Lectures on Russian literature
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" 'You see,' Anna Sergeievna continued, 'you and I have made a mistake; we're both past our first youth—especially I; we have seen life, we are tired; we're both—why be falsely modest?—clever; at first we aroused each other's interest, our curiosity was stirred, but then — '
" 'But then I became flat,' Bazarov put in. 'You know that that was not the cause of our misunderstanding. But be that as it may, we had no need of each other, that's the main thing; there was too much —how should I put it? —similarity in us. We did not realize this immediately. . . . Eugene Vasilyich, we have no power over—' she began; but a gust of wind swooped down, set the leaves rustling, and bore her words away.
" 'Of course, you are free—' Bazarov declared a little later. Nothing more could be distinguished; their steps retreated; everything was stilled." The next day Bazarov blesses his young friend Arkadi and departs.
We now come to the greatest chapter in our novel, chapter 27, which is the one before the last. Bazarov returns to his family and engages himself to medical activities. Turgenev is preparing his death. Then it comes. Eugene asks his father for some lunar caustic:
" 'Yes, what do you want it for?'
" T need it—to cauterize a cut.'
" 'For whom?'
" 'For myself.'
" 'What—yourself? How is that? What sort of a cut? Where is it?'
" 'Right here, on my finger. I went to the village today—you know, where they brought that peasant with typhus from. They were about to perform an autopsy on him for some reason or other, and I've had no practice on that sort of thing for a long while.'
" 'Well?'
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" 'Well, so I asked the district doctor to let me do it; and so I cut myself.'
"Vasili Ivanovich suddenly turned all white and, without uttering a word, rushed to his study, from which he returned at once carrying a bit of lunar caustic. Bazarov was about to take it and leave.
" 'For dear God's sake,' said his father, 'let me do this myself.'
Bazarov smiled.
" 'What a devoted practitioner!'
" 'Don't laugh, please. Let me see your finger. The cut isn't so great. Doesn't that hurt?'
" 'Press harder; don't be afraid.'
"Vasili Ivanovich stopped. "'What do you think, Eugene—wouldn't it be better to cauterize it with a hot iron?'
'That should have been done sooner; but now, if you get down to brass tacks, even the lunar caustic is useless. If I've been infected, it's too late now.'
" 'What —too late — ' Vasili Ivanovich could scarcely articulate the words.
" 'Of course! It's more than four hours ago.'
"Vasili Ivanovich cauterized the cut a little more.
" 'Why, didn't the district doctor have any lunar caustic?'
" 'No.'
'My God, how is it possible? A doctor—and he hasn't got such an indispensable thing as that!'
" 'You ought to have a look at his lancets,' Bazarov observed, and walked out."
Bazarov has become infected, falls ill, has a partial recovery, and then a relapse that brings him to the crisis of the disease.
Anna is sent for, arrives with a German physician, who tells her there is no hope, and she goes to Bazarov's bedside.
'Well, thanks,' Bazarov repeated. 'This is a regal action. They say that monarchs visit the dying, too.' 'Eugene Vasilyich, I hope—'
'Eh, Anna Sergeievna, let's speak the truth. It's all over with me. I'm caught under the wheel. And now it turns out it was useless to think of the future. Death is an old trick, yet it strikes everyone as something new. So far I have no craven fear of it—and later on a coma will come, and—' he whistled and made a feeble nugatory gesture. 'Well, what am I to say to you?
That I loved you? There was no sense in that even before, and less than ever now. Love is a form, and my own form is already decomposing. I'd do better to say how fine you are! Even now you're standing there, so beautiful—'
"Anna gave an involuntary shudder.
" 'Never mind, don't be upset. Sit over there. Don't come close to me — after all, my illness is contagious.'
"Anna swiftly crossed the room and sat down in the armchair near the divan on which Bazarov was lying.
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" 'Magnanimous one!' he whispered. 'Oh, how near and how young and fresh and pure ... in this loathsome room! . . . Well, good-by! Live long, that's the best thing of all, and make the most of it while there is time. Just see, what a hideous spectacle: a worm half crushed, but writhing still. And yet I, too, thought: I'd accomplish so many things, I wouldn't die, not me! If there were any problem—well, I was a giant! And now all the problem the giant has is how to die decently, although that makes no difference to anyone either. Never mind; I'm not going to wag my tail.'. . .
"Bazarov put his hand to his brow.
"Anna bent down to him. 'Eugene Vasiliyich, I'm here—'
"He at once took his hand away and raised himself. 'Good-by,' he said with sudden force, and his eyes gleamed with a last gleam. 'Good-by. Listen—you know I didn't kiss you that time. Breathe on the dying lamp and let it go out—'
"Anna put her lips to his forehead. 'Enough!' he murmured, and dropped back on the pillow. 'Now . . . darkness—'
"Anna went softly out. 'Well?' Vasih Ivanovich asked her in a whisper. 'He has fallen asleep,' she answered, barely audible.
"Bazarov was not fated to awaken. Toward evening he sank into complete unconsciousness, and the following day he died.
. . .
