In this blog post, we’ll examine how Raskolnikov’s murder and repentance, as well as the poverty in St. Petersburg, as depicted in Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’, dramatically illustrate the clash between abstract ideals and the reality of human nature.

From Idealism

“The human soul is a union of heaven and earth. Our universe is like a purgatory known to celestial spirits captivated by evil thoughts. The world has taken a negative turn, and what was once a beautiful and noble spirituality has now become a caricature.” Such a passage brings to mind the seventeen-year-old literary youth that the author Dostoevsky (Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, 1821–1881), then in his mid-forties, once wrote to his brother Mikhail. The idealistic worldview of reality versus ideal was the fundamental backdrop of the Romantic era in which he grew up, and Dostoevsky never abandoned that dualistic perspective throughout his life.
Having made his literary debut during the critical era of post-Romanticism, Dostoevsky sought to replace Romanticism’s fantastical space with an urban Romanticism that was closer to the realities of life. Through his contemporaries, he sought to depict the division inherent in idealism and Romanticism—that is, the painful polarity between the idealized life and the real life. Even in his early works, ‘Poor Folk’ (Бедные люди) and ‘The Double’ (Двойник), the protagonists clashed with the concrete circumstances of life through actions motivated by idealistic and romantic reading; this was intertwined with the realization that idealistic values could never align with the concrete conditions of reality.
This sense of concern developed even more actively during his involvement with the circle of M. V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky (1821–1866). Although Dostoevsky did not support the overthrow of the tsarist government through force, it is true that he deemed the existing social order immoral and dreamed of establishing a new social order based on utopian socialist ideals. His early worldview—which sought to reshape and control reality through ideas—was still very much at work here.
However, after returning from his exile in Siberia, Dostoevsky still dreamed of social reform, but his direction shifted toward rejecting revolution, socialism, and materialism. The driving forces behind the reform he believed in were the Russian land, the people, and faith and love. In his literature, he began to fight against ideologies that sought to radically transform all aspects of the social order. These ideologies clashed with radicalism, which sought to liberate human thought from the constraints and prejudices of religion, morality, and the family.
This struggle had already begun in ‘Notes from the Underground’ (Записки из подполья). However, in that work, only the destructive influence of ideology and the people “devoured” by it appear; positive values to replace it exist only in an abstract form. In contrast, in ‘Crime and Punishment’, the author’s effort to present a guiding principle applicable to all human existence is evident.

The Clash Between Human Nature and Ideology

‘Crime and Punishment’ was the first of Dostoevsky’s full-length novels to be written and published. It became a major literary event upon its release, and the reason it remains widely known and read to this day is likely its relative straightforwardness—thanks to a relatively linear plot, well-crafted drama, and characters whose actions unfold within a single, coherent narrative centered on a murder. However, this novel goes beyond a simple depiction of an isolated incident.
Dostoevsky focused on criminals when their will revealed historical-philosophical and moral ideals through their crimes, and when those crimes served as pathological symptoms or expressions of a generational crisis. In that sense, his crime novels become studies critical of both the era and society.
This point is also connected to the creative process behind “Crime and Punishment.” Dostoevsky conceived ‘The Drunkards’ (‘Пьяненькие’) in 1864 and proposed the idea to newspaper and magazine editors in June 1865. In a letter to Krayevsky, he explained that the work would address alcoholism—a serious problem at the time—and its impact on family life and children. After being rejected by both publications, he halted writing, but the basic concept later evolved into the story of the Marmeladov family and was incorporated into ‘Crime and Punishment’.
In September of the same year, while introducing the plot of another work to a different magazine editor, he described a concept in which a university student on leave from the petty bourgeoisie, weighed down by poverty, becomes swayed by subversive and immature ideologies in an attempt to escape his miserable circumstances. The story depicted a university student on leave from the lower middle class, weighed down by poverty, who, swayed by subversive and immature ideologies, sought to escape his miserable circumstances by murdering a greedy old moneylender and using her money to finish college before going abroad to live an honest life for the rest of his days—only to ultimately repent and experience a moral rebirth. This concept, combined with elements from ‘The Drunkard’ and with the narrative shifted from first person to third person, was serialized in ‘The Russian Messenger’ (Русский вестник) from January to December 1866 and, after minor revisions, published as a book beginning in 1867.
