“There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.”
- Source
- Crime and Punishment
- Date
- 1866
- Local voice
- Narrator voice · Narrator
- English wording
- Constance Garnett — Translator · from Russian
Meaning of “There are chance meetings with strangers that interest…”
The narrator observes that attention and interest can arise before conversation, capturing the immediate impressions people sometimes form in an encounter without claiming those impressions are necessarily accurate.
Where does it come from?
Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter II, printed page 10 / Wikisource scan leaf 42, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. The narrator observes that some chance meetings interest us before a word is spoken while introducing Raskolnikov’s first attention to Marmeladov in the tavern; this remains literary narration rather than an empirical psychological law.
Why the local voice matters
Narrator voice introduces Raskolnikov’s first interest in Marmeladov.
