always a poet. In reading him we feel that what he says is true, it is
life indeed; but we also feel an inexpressible charm. It is the
mysterious charm of music, that makes our hearts swell and our eyes
swim. He saw life, as every one must see it, through the medium of his
own soul. As Joseph Conrad has said, no novelist describes the world;
he simply describes his own world. Turgenev had the temperament of a
poet, just the opposite temperament from such men of genius as
Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant. Their books receive our mental homage,
and deserve it; but they are without charm. On closing their novels,
we never feel that wonderful afterglow that lingers after the reading
of Turgenev. To read him is not only to be mentally stimulated, it is
to be purified and ennobled; for though he never wrote a sermon in
disguise, or attempted the didactic, the ethical element in his
tragedies is so pervasive that one cannot read him without hating sin
and loving virtue. Thus the works of the man who is perhaps the
greatest novelist in history are in harmony with what we recognise as
the deepest and most eternal truth, both in life and in our own
hearts.
The silver tones and subtle music of Turgenev's clavichord were
followed by the crashing force of Tolstoi's organ harmonies, and by
the thrilling, heart-piercing discords struck by Dostoevski. Still
more sensational sounds come from the younger Russian men of to-day,
and all this bewildering audacity of composition has in certain places
drowned for a time the less pretentious beauty of Turgenev's method.
During the early years of the twentieth century, there has been a
visible reaction against him, an attempt to persuade the world that
after all he was a subordinate and secondary man. This attitude is
shown plainly in Mr. Baring's "Landmarks in Russian Literature," whose
book is chiefly valuable for its sympathetic understanding of the
genius of Dostoevski. How far this reaction has gone may be seen in
the remark of Professor Bruckner, in his "Literary History of Russia":
"The great, healthy artist Turgenev always moves along levelled paths,
in the fair avenues of an ancient landowner's park. Aesthetic pleasure
is in his well-balanced narrative of how Jack and Jill did NOT come
together: deeper ideas he in no wise stirs in us." If "A House of
Gentlefolk" and "Fathers and Children" stir no deeper ideas than that
in the mind of Professor Bruckner, whose fault is it? One can only
pity him. But there are still left some humble individuals, at least
one, who, caring little for politics and the ephemeral nature of
political watchwords and party strife, and still less for faddish
fashions in art, persist in giving their highest homage to the great
artists whose work shows the most perfect union of Truth and Beauty.
IV
DOSTOEVSKI
The life of Dostoevski contrasts harshly with the luxurious ease and
steady level seen in the outward existence of his two great
contemporaries, Turgenev and Tolstoi. From beginning to end he lived
in the very heart of storms, in the midst of mortal coil. He was often
as poor as a rat; he suffered from a horrible disease; he was sick and
in 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; he
was a faithful witness, and we know that his testimony is true.
Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevski was born on the 30 October 1821, at
Moscow. His father was a poor surgeon, and his mother the daughter of
a mercantile man. He was acquainted with grief from the start, being
born in a hospital. There were five children, and they very soon
discovered the exact meaning of such words as hunger and cold. Poverty
in early years sometimes makes men rather close and miserly in middle
age, as it certainly did in the case of Ibsen, who seemed to think
that charity began and ended at home. Not so Dostoevski: he was often
victimised, he gave freely and impulsively, and was chronically in
debt. He had about as much business instinct as a prize-fighter or an
opera singer. As Merezhkovski puts it: "This victim of poverty dealt
with money as if he held it not an evil, but utter rubbish. Dostoevski
thinks he loves money, but money flees him. Tolstoi thinks he hates
money, but money loves him, and accumulates about him. The one,
dreaming all his life of wealth, lived, and but for his wife's
business qualities would have died, a beggar. The other, all his life
dreaming and preaching of poverty, not only has not given away, but
has greatly multiplied his very substantial possessions." In order to
make an impressive contrast, the Russian critic is here unfair to
Tolstoi, but there is perhaps some truth in the Tolstoi paradox. No
wonder Dostoevski loved children, for he was himself a great child.
He was brought up on the Bible and the Christian religion. The
teachings of the New Testament were with him almost innate ideas.
Thus, although his parents could not give him wealth, or ease, or
comfort, or health, they gave him something better than all four put
together.
When he was twenty-seven years old, having impulsively expressed
revolutionary opinions at a Radical Club to which he belonged, he was
arrested with a number of his mates, and after an imprisonment of some
months, he was led out on the 22 December 1849, with twenty-one
companions, to the scaffold. He passed through all the horror of
dying, for visible preparations had been made for the execution, and
he was certain that in a moment he would cease to live. Then came the
news that the Tsar had commuted the sentence to hard labour; this
saved their lives, but one of the sufferers had become insane.
