The life of Dostoevski contrasts harshly with the luxurious ease andsteady level seen in the outward existence of his two greatcontemporaries, Turgenev and Tolstoi. From beginning to end he livedin the very heart of storms, in the midst of mortal coil. He was oftenas poor as a rat; he suffered from a horrible disease; he was sick andin prison, and no one visited him; he knew the bitterness of death.Such a man's testimony as to the value of life is worth attention; hewas a faithful witness, and we know that his testimony is true.
Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevski was born on the 30 October 1821, atMoscow. His father was a poor surgeon, and his mother the daughter ofa mercantile man. He was acquainted with grief from the start, beingborn in a hospital. There were five children, and they very soondiscovered the exact meaning of such words as hunger and cold. Povertyin early years sometimes makes men rather close and miserly in middleage, as it certainly did in the case of Ibsen, who seemed to thinkthat charity began and ended at home. Not so Dostoevski: he was oftenvictimised, he gave freely and impulsively, and was chronically indebt. He had about as much business instinct as a prize-fighter or anopera singer. As Merezhkovski puts it: "This victim of poverty dealtwith money as if he held it not an evil, but utter rubbish. Dostoevskithinks he loves money, but money flees him. Tolstoi thinks he hatesmoney, but money loves him, and accumulates about him. The one,dreaming all his life of wealth, lived, and but for his wife'sbusiness qualities would have died, a beggar. The other, all his lifedreaming and preaching of poverty, not only has not given away, buthas greatly multiplied his very substantial possessions." In order tomake an impressive contrast, the Russian critic is here unfair toTolstoi, but there is perhaps some truth in the Tolstoi paradox. Nowonder Dostoevski loved children, for he was himself a great child.
He was brought up on the Bible and the Christian religion. Theteachings of the New Testament were with him almost innate ideas.Thus, although his parents could not give him wealth, or ease, orcomfort, or health, they gave him something better than all four puttogether.
When he was twenty-seven years old, having impulsively expressedrevolutionary opinions at a Radical Club to which he belonged, he wasarrested with a number of his mates, and after an imprisonment of somemonths, he was led out on the 22 December 1849, with twenty-onecompanions, to the scaffold. He passed through all the horror ofdying, for visible preparations had been made for the execution, andhe was certain that in a moment he would cease to live. Then came thenews that the Tsar had commuted the sentence to hard labour; thissaved their lives, but one of the sufferers had become insane.
Then came four years in the Siberian prison, followed by a few yearsof enforced military service. His health actually grew better underthe cruel regime of the prison, which is not difficult to understand,for even a cruel regime is better than none at all, and Dostoevskinever had the slightest notion of how to take care of himself. At whattime his epilepsy began is obscure, but this dreadful diseasefaithfully and frequently visited him during his whole adult life.From a curious hint that he once let fall, reenforced by the manner inwhich the poor epileptic in "The Karamazov Brothers" acquired thefalling sickness, we cannot help thinking that its origin came from ablow given in anger by his father.
Dostoevski was enormously interested in his disease, studied itssymptoms carefully, one might say eagerly, and gave to his friendsminute accounts of exactly how he felt before and after theconvulsions, which tally precisely with the vivid descriptions writtenout in his novels. This illness coloured his whole life, profoundlyaffected his character, and gave a feverish and hysterical tone to hisbooks.
Dostoevski had a tremendous capacity for enthusiasm. As a boy, he wasterribly shaken by the death of Pushkin, and he never lost hisadmiration for the founder of Russian literature. He read the greatclassics of antiquity and of modern Europe with wild excitement, andwrote burning eulogies in letters to his friends. The flame of hisliterary ambition was not quenched by the most abject poverty, nor bythe death of those whom he loved most intensely. After his first wifedied, he suffered agonies of grief, accentuated by wretched health,public neglect, and total lack of financial resources. But chillpenury could not repress his noble rage. He was always planning andwriting new novels, even when he had no place to lay his head. And thebodily distress of poverty did not cut him nearly so sharply as itsshame. His letters prove clearly that at times he suffered in the sameway as the pitiable hero of "Poor Folk." That book was indeed aprophecy of the author's own life.
It is impossible to exaggerate the difficulties under which he wrotehis greatest novels. His wife and children were literally starving. Hecould not get money, and was continually harassed by creditors. Duringpart of the time, while writing in the midst of hunger and freezingcold, he had an epileptic attack every ten days. His comment on allthis is, "I am only preparing to live," which is as heroic as PaulJones's shout, "I have not yet begun to fight."
In 1880 a monument to Pushkin was unveiled, and the greatest Russianauthors were invited to speak at the ceremony. This was the occasionwhere Turgenev vainly tried to persuade Tolstoi to appear andparticipate. Dostoevski paid his youthful debt to the ever living poetin a magnificent manner. He made a wonderful oration on Russianliterature and the future of the Russian people, an address thatthrilled the hearts of his hearers, and inspired his countrymeneverywhere. On the 28 January 1881, he died, and forty thousandmourners saw his body committed to the earth.