The questions that were important to Dostoevsky during the novel’s conceptual phase had already been revealed in his letters. Does a strong person have the right to judge others and determine their fate? Are there circumstances that justify such a right? For example, can the utilitarian goal of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” justify a crime? Can a future life of virtue offset past crimes? Should social circumstances bear responsibility for an individual’s crimes, or is the individual ultimately the only one responsible?
The reason Dostoevsky, upon his return from Siberia, focused on these issues was that he viewed the confusion among young members of the Russian intelligentsia at the time as an inevitable result of the spiritual processes Russia had undergone over the previous decade. He focused not so much on the young people’s political attitudes as on their moral attitudes—specifically, the confusion of thought in which social constraints are transformed into philosophical ideals. If the author had intended to depict a politically motivated murder, he might have given the young protagonist a more affluent background. However, Raskolnikov ranks among the poorest of the characters Dostoevsky created. This suggests that his extreme criminal ideology stems precisely from such poverty.
For this reason, the spaces overwhelmingly depicted in the novel are the filthy streets and alleys of St. Petersburg, cramped attics and shabby rented rooms, unsanitary restaurants and taverns, cheap inn rooms, and district police station offices permeated with the smell of mold and paint. When the protagonist escapes his “coffin-like” attic, he encounters poor people deprived of their right to survive, those struggling to maintain their last shred of human dignity, people traded like commodities, and prostitutes. St. Petersburg, a city emblematic of Western culture, is consumed by the evils of materialism; even when its splendid streets and palaces are described, the coldness, corruption, misery, and death lurking beneath the surface stand out all the more. Dostoevsky depicted poverty and its backdrop so faithfully that residents of that era could easily recognize that the events in this novel were unfolding right where they lived.
However, this realistic depiction is not an end in itself. What is more important to the author is another aspect of poverty—namely, poverty as an incubator of ideas. Raskolnikov needed the low ceilings, cramped rooms, and the “opium” of poverty to devise and meticulously refine his plan. In this incubator, he divides humanity into the extraordinary and the ordinary. He posits that the extraordinary possess the nature of rulers and leaders—capable of acting for the welfare of humanity without being bound by any law or moral code—while the ordinary are beings destined solely for obedience and are merely the raw material of history. According to this theory, while transgressing laws and moral codes constitutes a crime (transgression, преступление) for the ordinary man, the extraordinary man possesses the right to commit crimes “in accordance with his conscience.” In short, there are situations where a crime is a crime only in a formal legal sense but not in essence; in world history, crime is the eternal form and fundamental law of historical development.
This theory cannot be conceived without two ideologies that formed the social backdrop of Russia at the time. One is utilitarianism, which substitutes mathematical value for moral absolute value—that is, the utilitarianism that exchanges one life for a hundred, or saves thousands of lives by taking one—and the other is Napoleon’s ideology of power. The ideology of the “extraordinary man”—that “everything is permitted”—was an ideology that, though Napoleon’s power had long since passed, continued to be reproduced in the minds of later generations. Moreover, in March 1865, when the novel began to be written, Napoleon III (1808–1873) had published the first volume of ‘Histoire de Jules César’, causing a sensation throughout Europe; a Russian translation had even appeared just one month later. What captivated the youth of Europe above all else was that this book championed the superiority of extraordinary figures—geniuses who had decisively shaped the fate of humanity, such as Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon—who occasionally appeared in history like bright lighthouses, dispelling the darkness of their times and illuminating the future, and spoke of the happiness of those who sought to follow in their footsteps.
A shabby attic in a dingy alley that seemed to mock his talent and ambition, a mother starving for his sake, and a sister forced to endure humiliation—this was a reality shared by countless hopeless young people living in the capital of Tsarist Russia in the 1860s. In such circumstances, Russia’s youth became intoxicated by the myth of Napoleon. Half a century earlier, when people feared no obstacles and were afraid of nothing, it was possible to seize power and glory as one pleased; it was even possible for a mere lieutenant to become an emperor. As long as one understood that everything was permitted and possessed a strong will, one could achieve anything—and everything was permitted. Why shouldn’t Raskolnikov himself be able to amass wealth, rise to prominence, and seize power? What if, free from the meaningless pangs of conscience unbecoming of an extraordinary man, he were to kill the old pawnbroker and take her money? It is he himself who judges what is right and wrong, and it is he himself who decides who is worthy of life and who must die. Laws and moral codes are mere prejudices, nothing more than instilled fear. Therefore, there are no obstacles; he need only step over the lines they have drawn.
