Dostoevsky

by Frank, Joseph

  This document, presented to the tsar on February 19 by the minister of the interior, L. S. Makov, was read carefully by its recipient, who perhaps understood its underlying drift more clearly than its official sponsors. For the tsar remarked to his minister (his words were reported to Anna after Dostoevsky’s death), “I never suspected the Slavic Benevolent Society of solidarity with the Nihilists.”7 The tsar could only have been speaking ironically, which means he had grasped those aspects of the address betraying not only a latent sympathy with the sincere radicals but also a desire that the tsar allow the people to make their wishes known “without fear.”

  Dostoevsky visited Suvorin on the same day his address was given to the tsar, and, in a two-hour conversation, the journalist found Dostoevsky in an extremely good mood, “very lively” and full of hope about a change for the better under Loris-Melikov. “You will see,” he told Suvorin, “something new is beginning. I’m not a prophet, but you’ll see. Now everything looks different.”8

  On the day following the tsar’s anniversary celebration, an extraordinary conversation took place between Dostoevsky and Suvorin. The former had just suffered another epileptic attack, and Suvorin found him in a gloomy and depressed state of mind. The talk turned to the wave of political crimes, and to the explosion in the Winter Palace. “Deliberating on these events,” Suvorin recalled, “Dostoevsky dwelt on the strange relation of society to these crimes. Society sympathized with them, as it were, or, closer to the truth, did not really know what to think about them.” Then he invented a dramatic situation, as he had so often done for the characters in his novels, in which he himself would be confronted with having to choose a course of action that would define his moral attitude. What if he and Surovin had overheard a conversation between two terrorists about imminent plans to blow up the Winter Palace. Would they turn to the police to arrest the conspirators?. When Surovin replied in the negative, Dostoevsky concurred, “Nor would I. . . . Why? . . . I turned over all the reasons that would cause me to do it. Well-founded reasons . . . then considered all the reasons that would hold me back. These reasons are—simply insignificant. Simply the fear of being reputed to be an informer.”9

  Nothing shows more glaringly the moral discredit into which the tsarist regime had fallen by this time and the torturing moral-political dilemma that confronted all thinking Russians as they observed from the sidelines the attempts to kill the Tsar-Father. No wonder that every installment of The Brothers Karamazov was snapped up and read with such passionate intensity, as if the literate classes were hoping the novel would help them find some answer to their quandary. There can be no doubt, in any case, that Dostoevsky felt the dilemma he and Suvorin were contemplating to have the most intimate connection with the thematics of the novel. For it was at the conclusion of this dialogue, and under its stimulation, that he outlined for his listener one of the possible continuations envisaged for his second volume. In this version, Alyosha Karamazov prepared himself “to pass through the monastery and become a revolutionary. He would commit a political crime. He would be executed. He would have searched for truth, and in these searches, naturally, he would have become a revolutionary.”10 Such words surely indicate the affinity between his morally positive hero Alyosha and the radicals. They also help us to understand why, despite all the “solid” reasons he could muster, Dostoevsky flinched at the prospect of turning the terrorists over to the police.

  On the very day of this conversation, an attempt was made on the life of Loris-Melikov. A young Jewish radical, Ippolit Mlodetsky, fired at the newly appointed plenipotentiary point-blank but missed. Mlodetsky was captured, tried by court-martial, and condemned to death. Soon afterward, Suvorin writes that “the attempt on the life of Count Loris-Melikov agitated Dostoevsky, [who] was afraid of a reaction.” “God forbid that we turn back to the old road,” he is quoted as having said. Suvorin also notes that “during the period of our political crimes he was in terrible fear of a massacre, a massacre of the educated class by the people, who would surge up as the avengers. ‘You haven’t seen what I saw,’ he would say, ‘you don’t know what the people are capable of when they are enraged. I have seen terrible, terrible instances.’ ”11

