Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Part Five, Chapter 1 commentary

100 Days of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment September 1 - December 10, 2024

100 Days of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment

September 1 - December 10, 2024

November 13

Crime and Punishment Part Five, Chapter 1, 18 pages

Next passage:

November 15

Crime and Punishment Part Five, Chapter 2, 14 pages

Absolutely hilarious chapter!!! Luzhin and Lebezyatnikov deserve each other…

Luzhin is lamenting the fact that the “furniture store refused to return even a single rouble of the deposit for furniture bought but not yet delivered to the apartment.”

What to do now?! “I'm not going to get married just for the sake of the furniture!" - but still, such a financial investment and wasted expenses - with no bride… Luzhin does have a plan up his sleeve - stay tuned…

Why does he befriend and tolerate Lebezyatnikov? He believes that Lebezyatnikov belongs to the type of “organization” that could potentially “expose” Luzhin - and Luzhin calculated that it’s in his rational self-interest to be on good terms with someone who could scuttle his career advancement. He has known men in the provinces who were “exposed” - and is willing to tolerate such a non-entity as Lebezyatnikov - AND his evolved and utilitarian views about the progress of society!!!

Lebezyatnikov is developing Sonya’s mind to condition her for the “commune” - where all love is free and relationships between men and women are open and unburdened by obligations…

“In today's society it is, of course, not quite normal, because it's forced, but in the future it will be perfectly normal, because free. But now, too, she had the right: she was suffering, and this was her reserve, her capital, so to speak, which she had every right to dispose of. Naturally, there will be no need of reserves in the future society; but her role will be designated by a different significance, it will be conditioned harmoniously and rationally.”

Through Lebezyatnikov, Dostoevsky once again engages in the critique of Chernyshevsky’s novel “What Is to Be Done” - please read my earlier notes on the connection between Chernyshevsky, Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” and Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground.”

Chernyshevsky’s ideological defense of equal relationships between men and women, the negotiations of the rules for communal living (discussion of open door policy for community members), and abdication of property and privacy rights turn into mockery in the arguments of Lebezyatnikov who defends striking Katerina on the grounds of equality - since she, a woman, strikes him - he gets to strike her. He is “enlightening” Sonya in the utility of communal living and the benefits of free love - since this could get him access to her services without financial compensation. But, being a total hypocrite, he was responsible for chasing her out of her dad’s apartment - on account of her “immorality.” When Luzhin points out the self-serving aspects of Lebezyatnikov’s ideology, he shouts back:

“We seek woman's freedom, and you have only one thing on your mind...

Setting aside entirely the question of chastity and womanly modesty as in themselves useless and even prejudicial, I fully, fully allow for her chastity with me, because-it's entirely her will, entirely her right. Naturally, if she herself said to me: 'I want to have you,' I would regard myself as highly fortunate, because I like the girl very much; but for now, for now at least, certainly no one has ever treated her more politely and courteously than I, or with more respect for her dignity ... I wait and hope—that's all!"

Luzhin, who didn’t attain his goal with Dunechka, suggests bribery through gifts as a faster way of attaining the goal than consciousness raising…

"Well, you'd better give her some present. I bet you haven't thought of that."

Lebezyatnikov’s interest in convincing Sonya to enter into “free love” with him stems from his interpretation of her entry into prostitution as a revolutionary act of negation of a society which he considers repressive - but of course Sonya’s negation of the social norms could benefit him personally - he uses ideology for his own personal self-interest - a feature that Dostoevsky lambasted in “Notes from Underground”!!!

"You understand n-nothing, I tell you! She's in that sort of position, of course, but the question here is different! Quite different! You simply despise her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly consider worth despising, you deny her any humane regard as a person. You still don't know her nature! Only it's a great pity that lately she has somehow ceased reading altogether and no longer takes any books from me. And she used to. It's a pity, too, that with all her energy and determination to protest-which she has already proved once-she still seems to have too little self-sufficiency, or independence, so to speak, too little negation, to be able to break away completely from certain prejudices and ... stupidities. In spite of that, she has an excellent understanding of certain questions. She understood splendidly the question of kissing hands, for instance-that is, that a man insults a woman with inequality if he kisses her hand. The question was debated among us, and I immediately told her. She also listened attentively about the workers' associations in France. Now I'm explaining to her the question of freedom of entry into rooms in the future society."

But how to convince others that the ideology he is using to achieve his own personal goals is intellectually sound and above reproach?! Depose the intellectual foundations of the past - take the likes of Raphael and Pushkin off their pedestals - and replace the gaping hole with his own ideologically motivated deliberations:

“I, first, I'm ready to clean out any cesspits you like! There isn't even any self-sacrifice in it! It's simply work, a noble activity, useful for society, as worthy as any other, and certainly much higher, for example, than the activity of some Raphael or Pushkin, because it's more useful!"

This is a world where the value of art is determined through its utility - reminiscent of the incident in “Fathers and Sons” where Arkady Kirsanov gently takes a volume of “old fashioned” Pushkin out of his non-enlightened father’s hands and replaces it with a progressive treatise on dialectical materialism… Dostoevsky will continue examining arguments about the “utility” of art in both “The Idiot” and “Demons” - novels we are reading in 2025 and 2026.

Luzhin defends the legality of marriage on both moral grounds (“wearing horns”) and financial grounds (raising other men’s children):

"Because I don't want to wear horns and breed up other men's children—that's why I need a legal marriage," Luzhin said, just to make a reply. He was especially pensive and preoccupied with something.

"Children? You've touched upon children?" Andrei Semyonovich gave a start, like a war horse hearing the sound of trumpets.

"Children are a social question, and the question is of the first importance, I agree; but the question of children will be resolved differently. There are even some who negate children altogether, as they do every suggestion of the family.”

The ideological nihilism of Lebezyatnikov is once again self-serving - setting up a family is costly - just look at Luzhin’s expenses. Ever so much easier to “educate” Sonya and convince her to engage in ideologically enlightened “communal” sex - as long as there are no children as a result of such interactions - since children, too, can be turned into a social issue.

Please keep these ideas in mind - Dostoevsky will engage in an ongoing argument with Chernyshevsky in all of his Great Five - stay tuned!!!

But why did Luzhin invite Sonya - and insist on Lebezyatnikov staying in the room? And why did he show all the money to both Lebezyatnikov and Sonya? Human beings have a boundless capacity for meanness - stay tuned…

Luzhin and Sonya, Crime and Punishment, 1970.