However, Raskolnikov—who, as a theoretical justification for his crime, had already killed the absolute principles of morality within his own consciousness—encounters a new obstacle. When he went to the pawnshop to test his resolve, and when, on the eve of the crime, he dreamed of a “horse being brutally beaten to death,” he realized that no matter how clear and correct everything he had thought through up to that point might be, he would never be able to “endure” it. He realizes that he is an ordinary human being in whom the concepts of right and wrong are still alive, and that he is a weak man who, driven by the agitation of his ego, has nurtured within himself a theory that he himself does not fundamentally believe in.
So, even though he clearly realized that his plan for the crime contradicted his very nature, what ultimately drove him to commit the crime? It is precisely here that the character trait the author was determined to express through Raskolnikov—namely, his extreme arrogance—comes into play. If he were to abandon his plan because of his nature, it would prove that he is a “trembling creature” who accepts and submits to the world as it is. His arrogance does not allow him to “hold back” in such a situation. His arrogance now even alters the very purpose of the crime. The utilitarian justification of overcoming obstacles for the sake of humanity’s happiness is merely a pretext. He must commit the crime to triumph over his own nature. Otherwise, the ideology he had directed against “these lice-like” human beings would turn its blade against himself. Now, the crime becomes a tool to transcend his human nature and become an “extraordinary human being”—a tool to create an “extraordinary human being.”
However, the crime committed in this way is a betrayal of his own theory. As Raskolnikov himself explains to Porfiry, it is impossible to “become” Napoleon; one must simply be “born” as Napoleon. Whether one belongs to the category of ordinary humans or extraordinary humans is genetically predetermined, and it is impossible to cross from one category to the other.
The conflict between nature and ideology is revealed once again in the dream he has just before committing the crime. Just as he feels utterly refreshed after drinking crystal-clear water in a peaceful and beautiful oasis, the sound of a clock suddenly wakes him. He jumps up from the sofa, realizing that the time has come—that he must now carry out the deed. The time signaled by the clock’s chime drives him out of his blissful dream of heavenly peace and propels him, like a demon, toward murder.
An ordinary human being may be capable of committing atrocities, but cannot endure the consequences. What sustained him while murdering the old woman was his fervent determination to test himself. However, after committing the murder, he falls into a state of terrifying panic and is tormented by inescapable pangs of conscience. It is over for Napoleon. Yet what does not let him go is not so much the fact that he failed to rise to the level of Napoleon, but rather the terrifying realization that he is a murderer and a completely “lost human being.” His confession—that he killed a principle rather than a human being, and that though he killed the principle, he failed to transcend it and remained on this side—is an admission that he failed in his existential crime of attempting to transcend his own human nature. But did he really beat the Principle to death? The dream he had prior to this confession clearly shows that he failed to kill the Principle as well. The image of the old woman smiling unperturbed even as the axe strikes her demonstrates that the Principle is as hard as iron and indestructible—and that the more he strikes it, the more it mocks him.
The murder committed by Raskolnikov failed to become either a moral or an existential transcendence, instead becoming merely a criminal act of transcendence, and the murder of Lizaveta makes this even more complete. If the premeditated murder of the old woman was a crime through which Raskolnikov strove not to feel remorse, the murder of Lizaveta is a clear betrayal of his ideology. Since the only thing that can serve as a bulwark against the pangs of conscience he feels as a murderer is an ideology that justifies the killings, he begins to believe in his ideology “once again”; however, as long as he clings to the logic of that ideology, the murder of the old woman and that of Lizaveta become mutually contradictory. Thus, while he still wants to believe that killing the old woman was justified, he banishes the murder of Lizaveta from his consciousness in order to cling to that logic and hold on. However, the murder he has banished never remains outside his consciousness; it follows him like an invisible shadow, plunging him into delirium.