  The public hanging of Mlodetsky took place on February 22, at the same Semenovsky Square where, thirty years before, Dostoevsky had stood as a condemned man. Now he took his place in the crowd of onlookers, which he estimated to be about fifty thousand. He was still under the unhappy effect of the execution two days later when visited by Countess A. I. Tolstaya, who describes him in a letter to her daughter Ekaterina Yunge as “disturbed, sickly, terribly pale”; knowing him quite well, she attributes his condition to the Mlodetsky hanging.12 To cheer him up, she asked Anna to read a laudatory letter from Mme Yunge containing perceptive remarks about the published portions of The Brothers Karamazov. “Involuntarily,” she tells her mother, “you compare Dostoevsky with European novelists—I pick only the best of them—the French: Zola, Goncourts, Daudet—they are all honorable, desire improvement; but, my God! how they paddle in shallow water! But he . . . [is] also a . . . realist, a precise investigator, a psychologist, an idealist, a philosopher.”13

  In conclusion, expressing a sentiment aroused in many others as well, she writes that, after reading about the suffering of the children and the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, she was unable to continue and felt a desire “to make her confession before [Dostoevsky] and hear from him some sort of necessary, helpful . . . word.”14 As Dostoevsky listened to the young woman’s encomium, his face gradually “lit up, acquired some living color, his eyes sparkled with satisfaction, often with tears. . . . It seemed that he suddenly became younger.” He asked the countess to convey his thanks for such a comprehension of his novel, which “nobody has yet read so thoughtfully.”15

  The letter from Ekaterina Yunge to her mother was followed by another addressed to him directly. A month later he replied, complaining that he had wished to answer her perceptive missives sooner, but “honest to God, my life goes on at such a disorderly boil and even in such a bustle that I rarely belong to myself.” Dostoevsky knew that Mme Yunge was a painter and (from her mother) that she was personally unhappy, “living in solitude and embittering [her] soul with recollections.” He urges her to have recourse “to a single medicine: art and creative work.” She had described for Dostoevsky the troubling “duality” that she felt in her personality, and his reassuring comments on this problem touch on one of the major leitmotifs of his own work. Such a personality trait, he tells her, “is peculiar to human nature in general,” but not everyone suffers from it to the same degree as Mme Yunge—or himself. “That’s precisely why you are so kindred to me, because that split in you is exactly the same as my own and has been so all my life. It’s a great torment, but at the same time a great delight too. It’s a powerful consciousness, a need for self-evaluation, and the presence in your nature of the need for moral obligation toward yourself and toward humanity. That’s what that duality means.”16

  Such words offer insight into his psyche, and also into the moral significance of all the so-called “schizophrenic” characters that he portrays. “If you were less developed in intellect,” he writes, “if you were limited, you would be less conscience-stricken and there wouldn’t be that duality. On the contrary, very great vanity would result. But the duality is nevertheless a great torment.” The positive moral value assigned to “suffering” in Dostoevsky’s work is always such an inner wrestling with the self; and the only source of comfort is to turn to Christ. As he advises Mme Yunge, “If you believe (or very much want to believe), then give yourself over to Him completely and the torment from that split will be greatly assuaged and you will receive an emotionally spiritual answer, and that’s the main thing.”17

  Despite a social and public life that would have proved taxing even for a younger man, work on The Brothers Karamazov proceeded apace. Dostoevsky had sent Book 9 to Lyubimov in early January, and he sent Book 10 sometime bet
ween the end of March and early April. At the same time, whatever the status that Dostoevsky had now attained in Russian literary life, he was reminded of some of the embarrassments of his youthful literary début by a reference in the April issue of the liberal Westernizing journal European Messenger. This influential publication had been running a series of reminiscences of the 1840s by Annenkov, later published as The Extraordinary Decade—a book that takes its place just behind Herzen’s My Past and Thoughts as the most penetrating and insightful portrait of the period. Many pages are devoted to Belinsky, the central figure of that day, and the critic’s enthusiastic response to Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk, provides part of the story. But Annenkov, who was the closest Russian confidant of Turgenev and served as his literary factotum, could not resist paying back Dostoevsky for the deadly caricature of Turgenev in Demons and for the recent incident at the banquet. According to Annenkov, the young Dostoevsky became so inflated with his newly acquired fame that he asked Nekrasov, the editor of the Petersburg Almanac, “to separate [Poor Folk] from all the other works by a special typographical sign, for example—borders. The novel was actually surrounded by such borders in the almanac.”18

