in its occasional passages of wonderful beauty and pathos, characteristic
in its utter formlessness and long stretches of uninspired dulness,
is "Downtrodden and Oppressed." Here the author gives us the life he
knew best by actual experience and the life best suited to his natural
gifts of sympathetic interpretation. Stevenson's comment on this story
has attracted much attention. Writing to John Addington Symonds in 1886,
he said: "Another has been translated--"Humilies et Offenses." It is
even more incoherent than "Le Crime et le Chatiment," but breathes much
of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. Dostoevski is
a devil of a swell, to be sure." There is no scorn and no satire in
this book; it was written from an overflowing heart. One of the speeches
of the spineless young Russian, Alosha, might be taken as illustrative
of the life-purpose of our novelist: "I am on fire for high and noble
ideals; they may be false, but the basis on which they rest is holy."
"Downtrodden and Oppressed" is full of melodrama and full of tears; it
is four times too long, being stuffed out with interminable
discussions and vain repetitions. It has no beauty of construction, no
evolution, and irritates the reader beyond all endurance. The young
hero 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 of
will. The real problem of the book is how either of the girls could
have tolerated his presence for five minutes. The hero's father is a
melodramatic villain, who ought to have worn patent-leather boots and
a Spanish cloak. And yet, with all its glaring faults, it is a story
the pages of which ought not to be skipped. So far as the narrative
goes, one may skip a score of leaves at will; but in the midst of
aimless and weary gabble, passages of extraordinary beauty and uncanny
insight strike out with the force of a sudden blow. The influence of
Dickens is once more clearly seen in the sickly little girl Nelly,
whose strange caprices and flashes of passion are like Goethe's
Mignon, but whose bad health and lingering death recall irresistibly
Little 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 the
title "Buried Alive." Of the many works that have come from
prison-walls to enrich literature, and their number is legion, this is
one of the most powerful, because one of the most truthful and
sincere. It is not nearly so well written as Oscar Wilde's "De
Profundis;" but one cannot escape the suspicion that this latter
masterpiece was a brilliant pose. Dostoevski's "House of the Dead" is
marked by that naive Russian simplicity that goes not to the reader's
head but to his heart. It is at the farthest remove from a
well-constructed novel; it is indeed simply an irregular, incoherent
notebook. But if the shop-worn phrase "human document" can ever be
fittingly applied, no better instance can be found than this. It is a
revelation of Dostoevski's all-embracing sympathy. He shows no
bitterness, no spirit of revenge, toward the government that sent him
into penal servitude; he merely describes what happened there. Nor
does he attempt to arouse our sympathy for his fellow-convicts by
depicting them as heroes, or in showing their innate nobleness. They
are indeed a bad lot, and one is forced to the conviction that they
ought not to be at large. Confinement and hard labour is what most of
them need; for the majority of them in this particular Siberian prison
are not revolutionists, offenders against the government, sent there
for some petty or trumped-up charge, but cold-blooded murderers,
fiendishly cruel assassins, wife-beaters, dull, degraded brutes. But
the regime, as our novelist describes it, does not improve them; the
officers are as brutal as the men, and the floggings do not make for
spiritual culture. One cannot wish, after reading the book, that such
prisoners were free, but one cannot help thinking that something is
rotten in the state of their imprisonment. Dostoevski brings out with
great 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 they
have in silly talk, in purposeless discussions, in endeavours to get
drink, in practical jokes, and in thefts from one another. The cruel
pathos 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 organised
nervous system, with a wonderful imagination, condemned to live for
years in slimy misery, with creatures far worse than the beasts of the
field. Indeed, some of the most beautiful parts of the story are where
Dostoevski turns from the men to the prison dog and the prison horse,
and there finds true friendship. His kindness to the neglected dog and
the latter's surprise and subsequent devotion make a deep impression.
The greatness of Dostoevski's heart is shown in the fact that although
his comrades were detestable characters, he did not hate them. His
calm account of their unblushing knavery is entirely free from either
vindictive malice or superior contempt. He loved them because they
were buried alive, he loved them because of their wretchedness, with a
love as far removed from condescension as it was from secret
admiration of their bold wickedness. There was about these men no
charm of personality and no glamour of desperate crime. The delightful
thing about Dostoevski's attitude is that it was so perfect an
exemplification of true Christianity. No pride, no scorn, no envy. He
regarded them as his brothers, and one feels that not one of the men
would ever have turned to Dostoevski for sympathy and encouragement
without meeting an instant and warm response. That prison was a great
training-school for Dostoevski's genius, and instead of casting a
black shadow over his subsequent life, it furnished him with the
necessary light and heat to produce a succession of great novels.
Their production was, however, irregular, and at intervals he
continued to write and publish books of no importance. One of his
poorest stories is called "Memoirs of the Cellarage," or, as the
French translation has it, "L'Esprit Souterrain." The two parts of the
story contain two curious types of women. The hero is the regulation
weak-willed Russian; his singular adventures with an old criminal and
his mistress in the first part of the story, and with a harlot in the
second, have only occasional and languid interest; it is one of the
many books of Dostoevski that one vigorously vows never to read again.
