Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion: From Hearing to Listening

Author(s): Daniel Schümann

Source: Ulbandus Review , 2014, Vol. 16, HEARING TEXTS (2014), pp. 6-23
Published by: Columbia University Slavic Department

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 Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion:
From Hearing to Listening

Daniel Schümann

University of Bamberg

Dostoevsky and the Psychology of Perception

Among the many controversial issues of Dostoevsky scholarship

question of whether or not the Russian author created psycholog
convincing characters. Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote that Dosto
was "the only psychologist [...] who was able to teach me someth
It seems amazing that this statement has not lost its validity for
readers in spite of roughly one and a half centuries of psycho
research which have added more detail to the understanding
human mind than both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche could have for
It has to be noted, however, that not all prominent readers subs
to Nietzsche's enthusiastic praise for Dostoevsky's psychological in
One notable opponent to the stance taken by Nietzsche and othe
Vladimir Nabokov who, in his lectures on Russian Literature, finds faul
virtually all of Dostoevsky's major characters, especially the femal
With his well-known skepticism about the psychological profess
general, Nabokov's appraisal of Dostoevsky could not reach beyon
contention that his "gallery of characters consists almost exclusiv
neurotics and lunatics."2
If one follows Nietzsche's lead, however, Dostoevsky m
considered a master in revealing the psychological mechanis
perception, especially such forms of perception that deviate from
of the majority of people. One possible psychological approach to r

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, vo

nich: dtv, 1999), 147 [my translation]. As early as 1903, this statement was quoted
Shestov (leguda Leib Shvartsman), and it has since resurfaced on various occasio
Lev Shestov, Dostoevski! i Nitshe: Filo^ofiia tragedii, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 4th ed.
YMCA-Press, 1971), 23.
2 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed. and with an introduction
Bowers (San Diego: Harvest, 1981), 109.

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Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion

Dostoevsky consists of tracing back those various "deviating" perceptions

to the factors that shaped them. In doing this, one can gain valuable insights
into the psychological make-up of Dostoevsky's characters, who are often
portrayed as individuals torn between various attitudes toward what they
see, hear, and feel. In the fictitious personae created by the Russian author,
there frequently appears to be a conflict between the various ways of
perceiving the world: a character, such as Goliadkin in The Double, may
see and hear things and people that do not exist in reality, or he may feel,
like Dostoevsky's Underground Man, that 2 + 2 = 5, even when he knows
himself that this is against all empirical evidence. More often than not,
the boundaries between sound judgment and the various pathologies of
perception are blurred in Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky's frequent focus on misperceptions of reality can be
attributed to the fact that the author lived and worked at a time when the

rapid spread of science and technology brought about not only profound
social and economic changes, but also changes in how people perceived the
world around them. The development of periodicals, and their acceptance
by a growing share of the public in the Russian Empire's urban centers,
meant that in Dostoevsky's lifetime, the alphabet and hence the sense
of vision became increasingly important for the reception of complex
information and the perception of reality in general.3 At the same time,
in most rural parts of the country, society was predominandy based on
an oral and aural culture. Through his journalistic enterprises, Dostoevsky
participated actively in the process of giving Russia "an Eye for an Ear,"4
yet he also frequendy reflected on the social and psychological side effects
of this process. It was in the two capitals of Russia where these two main
modes of sense perception, seeing and hearing, clashed most violently,
and this conflict of eyes versus ears cleady has a destabilizing influence on
many of Dostoevsky's individual protagonists.5 Not all of them are able
to reconcile these various modes of perceiving the world. As indicated
by the case of the over-ambitious titular councilor Goliadkin in The
Double, the inability to bring one's own perception in line with what others

3 For general observations on this process see Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy:
The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; repr. 1988).
McLuhan's views of "primitive" societies clearly show a Western bias (in fact he likens
the barely alphabetized Russian society of the Stalinist period to societies in Africa), but
the idea that literacy gradually changes human perception of reality indeed seems to have
been an issue for Dostoevsky, as can be gleaned from many of his works of fiction.
4 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge,
2001), 88.
5 See Konstantine Klioutchkine, "The Rise of Crime and Punishment from the Air of the
Media," Slavic Review 61, no. 1 (2002), 88.

