Quotes / Fyodor Dostoevsky / Crime and Punishment
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, spoken by Sonia Marmeladova
Genuine Found word for word in the work, in the original and in a public-domain translation.Draft entry, not yet reviewed
Страдание принять и искупить себя им, вот что надо.
Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.
- Work
- Crime and Punishment, 1866
- Where
- Part 5, chapter 4
- Speaker
- Sonia Marmeladova
- To
- Raskolnikov
The scene
Moments after telling Raskolnikov to go to the crossroads and kiss the earth, Sonia answers his gloomy question, 'You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?' with this line. He refuses: the authorities 'destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a virtue'. Sonia repeats that it will be too much for him to bear; after he gives himself up she follows him to Siberia.
Read it in the text
ЧАСТЬ ПЯТАЯ · IV
Он изумился и был даже поражен ее внезапным восторгом.
-- Это ты про каторгу, что ли, Соня? Донести, что ль, на себя надо? -- спросил он мрачно.
-- Страдание принять и искупить себя им, вот что надо.
-- Нет! Не пойду я к ним, Соня.
-- А жить-то, жить-то как будешь? Жить-то с чем будешь? -- восклицала Соня. -- Разве это теперь возможно? Ну как ты с матерью будешь говорить? (О, с ними-то, с ними-то что теперь будет!) Да что я! Ведь ты уж бросил мать и сестру. Вот ведь уж бросил же, бросил. О господи! -- вскрикнула она, -- ведь он уже это всё знает сам! Ну как же, как же без человека-то прожить! Что с тобой теперь будет!
PART V · CHAPTER IV · Constance Garnett
He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.
“You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?” he asked gloomily.
“Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.”
“No! I am not going to them, Sonia!”
“But how will you go on living? What will you live for?” cried Sonia, “how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your mother? (Oh, what will become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned your mother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh, God!” she cried, “why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by himself! What will become of you now?”
What it says
Not the law's punishment but suffering freely taken on is the way back to life: by accepting it he can redeem himself.
How it is misread
Often quoted as a general praise of suffering. Sonia means a concrete act: give yourself up and accept penal servitude. And the novel does not end on suffering alone: in the epilogue Raskolnikov and Sonia are 'renewed by love'.
Forms in circulation
- translation
Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.
Constance Garnett's version. The Russian has no 'sin': Sonia says 'accept suffering and redeem yourself by it' (искупить себя им), which the popular form, from a later translation, follows more closely. (Crime and Punishment, tr. Constance Garnett (London: Heinemann, 1914), Part 5, chapter 4)
Tags
What it is made of
Nearby
- Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled, and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!' related
- Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. related
- Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. alike 68%
- Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong. alike 57%
- The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. alike 53%
Checked against
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