Much as I admire the brilliant Russian critic, Merezhkovski, I cannotunderstand his statement that Dostoevski "drew little on his personalexperiences, had little self-consciousness, complained of no one." Hisnovels are filled with his personal experiences, he had an almostabnormal self-consciousness, and he bitterly complained that Turgenev,who did not need the money, received much more for his work than he.Dostoevski's inequalities as a writer are so great that it is nowonder he has been condemned by some critics as a mere journalisticmaker of melodrama, while others have exhausted their entire stock ofadjectives in his exaltation. His most ardent admirer at this momentis Mr. Baring, who is at the same time animated by a strange jealousyof Turgenev's fame, and seems to think it necessary to belittle theauthor of "Fathers and Children" in order to magnify the author of"Crime and Punishment." This seems idle; Turgenev and Dostoevski weregeniuses of a totally different order, and we ought to rejoice in thegreatness of each man, just as we do in the greatness of those twoentirely dissimilar poets, Tennyson and Browning. Much of Mr. Baring'slanguage is an echo of Merezhkovski; but this Russian critic, whileloving Dostoevski more than Turgenev, was not at all blind to thelatter's supreme qualities. Listen to Mr. Baring:--
"He possesses a certain quality which is different in kind from thoseof any other writer, a power of seeming to get nearer to the unknown,to what lies beyond the flesh, which is perhaps the secret of hisamazing strength; and, besides this, he has certain great qualitieswhich other writers, and notably other Russian writers, possess also;but he has them in so far higher a degree that when seen with otherwriters he annihilates them. The combination of this difference inkind and this difference in degree makes something so strong and sotremendous, that it is not to be wondered at when we find many criticssaying that Dostoevski is not only the greatest of all Russianwriters, but one of the greatest writers that the world has ever seen.I am not exaggerating when I say that such views are held; forinstance, Professor Bruckner, a most level-headed critic, in hislearned and exhaustive survey of Russian literature, says that it isnot in "Faust," but rather in "Crime and Punishment," that the wholegrief of mankind takes hold of us.
"Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is trueto say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present daywould place Dostoevski as being equal to Tolstoi and immeasurablyabove Turgenev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the presentday no more dreams of comparing Turgenev with Dostoevski, than itwould occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with CharlotteBronte."
This last sentence shows the real animus agains
t Turgenev thatobsesses Mr. Baring's mind; once more the reader queries, SupposeDostoevski be all that Mr. Baring claims for him, why is it necessaryto attack Turgenev? Is there not room in Russian literature for bothmen? But as Mr. Baring has appealed to Russian criticism, it is onlyfair to quote one Russian critic of good standing, Kropotkin. Hesays:--
"Dostoevski is still very much read in Russia; and when, some twentyyears ago, his novels were first translated into French, German, andEnglish, they were received as a revelation. He was praised as one ofthe greatest writers of our own time, and as undoubtedly the one who'had best expressed the mystic Slavonic soul'--whatever thatexpression may mean! Turgenev was eclipsed by Dostoevski, and Tolstoiwas forgotten for a time. There was, of course, a great deal ofhysterical exaggeration in all this, and at the present time soundliterary critics do not venture to indulge in such praises. The factis, that there is certainly a great deal of power in whateverDostoevski wrote: his powers of creation suggest those of Hoffmann;and his sympathy with the most down-trodden and down-cast products ofthe civilisation of our large towns is so deep that it carries awaythe most indifferent reader and exercises a most powerful impressionin the right direction upon young readers. His analysis of the mostvaried specimens of incipient psychical disease is said to bethoroughly correct. But with all that, the artistic qualities of hisnovels are incomparably below those of any one of the great Russianmasters Tolstoi, Turgenev, or Goncharov. Pages of consummate realismare interwoven with the most fantastical incidents worthy only of themost incorrigible romantics. Scenes of a thrilling interest areinterrupted in order to introduce a score of pages of the mostunnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such ahurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read overhis novels before sending them to the printer. And, worst of all,every one of the heroes of Dostoevski, especially in his novels of thelater period, is a person suffering from some psychical disease orfrom moral perversion. As a result, while one may read some of thenovels of Dostoevski with the greatest interest, one is never temptedto re-read them, as one re-reads the novels of Tolstoi and Turgenev,and even those of many secondary novel writers; and the present writermust confess that he had the greatest pain lately in reading through,for instance, "The Brothers Karamazov," and never could pull himselfthrough such a novel as "The Idiot." However, one pardons Dostoevskieverything, because when he speaks of the ill-treated and theforgotten children of our town civilisation he becomes truly greatthrough his wide, infinite love of mankind--of man, even in his worstmanifestations."
Mr. Baring's book was published in 1910, Kropotkin's in 1905, whichseems to make Mr. Baring's attitude point to the past, rather than tothe future. Kropotkin seems to imply that the wave of enthusiasm forDostoevski is a phase that has already passed, rather than a new andincreasing demonstration, as Mr. Baring would have us believe.
Dostoevski's first book, "Poor Folk," appeared when he was onlytwenty-five years old: it made an instant success, and gave the youngauthor an enviable reputation. The manuscript was given by a friend tothe poet Nekrassov. Kropotkin says that Dostoevski "had inwardlydoubted whether the novel would even be read by the editor. He wasliving then in a poor, miserable room, and was fast asleep when atfour o'clock in the morning Nekrassov and Grigorovich knocked at hisdoor. They threw themselves on Dostoevski's neck, congratulating himwith tears in their eyes. Nekrassov and his friend had begun to readthe novel late in the evening; they could not stop reading till theycame to the end, and they were both so deeply impressed by it thatthey could not help going on this nocturnal expedition to see theauthor and tell him what they felt. A few days later, Dostoevski wasintroduced to the great critic of the time, Bielinski, and from him hereceived the same warm reception. As to the reading public, the novelproduced quite a sensation."
