Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  You remember, I daresay, my dear Sonetchka, what you wrote with regard to the novel which I did over here: that you wondered how I could undertake and bind myself to get such a work done in a fixed space of time. But the work which I am now writing for the Roussky Viestnik is a good deal more arduous still. I have to cram into twenty-five sheets material which ought to take at least fifty, and that only because it must be finished by a certain date; and I have to do this, because for the moment, while I am living abroad, I can’t write anything else. The people at the Sarya office praised beyond measure a little story that I published in that journal. Even the newspaper critics (on the Golos, the Peterbourgskaya Listok, etc.) were most benevolent. But you will hardly believe how it revolts me to write that kind of thing when I have so many fully formed ideas in my mind: that is, to write something quite different from what I want to be at. You can surely understand, Sonetchka, that that alone is great torment, and added to it is the desperate state of my affairs. Since I have been absent from Petersburg, all my business matters and connections there have been frightfully neglected (although “The Idiot” did miss fire, several publishers wanted to buy the rights of the second edition from me; they offered me relatively good terms — from a thousand five hundred to two thousand roubles). But all these projects fell through, for I had no one in Petersburg to look after the business for me. Well, that’s how it stands with me. And I say nothing of how very much I grieve for Anna Grigorovna, longing so terribly as she does for Russia. I can’t possibly tell everything in this letter. But I have finally resolved to return to Russia, in any event, in the autumn of this year, and shall quite decidedly get it done somehow. Of course, too, I shall come to Moscow (for business reasons, if for no others); that is, if the creditors do not put me in a Petersburg prison so soon as I arrive there. In any case I hope to see you all again, my dears, at the beginning of the winter.

  In truest love:

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, ANYA, AND LYUBA.

  LVII. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov

  DRESDEN,

  June 11 [23], 1870.

  [In the first half of the letter Dostoevsky complains of Kachpirev, who has not agreed to his proposal with regard to “The Life-Story of a Great Sinner.”]

  By chance the Viestnik Europi for the current year fell into my hands, and I looked through all the numbers that have appeared. I was amazed. How can this unbelievably mediocre journal (which at its best can only be classed with the Northern Bee of Bulgaria) have such vogue with us (6,000 copies in the second edition!). It is because they know their business. How deftly they adopt the popular tone! An insipid pattern for Liberalism! These are the things we like. But the paper is, nevertheless, very well managed. It appears punctually each month, and has a varied staff of contributors. I read, among other things, “The Execution of Tropmann,” by Turgenev. You may be of a different opinion, Nikolay Nikolayevitch, but I was infuriated by that pretentious and paltry piece of pathos. Why does he keep on explaining that he was very wrong to look on at the execution? Certainly he was, if the whole thing was a mere drama for him; but the sons of men have not the right to turn away from anything that happens on the earth and ignore it; no, on the highest moral grounds they have not. Homo sum et nihil humani... and so forth. Peculiarly comic is it, when at the last moment he does turn away, and thus avoids seeing the actual execution. “Look you, gentlemen, of what delicate upbringing I am! I could not endure that sight!” All through, he betrays himself. The most definite impression that one gets from the whole article is that he is desperately concerned with himself and his own peace of mind, even when it comes to the cutting off of heads. Oh, I spit upon the whole business. I am fairly sick of folk. I consider Turgenev the most played-out of all played-out Russian writers, whatever you, Nikolay Nikolayevitch, may write in Turgenev’s favour: please, don’t take it ill of me....

  LVIII. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna

  DRESDEN,

  July 2 [14], 1870.

  MY DEAR SONETCHKA, I really wished to answer your last letter instantly, but have again delayed my reply. Blame my work and various anxieties for that. And besides, you, like all my Moscow friends, have the bad habit of giving no address in your letters.

  From your letter I conclude that you have moved. Where then am I to address you? You should, you know, reckon also with the possibility of my having mislaid or lost the letter in which you gave your last address. As it is, I have spent three days looking through all my correspondence for the last three years. But I happen to remember your old address, and there I send this letter. Will it reach you, I wonder? Such doubts discourage me. I beseech you not to write your letters, at any rate not those to me, in the woman’s way — that is, not to omit date and address; by God, we shall manage better so!

  Your letter made a very mournful impression on me, dear. Is it really a fact that if you go into the country, they won’t give you any more translation to do, even in the autumn? Why do you so torment yourself? You need happiness and healthy surroundings. You work from early morning till far into the night. You must marry. My dear Sonetchka, for Christ’s sake, don’t be angry with me for saying that. Happiness is meted out to us but once in life; all that comes afterwards is merely pain. We must prepare ourselves for this beforehand, and arrange our lives as normally as possible. Forgive me for writing to you in this tone, when I have not seen you for three years. I don’t mean it for advice; it is only my most cherished desire. For I must love you — I cannot help it!