Then came four years in the Siberian prison, followed by a few years
of enforced military service. His health actually grew better under
the cruel regime of the prison, which is not difficult to understand,
for even a cruel regime is better than none at all, and Dostoevski
never had the slightest notion of how to take care of himself. At what
time his epilepsy began is obscure, but this dreadful disease
faithfully and frequently visited him during his whole adult life.
From a curious hint that he once let fall, reenforced by the manner in
which the poor epileptic in "The Karamazov Brothers" acquired the
falling sickness, we cannot help thinking that its origin came from a
blow given in anger by his father.
Dostoevski was enormously interested in his disease, studied its
symptoms carefully, one might say eagerly, and gave to his friends
minute accounts of exactly how he felt before and after the
convulsions, which tally precisely with the vivid descriptions written
out in his novels. This illness coloured his whole life, profoundly
affected his character, and gave a feverish and hysterical tone to his
books.
Dostoevski had a tremendous capacity for enthusiasm. As a boy, he was
terribly shaken by the death of Pushkin, and he never lost his
admiration for the founder of Russian literature. He read the great
classics of antiquity and of modern Europe with wild excitement, and
wrote burning eulogies in letters to his friends. The flame of his
literary ambition was not quenched by the most abject poverty, nor by
the death of those whom he loved most intensely. After his first wife
died, he suffered agonies of grief, accentuated by wretched health,
public neglect, and total lack of financial resources. But chill
penury could not repress his noble rage. He was always planning and
writing new novels, even when he had no place to lay his head. And the
bodily distress of poverty did not cut him nearly so sharply as its
shame. His letters prove clearly that at times he suffered in the same
way as the pitiable hero of "Poor Folk." That book was indeed a
prophecy of the author's own life.
It is impossible to exaggerate the difficulties under which he wrote
his greatest novels. His wife and children were literally starving. He
could not get money, and was continually harassed by creditors. During
part of the time, while writing in the midst of hunger and freezing
cold, he had an epileptic attack every ten days. His comment on all
this is, "I am only preparing to live," which is as heroic as Paul
Jones's shout, "I have not yet begun to fight."
In 1880 a monument to Pushkin was unveiled, and the greatest Russian
authors were invited to speak at the ceremony. This was the occasion
where Turgenev vainly tried to persuade Tolstoi to appear and
participate. Dostoevski paid his youthful debt to the ever living poet
in a magnificent manner. He made a wonderful oration on Russian
literature and the future of the Russian people, an address that
thrilled the hearts of his hearers, and inspired his countrymen
everywhere. On the 28 January 1881, he died, and forty thousand
mourners saw his body committed to the earth.
Much as I admire the brilliant Russian critic, Merezhkovski, I cannot
understand his statement that Dostoevski "drew little on his personal
experiences, had little self-consciousness, complained of no one." His
novels are filled with his personal experiences, he had an almost
abnormal 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 no
wonder he has been condemned by some critics as a mere journalistic
maker of melodrama, while others have exhausted their entire stock of
adjectives in his exaltation. His most ardent admirer at this moment
is Mr. Baring, who is at the same time animated by a strange jealousy
of Turgenev's fame, and seems to think it necessary to belittle the
author of "Fathers and Children" in order to magnify the author of
"Crime and Punishment." This seems idle; Turgenev and Dostoevski were
geniuses of a totally different order, and we ought to rejoice in the
greatness of each man, just as we do in the greatness of those two
entirely dissimilar poets, Tennyson and Browning. Much of Mr. Baring's
language is an echo of Merezhkovski; but this Russian critic, while
loving Dostoevski more than Turgenev, was not at all blind to the
latter's supreme qualities. Listen to Mr. Baring:--
"He possesses a certain quality which is different in kind from those
of 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 his
amazing strength; and, besides this, he has certain great qualities
which other writers, and notably other Russian writers, possess also;
but he has them in so far higher a degree that when seen with other
writers he annihilates them. The combination of this difference in
kind and this difference in degree makes something so strong and so
tremendous, that it is not to be wondered at when we find many critics
saying that Dostoevski is not only the greatest of all Russian
writers, but one of the greatest writers that the world has ever seen.
I am not exaggerating when I say that such views are held; for
instance, Professor Bruckner, a most level-headed critic, in his
learned and exhaustive survey of Russian literature, says that it is
not in "Faust," but rather in "Crime and Punishment," that the whole
grief of mankind takes hold of us.
"Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is true
to say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present day
would place Dostoevski as being equal to Tolstoi and immeasurably
above Turgenev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the present
day no more dreams of comparing Turgenev with Dostoevski, than it
would occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte
Bronte."
