Universal Universal literature

Franklin Darrem

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless vermin. He also commits this murder to test his own hypothesis that some people are naturally capable of such things, and even have the right to do them. Several times throughout the novel, Raskolnikov justifies his actions by comparing himself with Napoleon Bonaparte, believing that murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose.

Crime and Punishment

Marcel Marcel Proust

Where does one start? During the last few weeks my reading has been disrupted by a burst water main, various home repairs, a bout of minor illness and of course by work. I started Within a Budding Grove during a long weekend where I thought I'd have uninterrupted time to enjoy it. I wasn't so fortunate. In fact there were times in which a week would pass and I wasn't able to read a single page. It's lucky then that Within a Budding Grove is a masterpiece. It's lucky that Proust is an extraordinary writer. Without the sheer quality of the book I'd have had to abandon it part way through (which I have done once before). As it was though each time I dipped into it I was refreshed by it. That sounds trite, but the truth sometimes is.

Within a Budding Grove

Nikolai Nikolai Gogol

One morning, a barber and his wife are munching on some breakfast when he finds a nose in his bread roll. He recognizes the nose-it belongs to one of his clients, Collegiate Assessor Kovalev. Neither of them is particularly grossed out by this. Still, the barber's wife gets mad at her husband's carelessness, drunkenness, and general crappiness, and she demands that he take the nose away. After some misadventures in the streets, the barber ends up throwing it away into the river. That same day, Collegiate Assessor Kovalev wakes up and realizes that his nose is gone. He is embarrassed about having to go outside like this and covers his face with a handkerchief. Suddenly, on the street, he sees a highly decorated civil servant get out of a carriage and go into a mansion, and is shocked to realize-it's his nose. Kovalev follows the nose, but when he gets close enough to talk to him (it?), he gets all stressy about speaking to someone so much higher ranking. The nose denies being his nose and goes about its day like a total weirdo. Kovalev first tries to get the police involved and then tries to put an announcement in the paper, but all he gets for his troubles is a lot of social awkwardness and rudeness. Finally, he decides that this is obviously the work of the mother of a girl he's been flirting with but not actually proposing to. He gives up and goes home, but just then a policeman shows up with the nose. Kovalev can't get the nose to stick on his face and a doctor he summons refuses to help... because the doctor is actually the nose in disguise, making its escape. Um, okay? Depressed, Kovalev writes an angry letter to the girl's mom, but she writes back that she has no idea what he's talking about and is more than psyched for him to marry her daughter. Meanwhile, the nose is making TMZ-style headlines wherever it goes. Two weeks later, Kovalev wakes up and discovers... the nose is back on his face. He goes outside, feeling all smug about the size of his nose compared to the noses of the other men he sees. Life is good, and he decides not to marry that girl after all. Then the narrator pops into the story to say that it all kind of sounds like nonsense, and who would publish this kind of thing anyway?

The Nose

The Guermantes Way presents a troubling portrait of levity in the face of great loss. Proust began work on the version we know today of the third volume in his series after the outbreak of fighting in 1914, when Paris had all but shut down and the future of Europe looked grim. Over the course of the narrative, Marcel's beloved grandmother dies, and Charles Swann, a central figure for him since childhood, reveals himself to be close to death. Moreover, our closer look in this volume into the old aristocracy-which will lose disproportionate numbers in the war to come, mutterings of which hostilities Proust has shifted back to this earlier date-shows it to be a spectacular but obsolete world that is already drifting to an end. The reaction of the living to these frightening realities is to surround themselves with frivolities and distractions. The band plays on, even after the lights have gone out.

Universal Universal literature

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