The following post by Nicoleta Strugari, an undergraduate student at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania, continues the new series of posts highlighting exemplary work by undergraduates with interests in Russian Philosophy and Religious Thought. The NURPRT Forum welcomes any undergraduate student to submit academic writing related to these fields to be considered for publication.
“Papa, why did they … kill … the poor horse!” These are Raskolnikov’s words, the character from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the same Raskolnikov who “pulled the axe out, swung it with both hands, hardly conscious of what he was doing, and almost mechanically, without putting any force behind it, let the butt-end on her head” (Dostoevsky, 73), on the head of the old moneylender.
In nineteenth-century Saint Petersburg, the horse is an animal whose presence is customary, whose hoofs cross the dusty streets of the town. Bound to its carriage and driven by a coachman, this creature seems to have only the function of carrying a city dweller from one place to another. But is this its only role in the novel? Is it just an unimportant detail that, just before his crime, Raskolnikov dreams of a horse killed with bestiality by a man? This horse, whose body is crushed by the wickedness of humans, is caressed by a young Rodion. In his dream, Raskolnikov returns to the position of the child who is filled with tears for the suffering of this horse; nevertheless, he is also able to kill a person just some hours later. The dream scene seems to also be a mirror that Dostoevsky places in front of his character to reveal his bestiality to him, but also its opposite, a human able of love and compassion. The role of this living being that carries its carriage to the other side of the town in the same foggy night in which Raskolnikov puts on his coat and goes to the old moneylender’s house remains to be seen.
In this text I will analyze the role of the horse as it appears in two important moments in the novel: when it produces the death of a human, with Marmeladov’s accident, and when this animal is killed by a human, in Raskolnikov’s dream. This dichotomy seems to be a mirror of the main character’s soul that struggles with two opposite tendencies, to be a victim or to be a murderer.
In the city’s landscape, animals are almost absent, with the exception of horses. Even so, horses do not occupy a central place either. Animals leave their mark in an indirect way, without a certain function.
A cat, for example, does not have a physical appearance in the novel. On the town’s streets there is not even one cat going for a walk, and the word “cat” appears three times only. In all of these instances, though, “cat” designates some behavior of the characters: their desire to hide, to go unnoticed, to lie in wait. From the first pages, the way in which Raskolnikov hides from his landlady is described by the narrator with behaviors that belong to cats: he “creeps downstairs as softly as a cat” (1). Then, when Raskolnikov steals the axe for the murder, he behaves in a similar way, he dodges: “He flung himself towards the door, listened, seized his hat, and crept as stealthily as a cat down his thirteen stairs” (66). Animals, then, are not entirely absent; a cat describes a game of the characters, a hunting. At the beginning, Raskolnikov is the one who slips from his house to plan in detail his murder, but then he is tracked by Porfiry Petrovich, the case investigator who slips “quietly, like a cat” (429) in Raskolnikov’s house and then in his mind, to make him confess his sin. Despite their apparent unimportant presence, even cats have a role in emphasizing the character’s behaviors. This gives us further reason to not ignore the horse, which has a role in the protagonist’s reflection. The number of times horses appear in the novel is insignificant; however, what it is interesting is the moment and the way in which this animal is found in the economy of the novel. Carrying on its back the entire bustle of Saint Petersburg, this living being is found when death is present: when a character dies, Marmeladov who is trampled by horses, when this animal its end, killed by man, and, with greater intensity, when the crime appears in the main character’s conscience, in his divided personality.
The three elements of death: death of the animal, death of human because of animal and the idea of murder are bound together and bring to light the idea of a human’s animality, suggesting it within an ensemble of events that place man in different situations with a common question: is a human a beast?