Having fallen away from God’s order through murder, Raskolnikov’s every effort is focused on escaping from himself and his conscience, and from the consequences of his crime. Now three paths lie before him: compensation, denial, and atonement; yet until the very end, he follows the paths of compensation and denial.
The first path—recompense—is the one that best aligns with his ideology, in which he has appointed himself the world’s judge. This includes caring for Marmeladov, who was struck and killed by a carriage, and using all his money to help the family; it also encompasses the overwhelming emotion he felt when Polya thanked him and kissed him, believing that his actions had been proven right. This sense of his own righteousness once again fuels his arrogance. He proclaims that he did not die alongside the old woman and that the kingdom of reason, enlightenment, will, and strength has now begun, reigniting his resolve. When he is confronted with the economic truth that “Love only yourself and pursue your own interests; Then the universal welfare of humanity and the happiness of more people will follow naturally”—his intense fury is also linked to his intention to once again convince himself of the legitimacy of the “exceptional human” ideal in the face of the pursuit of human self-interest and power, symbolized by this “louse.”

The Second Path and the Third Path

The second path—denial—is the path of the devil, at odds with both the ideal of the “extraordinary man” and the conscience of the ordinary man. Because Raskolnikov knows that his crime cannot be justified by anything, he strives not to leave any trace that might implicate him. This includes meticulously preparing the crime without drawing attention, taking a detour to the old woman’s apartment away from his boarding house, burying all the stolen goods in the ground, and, above all, murdering Lizaveta, who unexpectedly appeared as a witness.
On this path, he comes so close to committing the perfect crime that even Investigating Judge Porfiry—who is convinced he is the culprit—has no choice but to cling to his confession.
Third, the path of atonement is the path of realization regarding one’s sins and responsibility, as well as the inevitability of punishment; it is the path of abandoning arrogance, self-worship, and the role of judge of the world, and embracing the reconciliation and love granted anew by God—the path of accepting suffering and achieving atonement through it.

The Unity and Bond of Existence—A Breakthrough Inward

Raskolnikov and Sonya represent, in principle, two distinct ethical systems. Unlike Raskolnikov, who justifies his crime by relativizing moral standards, for Sonya, a sin is a sin no matter who commits it, and the pursuit of selfish happiness can be neither a right nor a goal for anyone. For her, morality and sin are absolute concepts.
Even before Raskolnikov committed the crime, when he first heard about Sonya from Marmeladov, he resolved to seek her out later and confess his deed because he believed that Sonya, too, had “transcended” moral boundaries. He reasoned that compassion and love for one’s family could only be realized by means other than sin—by transcending moral law—and therefore concluded that Sonya was walking the same path as he was.
However, the two people’s “transcendence” is not the same. Raskolnikov sacrificed others to test himself, whereas Sonya transcended herself for the sake of others. After crossing the line, Sonya remains even more faithful to moral principles on the other side and is tormented by guilt, whereas Raskolnikov continues to assert his right to commit the crime.
Nevertheless, because he knows deep down that he has failed in the moral and existential sense of “crossing the line,” he clearly recognizes the tragedy of his situation. His statement, “If you go up to a certain line and do not cross it, you are unhappy; if you cross it, you are even more unhappy,” succinctly captures his predicament, but in this regard, too, Sonya is different from him. She considers it a far greater misfortune to fail to save her family from starvation without crossing the line than to suffer from the guilt of having crossed it.
Despite these differing ethical views and self-awareness, what binds the two together is an extremely keen sensitivity to the suffering of others and their love for their families. Raskolnikov’s cry—“Ah, if only I were alone, if no one loved me and I, in turn, had never loved anyone! Then none of this would have happened!”—reveals, even before ideology, where the root of his crime lies.
However, a difference exists here as well. While Sonya accepts this love as her cross to bear and resolves to endure it, Raskolnikov seeks to escape it. His attempt to shake off the burden of love and break free from his own nature is nothing less than an attempt to cease being himself. Sonya, on the other hand, maintains her connection to the world through the cross of love, and this is what prevents her from committing suicide.
