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A bit more on the horse story... It was many many years ago when I read C&P, but is sure stuck in my mind.
"The passage in question occurs early on in Dostoevsky’s great work Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, who will imminently butcher two old ladies with an axe, is anxiously laid up in bed. In a scene that foreshadows the guilt-ridden and hallucinatory fits that will plague him after the murder takes place, he falls into a disturbing dream. Raskolnikov sees himself as a young boy, walking through a provincial town with his father. Outside a pub, a drunken rabble surrounds a weary old horse, hitched to a weighty cartload that it cannot possibly pull. To the delight of the cheering mob, the horse is beaten by its owner (“so brutally, so brutally, sometimes even across the eyes and muzzle”). Men climb into the cart to weigh it down further, and the owner continues to whip and to shout “Gee-up!” When someone speaks up against the violence, he merely yells “My property, my property!”
Raskolnikov, in the voice of a child, pleads with the men to stop. Crying, he runs forward and looks the horse directly in the eye, and in doing so, is caught by a lash from the whip. As the cruelty escalates and the horse collapses, it becomes clear that it will die. Raskolnikov throws his arms around the bloodied muzzle and kisses it around the eyes, calling in vain for the barbarism to stop. His father scoops him up and drags him away from the horse, against his will, and suddenly Raskolnikov awakes, cold and sweating. He understands the significance of the dream, and understands that he himself was at once the child, the flogged horse, and the man with the whip. Nevertheless, he rises, dresses, and prepares to commit murder."
blog.lareviewofbooks.org
"The passage in question occurs early on in Dostoevsky’s great work Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, who will imminently butcher two old ladies with an axe, is anxiously laid up in bed. In a scene that foreshadows the guilt-ridden and hallucinatory fits that will plague him after the murder takes place, he falls into a disturbing dream. Raskolnikov sees himself as a young boy, walking through a provincial town with his father. Outside a pub, a drunken rabble surrounds a weary old horse, hitched to a weighty cartload that it cannot possibly pull. To the delight of the cheering mob, the horse is beaten by its owner (“so brutally, so brutally, sometimes even across the eyes and muzzle”). Men climb into the cart to weigh it down further, and the owner continues to whip and to shout “Gee-up!” When someone speaks up against the violence, he merely yells “My property, my property!”
Raskolnikov, in the voice of a child, pleads with the men to stop. Crying, he runs forward and looks the horse directly in the eye, and in doing so, is caught by a lash from the whip. As the cruelty escalates and the horse collapses, it becomes clear that it will die. Raskolnikov throws his arms around the bloodied muzzle and kisses it around the eyes, calling in vain for the barbarism to stop. His father scoops him up and drags him away from the horse, against his will, and suddenly Raskolnikov awakes, cold and sweating. He understands the significance of the dream, and understands that he himself was at once the child, the flogged horse, and the man with the whip. Nevertheless, he rises, dresses, and prepares to commit murder."
Nietzsche’s Horse - BLARB
On January 3, 1889, in the throes of a manic episode, Friedrich Nietzsche left his lodgings in Turin, walked a ...
blog.lareviewofbooks.org
