What It Is
Two breast crosses change hands on the staircase of Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin's house. One is of tin, eight-pointed, which a drunken soldier sold to Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin for twenty kopecks, swearing it was silver; the other is Rogozhin's gold cross. Rogozhin asks to see the soldier's, asks the prince to give it to him, and offers his own; the prince accepts with joy and proposes that they become brothers, and Rogozhin takes him by the hand to his mother for her blessing. The exchange seals a brotherhood of the cross, which is the name the prince will give Rogozhin from then on, and it happens on the same day that Rogozhin waits for the prince on the hotel staircase with the knife. Before it, the book has already shown another cross: the one the priest gives the condemned man to kiss, in the prince's description in Part One.
Where It Appears
In ch. V of Part One, the prince proposes to Adelaida Ivanovna Epanchina, as a subject for a painting, the face of a condemned man one minute before the guillotine, and he tells how the priest gives him the cross to kiss at every weakness and how he kisses it eagerly, without religious awareness. The composition comes down to two things.
Крест и голова, вот картина, the cross and the head, there is the painting.
In ch. IV of Part Two, already on the stairs, the prince tells of the soldier who sold him the tin cross and says he has decided not to condemn him. Rogozhin calls him back, wants the cross, and offers his gold one; he takes the prince to his mother, a little old woman already in her second childhood, who blesses him three times before her son presses her fingers together, and on the way back he refuses the embrace with a joke.
Небось! Я хоть и взял твой крест, а за часы не зарежу!, Don't be afraid! I took your cross, but I won't cut your throat over a watch!
Still in ch. IV of Part Two, the embrace comes after a change in Rogozhin's face, and he slams the door.
Так бери же ее, коли судьба! Твоя! Уступаю!.. Помни Рогожина!, Then take her, if it is fate! She is yours! I give her up!... Remember Rogozhin!
In ch. V of Part Two, out on the street, when he finally admits that the eyes following him are Rogozhin's, the prince suddenly recalls everything that happened that morning: the question about the eyes, the Rogozhin cross he now wears on his chest, his mother's blessing, the last convulsive embrace. Hours later, Rogozhin's hand rises on the hotel staircase.
In ch. III of Part Three, on the park bench, the prince tells Rogozhin that he only remembers the Rogozhin he swore brotherhood with through the crosses, says that the thought may have stirred right there, in the exchange, and asks whether Rogozhin took him to his old mother so that he could hold his own hand. When he invites him to share the birthday celebration, he tells him to return the cross if he does not want to come, and he wants to know whether he still wears it; Rogozhin says he does.
Мы тогда в одно слово почувствовали. Не подыми ты руку тогда на меня (которую бог отвел), чем бы я теперь пред тобой оказался? Ведь я ж тебя всё равно в этом подозревал, один наш грех, в одно слово!, That day we felt the same thing, in one word. If you had not raised your hand against me (the hand God turned aside), what would I be now before you? For I suspected you of it too, one sin, ours, in one word!
What It Means
The exchange is the closest thing to a pact that the novel gives the two rivals: each comes to wear the other's cross, and Rogozhin's mother blesses the prince as if he were a son. The book, however, does not leave it there. The gold cross changes hands in the same chapter as the question about faith before Holbein's painting, and the exchanged cross is on the prince's chest when the knife rises. On the bench in Part Three it is the cross he uses to forgive: he recalls the brother of the cross and not the man with the knife, and he wants to know whether the cross is still on the other man's chest, as proof that the brotherhood continues.
The cross Rogozhin asks for is the false one, the tin cross sold as silver by a soldier who needed a drink, and he asks for it right after hearing that story and the prince say he does not condemn the seller. Two readings. In one, he takes for himself the object of a cheapened faith, as someone who recognizes a kinsman in the soldier; in the other, what he wants is not the cross but what the prince did with it, refusing to condemn the one who deceived him. The condemned man of ch. V of Part One, the prince says, kisses the cross like someone clutching something in reserve, and the tin cross that Rogozhin still wears on his chest in ch. III of Part Three can be read in the same way.
Relationships
- Default themes: Faith, Compassion and charity.
- Themes in the novel: Faith, Compassion and charity.
- Characters: Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, Adelaida Ivanovna Epanchina.
- Related symbols: the Holbein painting, before which Rogozhin asks about faith minutes before the exchange, and the knife, which rises the same night.