The Plan and the Moment

While I was reading Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky, 1866) again, I noticed that in the moments leading up to Raskolnikov's act (murdering the old lady), the tensions between his plans and his actions parallel feelings and thoughts that many artists experience during the creative process. Take this first quote for example:

We may add only that practical, purely material difficulties of the affair occupied a secondary position in his mind. 'One has but to keep all one's will-power and reason to deal with them, and they will all be overcome at the time when once one has familiarized oneself with the minutest details of the business...' But this preparation had never been begun. His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quit differently, as it were accidentally and unexpectedly.

This paragraph is a microcosm of the struggle between concept and expression. The statement "material difficulties...occupied a secondary position in his mind" is reminiscent of Sol Lewitt's over-quoted declaration, "When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair." (From "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art") The important part of this quote in this context is "all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand" because in the story, Raskolnikov keeps discussing how attentive he must be to details (theoretically) while he should be paying attention to details. It is as if he is still contemplating the potential use of the paddle while he should be hitting the ball and still thinking about which brush to use when he should be already painting.

Then when the narrator says, "His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite differently, as it were accidentally and unexpectedly," it shows that even when Raskolnikov made a decision, had set the plan before the action, what followed never went according to design. It's like a conceptual artist drawing a grid and then splattering freely over top of it. Of course, the parallel isn't perfect, there were external circumstances that led to Raskolnikov's "plans" misfiring but many times, these missteps could have been avoided by more careful planning on his part. The component I want to emphasize is that he ponders what he should do while he is doing and then does something different from what he may decide anyway. The concept and the execution are all befuddled into a mess of the energy of the moment.

Here's another quote:

And, indeed, if it had ever happened that everything to the least point could have been considered and finally settled, and no uncertainty of any kind had remained, he would, it seems, have renounced it all as something absurd, monstrous and impossible. But a whole mass of unsettled points and uncertainties remained.

This little beauty of a snippet reveals to us that if Raskolnikov had completely figured out everything beforehand that he would've deemed the whole idea "absurd." The fact that "unsettled points and uncertainties remained" allowed him to begin. Since he didn't know everything that was going to happen, his action became possible. That idea is fascinating and it goes right back to Lewitt's assertion that extensive, finite plans are "the work." True, Raskolnikov's reasoning for why the action would be "perfunctory" is because it couldn't happen (an irrational notion, most likely) unlike for Lewitt where it doesn't matter if it happens (an irrational notion, most likely) but the decision for why the action is negated is because it's all been figured out.

There can be many qualms about my parallels...one of which is that Raskolnikov's issues include a hefty moral dimension that Lewitt's (or artists in general) lacks (but not according to some...is abstract expressionism irresponsible today? Should artist's be socially responsible?). We aren't killing anyone. But that element isn't the one I'm focusing on. My examination here is based around plan and action which are commonalities of making art and killing someone (or any calculated action in general) and the impulsive energy that strikes during the moment disturbing the balance of intent and action. To bridge the gap further, one may recollect the art historically common distinction between classicism and expressionism in the 18oo's. The neo-classicist Ingres believed that the essence of the work lay in the drawings (as the plan for the painting) and it's calculated, sculptural finish while Delacroix believed that the expression of color and passion was paramount. Raskolnikov's plan and execution got tangled in reason, passion, chance, delirium, calculation, and distraction... none of which can be really distinguished by the end. It's like he is trying to be Ingres but falling into Delacroix and even beyond to Hans Arp.

Here's an example of one of Raskolnikov's hilarious bouts of distraction:

"His mind was even occupied by irrelevent matters, but by nothing for long. As he passed the Yusupov garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the building of great fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere of all the squares."

While he should be focused on his execution, as he just stated for the umpteenth time that he should be, he's appreciating the architecture of "great fountains." While he's heading out to murder somebody he's pondering aesthetics! The similie here is pretty straightforward (in that any time one is achieving an aim, there are certain to be distractions...it's just ironic here that Raskolnikov's distraction is aesthetic).

I'll list the rest of the relevant quotes (many of the parallels are self-evident) and then I'll follow them up with some final thoughts:

"He suddenly felt tempted again to give it all up and go away. But that was only for an instant; it was too late to go back."

"It was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he kept making mistakes."

"Good God, am I going out of my senses?"

"But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess, had begun by degrees to take possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather, forgot what was of importance, and caught at trifles."

"He dropped the axe with the blade in the water, snatched a piece of soap that lay in a broken saucer on the window, and began washing his hands in the bucket."

"But he knew he was not looking thoroughly, that there might something quite noticeable that he was overlooking. He stood in the middle of the room, lost in thought. Dark agonising ideas rose in his mind--the idea that he was mad and that at that meant he was incapable of reasoning, of protecting himself, that he ought perhaps to be doing something utterly different from what he was now doing."

"Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky because there was a great crowd of people and he was lost in it like a grain of sand."

Many times when I'm making a work, I question my choice for the existence of this work. Why am I making this work and not another? How do I know that my aesthetic sense hasn't spiraled out of control and that I'm not just deluding myself that this work is worth my time or anybody else's? Sometimes my focus is imprecise and I'm messy where I should be exact. Sometimes after I'm done a work and I look back on the process I think, "Wow, how did I guide those variables in that way to get it just right? How did I not screw it up when I was so lost in passion?" Sometimes I get so lost in a work that I forget myself, my surroundings, and intuition drives. Then after the process is completed and the reflection is over, I look up out of my little locale and see that I am in "a crowd of people" and "lost in it like a grain of sand."