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 Daniel Schümann

perceive can border on mental insanity, whereas in Notesfrom Underground

Dostoevsky highlights the plight of the modern hero who isolates himself
by stubbornly insisting on his individual perception of reality, which clearly
contradicts empirical evidence.
Potentially the most interesting Dostoevsky text to examine in
this context is Crime and Vanishment, a novel deeply rooted in the urba
microcosm of St. Petersburg of the 1860s, a city undergoing what Murray
Schäfer has described as the acoustic changes from town to city.6 It is in thi
environment that Dostoevsky places his protagonist Rodion Romanovic
Raskolnikov, a law school dropout, who murders the pawnbroker Alen
Ivanovna and her half-sister Lizaveta, but finally surrenders himself t
the police. The enduring appeal of Crime and Punishment seems to be based
on Dostoevsky's ability to create not just a fascinating portrait of St.
Petersburg in the 1860s, but an intricate work of art that Roger Anderson
called "a harbinger of Europe's gathering crisis of confidence in humanistic
progress and religious faith."7 The novel ingeniously intertwines the theme
of progress versus faith with the juxtaposition of seeing and hearing, a
aspect that seems to have drawn litde attention so far in the numerous
religious readings of the text. The present paper seeks to redress the
balance by shifting the focus from the perspective of the speaker to th
of the listener in this first of the five "great" Dostoevsky novels.8

Interface of Psychology, Sociology, and Theology

in Crime and Punishment

More than any other of his major novels, Crime and Punishment illustrates
that a focus on the various aspects of auditory perception encoded in
the text can be a highly productive approach to interpreting Dostoevsky.
There is no doubt that Dostoevsky criticism is indebted to Mikhail Bakhtin
for creating the concept of the polyphonic novel, a type of novel which is
designed as a concert of competing and conflicting voices where no single
voice is given predominance by the author and narrator.9 While Bakhtin's

6 See Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World
(Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1977; repr. 1994), 53-67.
7 Roger Anderson, "What Symbols Can't Tell Us: Some Modernist Potentials in Crime
and Punishmentin Uterarische Avantgarde: Festschriftfur Rudolf Neuhäuser, ed. Horst-Jürgen
Gerigk (Heidelberg: Mattes Verlag, 2001), 5.
8 In this paper, I am drawing on some of the ideas presented by Janet G. Tucker, who
contends that "Dostoevsky is intensely visually as well as orally and aurally oriented." See
Janet G. Tucker, Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in Dostoevski's Crime and Punish
ment (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 6.
9 Bakhtin develops this theory in the first chapter of his treatise "Problemy tvorchestva

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Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion

concept helps to explain some of Dostoevski's stylistic innovations, it has

also led to a biased perspective concentrating on issues of speaking rather
than hearing and listening: in their eagerness to support the claim that
Dostoevsky is the father of the dialogic novel, many authors associated
with the Bakhtdn school of criticism have largely overlooked the importance
of hearing and listening in dialogue.10 Similarly^ the critical discussion of
Bakhtin's groundbreaking theory of carnival has not highlighted these
aspects either.11 The bulk of Dostoevsky criticism devoted to media
adaptations also seems to have neglected the auditory side of Dostoevsky's
fiction by paying attention more to the image and the visual scene, rather
than to the audible.12

Dostoevskogo." See Mikhail Bakhtin, Sobranie socbinenii, vol. 2 (Moscow: Russkie slovari,
2003), 42. See also Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics, ed. and tians. Caryl
Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 5-46. There has been a
considerable amount of criticism of this notion. As far as Crime and Punishment is con

cerned, it appears that not all voices present in the novel are equally trustworthy from a
moral or an ideological point of view. Hence it was rightfully stated that in Dostoievsky's
fiction, "authorial intention remains." See Donna Tussing Orwin, Consequences of Con
sciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 48.
See also Bernard J. Paris, Dostoevski's Greatest Characters: A New Approach to 'Notes from
Underground, " Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008), 71.
10 This may have to do with the fact that Bakhtin's theory relies so heavily on the idea of
slovo ("word"), and the production of speech rather than its reception. At any rate, Sylvia
Sasse's highly informative and otherwise well-balanced introduction to Bakhtin's theory
deals with the concept of dialogue without conceiving of it in terms of categories such
as sender versus addressee or orality versus aurality. For additional information see Sylvia
Sasse, Michail Bachtin vur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 2010), 80-98,131—40.
11 So far, the focus of critical endeavors to apply Bakhtin's theory to the theory of mass
media concentrates on his link with the oral tradition in literature. See Iurii Murashov,
"Bakhtin's Carnival and Oral Culture," in Face to Faces: Bakhtin Studies in Russia and the West,
eds. Carol Adlam et al. (Sheffield: Academic Press, 1997), 203—213. Sylvia Sasse (Michail
Bachtin %ur Einführung, 163) mentions, at least in passing, the visual and auditory aspects
in Rabelais. Bakhtin's theory of carnevalistic culture was based on Rabelais's narratives of
Gargantua and Pantagruel.
12 For a discussion of the "graphic afterlife" of Crime and Punishment in a Japanese manga
and an American comic, see Katy Sosnak, "The Many Faces of Raskolnikov: Prestuplenie
i nakavpnie as 1950s Bspaganda," Slavic and East European journal 57, no. 2 (2013): 154—74.
While the cineastic reception of Dostoevsky's The Idiot has even merited a monographic
study, filmic adaptations of Crime and Punishment still seem to be awaiting similar scholarly
attention. See Dunja Brötz, Dostojewskis 'Der Idiot" im Spielfilm: Analogien bei Akdra Kurosa
wa, Sala Gedeon und Wim Wenders (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008). There has been some critical
interest in stage adaptations. For Polish adaptations of Crime and Punishment, see Andrzej
Krupski, Dostojewski w teatrqepolskim (1958—1975), Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis, no. 862
/ Slavica Wratislaviensia 42 (1988): 14—42. See also Joanna Walaszek, Teatr Wajdy: W krçgu
arcydfiel: Dostojewski, "Hamlet, " "Wesele" (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003), 100—26.
For a more general and cross-cultural perspective on this subject up to the early 1970s,

