(548) The Phrase 'That Percentage' (of Unlucky People) from Dostoevsky

Here's the quote from my profoundly beloved novel that I shared with you at the beginning of the video:

[Source] Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment," translated in 2014 by Oliver Ready, pp.47-48, Penguin Books; Part 1, Chapter 4

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'Poor girl!" he [= Raskolnikov the hero] said, glancing at the empty corner of the bench. 'She'll come round, have a cry, then her mother with find out... First she'll beat her a bit, then she'll whip her, hurting her and shaming her, then she might even throw her out... And even if she doesn't, some Darya Frantsevna or other will sniff her out, and my girl will start doing the rounds... Then it's straight off to hospital (that's always the way with girls who live with very honest mothers and misbehave on the quiet) and then... well... back to hospital... booze... the pothouse... the hospital again... and within two or three years you'e got yourself a cripple, her whole life over at the age of nineteen or less... Haven't I seen girls like that? And how did they get there? That's how they got there, all of them... Pah! So be it! That's how it should be, they say. A certain percentage, they say, must go that way every year... Which way? ... To the devil, I suppose, so as to frenshen up the rest and not get in their way. Percentage! What lovely words they use: so soothing, so scholarly. You hear a word like that and wonder what on earth you were worrying about. Now if it were a different word, you might feel a little less comfortable... But what is Dunechka also ended up in that percentage... and if not that one, then another?

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Here the link to the Project Gutenberg page containing another translation of the novel: one by Constance Garnett in 1918 (?).

life,