If literature offers models of the world, then the big problem it poses is that of ontology, the nature of reality. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky takes us into the head of his hero, and we see the world mostly through his eyes. What we see is the utterly recognizable, tangible cityscape of St. Petersburg, Russia, captured at a precise moment in the year 1865, with its slums, bridges, canals, taverns, smells and crowded, filthy flats. Even the weather corresponds to meteorological records of the time. Nowhere before in Russian literature had a writer so tangibly conveyed the physical experience of urban poverty, hunger, prostitution, and drunkenness. Seduced by this immersion in a particular time and place, readers might not notice an odd, disquieting feature of the novel: the dubious material grounding of its protagonist. This reading tracks Raskolnikov’s path leading up to the act of murder, posing the question: how, given the mass of potential witnesses, does he get away with it? Who sees him, and how do we know? The more deeply we probe into this question, the stranger and more fantastical does he, and his world become.
❖ Friday, November 2 at 4 pm | Schapiro 241
