Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - VI
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shrunk from the shedding of blood, and that even very
often entirely innocent blood, which was offered up with
heroic courage for the defence of the old law. The
masses do not recognize the right of such men, they
execute or hang them when they can compass it, but the
coming generations place these executed men on
pedestals and show them honor. And is not he himself
such an exceptional man?
But his whole being is roused against the act. It is
altogether too shameful, far too disgusting. To kill a
little old woman with an axe! All his pride, all the
nobility in his nature, shrinks and groans.
Still the days roll on — and there is no other way out;
slowly, slowly he becomes familiar with the idea; by
the strangest accident he learns a time when the old
woman on a certain evening will be alone ... it is as if
a corner of his coat had been caught on the wheel of a
machine, which winds him in with it, and with a
commingling of determined resolution and child-like
recklessness, in a moment of crime, he accomplishes the
murder — and still another murder; for her sister, a
simple and good old being, comes in just as Raskolnikof
has begun to investigate the drawers and chests of his
victim, and he strikes her down with another blow.
But he was not equal to the task, or too nobly
constituted for the misdeed, — just as you may regard it. He
can commit murder in a somnambulistic insanity, but he
does not know how to steal. He only appropriates one
or two worthless things; with the greatest difficulty he
escapes the fate of being arrested on the spot, and now
begins that period of his life when he is in no condition
to do anything else than brood over his misdeed. He
obliterates all material traces of it; but he is absorbed
in the thought of concealing it, and betrays himself
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