The story "Poor Folk" is told in the highly artificial form ofletters, but is redeemed by its simplicity and deep tenderness.Probably no man ever lived who had a bigger or warmer heart thanDostoevski, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.All the great qualities of the mature man are in this slender volume:the wideness of his mercy, the great deeps of his pity, theboundlessness of his sympathy, and his amazing spiritual force. Ifever there was a person who would forgive any human being anythingseventy times seven, that individual was Dostoevski. He never had tolearn the lesson of brotherly love by long years of experience: themystery of the Gospel, hidden from the wise and prudent, was revealedto him as a babe. The language of these letters is so simple that achild could understand every word; but the secrets of the human heartare laid bare. The lover is a grey-haired old man, with the trueSlavonic genius for failure, and a hopeless drunkard; the young girlis a veritable flower of the slums, shedding abroad the radiance andperfume of her soul in a sullen and sodden environment. She has apurity of soul that will not take pollution.
"See how this mere chance-sown deft-nursed seedThat sprang up by the wayside 'neath the footOf the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,Spreads itself, one wide glory of desireTo incorporate the whole great sun it lovesFrom the inch-height whence it looks and longs!"
No one can read a book like this without being better for it, andwithout loving its author.
It is unfortunate that Dostoevski did not learn from his first littlemasterpiece the great virtue of compression. This story is short, butit is long enough; the whole history of two lives, so far as theirspiritual aspect is concerned, is fully given in these few pages. Thebesetting sin of Dostoevski is endless garrulity with its accompanyingdemon of incoherence: in later years he yielded to that, as he did toother temptations, and it finally mastered him. He was never to writeagain a work of art that had organic unity.
Like all the great Russian novelists, Dostoevski went to school toGogol. The influence of his teacher is evident throughout "Poor Folk."The hero is almost an imitation of the man in Gogol's short story,"The Cloak," affording another striking example of the germinal powerof that immortal work. Dostoevski seemed fully to realise his debt toGogol, and in particular to "The Cloak;" for in "Poor Folk," oneentire letter is taken up with a description of Makar's emotions afterreading that extraordinary tale. Makar assumes that it is adescription of himself. "Why, I hardly dare show myself in thestreets! Everything is so accurately described that one's very gait isrecognisable."
Dostoevski's consuming ambition for literary fame is well indicated inhis first book. "If anything be well written, Varinka, it isliterature. I learned this the day before yesterday. What a wonderfulthing literature is, which, consisting but of printed words, is ableto invigorate, to instruct, the hearts of men!"
So many writers have made false starts in literature that Dostoevski'sinstinct for the right path at the very outset is something notable.His entire literary career was to be spent in portraying the despisedand rejected. Never has a great author's first book more clearlyrevealed the peculiar qualities of his mind and heart.
But although he struck the right path, it was a long time before hefound again the right vein. He followed up his first success with arow of failures, whose cold reception by the public nearly broke hisheart. He was extremely busy, extremely productive, and extremelycareless, as is shown by the fact that during the short period from1846 to 1849, he launched thirteen original publications, not a singleone of which added anything to his fame. It was not until after thecruel years of Siberia that the great books began to appear.
Nor did they appear at once. In 1859 he published "The Uncle's Dream,"a society novel, showing both in its humour and in its ruthless satirethe influence of Gogol. This is an exceedingly entertaining book, and,a strange thing in Dostoevski, it is, in many places, hilariouslyfunny. The satire is so enormously exaggerated that it completelyovershoots the mark, but perhaps this very exaggeration adds to thereader's merriment. The conversation in this story is often brilliant,full of unexpected quips and retorts delivered in a manner far moreFrench than Russian. The intention of the author seems to have been towrite a scathing and terrible satire on prov
incial society, whereevery one almost without exception is represented as absolutelyselfish, absolutely conceited, and absolutely heartless. It is a studyof village gossip, a favourite subject for satirists in all languages.In the middle of the book Dostoevski remarks: "Everybody in theprovinces lives as though he were under a bell of glass. It isimpossible for him to conceal anything whatever from his honourablefellow-citizens. They know things about him of which he himself isignorant. The provincial, by his very nature, ought to be a veryprofound psychologist. That is why I am sometimes honestly amazed tomeet in the provinces so few psychologists and so many imbeciles."
Never again did Dostoevski write a book containing so little ofhimself, and so little of the native Russian element. Leaving out theexaggeration, it might apply to almost any village in any country, andinstead of sympathy, it shows only scorn. The scheming mother, whoattempts to marry her beautiful daughter to a Prince rotten withdiseases, is a stock figure on the stage and in novels. The only trulyRussian personage is the young lover, weak-willed and irresolute, wholives a coward in his own esteem.
This novel was immediately followed by another within the same year,"Stepanchikovo Village," translated into English with the title "TheFriend of the Family." This has for its hero one of the mostremarkable of Dostoevski's characters, and yet one who infalliblyreminds us of Dickens's Pecksniff. The story is told in the firstperson, and while it cannot by any stretch of language be called agreat book, it has one advantage over its author's works of genius, inbeing interesting from the first page to the last. Both the uncle andthe nephew, who narrate the tale, are true Russian characters: theysuffer long, and are kind; they hope all things, and believe allthings. The household is such a menagerie that it is no wonder thatthe German translation of this novel is called "Tollhaus oderHerrenhaus"? Some of the inmates are merely abnormal; others aredownright mad. There is not a natural or a normal character in theentire book, and not one of the persons holds the reader's sympathy,though frequent drafts are made on his pity. The hero is a colossalhypocrite, hopelessly exaggerated. If one finds Dickens's charactersto be caricatures, what shall be said of this collection? This is thevery apotheosis of the unctuous gasbag, from whose mouth, eternallyajar, pours a viscous stream of religious and moral exhortation.Compared with this Friend of the Family, Tartuffe was unselfish andnoble: Joseph Surface modest and retiring; Pecksniff a humble andloyal man. The best scene in the story, and one that arousesoutrageous mirth, is the scene where the uncle, who is a kind of TomPinch, suddenly revolts, and for a moment shakes off his bondage. Heseizes the fat hypocrite by the shoulder, lifts him from the floor,and hurls his carcass through a glass door. All of which is in theexact manner of Dickens.
