Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - VI
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says to Raskolnikof, “that it was only such a wretched
old woman whom you killed; if, on the other hand, your
theory had taken another direction, then your misdeed
might have been a hundred million times more
frightful.” And indirectly, through a dream which
Raskolnikof has, while he is brooding over thoughts of murder
and is frightened at it, there is a description, which, it
is true, is not anywhere pointed directly at the Russian
people, but which undoubtedly is a symbol of the most
sombre representation of the situation. The hero sees
in his dream a miserable, emaciated, light brown
peasant-horse, harnessed to a very large, heavy wagon, which
it cannot possibly draw; but the horse is whipped again
and again by the rough owner of the wagon, without
mercy, over the muzzle, over the eyes, first with one
whip and then with three at a time; the horse groans
and puffs, can scarcely breathe, pulls, stops, tries to pull
again, cannot escape from the storm of blows, and at
last begins, to the general laughter of the men, to kick
back. The horse is whipped again — while some beat
on a drum in addition, one sings a shameless song, and a
woman contentedly cracks nuts — is whipped over the
muzzle and over the eyes. When even several heavy
blows with a wagon pole over the back are not able to
drive the horse forward, the owner seizes a great iron
bar and gives the horse a blow with that. The horse
tries for the last time to pull, then falls down on the
ground and breathes his last. When the social condition
is of the kind described here symbolically, it is no
wonder that sanguinary thoughts spring up in the minds
of the youth.
Even if it is not a political crime which Dostoyevski
has represented, it is a crime which has this in common
with the political, that it is not mean, was not committed
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