  As for my return to Russia, it is of course but a possibility of the fancy, which may come true, yet nevertheless is a mere dream. We shall see. And as for the rest of your counsels (with regard to the sale of the novel, the return without money, in face of the possibility of being clapped into jail by the creditors, and so forth), I must tell you that your whole letter displays your inexperience and your ignorance of the questions at issue. I have been occupied with literature for twenty-five years, but have never yet known a case of the author himself offering the booksellers his second edition (still less through the agency of strangers, to whom it matters nothing). If one offers the wares one’s-self, one gets only a tenth of their value. But if the publisher, that is to say the purchaser, comes to one of his own accord, one gets ten times as much. “The Idiot” came too late; it should have appeared in earlier years. Then, as to the creditors, they will, as sure as death, imprison me, for therein lies their sole advantage. Believe me, these gentry know very precisely how much I can get from the Roussky Viestnik or the Sarya. They will have me imprisoned in the hope that one or the other journal, or, if not, somebody else, will get me out. That is dead certain. No — if I am to come back, I must do it quite differently.

  I find it very hard to have to look on and see Anna Grigorovna consumed by home-sickness and longing as she is. That troubles me more than aught else. The child is healthy, but has not yet been weaned. Return is now my one fixed idea. If I go on living here much longer, I shall lose all power to earn anything; nobody will consent to print me. In Russia, at the worst I could edit school-books or compilations. Well, anyhow, it’s not worth while wasting words upon this matter. I shall most decidedly return, even if it is to be put in jail. I should like just to finish the work that I am doing for the Roussky Viestnik, so that I might be left in peace. And yet, as things are, I can’t, in any case, get done before Christmas. The first long half of the work I shall deliver to the office in six weeks. and get a little money. The second half I shall send at the beginning of the winter, and the third — in February. Printing will have to begin in this coming January. I am afraid that they will simply send back my novel. I shall tell them from the very first that I don’t intend to alter or take out anything in the book. The idea of this novel seemed to me most attractive at first, but now I am sorry that I ever began it. Not that it does not still interest me, but I should prefer to write something else.

  As often as I write to you, I feel what a long space of time divides us from one another.
And by-the-bye, there’s another thing: I have the most fervent desire to take, before my return to Russia, a trip to the East — that is, to Constantinople, Athens, the Archipelago, Syria, Jerusalem, and Athos. This trip would cost at least 1,500 roubles. But the expenses would not signify: I could cover them all by writing a book, about the visit to Jerusalem; I know by experience that such books are very popular nowadays. But for the moment I have neither the time nor the means; and yesterday I read, in an extra-edition, that at any moment there may be war between France and Prussia. So much combustible material has accumulated everywhere, that the war, so soon as it begins, must assume formidable dimensions. God grant that Russia may not be mixed up in any of the European entanglements; we have enough to do at home.

  I love you and yours beyond all bounds, and I hope you will believe that. Love me also a little. I do not wish to die on German soil; I want before my death to return home, and there die.

  My wife and Lyuba send kisses. It is very hot here with us, and yesterday, after a long respite, I had an attack again. To-day my head is quite muddled; I feel as if I were crazy.

  Till the next time, my dears — forget me not.

  I embrace and kiss you.

  Your FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.

  P.S. — If I get no answer to this letter, I shall conclude that it has not reached you. My address is: Allemagne, Saxe, Dresden, à M. Théodore Dostoevsky, Post restante.

  LIX. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna

  Dresden,

  August 17 [29], 1870.

  MY DEAR FRIEND SONETCHKA, Forgive me for not having at once answered on receiving your letter of August 3 (I got your short letter of July 28 also). I have, often, so many anxieties and disagreeables that I have not the energy to begin anything, least of all a letter. Only my work has to be done in any condition of mind — and I do it; but there are times when I am not equal even to that, and then I abandon all. My life is not an easy one. This time I want to write to you about my situation: to be sure I don’t like letter-writing, for I find it hard, after so many years of separation, to write of things that are of consequence to me, and especially to write in such a way that you will understand me. Lively letters one can write only to those with whom one has no relations of affection.