One of the most characteristic of Dostoevski's novels, characteristicin its occasional passages of wonderful beauty and pathos, characteristicin its utter formlessness and long stretches of uninspired dulness,is "Downtrodden and Oppressed." Here the author gives us the life heknew best by actual experience and the life best suited to his naturalgifts of sympathetic interpretation. Stevenson's comment on this storyhas attracted much attention. Writing to John Addington Symonds in 1886,he said: "Another has been translated--"Humilies et Offenses." It iseven more incoherent than "Le Crime et le Chatiment," but breathes muchof the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. Dostoevski isa devil of a swell, to be sure." There is no scorn and no satire inthis book; it was written from an overflowing heart. One of the speechesof the spineless young Russian, Alosha, might be taken as illustrativeof the life-purpose of our novelist: "I am on fire for high and nobleideals; they may be false, but the basis on which they rest is holy."
"Downtrodden and Oppressed" is full of melodrama and full of tears; itis four times too long, being stuffed out with interminablediscussions and vain repetitions. It has no beauty of construction, noevolution, and irritates the reader beyond all endurance. The younghero is a blazing ass, who is in love with two girls at the same time,and whose fluency of speech is in inverse proportion to his power ofwill. The real problem of the book is how either of the girls couldhave tolerated his presence for five minutes. The hero's father is amelodramatic villain, who ought to have worn patent-leather boots anda Spanish cloak. And yet, with all its glaring faults, it is a storythe pages of which ought not to be skipped. So far as the narrativegoes, one may skip a score of leaves at will; but in the midst ofaimless and weary gabble, passages of extraordinary beauty and uncannyinsight strike out with the force of a sudden blow. The influence ofDickens is once more clearly seen in the sickly little girl Nelly,whose strange caprices and flashes of passion are like Goethe'sMignon, but whose bad health and lingering death recall irresistiblyLittle Nell. They are similar in much more than in name.
Dostoevski told the secrets of his prison-house in his great book"Memoirs of a House of the Dead"--translated into English with thetitle "Buried Alive." Of the many works that have come fromprison-walls to enrich literature, and their number is legion, this isone of the most powerful, because one of the most truthful andsincere. It is not nearly so well written as Oscar Wilde's "DeProfundis;" but one cannot escape the suspicion that this lattermasterpiece was a brilliant pose. Dostoevski's "House of the Dead" ismarked by that naive Russian simplicity that goes not to the reader'shead but to his heart. It is at the farthest remove from awell-constructed novel; it is indeed simply an irregular, incoherentnotebook. But if the shop-worn phrase "human document" can ever befittingly applied, no better instance can be found than this. It is arevelation of Dostoevski's all-embracing sympathy. He shows nobitterness, no spirit of revenge, toward the government that sent himinto penal servitude; he merely describes what happened there. Nordoes he attempt to arouse our sympathy for his fellow-convicts bydepicting them as heroes, or in showing their innate nobleness. Theyare indeed a bad lot, and one is forced to the conviction that theyought not to be at large. Confinement and hard labour is what most ofthem need; for the majority of them in this particular Siberian prisonare not revolutionists, offenders against the government, sent therefor some petty or trumped-up charge, but cold-blooded murderers,fiendishly cruel assassins, wife-beaters, dull, degraded brutes. Butthe regime, as our novelist describes it, does not improve them; theofficers are as brutal as the men, and the floggings do not make forspiritual culture. One cannot wish, after reading the book, that suchprisoners were free, but one cannot help thinking that something isrotten in the state of their imprisonment. Dostoevski brings out withgreat clearness the utter childishness of the prisoners; mentally,they are just bad little boys; they seem never to have developed,except in an increased capacity for sin. They spend what time theyhave in silly talk, in purposeless discussions, in endeavours to getdrink, in practical jokes, and in thefts from one another. The cruelpathos of the story is not in the fact that such men are in prison,but that a Dostoevski should be among them. Here is a delicate,sensitive man of genius, in bad health, with a highly organisednervous system, with a wonderful imagination, condemned to live foryears in slimy misery, with creatures far worse than the beasts of thefield. Indeed, some of the most beautiful parts of the story are whereDostoevski turns from the men to the prison dog and the prison horse,and there finds true friendship. His kindness to the neglected dog andthe latter's surprise and subsequent devotion make a deep impression.The greatness of Dostoevski's heart is shown in the fact that althoughhis comrades were detestable characters, he did not hate them. Hiscalm account of their unblushing knavery is entirely free from eithervindictive malice or superior contempt. He loved them because theywere buried alive, he loved them because of their wretchedness, with alove as far removed from condescension as it was from secretadmiration of their bold wickedness. There was about these men nocharm of personality and no glamour of desperate crime. The delightfulthing about Dostoevski's attitude is that it was so perfect anexemplification of true Christianity. No pride, no scorn, no envy. Heregarded them as his brothers, and one feels that not one of the menwould ever have turned to Dostoevski for sympathy and encourageme
ntwithout meeting an instant and warm response. That prison was a greattraining-school for Dostoevski's genius, and instead of casting ablack shadow over his subsequent life, it furnished him with thenecessary light and heat to produce a succession of great novels.