In contrast, Raskolnikov severs his ties with the world before committing the crime. He cuts off all human relationships; he has not seen his only friend, Razumikhin, for three months, and for the past two months, he has even cut off contact with his family. Consequently, on the eve of the crime, he finds it easy to pawn the ring—a memento from his younger sister—and two days before the crime, he also pawns his father’s only heirloom, a watch.
Having thus cut himself off from the world, he attempts to escape by breaking through a random wall, only to plummet straight into crime through the very hole he has created. Standing on a bridge over the Neva River after the crime, he feels as if he has cut himself off from everyone and everything with a pair of scissors. Even as he pours all his energy into denying his guilt and asserting the opposite, the pain of this absolute isolation drives him to constantly seek someone who will listen to his confession.
He consciously and unconsciously reveals himself to nearly every character, but he makes a confession bordering on repentance only in front of Sonya. Sonya’s ability to serve as a catalyst for his salvation stems, above all, from her capacity to maintain a spiritual bond with others through suffering.
From Dostoevsky’s perspective, the person who hears a confession of sin must speak the truth about that sin and call evil by its name; however, it is only when that person accepts the sin as their own and bears it together with the confessor that the act can truly function in a Christian sense. The reason Raskolnikov’s confession to Sonya surpasses his confession in court is that Sonya serves as the setting for such repentance.
By confessing to Sonya, he gains a person connected to him through suffering and guilt, and he gains the possibility of moving from isolation and alienation toward connection and solidarity. When Sonya tells him to go out into the square, prostrate himself on the ground, and confess his sins to the people of the world, she means that by doing so, he will restore his connection to the world.
However, Raskolnikov does not yet understand the meaning of those words. Although he kisses the ground, he does not confess his sins before the people of the world; and although he turns himself in, it does not stem from a free decision to accept the suffering for his sins. He has simply reached his psychological and emotional limits due to the overwhelming weight of his secret, his irreconcilable conflict with it, and the sense of guilt he finds difficult to admit to himself—and he instinctively knew that the time had come.
Although turning himself in marked the first step toward reconnecting with the world, the event that could serve as the novel’s conclusion has not yet occurred. A true conclusion is necessary for a return to life, and thus the epilogue occupies an indispensable position in ‘Crime and Punishment’.
The epilogue foreshadows not the redemption of one sinner, but that of two. “Love had resurrected them, and their hearts held an infinite wellspring of life for one another.” Redemption must also occur for Sonya, who transcends him. For this to happen, just as Raskolnikov needs Sonya, Sonya also needs him.
Her inner rebirth had already begun at the moment he knelt before her and kissed her immense suffering. This was because she realized that her suffering held the meaning of atonement; that instead of going mad or throwing herself into the river out of guilt, she must accept that anguish and thereby atone; and that this suffering gave meaning to her life.
Here, suffering takes on a different dimension from the Underground Man’s attempt to sharpen his awareness of his own existence through pain. Suffering is not opposed to joy; rather, it becomes an essential element inseparable from love and the fulfillment of life. According to Dostoevsky, no human being fully knows themselves or what life has in store for them. It is the capacity for suffering that finally reveals who one truly is.
The capacity for suffering is necessary to become who one is meant to be, and since, for Dostoevsky, love is humanity’s highest task and virtue, the capacity for love goes hand in hand with the capacity for suffering.
However, even in Siberia, the transformation toward a love that embraces not only one’s own suffering but also the suffering of others does not come easily to Raskolnikov. Although he used to be angry at everything that had led him to prison, he now feels little guilt about himself and does not regard his ideology as particularly wrong.
The theory that killed his “principles” robbed him of any basis for acknowledging his own responsibility and guilt, so the entire cycle begins anew from the start.
However, in the final part of the epilogue, a sudden shift occurs in his consciousness. The dream of the nematode he had during Easter week reveals that there is a deep falsehood within his convictions, serving as the decisive motivation.
In the dream, the entire world is struck by a terrifying pandemic unlike anything ever experienced before, and humanity, attacked by a new species of roundworm, immediately descends into madness. Nevertheless, everyone remains convinced that they alone are wise and qualified to make sound judgments, plunging into total immorality and waging a war of all against all.