"And when finally he had breathed his last, and a universal lamentation arose throughout the house, Vasili Ivanovich was seized by a sudden frenzy.
" 'I said I would rebel,' he screamed hoarsely, with his face flaming and distorted, shaking his fist in the air, as though threatening someone, 'and I will rebel.'
"But Arina Vlasievna, all in tears, hung upon his neck, and both prostrated themselves together.
" 'Side by side,' Anfisushka related afterward in the servants' quarters, 'they let their poor heads droop, like lambs at noonday — '
"But the sultriness of noonday passes, and evening comes, and night, and then follows the return to the calm refuge, where sleep is sweet for the tortured and the weary."
In the epilogue, chapter 28, everyone is marrying, in the pairing-off device. Notice here the didactic and slightly humorous attitude. Fate takes over but still under Turgenev's direction.
"Anna has recently married, not of love but out of conviction, one of the future leaders of Russia, a very intelligent man, a lawyer, possessed of strong practical sense, firm will, and remarkable eloquence — still young, good-natured, and cold as ice. . . . The Kirsanovs, father and son, live at Maryino; their fortunes are on the mend. Arkadi has become zealous in the management of the estate, and the 'farm' is now yielding a rather good revenue. . . . Katya has a son, little Nikolay, while Mitya runs about ever so lively and talks beautifully. ... In Dresden, on the Bruhl Terrace, between two and four o'clock—the most fashionable time for walking—you may meet a man about fifty, by now altogether gray, and apparently afflicted with gout, but still handsome, exquisitely dressed, and with that special stamp which is gained only by moving a long time in the higher strata of society. That is Pavel Petrovich. From Moscow he had gone abroad for the sake of his health, and has settled down in Dresden, where he associates for the most part with Englishmen and Russian visitors. . . . Kukshina, too, found herself abroad. . . . With two or three just such young chemists, who don't know oxygen from nitrogen, but are filled with skepticism and self-respect, Sitnikov is knocking about Petersburg, also getting ready to be great, and, according to his own assertions, is carrying on Bazarov's 'work.' . . .
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"There is a small village graveyard in one of the remote nooks of Russia. Like almost all
our graveyards, it presents a woebegone appearance. . . . But among these graves there is one untouched by man, untrampled by beast; the birds alone perch thereon and sing at dawn. An iron railing runs around it; two young firs are there, one planted at each end.
"Eugene Bazarov is buried in this grave. Often, from the little village not far off, an old couple, decrepit by now, comes to visit it—man and wife. Supporting each other, they move to it with heavy steps; they come close to the railing and get down on their knees. And long and bitterly do they weep, and long and intently do they gaze at the mute stone, under which their son is lying; they exchange some brief phrase, brush the dust from the stone, and set straight a branch on one of the firs, and then pray again, and they cannot forsake this place, where they seem to feel nearer to their son, to their memories of him."
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FYODOR DOSTOEVSKI (1821-1881)
Nabokov's discussion of sentimentalism in his lecture on Dostoevski.
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Belinski from "Letter to Gogol" (1847): "... you have not observed that Russia sees its salvation not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the successes of civilization, of enlightenment, of humanitarianism. It is not preachments that Russia needs (she has heard them), nor prayers (she has said them over and over), but an awakening among her common folk of a sense of human dignity, for so many centuries lost amid the mire and manure, and rights and laws, conforming not with the teachings of the Church but with common sense and justice, and as strict fulfillment of them as is possible. But instead of that Russia presents the horrible spectacle of a land where men traffic in men, not having therefor even that justification which the American plantation owners craftily avail themselves of, affirming that the Negro is not a man; the spectacle of a land where people do not call themselves by names but by ignoble nicknames Jack and Tom (Vankas, Vaskas, Steshkas, Palashkas); the spectacle of a country, finally, where there are not only no guarantees whatsoever for one's person, honor, property, but where there is even no order maintained by the police, instead of which there are only enormous corporations of various administrative thieves and robbers. The most pressing contemporary national problems in Russia now are: the abolition of the right to own serfs, the abrogation of corporal punishment, the introduction as far as possible of a strict fulfillment of at least those laws which already exist. This is felt even by the government itself (which is well aware of what the landowners do with their peasants and how many throats of the former are cut every year by the latter), which is proved by its timid and fruitless half-measures for the benefit of our white Negroes. . . ."
My position in regard to Dostoevski is a curious and difficult one. In all my courses I approach literature from the only point of view that literature interests me —namely the point of view of enduring art and individual genius. From this point of view Dostoevski is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one—with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between. In Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov for some reason or other kills an old female pawnbroker and her sister. Justice in the shape of an inexorable police officer closes slowly in on him until in the end he is driven to a public confession, and through the love of a noble prostitute he is brought to a spiritual regeneration that did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. My difficulty, however, is that not all the readers to whom I talk in this or other classes are experienced. A good third, I should say, do not know the difference between real literature and pseudo-literature, and to such readers Dostoevski may seem more important and more artistic than such trash as our American historical novels or things called From Here to Eternity and such like balderdash.