Their production was, however, irregular, and at intervals hecontinued to write and publish books of no importance. One of hispoorest stories is called "Memoirs of the Cellarage," or, as theFrench translation has it, "L'Esprit Souterrain." The two parts of thestory contain two curious types of women. The hero is the regulationweak-willed Russian; his singular adventures with an old criminal andhis mistress in the first part of the story, and with a harlot in thesecond, have only occasional and languid interest; it is one of themany books of Dostoevski that one vigorously vows never to read again.The sickly and impractical Ordinov spends most of his time analysinghis mental states, and indulging in that ecstasy of thought which isperhaps the most fatal of all Slavonic passions. Soon after appeared astrange and far better novel, called "The Gambler." This story is toldin the first person, and contains a group of highly interestingcharacters, the best being an old woman, whose goodness of heart,extraordinary vitality, and fondness for speaking her mind recall thebest type of English Duchess of the eighteenth century. There is not adull page in this short book; and often as the obsession of gamblinghas been represented in fiction, I do not at this moment remember anyother story where the fierce, consuming power of this heart-eatingpassion has been more powerfully pictured. No reader will ever forgetthe one day in the sensible old lady's life when all her years oftraining, all her natural caution and splendid common sense, could notkeep her away from the gaming table. This is a kind of internationalnovel, where the English, French, German, and Russian temperaments areanalysed, perhaps with more cleverness than accuracy. The Englishman,Astley, is utterly unreal, Paulina is impossible, and the Slavophilattacks on the French are rather pointless. Some of the characters areincomprehensible, but none of them lacks interest.
Of all Dostoevski's novels, the one best known outside of Russia is,of course, "Crime and Punishment." Indeed, his fame in England and inAmerica may be said still to depend almost entirely on this one book.It was translated into French, German, and English in the eighties,and has been dramatised in France and in America. While it isassuredly a great work, and one that nobody except a genius could havewritten, I do not think it is Dostoevski's most characteristic novel,nor his best. It is characteristic in its faults; it is abominablydiffuse, filled with extraneous and superfluous matter, and totallylacking in the principles of good construction. There are scenes ofpositively breathless excitement, preceded and followed by drearydrivel; but the success of the book does not depend on its action, butrather on the characters of Sonia, her maudlin father, the studentRaskolnikov, and his sister. It is impossible to read "Crime andPunishment" without reverently saluting the author's power. As is wellknown, the story gave Stevenson all kinds of thrills, and in a famousletter written while completely under the spell he said: "Raskolnikovis easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; I am glad youtook to it. Many find it dull; Henry James could not finish it; all Ican say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness.James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikov was notobjective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, onfurther reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many mindsof to-day, which prevents them from living IN a book or a character,and keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show. To suchI suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is aroom, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and arepurified. The Juge d'Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird,touching, ingenious creation; the drunken father, and Sonia, and thestudent friend, and the uncircumscribed, protoplasmic humanity ofRaskolnikov, all upon a level that filled me with wonder; theexecution, also, superb in places."
Dostoevski is fond of interrupting the course of his narratives withdreams,--dreams that often have no connection with the plot, so far asthere may be said to exist a plot,--but dreams of vivid and sharpverisimilitude. Whether these dreams were interjected to deceive thereader, or merely to indulge the novelist's whimsical fancy, is hardto divine; but one always wakes with surprise to find that it is all adream. A few hours before Svidrigailov commits suicide he has anextraordinary dream of the cold, wet, friendless little girl, whom heplaces tenderly in a warm bed, and whose childish eyes suddenly givehim the leer of a French harlot. Both he and the reader are amazed tofind that this is only a dream, so terribly real has it seemed. ThenRaskolnikov's awful dream, so minutely circumstanced, of the cruelpeasants maltreating a horse, their drunken laughter and viciousconversation, their fury that they cannot kill the mare with one blow,and the wretched animal's slow death makes a picture that I have longtried in vain to forget. These dream episodes have absolutely noconnection with the course of the story--they are simplyimpressionistic sketches.
Another favourite device of Dostoevski's is to have one of hischaracters take a walk, and on this walk undergo some experience thathas nothing whatever to do with the course of the action, but is, asit were, a miniature story of its own introduced into the novel. Oneoften remembers these while forgetting many vital constructivefeatures. That picture of the pretty young girl, fifteen or sixteenyears old, staggering about in the heat of the early afternoon,completely drunk, while a fat libertine slowly approaches her, like avulture after its prey, stirs Raskolnikov to rage and then toreflection--but the reader remembers it long after it has passed fromthe hero's mind. Dostoevski's books are full of disconnected butpainfully oppressive incidents.
