On Prestuplenie And Punishment

I’m treating myself to a read of Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT in a Wordsworth Classics edition at the moment, and came across the following at the end of the Introduction:

The Russian word for ‘crime’ in the title of the novel and elsewhere is prestuplenie from pre (across) and stuplenie (a stepping) – i.e. similar to the etymology of the English ‘trans-gression’. This sense of ‘stepping across’ a barrier or a moral code is missing from the word ‘crime’.

  Maybe it’s just me, although I very much doubt it, but I always assumed that the crime in any given crime novel – murder, kidnap, blackmail, etc. – is at least as important in terms of its differentiating the lawful from the unlawful (the ‘awful’?) as it is in kick-starting the story. A crime can be any specific act that is illegal or unlawful; but the act of committing a crime is always an act of transgression.

In Spring A Young Man’s Thoughts Turn To French Fancies

The elves were just last week saying how you don’t get many French movie festivals to the pound these days, when – quelle fromage, etc. – up pops Dara Burke to let us know that the 19th Cork French Film Festival takes place in the People’s Republic of Cork, Ireland, from February 28th to March 7th. Highlights include Diva, Caramel (right), Gus van Sant’s Cannes winner Paranoid Park, Water Lilies, 2 Days In Paris, Silent Light, Tarkovsky’s last film The Sacrifice, and Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus on 16mm. The full programme line-up can be found here, with Dara suggesting that Paranoid Park is “a 21st century CRIME AND PUNISHMENT with a difference.” Given that he’s very probably related to CAP Grand Vizier Declan Burke, we’re not going to argue with him. We’ll just have him whacked instead. Pufnstuf? Put away that bong, we’ve got another job for you.