Dostoevsky, Nietzche, and Nightmares

When I was a Junior at Purdue, one snowy morning I awoke from an extended dream that was so intense and vivid that I thought it was an actual memory.  I think this kind of thing is not too rare, but this incident was disturbing because in the dream I had killed someone in the distant past.  As I was trudging across campus, I was completely depressed because I knew the authorities had finally figured it all out and connected me to the murder from years ago.  I had no remorse for the unmotivated killing (a clue!), only sadness for my life behind bars that was coming.  As I tried to remember the details of why I had actually killed some random person so long ago, I started to realize something was not right.  Just before I got to the Physics Building, I realized that there was no logic to my "memories" and that I probably didn't kill someone actually.  Then, like a fog lifting, I figured out, several hours after waking, that it was all just a dream.

Sometime later, I think a few years, I was telling this story to someone and a subconscious part of my brain connected the dream to Crime and Punishment which I had read at the beginning of my senior year in high school.  The novel had an enourmous impact on me.  (I remember an early conversation on a date with Irene when we discussing literature and she put some good, but not excellent book in its place by casually saying, "I mean - it's no Crime and Punishment, but it's still good." - as if I needed any more reasons to fall for her!)  But to cause me to have a nightmare three years later that was so intense as to be taken for a memory?  Wow, Dostoevsky certainly had gotten his hooks in me!

For years this story of mine has ended there:  A "gee, isn't that interesting?" kind of anecdote on the power of literature.  But today a final piece that I didn't even know was missing fell into place while reading the Boston Globe's Ideas section.  The writer of a new book on Russian literature casually throws this out at the end of the interview:

"Take “Crime and Punishment”: Raskolnikov is asking, “How does Nietzsche apply to me, a destitute student living in Petersburg? Can I maybe become a superman by murdering a depressing old lady?” That resonates with us, because it’s an experiment in applicability taken to the furthest degree, and not in an abstract way, but in the most concrete, concretely observed way."

Nietzche and Dostoevsky?  Of course!  I had taken a course in existentialism my freshman year and had found the readings and discussions on Nietzche very intense.  Just like Dostoevsky is my standard bearer for literature, Nietzche is for philosophy - many is the time I have watched or read a pseudo-philosophical work and thought "That's just watered-down Nietzche!"

I had never, consciously, associated the two.  But, thanks to Ms. Batuman (the interviewee of the article), I now realize that my subconscious had made the connection all those years ago...

Will to power, Raskolnikov - will to power.