Product Description

Jessie Coulson’s translation provides the text for the Third Edition of this acclaimed Norton Critical Edition. New footnotes have been added, based on discoveries by the leading Soviet Dostoevsky scholar, Sergei Belov. "Backgrounds and Sources", highly praised in the Second Edition, remains unaltered. Included are a detailed map of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, selections from Dostoevsky’s notebooks and letters, and a crucial passage from an early draft of his novel. Noteworthy among the several new "Essays in Criticism" are a little-known but important passage by Leo Tolstoy on Raskolnikov; an essay by Sergei Belov; observations by the Russian literary theoretician and scholar Mikhail Bakhtin; and an essay by the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz. A Chronology of Dostoevsky’s Life and a Selected Bibliography are also included. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15059 in Books
• Published on: 1989-02-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

About the Author
George Gibian is Goldwin Smith Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His honors include Fulbright, Guggenheim, American Philosophical Society, and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. He is the author of The Man in the Black Coat: Russia’s Lost Literature of the Absurd, The Interval of Freedom: Russian Literature During the Thaw, and Tolstoj and Shakespeare. He is the editor of the Norton Critical Editions of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and Gogol’s Dead Souls, and of the Viking Penguin Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader. Professor Gibian’s articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, the Christian Science Monitor, and Newsday, among others.

Customer Reviews

the Coulson translation can't be beat
Just a quick note to point out that if you're gonna read "Crime and Punishment" in English, the Jesse Coulson translation is indisputably the best one published to date.

Avoid at all costs the Garnett translation (as ubiquitous as it is stuffy), and try to keep away from the recently done one, the Pevear and Volokhonsky job (said to be breezy and inaccurate). The Sidney Monas translation (published in the Signet edition) is unimaginative, limp, and lifeless, lacking the oft-remarked vigor of Dostoevsky's prose. No, no: Coulson has never been outdone. Too bad he never did the Brothers K.

The only drawback with the Coulson translation, I must say, is that this guy does inject a lot of British slang, much of which can't be precisely deciphered even with the aid of a good desk dictionary. This is irritating.

However, the clarity and force of his work more than makes up for that shortcoming. He really knows how to make his characters speak differently, his descriptions are vivid and forceful, and the rhythm and dynamism of his prose can really knock you for a loop.

Admittedly, I'm not qualified to state whether all these characteristics were Dostoevsky's own and have merely been faithfully rendered into English by Coulson, or whether Coulson improved upon a stuffy and awkward original, as is perhaps suggested by the plethora of disagreeable translations. All I know is that using this translation will make your descent into Raskolinkov's world much more rewarding and memorable.

I should also note that the Coulson version is the translation employed in the Oxford World's Classics edition, which is also in print and available from Amazon. Naturally, that edition doesn't have all the critical essays the Norton edition has, but its footnotes are far more numerous and superior.

Less a review, more about content in this edition
Everyone knows about C&P; and if you don't, I'm rather surprised you're considering a Norton Critical Edition (regardless, I write this review about the content of this particular edition, and not about how wonderful Dostoevksy is). As usual, the folks at Norton have the best criticism following the text of the novel. From the great writer Tolstoy himself to the brilliant critic Bakhtin, the great literary scholars from all interpretive standpoints offer thoughtful history and criticism of the text. Furthermore, primary documents, including USSR treatises on the teaching of the novel, are also included. For those interested in delving beyond the text of Dostoevsky, Norton has succeeded once again in assembling a powerful lineup of scholarship to accompany a truly great novel.

One of the greatest novels ever written
I cannot emphasise enough just how wonderful this book is. Dostoevsky introduces a set of characters which we all in a way know, and through their completely believable and realistic interactions, expresses powerful, mystical messages. In essence, the story is about a young, intelligent former student, Raskolnikov (similar to Raskol, schism), who by cold, unemotional thought arrives at a sort of nihilism, and even goes so far as to thinking that an "extraordinary person" is justified in taking away a useless, harmful life for the greater good, and then, partially out of an effort to prove that he is such as person, commits a murder which he feels fits this program. At the same time, there is seething conflict inside him; the compassionate, loving side of his personality is revolting against these horrible thoughts. As Razumihin remarks, Raskolnikov is two people living in the same body. In a sense, Raskolnikov's original idea is correct; there is no harm done in removing pure, harmful evil, but one of Dostoevsky's principal messages in this novel is that there is no such thing as a purely harmful individual; Dostoevsky accomplishes this goal by presenting the character of an old pawn broker and her half-sister, Lizaveta. Through Raskolnikov's eyes, all good characteristics are placed in Lizaveta, and all that is evil is placed in the pawn broker; hence Raskolnikov feels justified in killing the pawn broker, but really it should come as no surprise that he ends up killing Lizaveta as well, that is, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ELIMINATE PURE EVIL, one inevitably takes some good away with it too. THIS is Raskolnikov's crime, the taking away of good in the form of Lizaveta. (Incidentally, Lizaveta Ivanovna's name is meant to bring up reminisces of the character of the same name in Pushkin's Queen of Spades; Dostoevsky was a great admirer of Pushkin.) After this crime, Raskolnikov loses sanity (it seems to me that Dostoevsky is trying to say that insanity cannot be held off by reason alone; one need loving belief as well), and eventually, although he does not know it at the time, confesses out of love for the Christ-like character of Sonia (short for Sofia, which is wisdom in Greek), and eventually, in one of the most beautiful and touching endings of ANY novels, his soul is redeemed by faith and love; even though he is sentenced to seven years in a Siberian prison camp, he and Sonia look on it as if it were seven days, and eagerly anticipate their freedom together. Although much of the novel is set in depressing circumstances, for me there is no other novel (even perhaps the great and still more philosophical Brothers Karamazov) which is as much sheer fun to read. As if this were not enough, this edition is absolutely first rate; the notes are very helpful and Dostoevsky's letters regarding this work together with the critical appraisals of Crime and Punishment (I LOVE Tolstoy's essay; it rings so true) particularly illuminating. I feel it is the duty of any educated person to read this book intelligently; I guarantee you, you will get new meaning out of this compact masterpiece every time you do so.