These Russians…

Not trying to make racial slurs. But I just read Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, and it falls right in with all of the other literature I’ve ever read about or by Russians. Not that there is a large amount of that, mind you. I’ve read Russka by Edward Rutherford, listened to Anna Karenina on tape, and read a short history of Russia from the library. So my experience is not vast, but the impression I always get is depressing, dark, unhappy, and slighly unhinged. (I should note that the only Russians I actually know are not at all like that!)\par
\par
Crime and Punishment is no exception. I just finished it today, so I haven’t really finished digesting it. For our book group we have a list of questions from The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, which we always plan to think about before the meeting and then discuss, and almost never actually do. Or not past the first 4 or 5 anyway! That’s what I mean by digesting it. That and just letting my subconcious work on it, so that perhaps I will automatically understand it in a few days! \par
\par
First Impressions:\par
\par
1. St. Petersburg is either hot and muggy or pouring down rain.\’c3\’82\’c2\~ It seems like people in the book are either stifling or getting drenched. I seem to remember reading that it was located in drained swampland, but perhaps that’s not accurate and I don’t care enough right now to look it up! \par
\par
2. As in Don Quixote, I was surprised at the amount of gory detail in this classic. What with a man being run over by a wagon wheel, a woman dying a bloody death of tuberculosis, a near rape, harlots, a suicide, and, let’s not forget the murder of two women with an axe, this book could easily be made into a modern movie without needing to add any extra blood or violence! It makes it more realistic, though, and the details of the consumptive woman destitute with 3 small children and nothing else add a lot of realism to the book.\par
\par
3. Reading this made me very thankful to be an American woman, married with children in the suburbs in 2007. Even the oft-described grime in the book wore on my nerves after a while and mades me look around with a sigh of relief when I put the book down.\par
\par
4. Sonia, the pure harlot who loves the main character follows him to Siberia when he goes there to serve out his 8 years. Now, granted she didn’t have much of a resume for being a wife, either, but to my practical mind it seems odd to choose a proud, haughty, moody, often cruel and irritable axe-murderer with no vocational skills and\’c3\’82\’c2\~8 years to serve in prison as your life-mate and father of your children. Just a thought.\par
\par
Oh well, those are just my first impressions. I’d say that I’d write more about it later, but it’s unlikely that I will, so I won’t.