’ was a familiar euphemism.

4.
the whole antheap
: Dostoyevsky had already used the image of the ‘antheap’ – derived from Lessing and Voltaire, and also from the writings of the French novelist Charles Naudier – to describe mass society in
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
and
Notes from Underground
.