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    The Crocodile
    The Crocodile
    The Crocodile
    Ebook58 pages

    The Crocodile

    By Fyodor Dostoevsky

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A true story of how a gentleman of a certain age and of respectable appearance was swallowed alive by the crocodile in the Arcade, and of the consequences that followed.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781910343029
    The Crocodile
    Author

    Fyodor Dostoevsky

    Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. Between 1838 and 1843 he studied at the St Petersburg Engineering Academy. His first work of fiction was the epistolary novel Poor Folk (1846), which met with a generally favourable response. However, his immediately subsequent works were less enthusiastically received. In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the socialist Petrashevsky circle, and subjected to a mock execution. He suffered four years in a Siberian penal settlement and then another four years of enforced military service. He returned to writing in the late 1850s and travelled abroad in the 1860s. It was during the last twenty years of his life that he wrote the iconic works, such as Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which were to form the basis of his formidable reputation. He died in 1881.

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    Reviews for The Crocodile

    3.5/5

    26 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A humorous read bordering on (and into) the absurd. A man is eaten by a crocodile and lives in his stomach. He communicates with the outside world freely (via voice only). His life continues on, but one wonders how long he can maintain such an existence. It reminded me of something that Kafka would have written, but only more humorous. As I read, I wondered if The Crocodile influenced the writing of Metamorphosis by Kafka. A good book (very short, only 78 pages with notes and appendix), not life changing, but worth the read.
    • 3/5
      Not quite what I expected from a literary master.
      Don't really know what to make of it.
      Will go ahead and read another one of his books to see if it improves.
    • 3/5
      It’s not that I didn’t like this short story from Dostoevsky, it’s just that it’s incomplete, and comes across as a fragment of an idea. The period in which Dostoevsky wrote this was one of great personal and economic strife, and he was finding an outlet for his increasing dislike of progressive European ideals. Clearly, the crocodile that swallows a man only to have him continue philosophizing within its belly is meant to be an absurd satire on these ideals, but it isn’t all that well developed. Dostoevsky himself said that it was the first part to a comic story that he never finished, and it shows. Frankly, it was more interesting to me to read his rebuttal to the claim that the man represented Nikolai Chernyshevsky, which he did years later in ‘Diary of a Writer’ and which was excerpted in the afterward. That would have been rather heartless indeed, despite their ideological differences, since Dostoevsky knew first-hand just how cruel and unfair imprisonment for political reasons was, but his account, which includes personal anecdotes with Chernyshevsky, seems believable. Regardless, this work is for Dostoevsky diehards only.

    Book preview

    The Crocodile - Fyodor Dostoevsky

    cover.jpg

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    The Crocodile

    filet%201%20short.jpg

    New Edition

    filet%201%20short.jpgtop10-russia.jpgtop10-world.jpgSovreign2.jpg

    New Edition

    Published by Sovereign Classic

    This Edition

    First published in 2014

    Copyright © 2014 Sovereign

    Contents

    THE CROCODILE

    CHAPTER I

    CHAPTER II

    CHAPTER III

    CHAPTER IV

    THE CROCODILE

    A TRUE STORY OF HOW A GENTLEMAN OF A CERTAIN AGE AND OF RESPECTABLE APPEARANCE WAS SWALLOWED ALIVE BY THE CROCODILE IN THE ARCADE, AND OF THE CONSEQUENCES THAT FOLLOWED.

    Ohe Lambert! Ou est Lambert?

    As-tu vu Lambert?

    CHAPTER I

    ON the thirteenth of January of this present year, 1865, at half-past twelve in the day, Elena Ivanovna, the wife of my cultured friend Ivan Matveitch, who is a colleague in the same department, and may be said to be a distant relation of mine, too, expressed the desire to see the crocodile now on view at a fixed charge in the Arcade. As Ivan Matveitch had already in his pocket his ticket for a tour abroad (not so much for the sake of his health as for the improvement of his mind), and was consequently free from his official duties and had nothing whatever to do that morning, he offered no objection to his wife’s irresistible fancy, but was positively aflame with curiosity himself.

    A capital idea! he said, with the utmost satisfaction. We’ll have a look at the crocodile! On the eve of visiting Europe it is as well to acquaint ourselves on the spot with its indigenous inhabitants. And with these words, taking his wife’s arm, he set off with her at once for the Arcade. I joined them, as I usually do, being an intimate friend of the family. I have never seen Ivan Matveitch in a more agreeable frame of mind than he was on that memorable morning-how true it is that we know not beforehand the fate that awaits us! On entering the Arcade he was at once full of admiration for the splendours of the building and, when we reached the shop in which the monster lately arrived in Petersburg was being exhibited, he volunteered to pay the quarter-rouble for me to the crocodile owner — a thing which had never happened before. Walking into a little room, we observed that besides the crocodile there were in it parrots of the species known as cockatoo, and also a group of monkeys in a special case in a recess. Near the entrance, along the left wall stood a big tin tank that looked like a bath covered with a thin iron grating, filled with water to the depth of two inches. In this shallow pool was kept a huge crocodile, which lay like a log absolutely motionless and apparently deprived of all its faculties by our damp climate, so inhospitable to foreign visitors. This monster at first aroused no special interest in any one of us.

    So this is the crocodile! said Elena Ivanovna, with a pathetic cadence of regret. Why, I thought it was ... something different.

    Most probably she thought it was made of diamonds. The owner of the crocodile, a German, came out and looked at us with an air of extraordinary pride.

    He has a right to be, Ivan Matveitch whispered to me, he knows he is the only man in Russia exhibiting a crocodile.

    This quite nonsensical observation I ascribe also to the extremely good-humoured mood which had overtaken Ivan Matveitch, who was on other occasions of rather envious disposition.

    I fancy your crocodile is not alive, said Elena Ivanovna, piqued by the irresponsive stolidity of the proprietor, and addressing him with a charming smile in order to soften his churlishness — a manoeuvre so typically feminine.

    Oh, no, madam, the latter replied in broken Russian; and instantly moving the grating half off the tank, he poked the monster’s head with a stick.

    Then the treacherous monster, to show that it was alive, faintly stirred its paws and tail, raised its snout and emitted something like a prolonged snuffle.

    Come, don’t be cross, Karlchen, said the German caressingly, gratified in his vanity.

    "How horrid that

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