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 10 Daniel Schümann

Through the them

can be seen as deve
profound cultural cri
period in which the m
eroded by the grow
the prosecution of cr
of large-scale migrat
the family gradually
institution. As Russ
rural patterns of li
loss of moral certai
Punishment, Dostoev
the novel around th
various fundamenta
hearing and listenin
hearing and listening

The Ambivalence of Hearing and Listening

in Crime and Punishment

The importance of hearing and listening as a consistent motif organizing

the structure of Crime and Punishment can easily be assessed when
one consults Ando Atsushi's, Urai Yasuo's and Mochizuki Tetsuo's A
Concordance to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. While it does not make
sense to claim that hearing, as a lexical field, is more important than seeing
in Dostoevsky's novel, the following word frequency statistics are certainly
impressive:

slushat' (to listen) - 91

slykhat' (to hear of sth. / about sth.) - 15
slyshat' / uslyshat' (to hear; also: to smell) - 112
podslushivat' / podslushat' (to overhear; to eavesdrop) - 10
prislushivat'sia / prislushat'sia (to listen to sth.; to hearken to sth.) -1613

The diversity of vocabulary denoting modes of auditory perception

indicates the richness of conceptualizations that Dostoevsky offers

see Vladimir Seduro, Dostoevski in Russian and World Theatre (North Quincy, Mass.: The
Christopher Publishing House, 1977).
13 All figures are based on A Concordance to Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment, eds. At
sushi Andö, Yasuo Urai, and Tetsuo Mochizuki, 3 vols. (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center,
Hokkaido University, 1994).

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 Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion 11

readers. As indicated in the text, h

social cohesion, but it can also lead
psychologically and morally. At an
that in Crime and Punishment Dostoe
of what McLuhan found typical of
conversion can be understood as an
eye."14
Raskolnikov grew up in a provincial environment dominated by gossip,
hearsay, and aural / oral communication, hence the ear. In contrast, the
Russian capital is the place where this traditional culture has been most
comprehensively replaced by literacy, as well as by visual media such as
theater, art, and pictorial journalism. Thanks to a good education and to
his relatively close ties with his mother and sister, who are still part of their
traditional hearing-centered provincial environment, Raskolnikov unites all
four basic skills of communication: hearing / listening, speaking, reading
and writing. His tragedy seems connected to the fact that for most of the
action, he allows himself to swing between opposite poles of perception
and interaction with the world around him. Having published an article in a
journal, he is about to become a man of the eye. However, as he abandons
his university career and executes his murderous plan, he gradually relapses
into becoming a man of the ear, even reverting to the pre-literary state of
instinctive hearing after the murder scene.
However, with the help of Sonia, Raskolnikov manages to reconcile
seeing and heating through listening to the Holy Scripture. Dostoevsky
links Raskolnikov's moral corruption, which leads to his assumption that
he has a right to kill Alena Ivanovna, to two motifs: the Napoleonic idea,
which is based on a distorted perception of reality triggered by his rather
superficial knowledge of European history, and a chance conversation
between another student and an army officer, which Raskolnikov overhears
in a tavern roughly a month prior to the murders.15 While the other student
talks to his interlocutor about Alena Ivanovna's stinginess, claiming that