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Man’s death
“He was too drunk to walk straight, that’s how it was. I saw him crossing the street, and he was staggering about and nearly falling—I shouted, three times altogether, and pulled in the horses; but he went and fell right under their feet! I don’t know if he did it on purpose, or if he was just too unsteady on his legs… my horses are young and skittish—they shied, and he screamed—they got more frightened…” (169)
This is how Marmeladov meets his end, being killed by a horse. In this scene, in which a horse is again present, Dostoevsky describes man’s suffering and his end. Marmeladov is the Dostoevskian character who acknowledges his own fall. He is a father who leaves his wife and children for days, and he wanders ceaselessly, being drunk and spending his family’s last money. His actions have consequences on his entire family, buried in poverty. He himself believes that he has no right to be pitied for his behavior: “No, there is no need to be sorry for me! I ought to be crucified, crucified, not pitied!” (20). Despite his mistakes, this character cannot be seen as a beast, an unscrupulous man. In the episode of his death, the image of the suffering that he experiences awakens pity and forgiveness in the surrounding people. He “had been crushed beneath the horses’ hooves; he was very poorly dressed but his clothes, which were now covered with blood, had once ben ‘respectable’. Blood was flowing from his face and head, and his head was terribly battered and mutilated” (169). He is a victim, taken on other people’s arms. Marmeladov’s suffering is difficult to ignore, especially by Rodion, despite the fact that Sonya’s father is situated on the same level with the old widow—both as victims in Raskolnikov’s initial conception, according to which certain people are inferior to others—and consequently would deserve his death. Raskolnikov sees injustice in the world, that certain people who can bring a “universal good” are condemned to poverty, as his own case, while others who bring no benefit to society and even harm it, as the pawnbroker who treats her sister unjustly, have a life with no worries. He acknowledges his own revolt against the injustice of the world and assumes the role of bringing justice by the murder of a “useless human,” and inferior one, believing that, in this way, he would become a superhuman. “For Dostoevsky, the main problem in this approach is the dehumanization of persons, of the very people who take upon themselves the problem of what they perceive to be evil and attempt to correct it” (Gabor 107). In Marmeladov’s case, though, we see that this hierarchy is no longer present, which shows that Rodion didn’t fully believe his own theory, rejecting his own arguments and showing, in his discussion with Sonya, that he had no right to kill (see Chapter IV, Part V).
Thus, Raskolnikov is “surprisingly agitated” (170) when he sees Marmeladov and offers to pay for a doctor, even if Sonya’s father has no chances of recovering. Dostoevsky makes a transfer here: the human Marmeladov becomes the murdered horse who, even if he lives with no purpose, without bringing any benefits to society, is not seen by others through the eyes of murderers, but with Raskolnikov’s eyes from his youth. Thus, in Marmeladov’s case, suffering brings forth forgiveness, and the image of the horse doesn’t show his bestiality, but the contrary. For Raskolnikov, the way in which he sees him shows the compassion that he is able to feel. He wouldn’t have shown more zeal even if it were his own father.
Here, man is seen during his last moments, in suffering, and his death is caused, even if involuntarily, by horses. Then, in the episode with Raskolnikov’s dream, the horse takes man’s place and is seen, on its turn, in the agony of death. We can see in these paragraphs a comparison of suffering. In Rodion’s dream, the horse is described in its full agony, and, besides paralleling man’s physical harm, its pain awakens in the child’s soul compassion that is similar to human suffering, which is completely absent in the behavior of the mare. Is, then, the lack of compassion an effect of the notion that a human’s suffering is different than that of the animal? In this context, a question arises: do animals suffer?
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The death of an animal
Derrida answers this dilemma, whether animals can suffer, in this way:
No one can deny the suffering, fear or panic the terror or fright that humans witness in certain animals. Some will still try-this is something else we will come to-to contest the right to call that suffering or anguish, words or concepts that they would still reserve for man and for the Dasein in the freedom of its being towards-death. We will have reason to problematize that discourse later. But for the moment let us note the following: the response to the question “can they suffer?” leaves no doubt. (Derrida 27)
What Derrida problematizes here is described in the scene of Raskolnikov’s dream. The mare murdered by Mikolka suffers, and the narrator emphasis it by showing the torments to which it is subjected. “Two men in the crowd got whips, ran to the horse, one on each side, and began to lash at her ribs” (55). “Mikolka was frenzied with rage at not having killed her with one blow” (55), but this animal is individualized and called “the wretched creature” by the narrator, who has compassion on her. Her efforts to remain alive— “the mare staggered, sank down, and then made another effort to get up”—build an image in which the animal, by her gestures, communicates her suffering even if she’s unable to speak. The mare becomes a creator of sentiment. “Moving that quick his coat, bunching, tongues swirling like so many flames. Like the human tongue, the coat of a horse gestures—but there isn’t a focused breath to turn those gestures into speech” (Moe 3) In the personification of the animal, the author emphasizes her despair: “her back legs gave way under her, but she staggered up, tugging and jerking one way and the other to get away” (Dostoevsky 55). Her suffering cannot be ignored. Finally, the mare transforms even her final gestures into language, and her last act is similar to the cry of pain of a human overtaken by death, just as Katerina Ivanovna, another character of the novel, passes away: “The wretched animal stretched out her muzzle, drew a deep, laboring breath, and died” (56).
In this scene, the horse is a victim, while man is the criminal. Through the image of Mikolka, Dostoevsky brings to the surface the potentiality of man to become a beast and to murder and innocent being. If in the first situation we see how man is able of compassion, how he can be a victim, in Raskolnikov’s dream we see the opposite situation: man’s potentiality to murder. In this, the narrator emphasizes more than the suffering of the horse through her individualization: he shows the connection between Raskolnikov and the horse, his potentiality to be both victim and criminal.