Upon waking from the dream, Raskolnikov is overcome by a sense of oppression but does not know how to interpret it. Although it is not explicitly stated whether this dream clearly reveals to him that his theory of the “exceptional man” is leading to its inevitable conclusion, the dream merely reaffirms that he is not an exceptional man and illustrates the chaos that ensues when ordinary people claim to be exceptional.
Nevertheless, he cannot help but be acutely aware that a life based on that theory offers no salvation whatsoever. Realizing that he was nothing more than a small puppet playing with the terrifying ideology he himself had conjured, he faces his despair and emptiness head-on for the first time.
When he recovers from his illness and sees Sonya standing outside his hospital room window as if waiting for something, he suddenly realizes what had been missing from his life. The scene where, after being discharged from the hospital, he collapses before her, clutches his knees, and bursts into tears—unlike the earlier scene in Sonya’s room—marks the moment he comes to understand true human devotion and love. Now, through their love, the two are able to accept all the suffering that lies ahead.
From this point on, Raskolnikov begins to speak to his fellow inmates and receives their love in return. Humility and connection replace arrogance and isolation, and life takes the place of dialectics. By abandoning his attitude of asserting his own exceptionality, a transformation occurs across all aspects of his life.
Having once chosen bondage over freedom, he now experiences victory in the very defeat of abandoning his superhuman nature, and chooses freedom within bondage. Raskolnikov’s experiment in breaking through is completed in the opposite direction of what he had intended. Only after the breakthrough “outward” fails does the breakthrough “inward” take place.
This sudden shift may seem puzzling, but Dostoevsky’s characters do not change gradually. His characters always change unexpectedly and abruptly; humans are depicted as being moved not by gradual change according to a rational system, but rather by changes that seem to come about as if by divine providence.
Raskolnikov, who sought to prove that he was not like other people, fails to reach the pinnacle of humanity and divinity through his crime and instead ends up in the solitary confinement of a penitent. There, he gains a new outlook on life. By recognizing the fact that humans are not gods—or at least that he himself is not a god—he comes to recognize God; the path he took to prove the “superman” actually leads him, conversely, toward the proof of God.
He becomes a blessed sinner who has discovered the path back to the ideal of the Madonna, standing once again at the starting point. The happiness he will experience will be gained through suffering, and the direct awareness felt through the process of suffering is a great joy for which he is willing to pay the price of many years of pain. The conclusion of the epilogue foreshadows precisely this joy.

The Veil of Realism

As ‘Crime and Punishment’ shifted from its originally conceived first-person narrative to a third-person narrative, the novel’s focus expanded from Raskolnikov to include various characters who were not originally part of the story. Among them, the portrayal of Svidrigailov in particular exemplifies the essence of a third-person narrative closely attuned to the character, playing a major role in elevating the novel from a mere psychological novel to a work of realism with a higher significance.
Svidrigailov’s significance in the novel lies in the veil of darkness that shrouds him, the hints of another world that shine through even his witty jokes, and his ontological position straddling the line between existence and nonexistence. In the scenes that appear before Raskolnikov like a series of dreams, Svidrigailov remains somewhat indistinct while still retaining a sense of reality.
The moment Raskolnikov says, “You seem like a very strange person yourself. There’s something about you, especially now,” the ambiguity deepens and the conversation suddenly takes on a darker tone. With these words, naturalistic realism shifts to a higher form of realism; though the invisible flickers through their conversation, the author offers no explanation for this ambiguity.
Not only Raskolnikov, but the other characters as well do not know Svidrigailov’s true nature. Even Luzhin himself admits that the stories—such as his having molested a young girl, driving her to suicide, and causing the death of a servant—are merely rumors. The scene where Dunya unexpectedly takes his side and confronts Luzhin casts doubt even on the veracity of the letter sent by his mother. We do not know for certain what he actually did, and the truth remains shrouded in mystery.
The only thing the author makes clear about Svidrigailov is his lust. While Raskolnikov’s murder was committed on an ideological level, what makes Svidrigailov a criminal is his lust, which drives him to abandon ethical norms in pursuit of sensual pleasure.
What connects these two very different men is their awareness of their ontological positions. The moment he first sees Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov senses that the man is standing on the precipice of some decision. Because Raskolnikov himself once felt the urge to throw himself off that precipice, Svidrigailov’s cryptic remarks make him feel both uneasy and excited. This “precipice of decision” becomes the first sign of the secret connection between the two men.