This last sentence shows the real animus against Turgenev that
obsesses Mr. Baring's mind; once more the reader queries, Suppose
Dostoevski be all that Mr. Baring claims for him, why is it necessary
to attack Turgenev? Is there not room in Russian literature for both
men? But as Mr. Baring has appealed to Russian criticism, it is only
fair to quote one Russian critic of good standing, Kropotkin. He
says:--
"Dostoevski is still very much read in Russia; and when, some twenty
years ago, his novels were first translated into French, German, and
English, they were received as a revelation. He was praised as one of
the greatest writers of our own time, and as undoubtedly the one who
'had best expressed the mystic Slavonic soul'--whatever that
expression may mean! Turgenev was eclipsed by Dostoevski, and Tolstoi
was forgotten for a time. There was, of course, a great deal of
hysterical exaggeration in all this, and at the present time sound
literary critics do not venture to indulge in such praises. The fact
is, that there is certainly a great deal of power in whatever
Dostoevski wrote: his powers of creation suggest those of Hoffmann;
and his sympathy with the most down-trodden and down-cast products of
the civilisation of our large towns is so deep that it carries away
the most indifferent reader and exercises a most powerful impression
in the right direction upon young readers. His analysis of the most
varied specimens of incipient psychical disease is said to be
thoroughly correct. But with all that, the artistic qualities of his
novels are incomparably below those of any one of the great Russian
masters Tolstoi, Turgenev, or Goncharov. Pages of consummate realism
are interwoven with the most fantastical incidents worthy only of the
most incorrigible romantics. Scenes of a thrilling interest are
interrupted in order to introduce a score of pages of the most
unnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such a
hurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read over
his novels before sending them to the printer. And, worst of all,
every one of the heroes of Dostoevski, especially in his novels of the
later period, is a person suffering from some psychical disease or
from moral perversion. As a result, while one may read some of the
novels of Dostoevski with the greatest interest, one is never tempted
to re-read them, as one re-reads the novels of Tolstoi and Turgenev,
and even those of many secondary novel writers; and the present writer
must confess that he had the greatest pain lately in reading through,
for instance, "The Brothers Karamazov," and never could pull himself
through such a novel as "The Idiot." However, one pardons Dostoevski
everything, because when he speaks of the ill-treated and the
forgotten children of our town civilisation he becomes truly great
through his wide, infinite love of mankind--of man, even in his worst
manifestations."
Mr. Baring's book was published in 1910, Kropotkin's in 1905, which
seems to make Mr. Baring's attitude point to the past, rather than to
the future. Kropotkin seems to imply that the wave of enthusiasm for
Dostoevski is a phase that has already passed, rather than a new and
increasing demonstration, as Mr. Baring would have us believe.
Dostoevski's first book, "Poor Folk," appeared when he was only
twenty-five years old: it made an instant success, and gave the young
author an enviable reputation. The manuscript was given by a friend to
the poet Nekrassov. Kropotkin says that Dostoevski "had inwardly
doubted whether the novel would even be read by the editor. He was
living then in a poor, miserable room, and was fast asleep when at
four o'clock in the morning Nekrassov and Grigorovich knocked at his
door. They threw themselves on Dostoevski's neck, congratulating him
with tears in their eyes. Nekrassov and his friend had begun to read
the novel late in the evening; they could not stop reading till they
came to the end, and they were both so deeply impressed by it that
they could not help going on this nocturnal expedition to see the
author and tell him what they felt. A few days later, Dostoevski was
introduced to the great critic of the time, Bielinski, and from him he
received the same warm reception. As to the reading public, the novel
produced quite a sensation."
The story "Poor Folk" is told in the highly artificial form of
letters, but is redeemed by its simplicity and deep tenderness.
Probably no man ever lived who had a bigger or warmer heart than
Dostoevski, 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, the
boundlessness of his sympathy, and his amazing spiritual force. If
ever there was a person who would forgive any human being anything
seventy times seven, that individual was Dostoevski. He never had to
learn the lesson of brotherly love by long years of experience: the
mystery of the Gospel, hidden from the wise and prudent, was revealed
to him as a babe. The language of these letters is so simple that a
child could understand every word; but the secrets of the human heart
are laid bare. The lover is a grey-haired old man, with the true
Slavonic genius for failure, and a hopeless drunkard; the young girl
is a veritable flower of the slums, shedding abroad the radiance and
perfume of her soul in a sullen and sodden environment. She has a
purity of soul that will not take pollution.
"See how this mere chance-sown deft-nursed seed
That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot
Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,
Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
To incorporate the whole great sun it loves
From the inch-height whence it looks and longs!"
No one can read a book like this without being better for it, and
without loving its author.