  Incensed by this charge, Dostoevsky dashed off a letter to Suvorin, who a few days later printed a denial in his conservative Petersburg newspaper New Time (Novoe Vremya). After several other publicists joined in the fray, Dostoevsky ended the controversy by requesting Suvorin to print the following: “We have received a formal declaration from F. M. Dostoevsky that nothing similar to what was stated in the European Messsenger ever happened, nor could it have.”19 Dostoevsky intended to reply at length in his Diary for 1881 since the gossip about “borders” had cast doubt on his account of his relations with Belinsky, and “if I do not object, they would say that [Annenkov’s version] was the correct one.”20 Dostoevsky “was so infuriated by Annenkov’s slander,” Anna writes, “that he resolved not to recognize him if he met him at the Pushkin festivities, and if Annenkov should approach him he would refuse to shake hands.”21

  The Pushkin festivities mentioned by Anna refer to the planned unveiling of a monument to Pushkin in Moscow and to a series of public receptions, speeches, and banquets celebrating Russia’s national poet. The prestige of the romantic and aristocratic Pushkin had been considerably damaged by the campaign carried on against him, and against art in general, by the radical publicists of the 1860s. Nonetheless, a large majority of educated Russians read and admired Pushkin, whose poems formed part of the school curriculum, and the idea of erecting a monument to him in Moscow had long been making the rounds. A subscription to raise funds became serious in 1871. After several competitions, the sculptor A. M. Opekushin was chosen to create the full-scale statue; its unveiling, along with the other planned events, was finally scheduled for June 5–9, 1880. Dostoevsky had set down a few thoughts for an article about Pushkin when, on April 5, he received a letter from Sergey Yuriev, chairman of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature (in charge of the preparations for the festivities). Yuriev had earlier asked Dostoevsky to contribute a new novel to his journal Russian Thought; this time he was approaching him for a contribution about Pushkin. Dostoevsky doubted that he would “be able to find the time to write anything,” but promised to keep Russian Thought in mind.22

  The month of April was so crowded with social engagements that he found it impossible to supply The Russian Messenger with a new installment. “I am really prevented from writing here,” he wrote apologetically to Lyubimov. The Karamazovs are again to blame for that. So many people come to see me every day apropos of them, so many people . . . invite me to their homes—that I’m absolutely at my wit’s end and am now fleeing Petersburg!” Dostoevsky planned to leave for Staraya Russa “in a week, and in three weeks I will have the whole novel finished.”23

  If he had been able to work uninterruptedly in Staraya Russa, he might have come closer to meeting the sanguine schedule outlined for his editor. On May 1, however, he received another letter from Yuriev, written on behalf of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, asking him “to honor the memory of the great poet” by speaking at one of the public sessions to take place after the unveiling of the monument.24 A private letter from Yuriev urged him to prefer the Moscow celebration to the one that would also take place in Petersburg, and he lists the names of other participants who would be present: Ivan Aksakov, Pisemsky, Ostrovsky, Turgenev. On May 4, at a meeting of the Slavic Benevolent Society, Dostoevsky (who had recently been elected vice president) was appointed the society’s representative to the Moscow festivities, and he accepted Yuriev’s invitation the very next day.25

  On May 8, he was again the guest of Grand Duke Konstantin and read fragments from The Brothers Karamazov, including, at the request of his host, the confession of Zosima, which the grand duke considered one of the best pieces Dostoevsky had ever written. The tsarevna, all through the evening, “listened very attentively and was in ecstasy”; one of the ladies openly wept.26 Once this highly gratifying obligation had been fulfilled, the family left for Staraya Russa sometime between May 9 and 11.

  1 Quoted in P. Zaionchkovsky, Krisis samoderzhaviya na rubezhe 1870–1880–kh godov (Moscow, 1964), 148.

  2 Letopis, zhizni i tvorchestvo F. M. Dostoevskogo, ed. N. F. Budanova and G. M. Fridlender, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1995), 3: 379.

  3 Ibid., 379.

  4 Ibid.

  5 The text of this address can be found in PSS, 30/Bk. 2: 47–48.

  6 Biografiya, 366; cited in I. Volgin, Posledny god Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1986), 84.

  7 Letopis, 3: 381.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid., 381–382.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Cited from the Diary of A. S. Suvorin in Volgin, Posledny god Dostoevskogo, 141.

