With the aid of the notebooks, it is possible to follow the composition of Crime and Punishment from its first inception to its conclusion.

Dostoevsky’s thoughts-at least as recorded here-are all directed outward to the work he was striving to bring into being his occasional moments of introspection or self-admonition invariably concern one or another problem that he was wrestling with in the course of composition. There is, then, nothing systematic or even self-reflective in these notes, in the sense of an author both creating and at the same time observing himself create. The so-called “notebooks” have been carved out of this mass of material by the Russian editors of the various volumes, who grouped together all the entries that could be related to one or another creative conception. “They contain,” writes Professor Wasiolek, “drawings, jottings about practical matters, doodlings of various sorts, calculations about pressing expenses, sketches, and random remarks.” Dostoevsky simply flipped his notebooks open any time he wished to write, and proceeded to fill the first blank space he could find hence there is no chronological sequence of any kind in his entries, though occasionally he included a date that helps to orient the reader. What are known as Dostoevsky’s notebooks are, in reality, a heterogeneous mass of writings containing all sorts of material that the author wished to record or to remember. But the Russians so far have refused to publish these manuscripts themselves, and have barred foreign scholars from access to them. This, to be sure, does not exhaust all the notebook material known to exist in Soviet archives-there are, for example notebooks dating from the important period of the early 1860’s, just before the composition of Notes from the Underground, which are certainly of the utmost interest. (One assumes, though it is not mentioned in the announced list, that the recently-published notebooks for A Raw Youth will also be included.) If this plan is carried through, we shall have all of Dostoevsky’s working notes, so far as they have been preserved, for the five major novels beginning with Crime and Punishment and ending with The Brothers Karamazov. Thus Professor Wasiolek can only be congratulated on his plan to translate all of Dostoevsky’s notebooks for his major novels.

Despite Dostoevsky’s enormous popularity, the basic: scholarly material relevant to his work has not hitherto been accessible to English readers, though it has been available in Russian-and partially in French translations-for many years. This translation of the notebooks for Crime and Punishment is the first instalment of a long-needed project.

Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment.

Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank