[He writes further of his somewhat strained relations with the Roussky Viestnik.]
All this worries me, and deprives me of the tranquillity that I need for the work; and there are other things besides, which I do not mention at all. With this beginning of the war, all credit has very nearly ceased, so that living is much more difficult. But I shall get through it somehow or other. The most important thing, though, is health; and my state has considerably worsened.
With your views on war I can’t possibly agree. Without war, people grow torpid in riches and comfort, and lose the power of thinking and feeling nobly; they get brutal, and fall back into barbarism.
I am not speaking of individuals, but of whole races. Without pain, one comprehends not joy. Ideals are purified by suffering, as gold is by fire. Mankind must strive for his Heaven. France has of late become brutalized and degraded. A passing trial will do her no harm; France will be able to endure it, and then will awake to a new life, and new ideas. But hitherto France has been dominated on the one hand by old formulas, and on the other by cravenheartedness and pleasure-seeking.
The Napoleonic dynasty will be impossible henceforth. New life and reformation of the country are so important that even the bitterest trials are nothing by comparison. Do you not recognize God’s hand in it? —
Also our politics of the last seventy years — I mean Russian, European, and German politics — must inevitably alter. The Germans will at last show us their real faces. Everywhere in Europe great changes must inevitably come — and of their own accord.
What new life will be called forth everywhere by this mighty shock! For want of great conceptions, even science has sunk into arid materialism; what does a passing blow signify in face of that? —
You write “People kill and wound, and then nurse the wounded.” Do but think of the noblest words that ever yet were spoken: “I desire love, and not sacrifice.” At this moment, or at any rate in a few days, there will, I believe, be much decided. Who betrayed whom? Who made a strategical error? The Germans or the French? I believe, the Germans.
Or rather, ten days ago I was of that opinion. But now it appears to me that the Germans will keep the upper hand a while longer; the French are on the verge of an abyss, into which they are bound to plunge for a time — by that I mean the dynastic interests to which the fatherland is being sacrificed. I could tell you much of German opinion, which I can observe here, and which is very significant in the present political crisis; but I have no time. —
I greet you all. Remember me to everyone. I embrace you from my heart; do not forget that no one is so cordially inclined to you as I am. I am glad that I have been able to write to you. Write to me, don’t forget me; I am now setting to again at my forced labour. —
With heart and soul, your FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.
When I think of the Petersburg relatives, my heart aches. I can send them nothing before the beginning of next year, though they are in great distress. This weighs heavily on my conscience; I had promised to aid them; about Pasha I am particularly grieved.
P.S. — You don’t understand my position with the creditors; that is why you think it would not be worth their while to put me in prison. On the contrary: they will quite certainly have me arrested, for in many respects it would be of great advantage to them. I forget whether I told you that I have hopes of procuring, immediately after my arrival in Petersburg, the use of about 5,000 roubles for about three years. That would save me from imprisonment. Nor is such a hope entirely without foundation. But I must do the business personally; if I attempted it from here, I might spoil all. The plan has nothing to do with my literary activities. At the same time, if my present novel should make a success, my hopes for these 5,000 roubles would be sensibly improved. This is all between ourselves.
Till next time, my dears.
Your DOSTOEVSKY.
LX. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
DRESDEN,
October 9 [21], 1870.
I have not written to you till now, because I have been uninterruptedly occupied with the novel for the Roussky Viestnik. The work was going so badly, and I had to re-write so much, that at last I vowed to myself that I would read nothing and write nothing, and hardly even raise my head from my desk, until I had accomplished what I had set myself to do. And I am only at the beginning now! It is true that many scenes belonging to the middle of the novel are ready written, and separate bits of what I have rejected I shall still be able to use. Nevertheless, I am still at work on the earliest chapters. That is a bad omen, and yet I mean to make the thing as good as may be. The truth is that the tone and style of a story must make themselves. But true as that is, one occasionally loses one’s note, and has to find it again. In a word: none of my works has given me so much trouble as this one. At the beginning, that is at the end of last year, I thought the novel very “made” and artificial, and rather scorned it. But later I was overtaken by real enthusiasm, I fell in love with my work of a sudden, and made a big effort to get all that I had written into good trim. Then, in the summer, came a transformation: up started a new, vital character, who insisted on being the real hero of the book; the original hero (a most interesting figure, but not worthy to be called a hero) fell into the background. The new one so inspired me that I once more began to go over the whole afresh. And now, when I have already sent the beginning to the office of the Roussky Viestnik, I am suddenly possessed with terror — I fear that I am not equal to the theme I have chosen. This dread torments me horribly. And yet I have not arbitrarily dragged in my hero. I arranged for his entire rôle in the synopsis of the book (I prepared a synopsis in several sheets, and sketched therein the entire action, though without the dialogues and comments). Therefore I hope that I may still bring off this hero, and even make him a quite new and original figure; I hope and fear simultaneously. For it is really time that I wrote something important at last. Perhaps it will all burst up like a soap-bubble. But come what come will, I must write; the many re-fashionings have lost me much time, and I have very little ready....
[The rest is concerned with journalism and the Sarya.]
LXI. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
DRESDEN,
December 15 [27], 1870.
I have undertaken a task to which my powers are not equal. I attacked a big novel (a novel “with a purpose “ — most unusual for me), and at first I thought I should manage it quite easily. But what has been the issue? When I had tried about ten settings, and saw what the theme demanded, I got very much out of heart with the thing. The first part I finished because I simply had to (it is very long, about ten sheets; and there are to be four parts in all), and sent it off. I believe that that first part is empty and quite ineffective. From it the reader can’t at all perceive what I’m aiming at, or how the action is to develop. The Roussky Viestnik people expressed themselves quite flatteringly about this beginning. The novel is called “The Possessed” (they are the same “possessed” about whom I wrote to you before), and has a motto from the Gospels. I want to speak out quite openly in this book, with no ogling of the younger generation. I can’t possibly say all I should like in a letter.
[He then speaks of his account with the publisher Stellovsky.]
LXII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
DRESDEN, December 30, 1870.
Yes, I am resolute to return, and shall certainly be in Petersburg early in the year. Here, I am constantly in such a frightful state of mind that I can hardly write at all. Work is dreadfully difficult to me. I follow Russian and German happenings with feverish interest; I have been through much in these four years. It has been a strenuous, if a lonely, existence. Whatever God shall send me in the future, I will humbly accept. My family, too, weighs heavily on my mind. In a word, I need human intercourse.
Strachov has written to me that everything in our society is still fearfully puerile and crude. If you knew how acutely one realizes that from here! But if you knew, besides, what a deep-drawn repulsion, almost appr
oaching hatred, I have conceived for the whole of Western Europe during these four years!
My God, how terrible are our prepossessions with regard to foreign countries! Are Russians simpletons, then, that they can believe it -is through their schooling that the Prussians have come off conquerors? Such a view is positively sinful: it’s a fine schooling whereby children are harassed and tormented, as it were by Attila’s horde, and even worse.
You write that the national spirit of France is in revolt against brute force. From the beginning I have never doubted that if only the French will not hasten to make peace, if they will but hold out for as much as three months, the Germans will be driven forth with shame and ignominy. I should have to write you a long letter if I tried to give you a series of my personal observations — for example, of the way in which soldiers are sent to France, how they are recruited, equipped, housed and fed, transported. It is extraordinarily interesting. An unfortunate poverty-stricken woman, say, who lives by letting two furnished rooms (rooms are all “furnished” here; she would have about twopence worth of furniture of her own)... such a woman is forced, because she “has her own furniture,” to supply quarters and food for ten soldiers. The quartering lasts a day, or two, or three — at most a week. But the business costs her from twenty to thirty thalers.
I have myself read letters from German soldiers in France to their parents (small business-folk). Good God, the things they have to tell! O, how ill they are, and how hungry! But it would take too long to relate. One more observation, though, I’ll give you: at first, one often heard the people in the streets singing the “Wacht am Rhein”: now, one never hears it at all. By far the greatest excitement and pride exists among the professors, doctors, and students; the crowd are but little interested. Indeed, they are very quiet. But the professors are extraordinarily arrogant. I encounter them every evening in the public library. A very influential scholar with silver-white hair loudly exclaimed, the day before yesterday, “Paris must be bombarded!” So that’s the outcome of all their learning. If not of their learning, then of their stupidity. They may be very scholarly, but they’re frightfully limited! Yet another observation: all the populace here can read and write, but every one of them is terribly unintelligent, obtuse, stubborn, and devoid of any high ideals. But enough of this. Till we meet. I embrace you and thank you in anticipation. For God’s sake, don’t forget me, and do write to me.
Your DOSTOEVSKY.
LXIII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
DRESDEN,
March 2 [14], 1871.
[At first the topic is a pending transaction between Dostoevsky and the publisher Stellovsky.]
I was delighted by your flattering opinion of the beginning of my novel. My God, how I feared for that book, and how I still fear! By the time you read these lines, you will have seen the second half of the first part in the February number of the Roussky Viestnik. What do you say to it? I am terribly anxious. I can’t at all tell if I shall get on with the sequel. I am in despair. There are to be only four parts in all — that is, forty sheets. Stepan Trofimovitch is a figure of superficial importance; the novel will not in any real sense deal with him; but his story is so closely connected with the principal events of the book that I was obliged to take him as basis for the whole. This Stepan Trofimovitch will take his “benefit” in the fourth part; his destiny is to have a most original climax. I won’t answer for anything else, but for that I answer without limitations. And yet I must once more say: I tremble like a frightened mouse. The idea tempted me, and I got tremendously carried away by it; but whether I shall bring it off, whether the whole novel isn’t a [...] — well, that’s my great trouble.
Only think: I have already had letters from several quarters congratulating me on the first part. This has enormously encouraged me. I tell you quite truthfully, with no idea of flattering you, that your judgment has more weight with me than any other. In the first place, I know that you are absolutely frank; in the second, your letter contains an inspired saying: “They are Turgenev’s heroes in their old age.” That’s admirably said! As I wrote, some such idea hovered before me; but you have expressed it in a word or two, in a formula, as it were. Aye — for those words I thank you; you have illuminated the whole book thereby. The work goes very heavily forward; I feel unwell, and soon now returns the period of my frequent attacks. I am afraid I shall not be ready in time. But I do not mean to hurry. True, I have thoroughly constructed and thoroughly studied my plan; nevertheless, if I hurry, I may spoil the whole thing. I have quite decided to return in the spring.
LXIV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
DRESDEN,
April 23 [May 5], 1871.
[In the first half of the letter Dostoevsky advises Strachov on no account to abandon his critical work.] —
As a consequence of the colossal revolutions which are taking place in politics as well as in the narrower literary sphere, we behold general culture and capacity for critical judgment momentarily shattered and undone. People have taken it into their heads that they have no time for literature (as if literature were a pastime — fine culture, that!); in consequence of which the level of literary taste is so terribly low that no critic of to-day, however remarkable he may be, can have his proper influence on the public. Dobrolyubov’s and Pissarev’s successes really derive from their having totally ignored any such thing as literature, that sole domain of intellectual and spiritual vitality here below. But one must not reckon with such phenomena; one is bound to continue one’s critical work. Forgive my offering you advice: but that is how I should act, were I in your place.
In one of your brochures there was a wonderful piece of observation which nobody before you has made, namely, that every writer of any significance, any authentic talent, has finally yielded to national sentiment and become a Slavophil. Thus, for example, the facile Pushkin created, long before any of the Slavophils, that figure of the Chronicler in the monastery at Tchudov — that is to say, he grasped, far better than all the Kireyevskys, Chomyakovs, etc., the inmost essence of Slavophilism. And then, look at Herzen: what a longing, what a need, to strike into the true path! Only because of his personal weaknesses did he fail to do it. Nor is that all: this law of the conversion to nationality is not only to be observed in writers and poets, but in all other directions. So that one can in the end set up yet another law: if any man has genuine talent, he will have also that impulse to return to the people from the crumbling upper regions of society; but if he has no talent, he will not only remain in those crumbling regions, but even exile himself to foreign lands, or turn to Catholicism, or what not.
Bielinsky, whom you even to-day admire, was, as regards talent, feeble and impotent; therefore he condemned Russia and, in full consciousness of what he was doing, reviled his native land (people will have much to say of Bielinsky in the future, and then you’ll see). But I want only to say one thing more: that idea which you have expressed is enormously important, and demands further and more specialized treatment.
Your letters give me great delight. But about your last opinion on my novel I want to say this to you: first, you praise far too highly those excellencies which you find therein; second, you point with admirable acumen to its principal fault. Yes, that was and ever is my greatest torment — I never can control my material. Whenever I write a novel, I crowd it up with a lot of separate stories and episodes; therefore the whole lacks proportion and harmony. You have seen this astonishingly well; how frightfully have I always suffered from it, for I have always been aware that it was so. And I have made another great mistake besides: without calculating my powers, I have allowed myself to be transported by poetic enthusiasm, and have undertaken an idea to which my strength was not equal. (N.B. — The force of poetic enthusiasm is, to be sure, as for example with Victor Hugo, always stronger than the artistic force. Even in Pushkin one detects this disproportion.) But I destroy myself thereby.
I must further add that the move to Russia and the many anxieties
which await me in the summer, will immensely injure the novel. Anyhow, I thank you for your sympathy. What a pity it is that we shall not see one another for so long. In the meantime
I am your most devoted
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.
LXV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
DRESDEN,
May 18 [30], 1871.
MUCH-ESTEEMED NIKOLAY NIKOLAYEVITCH, So you really have begun your letter with Bielinsky, as I foresaw. But do reflect on Paris and the Commune. Will you perchance maintain, as others do, that the whole thing failed simply because of the lack of men, and as a result of unfavourable circumstances? Through the whole of this 19th century, that school has dreamed of the setting-up of earthly paradises (for instance, the phalansteries), and then, directly it came to action (as in the years 1848, 1849, and now), has shown a contemptible incapacity for any practical expression of itself. At bottom, the entire movement is but a repetition of the Russian delusion that men can reconstruct the world by reason and experience (Positivism). But we have seen enough of it by now to be entitled to declare that such impotence as is displayed can be no chance phenomenon. Why do they cut off heads? Simply because it’s the easiest of all things to do. To say something sensible is far more difficult. Effort is, after all, a lesser thing than attainment. They desire the common good, but when it comes to defining “good,” can only reiterate Rousseau’s aphorism — that “good” is a fantasy never yet ratified by experience. The burning of Paris is something utterly monstrous: “Since we have failed, let the whole world perish!” — for the Commune is more important than the world’s weal, and France’s! Yet they (and many others) see in that madness not monstrosity, but only beauty. Since that is so, the aesthetic idea must be completely clouded over in the modern mind. A moral basis (taken from Positivist teachings) for society is not only incapable of producing any results whatever, but can’t possibly even define itself to itself, and so must always lose its way amid aspirations and ideals. Have we not sufficient evidence by this time to be able to prove that a society is not thus to be built up, that quite otherwhere lie the paths to the common good, and that this common good reposes on things different altogether from those hitherto accepted? On what, then, does it repose? Men write and write, and overlook the principal point. In Western Europe the peoples have lost Christ (Catholicism is to blame), and therefore Western Europe is tottering to its fall. Ideas have changed — how evidently! And the fall of the Papal power, together with that of the whole Romano-German world (France, etc.) — what a coincidence!
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 695