Raskolnikov's character cannot be described nor appraised; one mustfollow him all the way through the long novel. He is once more theRudin type--utterly irresolute, with a mind teeming with ideas andsurging with ambition. He wants to be a Russian Napoleon, with acompletely subservient conscience, but instead of murdering on a largescale, like his ideal, he butchers two inoffensive old women. Althoughthe ghastly details of this double murder are given with definiterealism, Dostoevski's interest is wholly in the criminal psychology ofthe affair, in the analysis of Raskolnikov's mind before, during, andchiefly after the murder; for it is the mind, and not the bodilysensations that constitute the chosen field of our novelist. Afterthis event, the student passes through almost every conceivable mentalstate; we study all these shifting moods under a powerful microscope.The assassin is redeemed by the harlot Sonia, who becomes hisreligious and moral teacher. The scene where the two read together thestory of the resurrection of Lazarus, and where they talk about God,prayer, and the Christian religion, shows the spiritual force ofDostoevski in its brightest manifestations. At her persuasion, hefinally confesses his crime, and is deported to Siberia, where hisexperiences are copied faithfully from the author's own prison life.Sonia accompanies him, and becomes the good angel of the convicts, whoadore her. "When she appeared while they were at work, all took offtheir hats and made a bow. 'Little mother, Sophia Semenova, thou artour mother, tender and compassionate,' these churlish and brandedfelons said to her. She smiled in return; they loved even to see herwalk, and turned to look upon her as she passed by. They praised herfor being so little, and knew not what not to praise her for. Theyeven went to her with their ailments."
It is quite possible that Tolstoi got the inspiration for his novel"Resurrection" from the closing words of "Crime and Punishment."Raskolnikov and Sonia look forward happily to the time when he will bereleased. "Seven years--only seven years! At the commencement of theirhappiness they were ready to look upon these seven years as sevendays. They did not know that a new life is not given for nothing; thatit has to be paid dearly for, and only acquired by much patience andsuffering, and great future efforts. But now a new history commences;a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow, progressiveregeneration, and change from one world to another--an introduction tothe hitherto unknown realities of life. This may well form the themeof a new tale; the one we wished to offer th
e reader is ended."
It did indeed form the theme of a new tale--and the tale was Tolstoi's"Resurrection."
Sonia is the greatest of all Dostoevski's woman characters. Theprofessional harlot has often been presented on the stage and in thepages of fiction, but after learning to know Sonia, the others seemweakly artificial. This girl, whose father's passion for drink issomething worse than madness, goes on the street to save the familyfrom starvation. It is the sacrifice of Monna Vanna without any rewardor spectacular acclaim. Deeply spiritual, intensely religious, she isthe illumination of the book, and seems to have stepped out of thepages of the New Testament. Her whole story is like a Gospel parable,and she has saved many besides Raskolnikov. . . . She dies daily, andfrom her sacrifice rises a life of eternal beauty.
Two years later came another book of tremendous and irregularpower--"The Idiot." With the exception of "The Karamazov Brothers,"this is the most peculiarly characteristic of all Dostoevski's works.It is almost insufferably long; it reads as though it had never beenrevised; it abounds in irrelevancies and superfluous characters. Onemust have an unshakable faith in the author to read it through, andone should never begin to read it without having acquired that faiththrough the perusal of "Crime and Punishment." The novel is acombination of a hospital and an insane asylum; its pages are filledwith sickly, diseased, silly, and crazy folk. It is largelyautobiographical; the hero's epileptic fits are described as only anepileptic could describe them, more convincingly than even so able awriter as Mr. De Morgan diagnoses them in "An Affair of Dishonour."Dostoevski makes the convulsion come unexpectedly; Mr. De Morgan usesthe fit as a kind of moral punctuation point. The author's sensationswhen under condemnation of death and expecting the immediatecatastrophe are also minutely given from his own never palingrecollection. Then there are allusions to Russian contemporaryauthors, which occur, to be sure, in his other books. One reason whyDostoevski is able to portray with such detail the thoughts andfancies of abnormal persons is because he was so abnormal himself; andbecause his own life had been filled with such an amazing variety ofamazing experiences. Every single one of his later novels is afootnote to actual circumstance; with any other author, we should say,for example, that his accounts of the thoughts that pass in amurderer's mind immediately before he assassinates his victim were thefantastical emanation of a diseased brain, and could never have takenplace; one cannot do that in Dostoevski's case, for one is certainthat he is drawing on his Siberian reservoir of fact. These novels arefully as much a contribution to the study of abnormal psychology asthey are to the history of fiction.
The leading character, the epileptic Idiot, has a magnetic charm thatpulls the reader from the first, and from which it is vain to hope toescape. The "lovely goodness" that Stevenson found in Dostoevski's"Downtrodden and Oppressed" shines in this story with a steadyradiance. The most brilliant and beautiful women in the novel fallhelplessly in love with the Idiot, and the men try hard to despisehim, without the least success. He has the sincerity of a child, witha child's innocence and confidence. His character is almost theincarnation of the beauty of holiness. Such common and universal sinsas deceit, pretence, revenge, ambition, are not only impossible tohim, they are even inconceivable; he is without taint. From one pointof view, he is a natural-born fool; but the wisdom of this world isfoolishness with him. His utter harmlessness and incapacity to hurtoccasion scenes of extraordinary humour, scenes that make the readersuddenly laugh out loud, and love him all the more ardently.Dostoevski loved children and animals, and so-called simple folk; whatis more, he not only loved them, he looked upon them as his greatestteachers. It is a delight to hear this Idiot talk:--
"What has always surprised me, is the false idea that grown-up peoplehave of children. They are not even understood by their fathers andmothers. We ought to conceal nothing from children under the pretextthat they are little and that at their age they should remain ignorantof certain things. What a sad and unfortunate idea! And how clearlythe children themselves perceive that their parents take them forbabies who can't understand anything, when really they understandeverything! Great folks don't know that in even the most difficultaffairs a child is able to give advice that is of the utmostimportance. O God! when this pretty little bird stares at you with ahappy and confiding look, you are ashamed to deceive him! I call themlittle birds because little birds are the finest things in the world."