14 Perhaps Dostoievsky's preoccupation with the auditory and its religious implications
in Crime and Punishment explains why Nabokov was so critical of this particular text. Na
bokov states: "Just as I have no ear for music, I have to my regret no ear for Dostoevski
the Prophet" See Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 104.
15 See Fedor Dostoevskii, Sohranie sochinenii, vol. 5 (Moscow: Chudozhestvennaia Lite
ratura, 1957), 14—27. Quotations from the novel refer to this edition. SS will be short
for Sohranie sochinenii. Konstantine Klioutchkine convincingly argues that Raskolnikov's
auditory perception is pre-determined by the coverage of criminal cases, stories of crime
detection and the topical feuilletons in the contemporary press. See Klioutchkine, "The
Rise of Crime and Punishment" 102: "His ear is constantly open to the noise of the street,
but what he hears predictably comes from the press."

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 12 Daniel Schümann

he would feel no pan

robbing her, the eav
in his distorted fan
by any moral constr
murderous mind gam
mode of listening, r
on their conversation
psychological point of
Although Dostoevsky
critique of both indis
novel's main eavesdr
casts an extremely ne
in the novel

Negative associations with hearing and listening abound in the first

parts of Crime and Punishment, culminating in and around the murder scene.
There, the theme of auditory perception repeatedly comes to the forefront,
such as when both the pawnbroker and Raskolnikov listen intently at
Alena Ivanovna's door from their respective sides. This type of listening
for danger is not specifically human—animals use their sense of hearing
to avoid dangerous situations and to recognize when their lives are at risk.
Predators listening in search of potential prey also fall into this category.
This category of listening makes use of the auditory apparatus only in the
selfish, survival-oriented interest of the individual, without consideration
or concern for the wider social implications of individual behavior.
After killing the two women with the axe, Raskolnikov manages a
narrow escape from the scene of the crime through instinctive listening
when hiding out in an empty flat. In this context, too, the sense of hearing
is an atavistic remnant from Man's pre-moral past, when human behavior
was guided by the necessity to use one's senses in order to escape lethal
danger. But clearly Raskolnikov is not the kind of amoral, or rather
post-moral, human being that he believes himself to be: as Dostoevsky
ingeniously intertwines his main protagonist's interior monologues with
his actual utterances and the narrator's comments, it becomes obvious that
the voice of Raskolnikov's conscience16 cannot be silenced as easily as he

16 Dostoevsky presents Raskolnikov's conscience as an interior monologue, which is

frequently at odds with what Raskolnikov actually says. Gary Rosenshield has therefo
re apdy described Raskolnikov's inner conflicts in the following terms: "The self that
revolts, the irrational self associated with conscience and compassion, is the self that
Raskolnikov tries to repress, and refuses, almost to the very end, to acknowledge." See
Gary Rosenshield, Challenging the Bard: Dostoevsky and Pushkin, a Study of Literary Relati
onship (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 162. One might also interpret

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 R Shkolnikov's Aural Conversion 13

had anticipated in his brave speculat

the Napoleonic type. For some time
schizophrenic personality shift, and it
imminent loss of perceptive control is
the presumed beating up of his land
police officer's assistant. In this cont
wild under the intense pressure of his
also triggered by a lack of food, as we
crimes. In this scene, Dostoevsky for
Raskolnikov without the help and care
and benevolence he has forfeited:

He could hear a crowd gathering on the landings and all up

the stairs; there were voices, outcries, footsteps running up and
down the stairs, raps, doors slamming. Hut what is it for? What
is it all about? How could it possibly be happening?' he repeated
to himself, seriously wondering if he had gone mad. But no, he
could hear it too plainly for that."

As it soon turns out, his landlady's servant, Nastasia, has heard nothing
of the complex acoustic scenario that unfurls before Raskolnikov's ears.
The violence of this auditory hallucination clearly exposes Raskolnikov's
psychic vulnerability, in spite of his idealistic illusions about possessing
a "Napoleonic" personality.18 He already implicitly gives himself away as

Raskolnikov's dreams as "heralds of his suppressed guilty conscience" ("Boten seines