It is unfortunate that Dostoevski did not learn from his first little
masterpiece the great virtue of compression. This story is short, but
it is long enough; the whole history of two lives, so far as their
spiritual aspect is concerned, is fully given in these few pages. The
besetting sin of Dostoevski is endless garrulity with its accompanying
demon of incoherence: in later years he yielded to that, as he did to
other temptations, and it finally mastered him. He was never to write
again a work of art that had organic unity.
Like all the great Russian novelists, Dostoevski went to school to
Gogol. 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 power
of that immortal work. Dostoevski seemed fully to realise his debt to
Gogol, and in particular to "The Cloak;" for in "Poor Folk," one
entire letter is taken up with a description of Makar's emotions after
reading that extraordinary tale. Makar assumes that it is a
description of himself. "Why, I hardly dare show myself in the
streets! Everything is so accurately described that one's very gait is
recognisable."
Dostoevski's consuming ambition for literary fame is well indicated in
his first book. "If anything be well written, Varinka, it is
literature. I learned this the day before yesterday. What a wonderful
thing literature is, which, consisting but of printed words, is able
to invigorate, to instruct, the hearts of men!"
So many writers have made false starts in literature that Dostoevski's
instinct for the right path at the very outset is something notable.
His entire literary career was to be spent in portraying the despised
and rejected. Never has a great author's first book more clearly
revealed the peculiar qualities of his mind and heart.
But although he struck the right path, it was a long time before he
found again the right vein. He followed up his first success with a
row of failures, whose cold reception by the public nearly broke his
heart. He was extremely busy, extremely productive, and extremely
careless, as is shown by the fact that during the short period from
1846 to 1849, he launched thirteen original publications, not a single
one of which added anything to his fame. It was not until after the
cruel 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 satire
the influence of Gogol. This is an exceedingly entertaining book, and,
a strange thing in Dostoevski, it is, in many places, hilariously
funny. The satire is so enormously exaggerated that it completely
overshoots the mark, but perhaps this very exaggeration adds to the
reader's merriment. The conversation in this story is often brilliant,
full of unexpected quips and retorts delivered in a manner far more
French than Russian. The intention of the author seems to have been to
write a scathing and terrible satire on provincial society, where
every one almost without exception is represented as absolutely
selfish, absolutely conceited, and absolutely heartless. It is a study
of village gossip, a favourite subject for satirists in all languages.
In the middle of the book Dostoevski remarks: "Everybody in the
provinces lives as though he were under a bell of glass. It is
impossible for him to conceal anything whatever from his honourable
fellow-citizens. They know things about him of which he himself is
ignorant. The provincial, by his very nature, ought to be a very
profound psychologist. That is why I am sometimes honestly amazed to
meet in the provinces so few psychologists and so many imbeciles."
Never again did Dostoevski write a book containing so little of
himself, and so little of the native Russian element. Leaving out the
exaggeration, it might apply to almost any village in any country, and
instead of sympathy, it shows only scorn. The scheming mother, who
attempts to marry her beautiful daughter to a Prince rotten with
diseases, is a stock figure on the stage and in novels. The only truly
Russian personage is the young lover, weak-willed and irresolute, who
lives 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 "The
Friend of the Family." This has for its hero one of the most
remarkable of Dostoevski's characters, and yet one who infallibly
reminds us of Dickens's Pecksniff. The story is told in the first
person, and while it cannot by any stretch of language be called a
great book, it has one advantage over its author's works of genius, in
being interesting from the first page to the last. Both the uncle and
the nephew, who narrate the tale, are true Russian characters: they
suffer long, and are kind; they hope all things, and believe all
things. The household is such a menagerie that it is no wonder that
the German translation of this novel is called "Tollhaus oder
Herrenhaus"? Some of the inmates are merely abnormal; others are
downright mad. There is not a natural or a normal character in the
entire book, and not one of the persons holds the reader's sympathy,
though frequent drafts are made on his pity. The hero is a colossal
hypocrite, hopelessly exaggerated. If one finds Dickens's characters
to be caricatures, what shall be said of this collection? This is the
very apotheosis of the unctuous gasbag, from whose mouth, eternally
ajar, pours a viscous stream of religious and moral exhortation.
Compared with this Friend of the Family, Tartuffe was unselfish and
noble: Joseph Surface modest and retiring; Pecksniff a humble and
loyal man. The best scene in the story, and one that arouses
outrageous mirth, is the scene where the uncle, who is a kind of Tom
Pinch, suddenly revolts, and for a moment shakes off his bondage. He
seizes the fat hypocrite by the shoulder, lifts him from the floor,
and hurls his carcass through a glass door. All of which is in the
exact manner of Dickens.