The Idiot later in the story narrates the following curious incident.Two friends stopping together at an inn retired to their roompeacefully, when one of them, lusting to possess the other's watch,drew a knife, sneaked up behind his victim stealthily, raised his eyesto heaven, crossed himself, and piously murmured this prayer: "O Lord,pardon me through the merits of Christ!" then stabbed his friend todeath, and quietly took the watch. Naturally the listener roars withlaughter, but the Idiot quietly continues: "I once met a peasant womancrossing herself so piously, so piously! 'Why do you do that, mydear?' said I (I am always asking questions). 'Well,' said she, 'justas a mother is happy when she sees the first smile of her nursling, soGod experiences joy every time when, from the height of heaven, hesees a sinner lift toward Him a fervent prayer.' It was a woman of thepeople who told me that, who expressed this thought so profound, sofine, so truly religious, which is the very basis of Christianity,that is to say, the idea that God is our father, that He is delightedat the sight of a man as a mother is at the sight of her child,--thechief thought of Christ! A simple peasant woman! To be sure, she was amother. . . . The religious sentiment, in its essence, can never becrushed by reasoning, by a sin, by a crime, by any form of atheism;there is something there which remains and always will remain beyondall that, something which the arguments of atheists will never touch.But the chief thing is, that nowhere does one notice this more clearlythan in the heart of Russia. It is one of the most importantimpressions that I first received from our country."
The kindness of the Idiot toward his foes and toward those who arecontinually playing on his generosity and exploiting him, enragesbeyond all endurance some of his friends. A beautiful young societygirl impatiently cries: "There isn't a person who deserves such wordsfrom you! here not one of them is worth your little finger, not onewho has your intelligence or your heart! You are more honest than allof us, more noble than all, better than all, more clever than all!There isn't one of these people who is fit to pick up the handkerchiefyou let fall, so why then do you humiliate yourself and place yourselfbelow everybody! Why have you crushed yourself, why haven't you anypride?"
She had begun her acquaintance with him by laughing at him and tryingto cover him with ridicule. But in his presence those who come toscoff remain to pray. Such men really overcome the world.
He is not the only Idiot in fiction who is able to teach the wise, asevery one knows who remembers his "David Copperfield." How BetsyTrotwood would have loved Dostoevski's hero! Dickens and Dostoevskiwere perhaps the biggest-hearted of all novelists, and their respectfor children and harmless men is notable. The sacredness of mad folkis a holy tradition, not yet outworn.
"The Eternal Husband" is a story dealing, of course, with an abnormalcharacter, in abnormal circumstances. It is a quite original variationon the triangle theme. It has genuine humour, and the conclusionleaves one in a muse. "The Hobbledehoy," translated into French as "UnAdolescent," is, on the whole, Dostoevski's worst novel, which iscurious enough, coming at a time when he was doing some of his bestwork. He wrote this while his mind was busy with a great masterpiece,"The Karamazov Brothers," and in this book we get nothing but thelees. It is a novel of portentous length and utter vacuity. I haveread many dull books, but it is hard to recall a novel where thesteady, monotonous dulness of page after page is quite so oppressive.For it is not only dull; it is stupid.
Dostoevski's last work, "The Karamazov Brothers," was the result often years' reflection, study, and labour, and he died withoutcompleting it. It is a very long novel as it stands; had he lived fiveyears more, it would probably have been the longe
st novel on the faceof the earth, for he seems to have regarded what he left as anintroduction. Even as it is, it is too long, and could profitably becut down one-third. It is incomplete, it is badly constructed, it isvery badly written; but if I could have only one of his novels, Iwould take "The Karamazov Brothers." For Dostoevski put into it allthe sum of his wisdom, all the ripe fruit of his experience, all hisreligious aspiration, and in Alosha he created not only the greatestof all his characters, but his personal conception of what the idealman should be. Alosha is the Idiot, minus idiocy and epilepsy.
The women in this book are not nearly so well drawn as the men. Icannot even tell them apart, so it would be a waste of labour to writefurther about them. But the four men who make up the Karamazov family,the father and the three sons, are one of the greatest family partiesin the history of fiction. Then the idiotic and epilepticSmerdakov--for Dostoevski must have his idiot and his fits, and theymake an effective combination--is an absolutely original character outof whose mouth come from time to time the words of truth andsoberness. The old monk at the head of the chapter is marvellous; hewould find a natural place in one of Ibsen's early historical dramas,for he is a colossal pontifical figure, and has about him the ancientair of authority. If one really doubted the genius of Dostoevski, onewould merely need to contemplate the men in this extraordinary story,and listen to their talk. Then if any one continued to doubtDostoevski's greatness as a novelist, he could no longer doubt hisgreatness as a man.
The criminal psychology of this novel and the scenes at the trial aremore interesting than those in "Crime and Punishment," for theprisoner is a much more interesting man than Raskolnikov, and by anexceedingly clever trick the reader is completely deceived. Thediscovery of the murder is as harsh a piece of realism as the mostdifficult realist could desire. The corpse lies on its back on thefloor, its silk nightgown covered with blood. The faithful oldservant, smitten down and bleeding copiously, is faintly crying forhelp. Close at hand is the epileptic, in the midst of a fearfulconvulsion. There are some dramatic moments!
