Crime and Punishment (1866)

I unexpectedly finished Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment yesterday evening and so I thought I'd quickly post about it before I forget about it or just put it off forever. It was another Kindle edition translated by Constance Garnett, published by Xist Publishing, California.

So Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment are sort of my first experiences of Russian literature and in their own way they are quite bleak but obviously exploring important social issues. I was somewhat glad that Dostoyevsky more or less jumped into the crime without much delay. I took a week or so off reading this novel in between because I was busy and because of or, perhaps, in spite of that, I found the novel to seem rather repetitive and long in the interval period of the crime taking place and main character's decision of what he will do with himself and his life now that the crime had been committed. This obviously is done on purpose to reflect the long, unending suffering and confusion of the character.

An important and central idea in the novel is that the crime itself is the punishment for the criminal, one that Raskolnikov touches upon in his article by suggesting that after a crime, often the criminal will fall ill, have a fever or experience some sort of delirium. The guilt of the crime and perhaps even paranoia can lead to mental, spiritual and physical illnesses. This same idea is expressed in Hamza Yusuf's commentary of his translation in Purification of the Heart. It is synonymous with Islamic spirituality that the spiritual heart can suffer from diseases, which are manifest in negative and sinful behaviour and certain behaviour can remedy or increase diseases too. Dostoyevsky explores guilt rather through psychology and redemption through confession, religion, as well as suffering.

While on the point of psychology, I found that the novel looks at the madness of living with sin or a crime that is caused by cognitive dissonance. The mental effects on a person are so strong that an option to find comfort somewhere is to find it in religion, as Sonia does.

Another central idea behind the crime itself was the idea of there being a small, elite group of people who are criminals of their time, because they transgress the limits of the society or context they're in, but in the next generation they are considered heroes. Dostoyevsky uses the examples of Napoleon and Muhammad (pbuh) in his novel. Arguably we could see the late Nelson Mandala in the same light, how he was imprisoned for 27 years and now he is a hero to the world. This brings up issues on Absolute Truth, and Absolute right and wrong versus the concepts we live with today of everything being relative, and therefore truth is always relative and consequently laws will always only be relative. Absolute Truth means that certain things will remain true regardless of the place, time or location and while many things may be relative and dependent on the context and situation, there will always be constant undying, unchanging truths that underpin laws and society. For example, intentionally killing an innocent person is and always will be wrong. This is an example of something someone could take as an absolute truth. Now the relative, situational aspects come in when the killing is unintentional (manslaughter) or justified through the person being guilty of a serious crime (i.e. murder)- with the latter example only being allowed through the state laws and after having gone through valid legal proceedings etc. The same applies to virtue too, for example racism in all forms is unjust and unacceptable, if we consider this an Absolute Truth, then people who defend this in contexts where this is not the case, will be seen as criminals until the world sees it is superior to the relative perception used by a certain government for example.

Dostoyevsky also explores crime as a choice, one that may be selected due to desperation or even frustration. We see this in the character Sonia who chooses to commit crime to feed her family, while Raskolnikov is rather frustrated with himself and commits the crime to try to prove something to himself. Both chose the crime and suffer according to their reason for it.

We also see how committing a crime is not necessarily only a punishment for the criminal but also those who are close to him or her, through a sense of betrayal they are punished as well as a double punishment for the criminal himself or herself.

Overall, I found it a worthwhile read with important themes of justice, power, poverty and virtue.

Anna Karenina (1877)

I've decided that I need to seriously start reading again and get through more classics. I loved reading at university and sometimes the time restraint made me feel like I couldn't enjoy a book and I was just reading it like a machine. So I've taken it upon myself to pick up from where I left off. I hope to be able to add some thoughts about my reading along the way to get some ideas out there, even if it's stating the obvious in some cases.

I've recently finished reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. No doubt it's a well-written piece; it's not a classic for no reason.

Firstly, I've read the HarperPerennial Classics kindle edition and I can't seem to find out who translated it unfortunately.

Right from the get go, the novel plunged into a domestic crisis, which consequently introduced some of the key characters. Some of the key themes include infidelity, loyalty, love, romance, family, religion, politics, war, importance of character, Russian agriculture versus European agriculture as well as social class structures and more.

For me, being someone who often has a tendency to go on about women's rights and the rest of it, it really made me ask some questions not only to myself but generally, since I may well answer certain questions with my own worldview in mind, but would not necessarily be getting genuine answers from "the everyday person" who doesn't share my worldview or beliefs.

Some points that I felt were raised:

- Is a woman's infidelity of greater consequence and gravity than a man's infidelity?
- Is infidelity pardonable?
- Does forgiveness for infidelity often lie in whether there are children or not?
- How does society punish infidelity? Is it punished equally between sexes?
- Why is it considered more of a taboo for a wife to leave her husband after he has cheated than the husband to leave the wife? Is this even the case?
- Is it a woman's beauty that leads to this corruption in society?
- Is compassion and mercy expected more from women because of the gendered attribute?

The novel is beautifully crafted in that it describes the mental processes of core characters so well, putting it against a backdrop of how they are perceived in society and consequently making the reader judge them through the hypocrisies, inconsistencies and consistencies, as well as their reactions to uncomfortable situations. The development of Russia as a state is no doubt always present and it's equally interested in life in the country and in tune with nature as that of life in the city full of corruption. The search for truth is present largely through the character of Levin and the debate of religion versus reason is one of his great inner struggles.

Having just watched the 2012 film adaptation a couple of days ago to celebrate having wifi and having finished the novel, I felt the detail dedicated to Levin's search and struggles was unfortunately not as close to the novel itself but there were indications of it and ultimately film has its own restrictions as a medium of art, and thus I feel that it wasn't a bad adaptation. It kept quite closely to the storyline, omitting parts due to time and perhaps other factors in film production. I wasn't quite happy with the actor chosen for Vronsky but that's just a matter of personal preference and imagination.

I'm currently reading Crime and Punishment and I'm looking forward to blogging about that one soon!