The Idiot - Opening

TOWARDS THE END of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o' clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full stream. It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows.

FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, JULY 2003

Copyright 2001 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Destroyer: An Actor's Revenge

An actor will seek revenge.
I don't know why and I don't know when.
There'll be talk. There'll be action.
Boys demanding satisfaction
From girls. Oh, you'd hate to play a girl!
An actor will seek revenge...

He came on too strong.
He was weird and he was wrong.
A bloodless cop at dawn
Throwing everybody out.
The kids twist and shout until the womb fucking wrecks it!

A boulevardier might say -
"Tomorrow's another day."
Alright, yes, but it's also just another mess!
Crime and Punishment - no, that's not what I meant!

An actor will seek revenge.
I don't know why and I don't know when.
There'll be talk. There'll be action.
Boys demanding satisfaction
From girls. Oh, you'd hate to be a girl!
An actor will seek revenge
Upon the ones who fed him those ridiculous lines
Saying - "What we really need now is an emotional history
Of the Lower Eastside, cause it was wild! It was wild!"
Oh no, here we go again...

(Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da... Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da da ba da!)

Crime and Punishment - pg. 118

ZOOSIMOV was a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty seven. He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linn was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, anad at the same time studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, but it was apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever at his work.

Crime and Punishment - pg. 84

He began, hurriedly dressing, "If I'm lost, I am lost, I don't care! Shall I put the sock on?" he suddenly wondered, "it will get dustier still and the traces will be gone."

Crime and Punishment - pg. 70

He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once brought the axe down, his strength returned to him.

Crime and Punishment - pg. 69

The old woman glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously and mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a sneer in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt that he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened that if she were to look like that and not say a word for another half-minute, he thought he would have run away from her.

Crime and Punishment - pg. 49

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness and extraordinary semblance of realty. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so unexpected, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.

Crime and Punishment - pg. 4

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.

Crime and Punishment - Opening

PART I
CHAPTER I

ON an excepionally 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.

Translated from
the Russian by
CONSTANCE GARNETT


NEW YORK
THE MACMILLN COMPANY
1951


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


PRINTED IN ENGLAND

Crime and Punishment

Destroyer: An actor will seek revenge

An actor will seek revenge.
I don't know why and I don't know when.
There'll be talk. There'll be action.
Boys demanding satisfaction
From girls. Oh, you'd hate to play a girl!
An actor will seek revenge...

He came on too strong.
He was weird and he was wrong.
A bloodless cop at dawn
Throwing everybody out.
The kids twist and shout until the womb fucking wrecks it!

A boulevardier might say -
"Tomorrow's another day."
Alright, yes, but it's also just another mess!
Crime and Punishment - no, that's not what I meant!

An actor will seek revenge.
I don't know why and I don't know when.
There'll be talk. There'll be action.
Boys demanding satisfaction
From girls. Oh, you'd hate to be a girl!
An actor will seek revenge
Upon the ones who fed him those ridiculous lines
Saying - "What we really need now is an emotional history
Of the Lower Eastside, cause it was wild! It was wild!"
Oh no, here we go again...

(Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da... Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da da ba da!)

Op. posth. no. 14

Noises from underground made gibber some
others collected & dug Henry up
saying 'You are a sight.'
Chilly, he muttered for a double rum
waving the mikes away, putting a stop
to rumors, pushing his fright

off with the now accumulated taxes
accustomed in his way to solitude
and no bills.
Wives came forward, claiming a new Axis,
fearful for their insurance, though, now, glued
to disencumbered Henry's many ills


A fortnight later, sense a single man
upon the trampled scene at 2 a.m.
insomnia-plagued, with a shovel
digging like mad, Lazarus with a plan
to get his own back, a plan, a stratagem
no newsman will unravel.