Volume 8, Number 6 · April 6, 1967
Clues to the Crime
By Helen Muchnic
The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky, edited and translated by Edward Wasiolek
University of Chicago, 246 pp., $6.95
While he was at work on his major novels, Dostoevsky jotted down in small notebooks various thoughts about the meaning and structure, the incidents and characters of his projected works. These were unsystematic scribblings, intended for himself alone, and not at all for publication. His widow, however, had the good sense to realize their importance; she numbered them, briefly described the content of each, and presented them to the State Archives of the USSR, 'In 1921,' as Professor Wasiolek now tells us, 'a representative of the Soviet government in the presence of A. V. Lunacharsky, Assistant Commissar of Education, opened a white tin case,' which contained them. There were fifteen notebooks in all, 'hard-covered copybooks, about nine by ten inches in size, bound in faded darkish maroon cloth.' They were presently published in Russia and later, in translation, in France. Now, happily, an English version has been undertaken. The first three notebooks, which we have here, concern Crime and Punishment.
Review, 1988 words
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