Pasternak on Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky
by
Joseph Pearce
My friend, Brendan King, who has contributed regularly to the print edition
of StAR has forwarded me this fine piece by Boris Pasternak on the
similarities between Macbeth and Dostoyevsky's Crime and
Punishment.
From "I Remember: Sketches for an Autobiography," By Boris
Pasternak. Translated by Manya Harari, 1959. Pages 150-152.
Macbeth.
Macbeth might well be called Crime and Punishment. All the
time I was translating it, I was haunted by its likeness to Dostoevsky’s novel.
Planning
the murder of Banquo, Macbeth tells his hired
murderers:
Your
spirits shine through you. Within this hour at
most
I will
advise you where to plant yourselves,
Acquaint
you with the perfect spy o’ the time,
The moment
on’t; for ‘t must be done tonight,
And
something from the palace…
A little
further on, in the third scene of the third act, the murderers, lying in ambush
for Banquo, watch the guests arriving through the
park.
SECOND MURDERER:
Then t’is
he; the rest
That are
within the note of expectation
Already are
in the court.
FIRST
MURDERER:
His horses
go about.
THIRD MURDERER:
Almost a
mile: but he does usually--
So all men
do -- from hence to the palace gate
Make it
their walk…
Murder
is a desperate, dangerous business. Everything must be thought out, every
possibility must be foreseen. Both Shakespeare and Dostoevsky endow their heroes
with their own foresight and imagination, their own capacities in timeliness,
detail, and precision. Both the novel and the play have the sharp heightened
realism of detection and of detective fiction; the cautious wariness of the
policeman who looks over his shoulder as often as the criminal
himself.
Neither
Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are
turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false
premises.
In one
case, the impetus is given by the prophecy of the witches who set the vanity of
Macbeth ablaze. In the other, it comes from the extreme nihilistic proposition
that, if there is no God, everything is allowed, and therefore a murder is in no
way different from any other human act.
Of the
two, Macbeth feels particularly safe from retribution. Who could threaten him? A
forest walking across a plain? A man not born of woman? -- Such things don’t
exist, they are blatant absurdities. And what, in any case, has he to fear from
justice once he has seized kingly power and become the only source of law? It
all seems so clear and logical! What could be more simple and obvious? And so
the crimes follow in quick succession -- many crimes over a long time -- until
the forest suddenly moves and sets out on its way and an avenger comes who is
not born of woman.
Incidentally, about Lady Macbeth -- coolness and will power are not her
predominant qualities. I think that what is strongest in her is something more
generally feminine. She is one of those active, insistent wives, a woman who is
her husband’s helper, his support, for whom her husband’s interests are her own
and who takes his plans on faith once and for all. She neither discusses them
nor judges nor selects among them. To reason, to doubt, to make plans -- that’s
her husband’s business, its his lookout. She’s his executive, more resolute and
consistent than he is himself. Miscalculating her strength, she assumes the
excessive burden and is destroyed, not by conscience, but by spiritual
exhaustion, sadness, and fatigue.