verdrängten schlechten Gewissens"). See Horst-Jürgen Gerigk, Dostojewskijs Entwicklung
als Schriftsteller: Vom "Toten Haus" %u den "Brüdern Karamasow" (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer,
2013), 89. Diane Oenning Thompson pinpoints Raskolnikov's conscience in the con
fession scene: "The dialogue with Sonia is gradually becoming a dialogue with his own
conscience." See Diane Oenning Thompson, "The Problem of Conscience in Crime and
Punishment" in Celebrating Creativity: Essays in Honour of Jostein Bertnes, ed. Knut Andreas
Grimstad (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1997), 200. Trying to detect the voice of a social
conscience in Raskolnikov, as some Marxist interpreters did, appears to be less convin
cing. See Valerii Kirpotin, Ra^ocharovanie i krushenie Rodiona Raskol'nikova: Kniga o romane F.
M. Dostoevskogo "Prestuplenie i naka^anie " (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1970), 434—5.
17 Fedor Dostoevskii, Crime and Punishment, ed. George Gibian, 3rd ed. (New York: Nor
ton & Company, 1989), 97.
18 It is debatable whether Raskolnikov's moral experiment should be linked to a certain
philosophical system. His tendency to believe in the power of strong individuals, how
ever, means that he can much more adequately be described as "a disillusioned idealist"
than as a "disillusioned socialist". See Malcolm V. Jones, "Raskol'nikov's Humanitari
anism," in Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea House
Publishers, 2004), 41.

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 14 Daniel Schümann

the murderer more t

confess, and he grad
against him. Howev
understands and wh
Punishment, it becom
sustain his mental eq

Antisocial Listening in Crime and Punishment

As the novel progresses, the theme of auditory perception is gradual

extended from Raskolnikov to two other characters: the police detecti
Porfirii Petrovich and the hedonistic Svidrigailov, and it is within th
context that the theme of hearing brings the community back in
Raskolnikov's life. Porfirii questions Raskolnikov about the murders usi
fairly unconventional methods. What he wants to hear is a confessio
and he repeatedly attempts to achieve this with his tactics of surprisi
Raskolnikov. In one situation, he even places an eavesdropper in t
adjoining room. However, this strategy fails when the painter Nikolai take
the blame for the murders, leading the eavesdropper, a furrier who h
witnessed Raskolnikov's return to the scene of the crime, to believe th
Porfirii wrongfully suspects Raskolnikov of the murders (cf. SS 5, 371-3).
The theme of eavesdropping gradually assumes the role of a leitmot
organizing a subplot of the novel; Joseph Frank has rightly described this
"Dostoevsky's ingenious variation on the convention of eavesdropping."
This type of listening eventually becomes the trademark of the debauchee
Svidrigailov, a highly complex character who, in many respects, serves as a
contrast to Raskolnikov.22

19 See Sylvia Sasse, Wortsünden: Reichten und Gestehen in der russischen Literatur (München
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009), 100.
20 In terms of auditory perception, one may apply a concept developed in musicologi
sound studies to Raskolnikov's state of mind after the murders, namely that of a "c
present polyphony of auditory experience of the perceptual and imaginative modalitie
See Don Ihde, "Auditory Imagination," in The Auditory Culture Reader, eds. Michael B
and Les Back (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 62. In the printed novel, this duality of real and im
ginary voices is typographically marked by the juxtaposition of hyphens for direct spee
and quotation marks for Raskolnikov's thoughts and fantasies.
21 See Joseph Frank, Dostoevsiy: The Miraculous Years 1865-1871 (Princeton: Princet
University Press, 1995), 115.
22 It is often claimed that Svidrigailov has an "immoral nature." See Ernest J. Simmo
"The Art of Crime and Punishment" in Dostoevskii, Crime and Punishment, ed. George G
an, 521. Rudolf Neuhäuser calls Svidrigailov "a man with a genetically deviant sexualit
("ein sexuell abartig veranlagter Mensch"). See Rudolf Neuhäuser, F. M. Dostqjevskij: d
grossen Romane und Erzählungen: Interpretationen und Analysen (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1993

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Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion 15

Svidrigailov accidentally manages to

able to accomplish: through the cl
successfully eavesdrops on Raskolniko
Sonia.23 This is the culmination of a
in Crime and Punishment, which high
people's conversations, especially se
mutual trust that lies at the very fo
While the innkeeper in the taver
confesses to Raskolnikov that he has
no attempt to hide his listening pose
use the ploy of clandestine listening.
eavesdropping furrier on behalf o
Raskolnikov has clearly broken.24 Svi
have these higher motives. He is a h
from listening in on Raskolnikov's
and his acoustic voyeurism graduall
objective seems to be to share the b
as the presumed sexual abuse of a
commits suicide, and a dubious role in
What sets Raskolnikov apart fro
develops the theme of listening in th

64. However, there are also more positive a

as Seeley's view that "he is always honest w
about himself." See Frank Ftiedeberg Seele
nikov and Svidrigailov, 82. Generally, moral
be a concern for Svidrigailov, since he mak
when his wife Marfa Petrovna turns her o
Ivanovna's death, Svidrigailov also takes pr
siblings are provided for financially (cf. SS
character remains, he seems to pass an impl
his life.

