In the background of these remarks is the attempt by the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature to ban Katkov from speaking. The committee of the society in charge of organizing the festivities was ideologically in league with the moderately liberal Westernizer orientation of influential professors at the University of Moscow, who felt reinforced by the presence of Turgenev. He had returned to Russia for the celebration and had been appointed an honorary member of the society. Turgenev and Katkov had long been enemies, and the latter had recently attacked the novelist for being in sympathy with the revolutionaries. In addition, Katkov had offended the intelligentsia as a whole by objecting to Loris-Melikov’s appeal for their collaboration, which he regarded as a first step toward a weakening of the autocrat’s power. “There is no need to seek support and aid from society,” he had written after the explosion in the Winter Palace. “Only discipline in state ranks, which will make everyone in them fear deviating from their duty and deceiving the supreme power, and patriotism in the educated spheres of society—that’s what’s needed.”4 It was thus a simple matter for Turgenev to persuade the committee to blacklist Katkov, even though the latter was a member of the society and had defended the value of Pushkin’s art against the attacks of the radical critics in the 1860s. An attempt was also made to blacklist Dostoevsky because of the disruptive incident at the dinner for Turgenev the previous year, but Dostoevsky had too many admirers, including the chairman of the society, Yuriev, for this effort to succeed.
Dostoevsky left Staraya Russa on May 22, seen off by Anna, the children, and his mother-in-law. Anna had desired to travel to Moscow herself with the children, but such an expedition was beyond their means. Worried about Dostoevsky’s health, in view of the anticipated strain, Anna made him promise to write every day, and he faithfully kept his word—often writing not once but twice. A full, firsthand account thus exists of the swirling round of activities in which he became engulfed during a stay that was expected to be no more than a week, but lasted twenty-two days.
This prolongation was partly due to the death of Tsarina Marya Alexandrovna on the very day of Dostoevsky’s departure. He heard about it from fellow passengers, and his first thought was that the festivities would be cancelled, but he decided to continue his trip nonetheless. Arriving in Moscow, he spent his morning returning visits from various notables, including Ivan Aksakov, and then went to call on Yuriev. “An enthusiastic meeting with kisses,” he reports with an edge of irony. He was not at all impressed with the editor, whom he compares with the scatterbrained Repetilov in Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit. “He’s a fibbertigibbet as a person, a Repetilov in a new form.” That evening he went to see Lyubimov and Katkov, who received him cordially, but were anxiously awaiting a new installment of his novel for June (“when I get home I’ll have to work like the devil”).5
A dinner had been arranged in Dostoevsky’s honor at the Hermitage on the twenty-fifth because “all the young Moscow writers are wildly anxious to meet me.” Twenty-two guests attended, among them Ivan Aksakov and Nikolay Rubinshtein, founder and director of the Moscow Conservatory, who had been placed in charge of the musical arrangements for the festival; there were also four university professors. He was impressed with the lavishness of the meal: “quail, amazing asparagus, ice cream, a river of fine wines and champagne . . . after dinner, over coffee and liqueur, two hundred magnificent and expensive cigars appeared.” Six laudatory speeches were given, and “mention was made of my ‘great significance as an artist of worldwide sensitivity,’ as a journalist, and as a Russian. . . . Everyone was in an enthusiastic state. . . . I replied to everyone with a quite successful speech that produced a great effect; moreover, I made Pushkin the topic of the speech.”6
During the dinner, Dostoevsky announced that he was planning to leave on the twenty-seventh and, he tells Anna, “an absolute din arose: ‘We won’t let you go.’ ” Earlier in the day, Prince Dolgoruky had told representatives of the society that the festivities would take place sometime between June 1 and 5, and Dostoevsky was admonished: “All of Moscow will be grieved and indignant if you leave.”7 When he pleaded that he had to work on The Karamazovs, it was instantly proposed that a deputation be sent to Katkov to demand a revision of the publication schedule. Under this pressure, he wavered and said he would come to a decision the next day.