  12 Letopis, 384.

  13 LN 86 (Moscow, 1973), 496.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Letopis, 3: 384.

  16 PSS, 30/Bk. 1: 147–149; April 11, 1880.

  17 Ibid.

  18 Ibid., 335. A satirical poem about Dostoevsky, written jointly by Turgenev and Nekrasov, had circulated among the members of the Belinsky Pléiade of young writers during 1845–1846. It contained a jesting reference to a story of his that had been framed “with borders,” and the anecdote resuscitated by Annenkov turns the jeering thrust into fact.

  19 Ibid., 155; May 14, 1880.

  20 PSS, 27: 198.

  21 Anna Dostoevsky, Reminiscences, trans. and ed. Beatrice Stillman (New York, 1975), 330.

  22 PSS, 30/Bk. 1: 147; April 9, 1880.

  23 Ibid., 151–152; April 29, 1880.

  24 LN 86 (Moscow, 1973), 509.

  25 Ibid., 153–154; May 5, 1880.

  26 LN, 137.

  CHAPTER 56

  The Pushkin Festival

  The Moscow Pushkin festival in the spring of 1880 has been remembered by posterity largely because of the sensation created by Dostoevsky’s impassioned apotheosis of the great poet. At the time, however, the event assumed considerable importance because of the tense and ominous social-political climate in the country, which imparted a political coloring to any large manifestation of public opinion. In this instance, the cream of the Russian intelligentsia gathered in the ancient capital (as well as in other major cities) to eulogize a poet who had incurred the displeasure of Nicholas I, had been sent into exile, and had close friends among the revolutionary Decembrists of 1825. Such a celebration was in itself unprecedented and, indeed, was felt as an implicit demand for a liberty of expression still lacking in Russian literature and society.

  Even more, the initiative for this enterprise had come from private individuals (a group of Pushkin’s surviving classmates from the lycée in Tsarskoe Selo), and funds for the statue had been raised by private subscription. Eventually the project was approved and even patronized by the crown, and the Moscow Duma agreed to pay the expenses of all the invited guests; but participants did not feel they were taking part in any official function. Instead, as one
observer put it, here “for the first time a social longing was displayed by us with such broad-ranging freedom. Those who attended felt themselves to be citizens enjoying a fullness of rights.”1

  Moreover, the official acceptance of this independent endeavor was seen positively as the augury of a new era in the relations between the tsar and the intelligentsia. Indeed, as a testimony to the influence that the educated class had begun to exercise, Count Loris-Melikov instructed the government of Moscow not to require preliminary approval of the speeches to be given after the unveiling. “Here in Petersburg,” Dostoevsky complains to Yuriev, “at the most innocent literary reading . . . every line, even one written twenty years ago, [has to be] submitted . . . for advance permission for reading. . . . Will they really allow one to read something newly written without someone’s advance censorship?”2 An atmosphere of expectation was created; perhaps even more concessions by the government would be forthcoming! What seemed to be a purely cultural event thus took on—as was usually the case in Russia, where no unfettered political discussion of any kind was possible—an important social-political sub-text. On a more personal level, this subtext was dramatized by the culmination of the ideological duel that Turgenev and Dostoevsky had been carrying on ever since the mid-1860s.

  On May 19, Dostoevsky wrote to convey name day greetings to Pobedonostsev, and also to wish him “every wonderful success in your new labors” as head procurator of the Holy Synod, the council supervising the Russian Orthodox Church. Informing him of the impending trip to Moscow, Dostoevsky reveals some of the ideological dissensions that had begun to surface in the preparations for the great event. As it happens, he writes, “I’ve already heard in passing even in Petersburg that there is a clique raging there in Moscow . . . and that they are afraid of certain reactionary words that could be spoken by certain people at the sessions of the Lovers of Russian Literature.”3 Dostoevsky, however, firmly declares: “I have prepared my speech about Pushkin, and precisely in the most extreme spirit of my (that is our, I make bold to thus express myself) convictions, and therefore I expect, perhaps, a certain amount of abuse . . . but I’m not afraid, and one should serve one’s cause, and I will speak without fear. The professors there are paying court to Turgenev, who is absolutely turning into a personal enemy of mine.”