But the story, as nearly always in Dostoevski, is a mere easel for theportraits. From the loins of the father--a man of tremendous force ofcharacter, all turned hellward, for he is a selfish, sensualbeast--proceed three sons, men of powerful individualities, boundtogether by fraternal affection. Mitia is in many respects like hisfather, but it is wonderful how we love him in the closing scenes;Ivan is the sceptic, whose final conviction that he is morallyresponsible for his father's murder shows his inability to escape fromthe domination of moral ideas; Alosha, the priestly third brother, hasall the family force of character, but in him it finds its only outletin love to God and love to man. He has a remarkably subtle mind, buthe is as innocent, as harmless, as sincere, and as pure in heart as alittle child. He invariably returns for injury, not pardon, but activekindness. No one can be offended in him for long, and his cheerfulconversation and beautiful, upright life are a living witness to hisreligious faith, known and read of all men. Angry, sneering, andselfish folk come to regard him with an affection akin to holy awe.But he is not in the least a prig or a stuffed curiosity. He isessentially a reasonable, kind-hearted man, who goes about doing good.Every one confides in him, all go to him for advice and solace. He isa multitudinous blessing, with masculine virility and shrewd insight,along with the sensitiveness and tenderness of a good woman. Seeingsix boys attacking one, he attempts to rescue the solitary fighter,when to his surprise the gamin turns on him, insults him, strikes himwith a stone, and bites him. Alosha, wrapping up his injured hand,after one involuntary scream of pain, looks affectionately at theyoung scoundrel, and quietly asks, "Tell me, what have I done to you?"The boy looks at him in amazement. Alosha continues: "I don't knowyou, but of course I must have injured you in some way since you treatme so. Tell me exactly where I have been wrong." The child bursts intotears, and what no violence of punishment has been able to accomplish,Alosha's kindness has done in a few moments. Here is a boy who wouldgladly die for him.
The conversations in this book have often quite unexpected turns ofhumour, and are filled with oversubtle questions of casuistry andcurious reasonings. From one point of view the novel is a huge,commonplace book, into which Dostoevski put all sorts of whimsies,queries, and vagaries. Smerdakov, the epileptic, is a thorn in theside of those who endeavour to instruct him, for he asks questions andraises unforeseen difficulties that perplex those who regardthemselves as his superiors. No one but Dostoevski would ever haveconceived of such a character, or have imagined such ideas.
If one reads "Poor Folk," "Crime and Punishment," "Memoirs of theHouse of the Dead," "The Idiot," and "The Karamazov Brothers," onewill have a complete idea of Dostoevski's genius and of his faults asa writer, and will see clearly his attitude toward life. In his storycalled "Devils" one may learn something about his political opinions;but these are of slight interest; for a man's opinions on politics arehis views on something of temporary and transient importance, and likea railway time-table, they are subject to change without notice. Butthe ideas of a great man on Religion, Humanity, and Art take hold onsomething eternal, and sometimes borrow eternity from the object.
No doubt Dostoevski realised the sad inequalities of his work, and thegreat blunders due to haste in composition. He wrote side by side withTurgenev and Tolstoi, and could not escape the annual comparison inproduction. Indeed, he was always measuring himself with these twomen, and they were never long out of his mind. Nor was his soulwithout bitterness when he reflected on their fortunate circumstanceswhich enabled them to write, correct, and polish at leisure, and giveto the public only the last refinement of their work. In the novel"Downtrodden and Oppressed" Natasha asks the young writer if he hasfinished his composition. On being told that it is all done, she says:"God be praised! But haven't you hurried it too much? Haven't youspoiled anything?" "Oh, I don't think so," he replied; "when I have awork that demands a particular tension of the mind, I am in a state ofextraordinary nervous excitement; images are clearer, my senses aremore alert, and for the form, why, the style is plastic, and steadilybecomes better in proportion as the tension becomes stronger." Shesighed, and added: "You are exhausting yourself and you will ruin yourhealth. Just look at S. He spent two years in writing one short story;but how he has worked at it and chiselled it down! not the least thingto revise; no one can detect a blemish." To this stricture the poorfellow rejoined, "Ah, but those fellows have their income assured,they are never compelled to publish at a fixed date, while I, why, Iam only a cabhorse!"
Although Dostoevski's sins against art were black and many, it was asupreme compliment to the Novel as an art-form that such a man shouldhave chosen it as the channel of his ideas. For he was certainly oneof the most profound thinkers of modern times. His thought dives belowand soars above the regions where even notable philosophers live outtheir intellectual lives. He never dodged the ugly facts in the world,nor even winced before them. Nor did he defy them. The vast knowledgethat he had of the very worst of life's conditions, and of the extremelimits of sin of which humanity is capable, seemed only to deepen andstrengthen his love of this world, his love of all the creatures onit, and his intense religious passion. For the religion of Dostoevskiis thrilling in its clairvoyance and in its fervour. That soexperienced and unprejudiced a man, gifted with such a power of subtleand profound reflection, should have found in the Christian religionthe only solution of the riddle of existence, and the best rule fordaily conduct, is in itself valuable evidence that the Christianreligion is true.
Dostoevski has been surpassed in many things by other novelists. Thedeficiencies and the excrescences of his art are glaring. But of allthe masters of fiction, both in Russia and elsewhere, he is the mosttruly spiritual.
V
TOLSTOI
Essays on Russian Novelists Page 4
