Cyrus of Persia and Lewes’ Physiology in the Novel Crime and Punishment

Abstract

The article is devoted to the significant presence in Crime and Punishment of George Henry Lewes’ Physiology of Common Life, the only book explicitly mentioned by Marmeladov among what constituted his daughter Sonya’s “education,” and to the paired message that Sonia’s historical education ended with Cyrus of Persia. A suggestion is made as to which history textbook Marmeladov used to tutor Sonya. Physiology of Common Life (as well as the figure of Cyrus of Persia) is examined in terms of what philosophy it may have engendered or reinforced in the minds of the character and the reader. The extended table of contents of the Physiology is also provided, in order to offer a partial insight into the character of the book that differs from the insight that scholars and commentators of Dostoevsky’s novel in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have drawn from reviews of it, published shortly after the translation came out, as well as from reviews of Crime and Punishment that mention Lewes’ book.