On May 27, he learned that the Moscow Duma would be covering the room and board of all the invited delegates. Far from being pleased, he objected strenuously but was told he would insult all of Moscow if he persisted in refusing. Why, even the surviving members of Pushkin’s family, all residing in the same hotel, had accepted the hospitality of the Duma! In view of Dostoevsky’s concern about expenses, one might think that his resistance was feigned, but a writer known to have accepted any kind of official support was assumed to have lost his independence, and Dostoevsky wished to avoid such an imputation at all costs. He thus tells Anna that he will “purposely go to restaurants for dinner so as to reduce as much as possible the bill that will be presented to the Duma by the hotel.”8 He did not want any gossip to spread that he was exploiting the situation unduly for his own advantage.
On the afternoon of May 26 it was learned that the ceremonies would take place on June 4, and most of the deputations, from all parts of Russia, decided to remain. Preparations for the great event were in full swing; “the windows of the buildings surrounding the square are being rented out for fifty rubles a window.”9 Dostoevsky explained again to Anna that “I should stay . . . it’s not just [the Society] who need me, but our whole party, our whole idea, for which we have been struggling thirty years now because the hostile party (Turgenev, Kovalevsky, and almost the entire university) definitely want to play down Pushkin’s significance as a spokesman for the Russian national character, denying that very national character. . . . I have fought for this my whole life and can’t flee the field of battle now.”10 Moreover, as he had told the more practical Anna just the day before, “if my speech at the gala meeting is a success, then in Moscow (and therefore in Russia too) from then on I will be better known as a writer (that is, in the sense of the eminence already won by Turgenev and Tolstoy). Goncharov, for instance, who doesn’t leave Petersburg, is known here, but from afar and coldly.”11
Turgenev had been assigned the delicate, unenviable task of journeying to Yasnaya Polyana to persuade Tolstoy to attend the Pushkin celebration, even though Tolstoy by this time had renounced literature for reasons comparable to those of the radical critics who had denounced Pushkin in the 1860s. Just what occurred during their meeting on May 2–3 is not known, but Grigorovich, an inveterate gossip, told Dostoevsky that “Turgenev, who has come back from seeing Lev Tolstoy, is ill, while Tolstoy has nearly lost his mind, and has perhaps quite lost it.”12 A day later Tolstoy informs Strakhov: “I had many interesting conversations with Turgenev. Up to now . . . people have said: ‘What’s Tolstoy doing, working away at some nonsense or other. He ought to be told to stop that nonsense.’ And every time it’s been the case that the people giving advice have become ashamed and frightened about themselves. I think it was the same with Turgenev too. I found it both painful and comforting to be with him. And we parted amicably.”13 Another report, however, claims that Turgenev was “hurt and offended” by the encounter. In a succeeding letter, Dostoevsky writes: “Katkov also confirmed about Lev Tolstoy that he has quite lost his mind. Yuriev has been trying to get me to see him. . . . But I won’t go, even though it would be very interesting.”14
On May 31, he finally received a letter from Anna and was greatly relieved: “An oppression seems to have lifted from my heart.” The provident Anna had charged him with the task of inscribing the name of their son Feodor in the register of the nobility in Moscow; but after several reminders, he replied that “in the first place, even if it were possible, I don’t have the time, and most important it needs to be done from Petersburg, through people.”15 A meeting had been held at Turgenev’s lodgings that day to make the final
arrangements, and two days later Dostoevsky complains to Anna about having been excluded. On the morning of June 1, he learned that instead of the readings that had been initially assigned to him, he had been given Pushkin’s “The Prophet,” which of course he knew by heart. “I probably won’t refuse ‘The Prophet,’ but how could they not notify me officially?”16
Such offhand treatment was as nothing compared with the blow dealt to Katkov on the same day. Visiting him that evening, Dostoevsky met Lyubimov, who told him that Yuriev, in the name of the society, had withdrawn an invitation to Katkov as editor of Moscow News, where Katkov’s attacks on the intelligentsia had appeared, on the ground that it had been sent through an error. Dostoevsky was outraged at this display of ideological partisanship, even more so when he learned from the irrepressible tattler Grigorovich that “Yuriev was made to sign it, mainly by Kovalevsky but by Turgenev too.” “It’s vileness,” Dostoevsky fumed, “and if I weren’t so involved in these festivities I would perhaps break off relations with them.”17