23 Following Nabokov's criticism of Dostoe

element of the plot. Gerigk calls it a "dow
zu phantastische Konstruktion"). See Gerigk, D
However; Dostoevsky seems to strain the re
deeply asocial character of eavesdropping.
24 Johae even went so far as to liken Porfir
to hear the sinner's confession of guilt, to s
towards the expiation of his crime throug
an iconography of Dostoevsky's 'Crime and
Tradition, eds. George Pattison and Diane
University Press, 2001), 178.
25 It must be said that not all readers found
psychologically. In psychoanalytical criticism

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16 Daniel Schümann

illustrate this point,

meaning of hearing a
of both verbs are fa
understanding heari
and listening as an a
in recent scholarship
verbs overlaps to a ce
certain stages in Ra
development, which p
to socially involved, p
first publication of C
debate over the issu
restored in the epilo
(LT 5, 573) in the epi
ending of Crime and
epilogue."28 Harold
However, it appears
way he perceives the
Raskolnikov's devel
and it appears that
animal, the destitut
the streets of the R

"is not merely Raskolnik

does what Raskolnikov
fession," in Raskolnikov
Svidrigailov's familiar an
the contrary.
26 See
Hillel Schwartz, "T
27 Janet G. Tucker expr
pacities: 'Terhaps he can h
Orthodox Response in Do
only in the epilogue. My
turning point in Raskoln
28 Bakhtin, Problems of D
29 See Harold Bloom, "In
Harold Bloom (New Yor
speaks of "the lack of m
"Christianity as Active Pit
30 The term "conversio
and Mystery, the Narrativ
Crime and Punishment, e
Mind to Murder (Boston:
on in Russian literature,
development. See Sasse, W

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 Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion 17

music, and urban noises, and he im

St. Petersburg.31 This form of audito
listening for atmospheric changes.
emotions, such as fear, hunger, an
only a short-term benefit and lacks a
of what the listener wants to hear. What is more: it is an urban survival

strategy involving considerable social risks. Raskolnikov wanders around

listening in order to re-establish his ties with society, from which he has
excluded himself in multiple ways long before he commits the murders.
First he excludes himself by leaving his provincial home town for the
challenges of life in the Russian capital. Later, he excludes himself by no
longer attending his university lectures, and then engaging in his dangerous
mind games based on the "Napoleonic idea." Without a regular interlocutor,
a patient listener, who can put Raskolnikov's ear-induced phantasmagorias
back into the proper social and moral perspective, mental insanity seems
to be the inevitable result of too much indiscriminate hearing, as well as of
too much selfish listening.

Social Listening in Crime and Punishment

As opposed to Svidrigailov, Dostoevsky allows Raskolnikov to develop

a mode of listening that transcends the narrow boundaries of selfish,
animal-like, competitive listening. This type of listening is a reciprocal
mode of perception, one in which social values and common faith prepare
the ground for a careful selection of what one wants to hear and to whom
one listens. It has long been noted that the sense of hearing is crucial for
creating solidarity and cohesion within a society. Immanuel Kant knew this:
in his treatise Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, he describes his
general observation that a person who becomes deaf later in life becomes
socially isolated much more quickly and much more fundamentally than a
person who turns blind.32 Apparendy a lack of trust in one's eyesight alone
ultimately leads to a weakening of social bonds. This may be because for
deaf people, listening cannot function as a reciprocal mode of perception.
For them, most confidence-building strategies of social interaction are
dependent upon the sense of vision.
In Crime and Punishment, reciprocal listening is characteristic of the
Raskolnikov-Sonia relationship, but the theme is hinted at much earlier in

31 Foi more information on the term "soundscape" see Schafer, The Soundscape.
32 See Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, transi, and ed. Robert
B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 52.

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 18 Daniel Schümann

the novel. Significantl

traces of this type
Sonia's father, the e
novel's "first epiphan
ruined life, and this
Sonia. Although th
spoken by Marmelad
narrator makes it c
Raskolnikov takes a
seems to be one of th
A truly reciprocal
the keen attention of the listener—it needs an occasional reversal of

the roles of listener and speaker. Only in the Raskolnikov-Sonia subpl

does listening become a two-sided, reciprocal and thoroughly reflectiv
process in which both sides are prepared to assume the role of the listener
Raskolnikov pays two visits to Sonia in her apartment, and for most
these scenes Sonia listens to Raskolnikov's confession. Significant
though, the roles change during Raskolnikov's first visit to Sonia: he a
her to read the Lazarus story from the New Testament (cf. TT 5,339-41),3
and this time he listens. At first glance, this scene seems to echo an earlie
one in which the detective Porfirii asks Raskolnikov whether he believes in

