Tête-à-tête: The Alienation of Raskolnikov and Caulfied
This is a collage of quotes and misquotes from two classic novels that share a few common elements: The sense of alienation, the absurdities of life, nihilism that defines our existence and so on. So here’s the collection of a few memorable passages, mostly attributed to the two protagonists: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, from Crime and Punishment and Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in the Rye.
I
“You are telling your story of this damn world,”
the older guy utters.
“I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored
sometimes when people tell me to act my age,”
Caulfield retorts so sharply the words would cut.
“Sometimes I act a lot older than I am;
I really do,
but people never notice it. People never notice anything.”
Yeah, indeed, “To go wrong in one’s own way
is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
The thick Russian accent was too apparent,
just like the Nagamapal road
is synonymous with filth and garbage.
“I tell my own story
because I want it just like that.
All along, I was surrounded by phonies...
They were coming in the goddamn window.
Man, I don’t exactly know what I mean by that,
but I mean it.”
II
I did not bow down to you;
I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.
Raskolnikov can hear the voice
as if some unknown notes sprang from the underground,
guiding him through the streets of humankind,
drowned in its own pond of puke.
“I felt so lonesome,
all of a sudden.
I almost wished I was dead,”
Caulfield always has a reply or two.
Poverty is no vice for him.
After all, his life is not bleak;
he has no worry for the rent;
and there is no landlady to bring him breakfast who nags about the rent all day, every day.
“I am always saying
‘Glad to’ve met you’ to somebody
I’m not at all glad I met.
If you want to stay alive,
you have to say that stuff, though.”
It is reassuring to hear from the junior,
“People never notice anything.”
Possibly, not even their own loneliness.
“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth,
nothing easier than flattery.”
Sometimes he acts more than his age.
No wonder then, when Caulfield thinks aloud,
there are always his thoughts to remember for good.
“Among other things,
you’ll find that you’re not the first person
who was ever confused and frightened
and even sickened by human behaviour.
You’re by no means alone on that score,
you’ll be excited and stimulated to know.
Many, many men have been just as troubled
morally and spiritually as you are right now.”
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
the deeper the grief, the closer is God!” Raskolnikov recites.
“I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much
for most of the other stuff in the Bible.
Take the Disciples, for instance.
They annoy the hell out of me,
if you want to know the truth.
They were all right after Jesus was dead and all,
but while He was alive,
they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head.
All they did was keep letting Him down.
I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples.”
III
“What’s your crime?”
“It was I who killed the old pawnbroker woman
and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.”
Death was no boundary.
Murder is even more unknown.
You know nothing is true and everything is permitted, even death.
The old Nietzsche would say,
combining all his poetry and philosophy.
Raskolnikov does believe, as his creator scribbles,
“If there is no God, everything is permitted.”
Their rambles would go on as much as life would
—Caulfield knows it, so does Raskolnikov—not necessarily
embodying the essence as rationalists would want it to be.
Raskolnikov invites Caulfield to his garret,
no matter how dingy it is—any boarding is no better.
He tells his feelings about Sonya Semyonovna.
He says, “Bro, I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden.
I almost wished I was dead.”
Both of them wonder if there are reasons beneath the broken-handled coffee mugs, or underneath the layers of our mundane existence.
“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
His red hunting hat is the proof.
Caulfield knows better when he shoots people with it.
Everyone knows sixteen is sweet, if not knowing life.
Death is overrated.
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Great news for Dostoevsky’s fan. You can read Crime and Punishment
on Project Guttenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2554/2554-h/2554-h.htm
and on Bartkeby.com http://www.bartleby.com/318/
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