On June 3, Dostoevsky went to a meeting of the executive committee of the society, where—in spite of his previous suspicions—the final dispositions were made. “Everything was arranged to everyone’s general satisfaction,” he tells Anna contentedly. “Turgenev was rather nice to me, while Kovalevsky (a big fat hulk and enemy of our tendency) kept staring at me intently.” He would read his Pushkin speech “on the second day of the morning meeting, and on the evening of the sixth I’m reading Pimen’s scene from Boris Godunov. . . . on the eighth, I’ll read three poems by Pushkin (two from ‘Songs of the Western Slavs’), and at the finale, for the conclusion of the celebrations, Pushkin’s ‘The Prophet.’ ” His public renditions of this poem had always created a sensation and become deservedly famous. “I was purposely put into the finale so as to produce an effect.”18
On returning to his hotel at ten o’clock, he found a card from Suvorin and hastened to the hotel where this Petersburg ally was staying with his wife. “I was terribly glad. Because of his articles he’s in disgrace with the ‘Lovers [Society]’ just like Katkov.”19 Suvorin had written several pieces attacking Yuriev’s Russian Thought and, though not defending Katkov directly, had assailed his enemies. These opinions had been enough for him to fall out of the good graces of the society. “They didn’t even give him a ticket for a morning meeting.” Dostoevsky and Grigorovich planned to visit the Kremlin Museum of Antiquities the next day, and Suvorin begged that they “take him and his wife.” “Poor fellow,” Dostoevsky remarks, “he seems bored with his wife”—an attitude very far from his own sentiments. Replying to Anna’s teasing accusation that “I don’t love you,” he confesses, “I keep having terrible dreams, nightmares every night, about your betraying me with others.”20
The official opening ceremonies of “the Pushkin days” began on June 5. In the afternoon all one hundred and six delegations were received in the hall of the Duma by Prince Oldenburgsky, head of the commission for the Pushkin monument, and Governor-General Dolgoruky. “The fussing around, the chaos—it’s impossible to describe,” Dostoevsky writes. Each delegation advanced in turn to a stage covered with luxuriant greenery and dominated by a large bust of Push-kin, at the foot of which they deposited their wreaths. (Dostoevsky had been tormented by the problem of acquiring such a wreath and paying for it out of his own pocket.) The delegates then read speeches, and the press comments on the merits of these oratorical efforts were hardly complimentary. The Populist writer Gleb Uspensky, who covered the festival for Notes of the Fatherland, remarked that “there were speeches so strange that even if one wanted to, one could not track down precisely where the main clause was located.”21 Dostoevsky says nothing about the oratory but mentions that he managed to speak to Pushkin’s daughter while standing in line, and that “Turgenev ran up courteously,” as did the playwright Ostrovsky, “the local Jupiter.”22
For June 7, he begins his letter to Anna with an account of the events of the day preceding, when the Pushkin monument had been unveiled and dedicated. His pen faltered, however, at depicting this epochal event. “You couldn’t describe it even in twenty pages, and besides, I don’t have even a moment’s time. For three nights I’ve slept only five hours each, and tonight too.”23 As a prelude to the unveiling, a mass had been held at the Strastnoi Monastery just across the square from the monument, and Metropolitan Makary—a member of the society—solemnly wished “eternal memory” to Pushkin’s shade. The plan had been for Metropolitan Makary to lead a solemn procession from the church to the statue, which he would sprinkle with holy water, but the clergy remained within the church and the statue did not receive the expected blessing. Protests had been raised that such a blessing would be sacrilege. Thus, without benefit of clergy, the processions marched to the strains of “four orchestras and several choruses and groups of schoolchildren” led by Rubinshtein. “Delegates wore badges and carried wreaths; some waved flags of red, white, and blue with their delegation’s name stamped in gold”;24 other banners bore the names of Pushkin’s poems.
The unveiling produced an explosion of joyful hysteria, and all accounts agree that “people were ‘crazed with happiness’; many wept, and even the most hard-nosed of newspapermen admitted afterward to shedding a few tears.” A columnist in Voice wrote of “How many sincere handshakes, how many good, honest kisses people exchanged—often people who weren’t even acquainted.”25 One should keep this generally ecstatic mood in mind in gauging what Dostoevsky tells us about the fervent testimonies of admiration lavished on him even before his speech. Once the unveiling had taken place, the delegations, marching to the music of Meyerbeer’s “The Prophet,” paraded to the monument and laid their wreaths at its foot.