the resurrection of Lazarus; Raskolnikov replies in the affirmative (cf. TT

5,271). However, it is not completely clear whether he really believes in the
Biblical tale, as can be gleaned from the stammer preceding his answer. It
appears that Raskolnikov stammers here because he cannot yet believe in
what he has heard (rather than read) on numerous occasions: that a certain
Lazarus of Bethany, recently deceased, can rise from the dead, just because
Jesus Christ says that he will.
Perhaps this typographically rendered speech impediment in the
dialogue can also be attributed to the fact that matters of faith have
no place in the relationship that the police detective forms through his
listening, which is essentially a one-sided activity. Porfirii's listening is part
of a state-controlled system of auditory surveillance, which Murray Schäfer

33 Robert Louis Jackson, "Philosophical Pro and Contra in Part One of Crime and Punish
ment" in Kaskolnikov and Svidrigailov, 23.
34 Parts has described Raskolnikov's attitude in this scene with the help of the Christian
category of pity. See Parts, "Christianity as Active Pity in Crime and Punishment67.
35 It has already been established by Dostoevsky scholarship how important this Biblical
narrative was for the author, as can be seen from the markings contained in Dostoevsky's
personal copy of the New Testament. See Irina Kirillova, "Dostoevsky's markings in the
Gospel according to St John," in Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition, 47.

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 Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion 19

has called "The Ear of Dionysius."3

justifications in crime detection and
a legally relevant confession is devoid
basis of the Raskolnikov-Sonia relat

Listening as a Pathway to Faith

Interestingly, the theme of heating and listening plays a prominent r

in the Biblical Lazarus tale itself. John the Gospel's tale of resurrecti
is presented in such a way that believing and heating / listening ar
inextricably linked with one another: Jesus decides to visit Lazarus' home
upon hearing that he is ill, but it is already too late when he arrives.37 Bef
he works the wonder of raising the man from the dead, he reestablishes
former friendship with Martha, Lazarus' sister. In a short dialogue befor
the scene at Lazarus's tomb, which seems to be mirrored with revers
roles in Raskolnikov's conversation with Sonia in Crime and Punishme
Jesus assures himself of Martha's faith before he addresses God directly:

"Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou
hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the peo
ple standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me."
When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus,
come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound
with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. (John 11:41 -4)

The Biblical wonder recounted by John revolves around the belief in

power of what one has heard, and it is based upon the trust that God
turn will hear the prayers of those who have faith. In other words: it
based upon the worshipper's conviction that his relationship with G
will eventually become one of reciprocal hearing / listening.38 Significantl

36 Murray Schafer, "Open Ears," in The Auditory Culture Reader, 38.

37 It has been argued that Jesus intentionally waits for another two days after hear
of Lazarus's illness before setting out for Bethany, so that he will perform not just
act of healing a sick man, but work the wonder of raising a dead man. See Beate Gla
Zuhören verwandelt: Ein pastoralspsychologischer Beitrag %ur Telefonseelsorge auf bibeltheologischer
personsyntrierter Grundlage (Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 2005), 167-9.
38 As an interesting aside, one may mention that in the German language, there i
specialized verb to denote God's hearing of Man's prayers: erhören (as opposed to hö
"to hear"). Presumably, it is modelled on the Latin augmented form exaudire, and it is o
rarely used outside religious contexts, at least in modem German. See Jacob Grimm
Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1862), 85
Whereas in English, this specialized religious meaning of the verb to hear is marked
archaic inflexional forms, the Russian Bible uses a combination of the archaic vocat

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 20 Daniel Schümann

the idea of a bond o

foundation of this
are orphans in the en
seen as a kind of com
The fact that Lazarus
command to do so hi
spirituality, rather
the story, there is
the scene from the
the apparent lack of
it clear that the impl
the part of Jesus in
who do not (yet) sh
of Jesus's resurrect
demands that he see
side (cf. John 20:29)
be gathered from cum
Through the Lazar
redemption, we can
linked in the theme o
to share the author's
the progression from
into human society a
not be initiated with
occasional reversal of
to Sonia's father Ma
and later to Sonia's re
confession in return).

