A Jewish Raskolnikov
UNDER the title The Confessions of a Jew, a German publishing house, R. Piper, of Munich, has recently issued the memoirs of a unique if unattractive personality. The writer was the hero more than fifty years ago of a Russian cause celibre, which struck the world by its resemblance to Dostoevski's famous novel, Crime and Punishment ; and it is to the letters which he afterwards wrote to Dostoevski, and which are now published for the first time, that he owes this posthumous tribute to his long-forgotten name.
Abraham Uriah Kovner was born in 1842 in the Vilna ghetto, in a family where " folk cursed each other over a crust of bread," where meat was seen once a week and milk and butter were unknown. He received _the usual Tal- mudic education, which completely ignored all forms of secular knowledge, and at seventeen was married to a girl some years older than himself whom he had never seen. The unwelcome birth of a child filled the cup of his bitter- ness ; at eighteen he turned his back on the ghetto for ever and fled secretly to Kiev. Existing nobody knows how, he mastered Russian and the usual subjects of school education, and forced his way into the University. Thanks to his amazing Jewish persistence, he found him- self by the age of thirty or so leading a penurious, but free, existence as a radical journalist in St. Petersburg.
The materialistic philosophy of Buckle and Mill, which he shared with most Russian students of his day, did not preclude a strong vein of romance. His landlady was a poor Jewish widow. Her eldest daughter was called Sonia ; like her namesake in Crime and Punishment she was " gentle and winning " ; the ever-active Kovner taught her to read and write, and in the process fell in love. He determined to leave the insufficiently remunerative profession of journalism and became a clerk in the St- Petersburg Loan and Discount Bank where, after serving a term as unpaid probationer, he would draw a salary of fifty roubles a month. But Sonia was consumptive, and Kovner decided that, since there was no other way, the funds for medical treatment and change of climate must conic from the bank. He assessed the amount which the bank could afford to lose for this worthy purpose at 3 per cent. of its previous year's profits. He drew a bill for the amount in the name of the bank on one of its Moscow correspondents, and, having stolen or forged the necessary full powers, proceeded to Moscow with Sonia and received the money in cash. So far he had acted with exemplary precision ; but the deed once done, his resolution failed him, as it failed Raskolnikov. The destination of the pair was Odessa, where they were to embark for America ; but they stopped by the way to go through a Jewish mar- riage ceremony (presumably worthless, for the marriage in the Vilna ghetto must have been legally, if not morally, binding), and then again at Kiev to consult doctors about Sonia's health. The sequel was the natural one ; the alarm had been given ; they were arrested at Kiev, brought back to Moscow and put on trial. This was in September, 1875.
The facts were beyond dispute ; but Kovner and his advocate made the most of " the chain of oppressive cir- cumstances conducing to the crime, which he had com- mitted without any evil motive." The jury recognized " extenuating circumstances " ; and Kovner got off with a sentence of four years' imprisonment. Sonia was acquitted ; but the ordeal had been too severe, and the poor girl died after the trial.
Fifteen months later, in January, 1877, Kovner dressed a letter from the prison to Dostoevski. " Nobody knows better than you," he wrote, after referring to Crime and Punishment," that it is possible to be all one's life an honourable man, to commit under pressure of circum- stances a great crime, and then once more for ever remain a perfectly honourable man." And he adds, echoing Raskolnikov almost word for word : " After committing the crime I did not feel, nor do I now feel, the slightest pangs of conscience." Two days later, an even longer letter follows the first. More reflections on his crime, and on the Jewish question, and—could not the great novelist perhaps help him to find publishers for some of his manuscripts ?
A fortnight later Dostoevski replies. He is sympathetic, though not optimistic, about the manuscripts, and sym- pathetic about the crime, which, now he knows the details, he regards in the same light as does Kovner himself. But there is one persage in Kovner's letter which provokes a not undignified rebuke :— •
" The two lines of your letter in which you say that you feel no remorse for the crime at the bank are,not quite to my taste. There is something higher than the arguments of reason or than any possible accessory circumstances, and to it every man must submit. . . . You are perhaps intelligent enough not to resent frankness. In the first place, I am no better than you or than anyone else ; but in the second place, even if I acquit you in ray heart (as I aak you to acquit me), it is better that I should acquit you than that you should acquit yourself."
And Dostoevski adds a " little parallel " which, though not particularly relevant, may be quoted for its wider interest: " The Christian says : It is my duty to share my goods with my weaker brother and to serve him in all things.' The communist says : ' It is thy duty to share thy goods with me, who am weak and poor, and to serve me.' The Christian will be right, and the communist wrong."
After Dostoevski's death, the untiring Kovner wrote a letter in a similar strain to Tolstoy, but failed to elicit a reply. He long outlived his fame, and died in obscurity just twenty years ago, in the spring of 1909.
E. C.
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