  The most important thing is that now Ï must return to Russia. That idea is simple enough; but I couldn’t possibly describe to you in full detail all the torments and disadvantages that I have to endure in these foreign lands; of the moral torments (the longing for home, the necessity of being in touch with Russian life which as a writer is essential to me, etc.), I won’t at all speak. How unbearable are the anxieties about my family alone! I see clearly how Anya longs for home, and how terribly she languishes here. At home, too, I could earn much more money; here we are absolutely impoverished. We have just enough to live on, it is true; but we cannot keep a nursemaid. A nursemaid here requires a room to herself, her washing, and high wages, three meals a day, and a certain amount of beer (of course only from foreigners). Anya is nursing the baby, and never gets a full night’s rest. She has no amusements of any kind, and usually not one moment to herself. Also her state of health leaves something to be desired. Why do I tell you all this, though? There are hundreds of similar little troubles, and together they make up a heavy burden. How gladly, for example, would I go to Petersburg this autumn with my wife and child (as I pictured to myself early in the year); but to get away from here and travel to Russia I must have not less than 2,000 roubles; nor am I therein reckoning my debts — I need so much as that for the journey alone. Oh yes! I can see you shrugging your shoulders and asking: “Why so much? What is the good of this exaggeration?” Do, my dear, for Heaven’s sake, get out of your habit of judging other people’s affairs without knowing all the circumstances. Two thousand roubles are absolutely necessary to do the journey, and to instal ourselves in Petersburg. You may believe me when I say it. Where am I to get hold of the money? And now we must be getting the child weaned, and vaccinated too. Only think what a fresh crop of cares for Anya, who is already run-down and feeble. I have to look on at it all, and am nearly driven out of my senses. And if I do get the money for the journey in three months, the winter will just be upon us, and one can’t drag an infant over a thousand versts in frosty weather. Consequently we shall have to wait till early spring. And shall we even then have money? You must know that we can scarcely manage on our income here, and have to go into debt for half we need. But enough of that. I want to talk of other things now, though they’re all connected with the principal subject.

  I forget whether I’ve written to you about my difficulties with the Roussky Viestnik; the fact is that at the end of last year I published a story in the Sarya, while I still had to work off an advance from the Roussky Viestnik; it was a year since I had promised them the work. Did I tell you how it came about? How my novel got unexpectedly long, and how I suddenly perceived that there was no time to get anything written by the beginning of the year for the Roussky Viestnik? They made me no reply about the matter, but ceased to send money. At the beginning of this year I wrote to Katkov that I would deliver the novel chapter by chapter from June, so that they could print at the end of the year. Then I worked at the utmost limit of my energy and my powers; I knew that if I were to break off my literary connection with the Roussky Viestnik, I should have no means of livelihood here abroad (for it is very difficult to enter into fresh relations with another journal from a distance). And besides I was frightfully distressed by the thought that they were calling me a rogue at the office, when they had always treated me so extraordinarily well. The novel at which I was working was very big, very original, but the idea was a little new to me. I needed great self-confidence to get equal with that idea — and as a matter of fact. I did not get equal with it, and the book went wrong. I pushed on slowly, feeling that there was something amiss with the whole thing, but unable to discover what it was. In July, directly after my last letter to you, I had a whole succession of epileptic fits (they recurred every week). I was so reduced by them that for a whole month I dared not even think of working; work might have been actually dangerous to me. And when, a fortnight ago, I set to again, I suddenly saw quite clearly why the book had gone so ill, and where the error lay; as if possessed by sudden inspiration, I saw in an instant a quite new plan for the book. I had to alter the whole thing radically; without much hesitation I struck out all that I had written up to that time (about fifteen sheets in all), and began again at the first page. The labour of a whole year was destroyed. If you only knew, Sonetchka, how grievous it is to be a writer — that is, to bear a writer’s lot! Do you know that I am absolutely aware that if I could have spent two or three years at that book — as Turgenev, Gontscharov, and Tolstoy can — I could have produced a work of which men would still be talking in a hundred years from now! I am not boasting; ask your conscience and your memory if I have ever yet boasted. The idea is so good and so significant that I take off my own hat to it. But what will come to pass? I know very well: I shall get it done in eight or nine months, and utterly spoilt. Such a work demands at least two or three years. (It will, even so, be very extensive — as much as thirty-five sheets.) Separate details and characters will perhaps come not so badly off; but only sketchily. Much will be “half-baked,” and much a great deal too drawn-out. Innumerable beauties I shall have altogether to renounce getting in, for inspiration depends in many respects upon the time one has at disposal. And yet I am setting to work! It is terrible; it is like a determined suicide! But it’s not even the most important thing: the most important thing is that all my calculations are upset. At the beginning of the year, I was confidently hoping that I should succeed in sending a considerable portion of the novel to the Roussky Viestnik by the first of August, and so bettering my situation. What am I to do now? At earliest I shall be able to deliver a small portion by September 1st (I wanted to send a lot at once, so as to have an excuse for requesting an advance); now I am ashamed to ask for money; the firs
t part (it is to be in five parts) will consist of only seven sheets — how can I ask for an advance? All my calculations having thus proved false, I don’t know at this moment what on earth I am to live on. And it is in such a state of mind that I must labour!