case (ptcbe) and the perfec

to ycAHmaA Mem K h 3
described elements — ver
of reciprocity.
39 See W. Mundle in Theol
Erich Beyreuther, and H
Rolf Brockhaus, 1972), 7
40 The dramatic pattern
arship. See Alexander J. Bu
and 12 (Lewiston: The E
41 Dostoevsky's narrator stresses the fact that for Sonia herself the rea
ding from the Gospel is a way of making her own confession heard, as can
be seen in the following narrative insertion in the flow of the Lazarus tale:
"[...] h, Kax 6h ôoabho nepeueAH Ayx, Cohh pa3AeAbHO h c chaoio npoiAa, tohho caMa
bo BceycAhnnaHne ncnoBeAOBaAa [...]" (SS 5, 340). Jessie Coulson's translation of the

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Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion 21

social bonding, as it creates an implic

the listener, and this is what sets the
the other instances of hearing and lis
and Porfirii Petrovich are shown list
the implicit objective of re-integra
their attempts, neither of them, nor
form the same mutual listening bond
ability stems from both the social and
Both Raskolnikov and Sonia are soci
of their isolation from society, and
both of them are portrayed as seeker
be replaced by the kind of social cont
offer Raskolnikov, nor by the compl
suggests to him.

Raskolnikov's Aural Redemption

Raskolnikov stubbornly clings to his atheist convictions for much of

novel. Although he faithfully executes the acts of public penance t
Sonia imposes on him and proves himself worthy of Porfirii's trust
his good conduct, it is not until the last pages of the epilogue that
finally seems to embrace Soma's faith. His behavior also does not s
that he really believes in the Biblical wonder of Lazarus's resurrection
he had claimed when questioned by the police detective). Significant
the religious volte-face in the plot is introduced by an intense visual
auditory experience, one that once again links the theme of percept
with issues of faith. As Raskolnikov sits alone outside his Siberian p
colony on the banks of the Irtysh River, distant sights and sounds ming
and set his mind in motion:

Raskolnikov went out of the shed on to the bank, sat down on

a pile of logs and looked at the wide, solitary river. From the
high bank a broad landscape was revealed. From the other bank,
far away, was faintly borne the sound of singing. There, in the im
mensity of the steppe, flooded with sunlight, the black tents of
the nomads were barely visible dots. Freedom was there, there
other people lived, so utterly unlike those on this side of the
river that it seemed as though with them time had stood still,

passage runs as follows: "[...] and drawing a painful breath, Sonya read clearly but stron
gly, as though she herself were confessing her faith for all to hear [..Dostoevskii, Crime and
Punishment, ed. George Gibian, 276 [emphasis mine].

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22 Daniel Schümann

and the age of Abr

[...] Raskolnikov sat
on the farther ban
he thought of noth
tormented him.42

Although the visual

it is the acoustic si
hitherto unproducti
many readers find s
that Dostoevsky in
St. John in this pas
of Raskolnikov's con
by stressing the abs
the protagonist "alm
on in Raskolnikov t
she reads as he fall
Dostoevsky seems to
gives Raskolnikov's
previously unthinka
din and hubbub of S
can be argued that in
narrative, hearing an
seeing serves only as
As Raskolnikov mu
River that same nigh
Lazarus once again e
Testament he has as
power of vision and
explanation of the
received remembran
instead. This suggests
eye when it comes to
what is rationally evi
that he reserves for t
is anything more to
He does so by allowi
listening to reciproca

42 Dostoevskii, Crime an
43 See George Gibian's fo

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Raskolnikov's Aural Conversion 23

speaker-listener relationship that is c

early Christian communities.44
Whether this enables Raskolnikov's
to be heard by God is a matter of fait
silence eventually prompts the reader
as a stimulus to a similar conversio
seems to be precisely this missionary
has caused Dostoevsky to fall out o
in his obsession with the visual an
this narrative strategy in the leas
applications of the auditory presen
such as prophesy, confession, and
thinker with a mind for an ear like
Raskolnikov's redemption psycholo
subject of a new paper, but our prese

44 Carol Harrison has highlighted the notio

of Listening in the Early Church (Oxford: O
features of early Christian prayer, such as t
derstood as indications of the transformativ
have upon the individual [..Gerigk has inte
to return Christianity to its mythic origin
tums"). See Horst-Jürgen Gerigk, "Prometh
und Strafe und Belyjs Petersburg," in Mode
Uerlings (Munich: Fink, 2006), 130. The rea
rence to Adam's flocks in the epilogue. Ho
faith and on individual ethics, both of whic
relationship, the early Christian communitie
the Old Testament, let alone that of Greek
45 Janet G. Tucker (Profane Challenge and O
nishment, 233) interprets the didactic ten
Dostoevsky, Raskol'nikov and the target re
from the written text." I would argue that i
central than orality, since listening forms t
presses orally—most importantly his conf
man society, possibly even into the fold of

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