When Svidrigailov mentioned that the ghost of Marfa Petrovna had visited him three times, Raskolnikov’s reaction (“Somehow I felt that something like that must have happened to you”) came as a surprise even to himself. This reaction suggests that the dream he had just had about the old woman might be more than just a dream—it could be an experience of another realm of existence.
Svidrigailov’s remark that the moment he first saw Raskolnikov, he thought, “This man is just like me!” implies that he realized Raskolnikov had done something similar to what he himself had done to free himself from his wife—and that this was the reason Raskolnikov was suffering from sleep paralysis. However, Svidrigailov experiences the ghost more realistically while awake, interpreting its appearance not as a dream illusion but as a signal from a world that exists on par with this one.
Of course, Dostoevsky does not state anything explicitly; everything takes place behind a veil. What makes the two men “two martens in one burrow” is the fact that they are both victims. One is a victim of the desire to escape through death, while the other is a helpless plaything of his own ideology, to which he clings until the very end. The two are each other’s grotesque shadows and reflections.
“Didn’t you come to me (…) hoping to gain something new? (……) I, too, was pinning my hopes on you on the train ride here, thinking that you would tell me something new as well (……)!” In this way, the two pin their hopes on each other in this bizarre situation and long for “new words,” but in the end, neither can find them in the other.
Svidrigailov, who had eavesdropped on Raskolnikov’s confession to Sonya, already knows that his theory is merely “the same as any other theory.” Although Raskolnikov defines the condition of an extraordinary human being as “one who can say something new, even if only a little,” he brushes off Svidrigailov’s words.
Raskolnikov also fails to properly understand what Svidrigailov says about lewdness. From the statement, “Here, one is bound to cross the line,” he gains only the certainty that this scoundrel will also cross the line with Dunya; he fails to grasp what Svidrigailov implied—namely, that Raskolnikov himself has already crossed the line, and that the two men are alike in their “resolve to cross the line.”
Interestingly, Dostoevsky himself once said during his lifetime, “In every place, in everything, I go to the very limit. All my life, I have always crossed the line.” They then exchange a conversation—akin to a game with death—regarding suicide by pistol, but neither realizes that the other shares his own thoughts.
The shared desire of the two men to cross the boundaries of life is also not clearly revealed. As Raskolnikov leaves his house, he says, “I must get this done today,” but out of fear and revulsion, he does not specify exactly what he means. Svidrigailov, too, is reluctant to speak directly, instead using euphemisms such as “anatomy,” “sailing,” and “a trip to America.”
Although they know the consequences of their actions will be fatal, they are only vaguely aware that they are about to do something that should never be done under any circumstances. For Svidrigailov, Dunya is now the only remaining, almost hopeless hope that might save him from the devil driving him to the very brink.
But the power of evil destroys even that hope. He prepares to meet Dunya through underhanded means, locks the door, and traps himself—not her—in a situation with no way out. He has staked everything on this single gamble and, in the end, loses everything.
Having lived until now like a spider hunting flies, he feels compassion for his victim for the first time and lets Dunya go. Having acted humanely for the first time, he can no longer return to his former role. The foundation of his self-centered existence has crumbled without hope.
For him, who had lived within his own order of absolute freedom, there was neither prison nor Siberia. There was only his own law, which he himself judged and enforced, and the final verdict he passes on himself is suicide.
For Svidrigailov, his final night on earth is nothing short of a living death. The mask of cynical superiority that had covered his face is torn away, and after the dam of security he had built around himself bursts, he is transformed from the hunter into the hunted as the floodwaters surge in from all sides. The three dreams he has—of an elusive, swift mouse; a dead girl lying in a coffin in the middle of a brightly lit country mansion; and a young girl who seduces him—are less a reenactment of actual events than a series of images depicting symbols from his unconscious mind. They depict a process of purification on the brink of death—the moment his life, composed of desire and crime, loathing of life, and exhausting ennui, undergoes a transcendent transformation. Yet we remain unaware of much of what he could tell us. Svidrigailov, on the one hand, reveals too much, while on the other, he still remains silent about so much.