That evening, a dinner held under the auspices of the Moscow Duma was to be followed by the first of the readings by the important authors present. Also, despite the maneuvers of the Society, Katkov had been invited to speak as a member of the Duma. Gaideburov, editor of the semi-Populist Week, who called on Dostoevsky just before dinner, noted his agitation. “I dropped by Dostoevsky’s, and see that he is in a most horrible state; he is somehow twitching all over, in his eyes—anxiety, in his movements—irritation and alarm. I knew he was a highly nervous and impressionable person, who passionately gave himself up to every emotion, but I had never seen him in such a state before.” When Gaideburov asked what was wrong. “ ‘Ah, what will happen, what will happen?’ he exclaimed in answer with despair.”26 Gaideburov understood him as referring to the impending dinner and Katkov’s speech. The pariah would now be able to speak his mind, and the result might be, as Dostoevsky had feared a day earlier, that people would come to blows.
When Katkov took the floor, however, he spoke of the celebration as a “holiday of peace” and hoped that “perhaps this passing rapprochement will serve us as a pledge for a more durable unity in the future that will lead to the dying out, or at least the mitigation, of hostilities.” He concluded with the famous poetic toast of Pushkin: “Let the sun shine forth, let the darkness cease!” These pacifying words were generally well received and evoked some applause (just how much depended on what newspaper one read). Both Aksakov and Gaideburov rose to congratulate the speaker, but when Katkov extended his arm to clink glasses with Turgenev, the latter turned away. According to Kovalevsky, Dostoevsky and Turgenev spoke about it later in the evening. “There are some things it is impossible to forget,” Turgenev maintained. “How could I extend my hand to a person whom I consider a renegade?”27
During the dinner on June 6, which began at five o’clock in the afternoon, “two ladies,” as he tells Anna, “brought me flowers,” but this tribute could not overcome his disappointment at what occurred that evening, when he read his assigned pieces, along with Pisemsky, Ostrovsky, Grigorovich, and, of course, the only other participant he cared about—Turgenev. “I read Pimen’s scene,” he writes Anna the next day. “They say I read superbly, but they say they couldn’t hear me very well.” Although he “was
greeted wonderfully” and called back three times, he still felt that he had been bested: “Turgenev, who read very badly, was called back more than I was.”28
Turgenev had been greeted clamorously by the audience, and one of the poems he read, “Again in the Homeland,” had a particular resonance because of his own self-exile. Dostoevsky, however, suspiciously persisted in believing that Kovalevsky had planted a claque (“a hundred young people shouted in a frenzy when Turgenev came out”) and that its purpose, besides applauding Turgenev, “was to humiliate us [the nonliberals] if we were to go against them.” For all that, he could not complain of any lack of adulation on the part of the public. “The reception offered me yesterday was amazing. During the intermission I went through the hall, and a horde of people, young people, gray-haired people, and ladies, rushed up to me, saying, ‘You are our prophet. You have made us better since we read The Karamazovs.’ In short, I am convinced that The Karamazovs has colossal significance.”29 All this appreciation was only a foretaste of what would occur the very next day.
The two most important literary figures at the Pushkin festival were Turgenev and Dostoevsky, and their barely concealed rivalry underlay all the solemn rituals of the occasion. Each gave entirely different readings of Pushkin—Turgenev viewing him in the context of European literature, Dostoevsky proclaiming his genius to be equal to, if not surpassing, anything that European genius had produced. Each presented not only a literary-critical view of Pushkin but also, implicitly, an evaluation of Russian achievement in relation to Europe. The argument, as the audience well understood, was thus only nominally about a literary figure; it was also a replay of the longstanding Westernizer-Slavophil debate carried on in Russian culture all through the nineteenth century. On this occasion, the historical record is clear: Dostoevsky emerged triumphant! He gave the public what it had been waiting to hear, and achieved a victory that astonished even himself.
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