However, I shall speak at length about a number of really great artists—and it is on this high level that Dostoevski is to be criticized. I am too little of an academic professor to teach subjects that I dislike. I am very eager to debunk Dostoevski. But I realize that readers who have not read much may be puzzled by the set of values implied.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski was born in 1821 in the family of a rather poor man. His father was a doctor in one of the public hospitals in Moscow, but the position of a doctor of a public hospital in contemporaneous Russia was a modest one and the Dostoevski family lived in cramped quarters and in conditions anything but luxurious.
His father was a petty tyrant who was murdered under obscure circumstances. Freudian-minded explorers of Dostoevski's literary work are inclined to see an autobiographic feature in the attitude of Ivan Karamazov toward the murder of his father: though Ivan was not the actual murderer, yet through his lax attitude, and through his not having prevented a murder he could have prevented, he was in a way guilty of patricide. It seems, according to those critics, that Dostoevski all his life labored under a similar consciousness of indirect guilt after his own father had been assassinated by his coachman.
Be it as it may, there is no doubt that Dostoevski was a neurotic, that from his early years he had been subject to that mysterious sickness, the epilepsy. The epileptic fits and his general neurotic condition worsened considerably under the influence of the misfortunes which befell him later.
Dostoevski received his education first at a boarding school in Moscow, then at the Military Engineers' School in Petersburg. He was not particularly interested in military engineering, but his father had desired him to enter that school.
Even there he devoted most of his time to the study of literature. After graduation he served at the engineering department just as long as was obligatory in return for the education he had received. In 1844 he resigned his commission and entered upon his literary career. His first book Poor Folk (1846) was a hit both with the literary critics and the reading 68
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public. There are all sorts of anecdotes concerning its early history. Dostoevski's friend and a writer in his own right, Dmitri Grigorovich, had persuaded Dostoevski to let him show the manuscript to Nikolay Nekrasov, who was at that time publisher of the most influential literary review Sovremennik (The Contemporary). Nekrasov and his lady friend Mrs. Panaiev entertained at the office of the review a literary salon which was frequented by all the worthies of contemporaneous Russian literature. Turgenev, and later Tolstoy, were among its constant members. So were the famous left-wing critics Nikolay Cherny-shevski and Nikolay Dobrolyubov. Being published in Nekrasov's review was enough to make a man's literary reputation. After leaving his manuscript with Nekrasov, Dostoevski went to bed full of misgivings: "They will poke fun at my Poor Folk," he kept telling himself. At four in the morning he was awakened by Nekrasov and Grigorovich, who made an irruption into his apartment and smothered him with smacking Russian kisses: they had begun to read the manuscript in the evening and could not stop until they had read it to the end. Their admiration had been so great that they decided to wake up the author and tell him what they thought of him at once. "What matter that he sleeps: this is more important than sleep," they said.
Nekrasov took the manuscript to Belinski and declared that a new Gogol had been born. "Gogols seem to grow like toadstools with you," remarked Belinski dryly. But his admiration after reading Poor Folk was unbounded too and he asked immediately to be introduced to the new author and showered upon him enthusiastic praise. Dostoevski was transported with joy; Poor Folk was published in Nekrasov's review. Its success was enormous. Unfortunately it did not last. His second novel, or long short story, The Double (1846), which is the best thing he ever wrote and certainly far above Poor Folk, met with an indifferent reception. In the meantime Dostoevski had developed a tremendous literary vanity, and being very naive, unpolished, and but poorly equippe
d where manners were concerned, contrived to make a fool of himself in his dealings with his newly acquired friends and admirers and eventually to spoil completely his relations with them. Turgenev dubbed him a new pimple on the nose of Russian literature.
His early inclinations were to the side of the radicals; he leaned more or less toward the Westernizers. He also consorted with a secret society (though apparently did not actually become its member) of young men who had adopted the socialistic theories of Saint-Simon and Fourier. These young men gathered at the house of an official of the State Department, Mikhail Petra-shevski, and read aloud and discussed the books of Fourier, talked socialism, and criticized the government. After the upheavals of 1848 in several European countries, there was a wave of reaction in Russia; the government was alarmed and cracked down upon all dissenters. The Petrashevskians were arrested, among them Dostoevski. He was found guilty of "having taken part in criminal plans, having circulated the letter of Belinski [to Gogol]
full of insolent expressions against the Orthodox Church and the Supreme Power, and of having attempted, together with others, to circulate anti-Government writings with the aid of a private printing press." He awaited his trial in the Fortress of St. Paul and Peter, of which the commander was a General Nabokov, an ancestor of mine. (The correspondence which passed between this General Nabokov and Tsar Nicholas in regard to their prisoner makes rather amusing reading.) The sentence was severe—eight years of hard labor in Siberia (this was later commuted to four by the Tsar)—but a monstrously cruel procedure was followed before the actual sentence was read to the condemned men: They were told they were to be shot; they were taken to the place assigned for the execution, stripped to their shirts, and the first batch of prisoners were tied to the posts. Only then the actual sentence was read to them. One of the men went mad. A deep scar was left in Dostoevski's soul by the experience of that day. He never quite got over it.