Raskolnikov, who suffocated love with arrogance and forged his ideology out of hatred rather than the suffering caused by poverty, and Svidrigailov, who, as a demon of lust, killed his own capacity to love—these two men are characters who, in the context of what Dostoevsky seeks to illustrate, have committed crimes against “love,” humanity’s most sublime and uniquely transcendent asset.
It is only after being exiled to Siberia that Raskolnikov finally comes to understand, through Sonya, that love is the power that saves him from his delusions. Svidrigailov, on the other hand, while recalling Dunya on his final night, desperately repeats to himself that she would have somehow transformed him into a new person; yet, even before his confrontation with Dunya, he was already acting as a changed man. Letting Dunya go was a liberation from dark emotions more terrible than death—and perhaps it was due to the revival of love. Whether he selflessly gave Sonya a promissory note worth 3,000 rubles so she could follow Raskolnikov to Siberia, or earnestly asked her to convey his regards to Razumikhin—who was to become Dunya’s husband—he already appears to be a man healed of his own curse. Ultimately, what Dunya was able to bring about in him was not Dunya’s love itself, but the transformation that took place within him through her.
Therefore, his death—which on the surface appears to be a farcical display of self-satisfaction—seems, in reality, to have occurred not out of the despair of self-contempt, but in the serenity of the freedom he had finally attained. He need not go any further to board the ship that will take him to “America.” The boundary of “the other side” is already right before his eyes. The fire station sentry could be read as an “official witness” attesting that the flames of the cruel and terrible emotions that had consumed him had finally subsided.
Svidrigailov was experiencing the realm “beyond,” which had repeatedly been presented to him as a sign of existence. Readers cannot know exactly what that world “beyond” is like. The only thing that is clear is that, since he had already ended the spider’s life before leaving, that world is unlikely to be a blackened, soot-stained rural bathhouse where a spider has spun its web in a corner. Dostoevsky reveals no more than that. The technique of uncertainty continues to cast a veil over the story.
Raskolnikov, a criminal who believes himself to be moral, thinks he has seen right through Svidrigailov—who appears immoral at their first meeting—but the relationship between the two is not simply defined as morality versus immorality. In many of his works, Dostoevsky frequently linked the relationship between right and left to righteousness and unrighteousness, faith and unbelief, and good and evil. In ‘Crime and Punishment’ as well, as Raskolnikov bids farewell to Sonya in front of her boarding house, he asks, “You’re going to the right, aren’t you, Sofya Semyonovna?” and Sonya continues on to the right, heading home. In contrast, upon leaving the restaurant, Svidrigailov says to Raskolnikov, “You to the right, I to the left—or is it the other way around?” and then walks to the right toward Sennaya Street. These scenes reveal that the relationship between the two men is not unilaterally fixed within the dichotomy of morality and immorality. They are each other’s shadows and projections. The moment he learns of Svidrigailov’s suicide, Raskolnikov is deeply shaken by the realization that Svidrigailov had done what he himself had been too cowardly to do. At the very moment that the demonic shadow that had coexisted in his subconscious vanishes, Raskolnikov feels powerless, as if he has lost his footing. Only Sonya can bring him back to his senses. Thus, the epilogue is set in motion.
In ‘Crime and Punishment’, Dostoevsky reaches a height and depth that surpass all his previous works. Characters who rise from objects of description to subjects of description; a narrative style that clings closely to the characters; unsolvable mysteries and deliberate ambiguity; the interplay between hidden and revealed thoughts, crowd scenes, the way characters are shaped by conflicting psychological elements, and the controversial treatment of opposing worldviews—all these methods, devices, and motifs, already employed in his earlier works, exert an incomparably powerful effect in this novel. Dostoevsky firmly asserts his identity and prowess as a writer, delving deep into the characters’ souls to illuminate their inner workings and raising profound ethical questions without providing the reader with definitive answers. Life is far more diverse than theorists imagine; as Razumikhin says, logic can predict only three possible outcomes, but in reality, there can be millions of scenarios. This refusal to lift the veil of uncertainty is also the very premise that allows ‘Crime and Punishment’ to continue to be reborn as a living classic. ‘Habent sua fata libelli’ (Books have their own destinies).