WotD: Crime and Punishment

1. Schuld und Sühne
2. Misdaad en straf
3. Crimen y castigo
4. Crim i càstig
5. Crime et châtiment
6. Coir agus pionós
7. Trosedd a chosb
8. Zbrodnia i kara
9. 죄와 벌 (罪와 罰)
10. 罪與罰 Zuì yǔ fá
11. 罪と罰 つみとばつ

Notes: It's interesting to see the pattern of alliteration in several European languages given that it isn't there in the original (Преступлéние и наказáние). If I had to guess, I suppose French is to blame. It could be a lucky accident in Spanish and Catalan, but the German is clearly deliberate as a literal rendering would be Verbrechen und Strafe (which has, in fact, been used for a couple of translated versions; the earliest translation used Raskolnikow and this appears on other versions, often as an alternative).

So I finished "Old Dusty" (as a colleague calls him) yesterday evening. I can see why he's held in such high esteem. I was impressed with his juggling of the three major storylines. He held my interest whilst delaying the denouement, and that's no mean feat. He also kept me guessing; I had no idea based on how they were introduced that Zamyotov was going to end up being such a minor character and Svidrigailov was going to be the focused on almost to the point of being a second protagonist.

It's going to take me a while to unpack the psychological dimensions and political ramifications of the work. As I joked to monshu at table, "I wonder if there's anything written about that." In the meantime, the Gombrowicz is finally getting interesting. About halfway through, we find that a character has chosen to kill himself slowly out of a pure spite and I was like, "That's the Gombrowicz I know!" It may be worth rereading the novel in a proper English translation, if one even exists.