Преступление и наказание

Crime And Punishment

Translated by Constance Garnett

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ-93
 
Д70

ISBN 978-5-9925-1233-5

 
Достоевский, Федор Михайлович.
Д70 
Преступление и наказание / пер. с рус. Констанс 
Гарнет. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2017. — 608 с. 
(Русская классическая литература на иностранных 
языках).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1233-5.

Предлагаем вниманию англоязчыного читателя один 
из самых известных романов великого русского писателя 
Ф. М. Достоевского (1821–1881) «Преступление и наказание» 
в переводе Констанс Гарнет.

УДК 372.8 
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2017

Part I

Chapter I

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came 
out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, 
as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house 
and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who 
provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the 
floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her 
kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time 
he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which 
made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to 
his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the 
contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained 
irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so 
completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows 
that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. 
He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had 
of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to 
matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. 
Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But 
to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, 
irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and 
complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime AnD Punishment
4

lie — no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a 
cat and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely aware of his fears.
“I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these 
trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm… yes, all is in a man’s 
hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It 
would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. 
Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most… 
But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. 
Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to 
chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking… 
of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of 
that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to 
amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything.”
The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the 
bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, 
and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer — all worked painfully upon the 
young man’s already overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench 
from the pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that 
part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, 
although it was a working day, completed the revolting misery of 
the picture. An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for 
a moment in the young man’s refined face. He was, by the way, 
exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, wellbuilt, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank 
into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete 
blankness of mind; he walked along not observing what was about 
him and not caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of talking to himself, to which he 
had just confessed. At these moments he would become conscious 

PArt i

that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very 
weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted food.
He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such 
rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise. Owing to the proximity 
of the Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad character, 
the preponderance of the trading and working class population 
crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, 
types so various were to be seen in the streets that no figure, 
however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such 
accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man’s heart, 
that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags 
least of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with 
acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he 
disliked meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, 
for some unknown reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge 
waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly shouted at him 
as he drove past: “Hey there, German hatter” bawling at the top 
of his voice and pointing at him — the young man stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall round hat 
from Zimmerman’s, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all 
torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most 
unseemly fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling 
akin to terror had overtaken him.
“I knew it,” he muttered in confusion, “I thought so! That’s the 
worst of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail 
might spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable… It looks 
absurd and that makes it noticeable… With my rags I ought to 
wear a cap, any sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. 
Nobody wears such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would 
be remembered… What matters is that people would remember 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime AnD Punishment
6

it, and that would give them a clue. For this business one should 
be as little conspicuous as possible… Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such trifles that always ruin everything…”
He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from 
the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He 
had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time 
he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself 
by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had 
begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues 
in which he jeered at his own impotence and indeci sion, he had 
involuntarily come to regard this “hideous” dream as an exploit to 
be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He was 
positively going now for a “rehearsal” of his project, and at every 
step his excitement grew more and more violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a 
huge house which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the 
other into the street. This house was let out in tiny tenements 
and was inhabited by working people of all kinds — tailors, 
locksmiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living as 
best they could, petty clerks, etc. There was a continual coming 
and going through the two gates and in the two courtyards of the 
house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and at 
once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the 
staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was 
familiar with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these 
surroundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes 
were not to be dreaded.
“If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came 
to pass that I were really going to do it?” he could not help asking 
himself as he reached the fourth storey. There his progress was 
barred by some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out 

PArt i

of a flat. He knew that the flat had been occupied by a German clerk 
in the civil service, and his family. This German was moving out 
then, and so the fourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted 
except by the old woman. “That’s a good thing anyway,” he thought 
to himself, as he rang the bell of the old woman’s flat. The bell gave 
a faint tinkle as though it were made of tin and not of copper. The 
little flats in such houses always have bells that ring like that. He had 
forgotten the note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed 
to remind him of something and to bring it clearly before him… He 
started, his nerves were terribly overstrained by now. In a little 
while, the door was opened a tiny crack: the old woman eyed her 
visitor with evident distrust through the crack, and nothing could 
be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness. But, seeing 
a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened 
the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which 
was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood 
facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a 
diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant 
eyes and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled 
hair was thickly smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over 
it. Round her thin long neck, which looked like a hen’s leg, was 
knotted some sort of flannel rag, and, in spite of the heat, there 
hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow with 
age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every instant. The 
young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.
“Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago,” the young 
man made haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he 
ought to be more polite.
“I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming 
here,” the old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring 
eyes on his face.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime AnD Punishment
8

“And here… I am again on the same errand,” Raskolnikov 
continued, a little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman’s 
mistrust. “Perhaps she is always like that though, only I did not 
notice it the other time,” he thought with an uneasy feeling.
The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on 
one side, and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her 
visitor pass in front of her:
“Step in, my good sir.”
The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow 
paper on the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, 
was brightly lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.
“So the sun will shine like this then too!” flashed as it were by 
chance through Raskolnikov’s mind, and with a rapid glance he 
scanned everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice 
and remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in 
the room. The furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted 
of a sofa with a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of 
the sofa, a dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between 
the windows, chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny 
prints in yellow frames, representing German damsels with birds 
in their hands — that was all. In the corner a light was burning 
before a small ikon. Everything was very clean; the floor and the 
furniture were brightly polished; everything shone.
“Lizaveta’s work,” thought the young man. There was not a 
speck of dust to be seen in the whole flat.
“It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such 
cleanliness,” Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious 
glance at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another 
tiny room, in which stood the old woman’s bed and chest of drawers and into which he had never looked before. These two rooms 
made up the whole flat.

PArt i

“What do you want?” the old woman said severely, coming into 
the room and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him 
straight in the face.
“I’ve brought something to pawn here,” and he drew out of his 
pocket an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which 
was engraved a globe; the chain was of steel.
“But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the 
day before yesterday.”
“I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little.”
“But that’s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell 
your pledge at once.”
“How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?”
“You come with such trifles, my good sir, it’s scarcely worth 
anything. I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one 
could buy it quite new at a jeweler’s for a rouble and a half.”
“Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father’s. 
I shall be getting some money soon.”
“A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!”
“A rouble and a half!” cried the young man.
“Please yourself” — and the old woman handed him back the 
watch. The young man took it, and was so angry that he was on 
the point of going away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere else he could go, and that he had had 
another object also in coming.
“Hand it over,” he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind the curtain into the other room. The young man, 
left standing alone in the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, 
thinking. He could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers.
“It must be the top drawer,” he reflected. “So she carries the 
keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring… And 
there’s one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime AnD Punishment
10

notches; that can’t be the key of the chest of drawers… then there 
must be some other chest or strong-box… that’s worth knowing. 
Strong-boxes always have keys like that… but how degrading it 
all is.”
The old woman came back.
“Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must 
take fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in 
advance. But for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me 
now twenty copecks on the same reckoning in advance. That 
makes thirty-five copecks altogether. So I must give you a rouble 
and fifteen copecks for the watch. Here it is.”
“What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!”
“Just so.”
The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He 
looked at the old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as 
though there was still something he wanted to say or to do, but he 
did not himself quite know what.
“I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona 
Ivanovna — a valuable thing — silver — a cigarette-box, as soon 
as I get it back from a friend…” he broke off in confusion.
“Well, we will talk about it then, sir.”
“Good-bye — are you always at home alone, your sister is not 
here with you?” He asked her as casually as possible as he went 
out into the passage.
“What business is she of yours, my good sir?”
“Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick… 
Good-day, Alyona Ivanovna.”
Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion 
became more and more intense. As he went down the stairs, 
he even stopped short, two or three times, as though suddenly 
struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, 
“Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly… No, 
it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added resolutely. “And how could