Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read Free Book Online Page B

Reading).
    A personal debt is owed to those who have read parts of the draft at various stages: Catriona Kelly, Iain Rogers, Dmitry Shatalov, Richard Short, Adrian Tahourdin, James Womack, Sarah Young. For helping to answer intractable queries I thank Alexander Ilichevskii, Alexander Krasovitsky, Nina Kruglikova, Aleksandr Rodionov and especially Boris Tikhomirov. The Dostoyevsky reading group run in Oxford by Muireann Maguire and attended by the late Diane Oenning Thompson provided vital stimulation. For valuable comments on my Introduction and Notes I thank Malcolm Jones, Andrew Kahn, Eric Naiman and Anna and Thomas Ready. The support of Wolfson College (Oxford), St Antony’s College (Oxford) and the Russkiy Mir Foundation has been essential. Without the editorial confidence of Alexis Kirschbaum, I would never have started, and without the skilled guidance of Rose Goddard, Anna Hervé and Ian Pindar, I might never have finished. Anthony Hippisley and Stephen Ryan spared no effort to improve my text.
    Above all, this translation has been a family affair. It was typed up from manuscript by my mother, Marisa, the most responsive first reader one could wish for, reviewed with the greatest discernment by my father, Nigel, willed on from afar by my siblings, Natasha and Tom, graced by the births of two daughters, Isabel and Natalie, and accompanied at every step by my wife, Ania.

Note on Names
    The List of Characters that follows contains the full and alternative names of all the novel’s protagonists, as well as those of the most prominent secondary and episodic characters.
    All Russians have three names – a first name, a patronymic and a surname. Thus: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov or Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailova. The patronymic is the father’s given name with the ending -ovich or -evich for men, and -ovna or -evna for women.
    Russian knows three main modes of address, in descending order of formality: by honorific and surname (Mr Raskolnikov), by first name and patronymic (Rodion Romanovich) and by first name alone. First names and patronymics are routinely shortened or softened in spoken Russian to suggest greater familiarity and affection: thus Rodion may become Rodya or Rodka, and Romanovich may become Romanych. Confusingly for the foreign reader, some diminutive forms of given names are quite distant from the original: Raskolnikov’s sister, for example, who bears the proud and formal-sounding name Avdotya, is most commonly referred to in the text as Dunya and Dunechka.
    Sudden shifts to the use of the affectionate forms of given names are typical of Dostoyevsky’s style and are preserved in translation. It is not just the characters who shift freely and meaningfully between these modes, but the narrator himself, who thereby subtly registers his apparent sympathies and antipathies. A few characters, such as Svidrigailov, are most commonly mentioned by surname alone, thereby creating a sense of distance and perhaps mystery. More common in the stiflingly close-knit world of
Crime and Punishment
is the use of first name and patronymic. Indeed one central character, the investigator Porfiry Petrovich, who declares himself opposed to formality on principle, is given no surname at all; nor is the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna.
    Like Gogol before him, Dostoyevsky makes great play of ‘speaking names’ (such as Marmeladov) for various purposes, notably irony and humour. The possible referents of some surnames are explained in the list that follows. Further comments on names are included in the Notes.

List of Characters
    Characters referred to most often by their surnames
    (stressed vowels are underlined)
    Lebez ya tnikov, Andr ei Sem yo novich : Neighbour of the Marmeladovs and a ‘young friend’ of Luzhin. Works ‘in one of the ministries’. The Russian verb
lebezit’
means ‘to fawn’.
    L u zhin, P yo tr Petr o vich : A middle-aged ‘man of business’