this sem i had many books to read, because of the number and types of modules i’m doing. but it’s been good…a little unsatisfactory in part, but very new and interesting in others. and strangely enough, one of the nicest bits came from the text that i only just managed to finish. it was a very strange experience reading this text. all the psychology bits and the feverish sleepwalking somehow gets extended to outside of the book and to whoever’s reading it too, and apparently it’s a text that my lecturer almost fainted in class talking about. so yes, very dense, very personal, very stirring, very painful, very dark, very dreary, and suddenly, very nice at the end.
and for all the big ideas and concepts that it mentions and gets us thinking about, in the end you could even say it’s like a love story buried in the mundane everyday, of two people kept apart by the conditions of their lives, but brought together by a wiser hand.
When Raskolnikov was convicted to serve his sentence in Siberia, Sonya was all ready to give up her entire life in St Petersburg and just go with him, and be with him, support him until he was ready to face life again. and “She and Raskolnikov had never made the slightest allusion to this, but both knew that it would be so.” But at first he continued to be mean to her, not understanding her devoted love for him, not understanding many things that seemed to have driven him into where he was. But finally, one day, he suddenly did something that he himself did not anticipate, nor understand.
“He clasped her knees and wept. For a moment she was terribly frightened, and her face grew white. She sprang up and looked down at him, trembling. But at once, in that instant, she understood. Infinite happiness shone in her eyes; she had understood, and she no longer doubted that he loved her, loved her for ever, and that now at last the moment had come…They tried to speak, but they could not. Tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin, but in their white sick faces there glowed the dawn of a new future, a perfect resurrection into a new life. Love had raised them from the dead, and the heart of each held endless springs of life for the heart of the other.”
maybe that’s how love is enough to give one energy, and to bring two together so closely that they can’t be told apart: “Could not her beliefs become my beliefs now? Her feelings, her aspirations, at least…” thought Raskolnikov.
it takes a long long time to get there. but if at all, won’t it be worth it?