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Murder: between victim and criminal
As André Gide points out, “We noticed the disquieting duality by which most of Dostoevsky’s characters are racked and driven, and which prompts Raskolnikov’s friend to say à propos of the hero of Crime and Punishment: ‘It really looks as if there were in him two opposite natures showing themselves in turn’” (106). Certain characters in Dostoevsky represent a duality of human conscience, which is present in double characters—as Myshkin and Rogozhin in the Idiot or Raskolnikov and Svidrigaylov in Crime and Punishment—but also in the contrast that is brought to surface by the personality of a single character, who is filled with love and mercy only to exhibit totally opposite feelings subsequently. Rodion Raskolnikov is such a character. In his conscience, there is a split, suggested by his name that originates from the Russian word “raskol,” to “split.” From the beginning of the novel, the main character manifests this split, his personality and especially his actions being at one extreme—compassion, love—or another—indifference, hatred—and never in the middle. Raskolnikov struggles between the tendency to be a human who cares for those around him—he cares for his sister Dunya and for her fate, for Marmeladov and his family, to whom he offers his last money, for the young woman whom he meets in the park and tries to help—and the thought that compassion makes him weak, which annihilates his desire to be a Napoleon. Confronting this split between the tendency to love and the one to kill, Raskolnikov must make a decision, must choose if he kills or not. To do this, he must also separate himself from one of these two parts between which he is divided.
Thus, right before Raskolnikov’s choice to commit the crime, the narrator brings the scene of the dream by which we have access to the subconscious of the character, where this dichotomy is emphasized. The image of the horse is placed as a mirror before Raskolnikov; in it, he sees more than the split; he sees that he has the potential to be a victim and also a criminal. To build this axe, the narrator brings Raskolnikov back to his childhood. He dreams that he is seven years old again, walking through his town, having his hand held by his father. They come from church. Next to a tavern, Raskolnikov and his father are witnesses to a scene filled with violence. A man named Mikolka kills the old mare with bestiality, claiming all this time that the horse is his property (55) and that he has the right to kill her. Seeing this scene, the child Raskolnikov bursts into tears, wonders why the animal is treated this way, and looks at Mikolka with hatred. “He pushed his way, shrieking, through the crowd to the mare, put his arms round the dead muzzle dabbed with blood and kissed the poor eyes and mouth” (56). The child is the part of Rodion’s soul that opposes the crime, being able of compassion. That part becomes the victim of Mikolka’s bestiality, suffering because of someone else’s suffering. Mikolka is the other tendency of Raskolnikov; he is the criminal, who considers that he has the right to kill because the old mare is seen as useless. For Raskolnikov’s subconscious, the mare is a representation for the old pawnbroker. The moment he wakes up, Rodion realizes that his dream has a connection with his plan and he sees himself in Mikolka’s situation, ready to kill, and he wonders whether he’s able to do it. The tendency of the criminal is stronger, so Raskolnikov kills, but he doesn’t become a superhuman, as he had believed.
The horse no longer shows man to be a victim, as in the case of Marmeladov, nor does it show that man is a mere beast. Man is not overtaken by meanness, nor is he a being deprived of love and compassion. The role of the horse in the economy of the text and especially in this scene is to show that a human is as capable to become virtuous as he is able to become a beast, and these tendencies fight in the mind of the main character. Everything depends on the side that he decides to follow, even if the other side remains in Rodion’s mind even when his choice is made: this is why he finally confesses his deed.
Dostoevsky shows that Raskolnikov is neither a positive nor a negative character. He has the potential to be good or evil, victim or criminal. The role of a horse, in both instances mentioned in the novel, is to provide a mirror for the protagonist, who can become a Mikolka, can be able of authentic love, as the child Rodion, or can be the old mare, the horse as servant, who carries on her back and accepts, just like Sonya, all the bustle of St. Petersburg, as it presents itself.
Image: Franz Marc, Horse Asleep 1913
Works Cited
Berger, Louis. Dostoevsky The Author as Psychoanalyst. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Bullivant, Stephan. “‘A House Divided Against Itself’: Dostoevsky And the Psychology of Unbelief”. Literature and Theology, vol. 23, no. 1 (March 2008): 16-31.
Derrida Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Translation by David Wills. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Di Santo, Michael John. „’Dramas of Fallen Horses’: Conrad, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche”. Conradiana, vol. 42, nr. 3 (2010): 45-68.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and punishment. Translation by J. Coulson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Gabor, Octavian. „Two Kinds of Responsibility in Crime Punishment”. Mundo Eslavo, no.16 (2017): 106-113.
Gide, André. Dostoevsky. New York: A New Direction of Paperbook, 1961.
Moe, M. Aaron. Zoopoetics Animals and the Making of Poetry. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014.