Crime and Punishment The most important things to read on this are ...

<strong>to</strong> make the subject aware <strong>and</strong> responsible, <strong>and</strong> feeling guilty, <strong>and</strong> you need <strong>to</strong> underst<strong>and</strong> the
ascetic ideal. Any book that helps you on these will be valuable. Books I like on Nietzsche
include:
Alan White, Within Nietzsche's Labyrinth 1990
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche <strong>and</strong> Philosophy, 1983
Jacques Derrida, Spurs, 1972
Tracy B Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche <strong>and</strong> the Politics of Transfiguration 1988
See also my book on Confession, <strong>and</strong> Opera <strong>and</strong> the Culture of Fascism, both of which have
much <strong>to</strong> say about ressentiment <strong>and</strong> "<strong>The</strong> Genealogy of Morals."
<strong>The</strong>re is much else written on Nietzsche, of very varied quality. <strong>The</strong> comparisons with
Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky are <strong>important</strong>: N. <strong>read</strong> D <strong>and</strong> commented on him enthusiastically, as he also
liked "Carmen" very much. Use N. <strong>to</strong> <strong>read</strong> Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky, but also use N <strong>to</strong> see how his ideas
illuminate the whole idea of reaction. A good essay on "<strong>The</strong> Genealogy of Morals" would ask
how the three essays link <strong>to</strong> each other: what is the logic that ties them all <strong>to</strong>gether.
Rimbaud
1854-91
<strong>The</strong> basic dates <strong>to</strong> remember are: 1. his meeting with Verlaine in September 1871 &emdash;
in the year of the Paris Commune (18 March &emdash; 28 May). 25,000 died in the fighting
in Paris in the last week of May. 2. His experiences with Verlaine in Paris <strong>and</strong> London in
1872, culminating with Verlaine shooting him in July 1873. That summer, he finished
"Season in Hell." Rimbaud continued writing, however, the poems called "Illuminations."
Essay question:
Rimbaud's "Season in Hell" is often regarded as his farewell <strong>to</strong> literature. Why did Rimbaud
feel that he wanted <strong>to</strong> say goodbye <strong>to</strong> literature &emdash; identifying this with bourgeois
culture?
"I is someone else" note the importance of the other person who speaks in the "Delirium"
poems.
A good essay question would be <strong>to</strong> explore the notion "Je est un autre."
<strong>The</strong>re is plenty of material on Rimbaud, not all of it easy, however, <strong>and</strong> you will have <strong>to</strong>
persevere with the French.
James Lawler: Rimbaud's theatre of the Self 1992
Nathaniel Wing: <strong>The</strong> Limits of Narrative 1986
Dee Reynolds, Symbolist Aesthetics <strong>and</strong> Early Abstract Art 1995
Kirsten Ross, Rimbaud <strong>and</strong> the Paris Commune, 1988
Svetlana Boym, Death in Quotation Marks 1991
You should try the following ideas:
Links between Rimbaud's sense of being cursed (maudit) with the sense of being Bohemian
<strong>and</strong> being like Raskolnikov, thinking of being a great criminal.