Overview
The Translator's Preface to Crime and Punishment serves as a concise biographical introduction to Fyodor Dostoevsky, written by translator Constance Garnett to help English-language readers understand the life experiences that shaped his fiction. Rather than discussing the novel's plot or translation methodology, the preface focuses entirely on the formative events of Dostoevsky's life, from his impoverished childhood to his dramatic brush with execution and the years of suffering that followed.
Early Life and Literary Debut
Garnett begins by describing Dostoevsky's humble origins as the son of a doctor. His parents were deeply religious and hard-working but so poor that the family of seven lived in only two rooms. Despite always being sickly, Dostoevsky performed well at the Petersburg School of Engineering, where he began his first novel, Poor Folk. Published by the poet Nekrassov, the book was received with great acclaim, and the shy young author became an overnight celebrity. However, this promising start was abruptly cut short by his arrest in 1849.
The Mock Execution and Imprisonment
The most powerful passage in the preface recounts Dostoevsky's near-execution. Though he was neither a revolutionary by temperament nor conviction, he belonged to a small reading circle that discussed the works of Fourier and Proudhon. Under Tsar Nicholas I, this was enough to warrant a death sentence. Dostoevsky and twenty-one others were led to Semyonovsky Square to be shot. The preface includes his own harrowing letter to his brother Mihail, describing the white execution shirts, the binding to stakes, and the last-moment reprieve when the troops beat a tattoo and the prisoners learned the Tsar had commuted their sentences to hard labor. One fellow prisoner, Grigoryev, went permanently insane from the ordeal.
Later Years and Legacy
Garnett traces the lasting impact of this trauma on Dostoevsky's mind and work. Four years of penal servitude among common criminals in Siberia followed, during which he began The Dead House and developed severe epilepsy. After returning to Russia in 1859, he faced repeated censorship of his journals, the deaths of his first wife and brother, crushing debt, and the pressure of writing at relentless speed. The preface notes that the later years were softened by his devoted second wife. Dostoevsky's famous 1880 speech at the Pushkin monument unveiling brought him extraordinary public adoration, and his funeral shortly after drew mourners who "gave the hapless man the funeral of a king." The preface closes with a Russian critic's tribute describing Dostoevsky as one whose suffering granted him a "wisdom of the heart" that readers seek in order to learn how to live.