The power of the novel consists of the exhaustive analysis of the motives and reac tions of a man who is on the verge of insanity and yet who is shown to be responsible for his deeds. Dost6yevsky had in his own life made a first-hand acquaintance with the lives of the poorest and most degraded people. He under stood, as few have, their trials and temptations and he deploys before the reader a remarkable series of scenes in a style evidently greatly in fluenced by Charles Dickens as well as by Gogol, "the Father of Russian Realism." The descriptions of the murder, of the meeting of Raskolnikof and Marmeladof at the low traktir, where the drunkard tells his life-story, of the funeral-dinner given by Marmeladof's widow and the dramatic appearance of Sonya among the queer persons present, who draw back from her as from the plague, and of the life of the exiles in Siberia, which DostOyevslcy knew at first-hand— all these and many more are por trayed with a masterly pen. The beautiful and touching epilogue where Raskolnikof comes to himself lifts the tale from a wholly sordid, depressing, gloomy and pessimistic tragedy into the serene light of optimism: it fully repays for the long pages of hypochondriacal psycho logical analysis, which however microscopic and scientific are yet morbid and unwholesome.
'Crime and Punishment' was regarded as the greatest literary event of the year 1866. It made a vast impression. It is said that it was immediately followed by a murder com mitted by a student at Moscow in almost pre cisely the same way as that described by Dos tdyevsky. He himself remarked that he seemed °to be like a criminal who had committed some terrible deed that weighed on his conscience.° It was anonymously translated into English from the French version and published in Lon don in 1885, and in New York the following year. It forms the third volume of the com plete works of Feodor DostOyevsky from the Russian by Constance Garnett. It has been carefully analyzed by the Vicomte de Vogue in his (Russian Novelists' (Boston 1887) and by William Lyon Phelps in his (Essays on Russian Literature' (New York 1916).