The sickly and impractical Ordinov spends most of his time analysing
his mental states, and indulging in that ecstasy of thought which is
perhaps the most fatal of all Slavonic passions. Soon after appeared a
strange and far better novel, called "The Gambler." This story is told
in the first person, and contains a group of highly interesting
characters, the best being an old woman, whose goodness of heart,
extraordinary vitality, and fondness for speaking her mind recall the
best type of English Duchess of the eighteenth century. There is not a
dull page in this short book; and often as the obsession of gambling
has been represented in fiction, I do not at this moment remember any
other story where the fierce, consuming power of this heart-eating
passion has been more powerfully pictured. No reader will ever forget
the one day in the sensible old lady's life when all her years of
training, all her natural caution and splendid common sense, could not
keep her away from the gaming table. This is a kind of international
novel, where the English, French, German, and Russian temperaments are
analysed, perhaps with more cleverness than accuracy. The Englishman,
Astley, is utterly unreal, Paulina is impossible, and the Slavophil
attacks on the French are rather pointless. Some of the characters are
incomprehensible, 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 in
America 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 is
assuredly a great work, and one that nobody except a genius could have
written, I do not think it is Dostoevski's most characteristic novel,
nor his best. It is characteristic in its faults; it is abominably
diffuse, filled with extraneous and superfluous matter, and totally
lacking in the principles of good construction. There are scenes of
positively breathless excitement, preceded and followed by dreary
drivel; but the success of the book does not depend on its action, but
rather on the characters of Sonia, her maudlin father, the student
Raskolnikov, and his sister. It is impossible to read "Crime and
Punishment" without reverently saluting the author's power. As is well
known, the story gave Stevenson all kinds of thrills, and in a famous
letter written while completely under the spell he said: "Raskolnikov
is easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; I am glad you
took to it. Many find it dull; Henry James could not finish it; all I
can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness.
James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikov was not
objective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, on
further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many minds
of 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 such
I suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a
room, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and are
purified. The Juge d'Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird,
touching, ingenious creation; the drunken father, and Sonia, and the
student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protoplasmic humanity of
Raskolnikov, all upon a level that filled me with wonder; the
execution, also, superb in places."
Dostoevski is fond of interrupting the course of his narratives with
dreams,--dreams that often have no connection with the plot, so far as
there may be said to exist a plot,--but dreams of vivid and sharp
verisimilitude. Whether these dreams were interjected to deceive the
reader, or merely to indulge the novelist's whimsical fancy, is hard
to divine; but one always wakes with surprise to find that it is all a
dream. A few hours before Svidrigailov commits suicide he has an
extraordinary dream of the cold, wet, friendless little girl, whom he
places tenderly in a warm bed, and whose childish eyes suddenly give
him the leer of a French harlot. Both he and the reader are amazed to
find that this is only a dream, so terribly real has it seemed. Then
Raskolnikov's awful dream, so minutely circumstanced, of the cruel
peasants maltreating a horse, their drunken laughter and vicious
conversation, their fury that they cannot kill the mare with one blow,
and the wretched animal's slow death makes a picture that I have long
tried in vain to forget. These dream episodes have absolutely no
connection with the course of the story--they are simply
impressionistic sketches.
Another favourite device of Dostoevski's is to have one of his
characters take a walk, and on this walk undergo some experience that
has nothing whatever to do with the course of the action, but is, as
it were, a miniature story of its own introduced into the novel. One
often remembers these while forgetting many vital constructive
features. That picture of the pretty young girl, fifteen or sixteen
years old, staggering about in the heat of the early afternoon,
completely drunk, while a fat libertine slowly approaches her, like a
vulture after its prey, stirs Raskolnikov to rage and then to
reflection--but the reader remembers it long after it has passed from
the hero's mind. Dostoevski's books are full of disconnected but
painfully oppressive incidents.
Raskolnikov's character cannot be described nor appraised; one must
follow him all the way through the long novel. He is once more the
Rudin type--utterly irresolute, with a mind teeming with ideas and
surging with ambition. He wants to be a Russian Napoleon, with a
completely subservient conscience, but instead of murdering on a large
scale, like his ideal, he butchers two inoffensive old women. Although
the ghastly details of this double murder are given with definite
realism, Dostoevski's interest is wholly in the criminal psychology of
the affair, in the analysis of Raskolnikov's mind before, during, and
chiefly after the murder; for it is the mind, and not the bodily
sensations that constitute the chosen field of our novelist. After
this event, the student passes through almost every conceivable mental
state; we study all these shifting moods under a powerful microscope.
The assassin is redeemed by the harlot Sonia, who becomes his
religious and moral teacher. The scene where the two read together the
story of the resurrection of Lazarus, and where they talk about God,
prayer, and the Christian religion, shows the spiritual force of
Dostoevski in its brightest manifestations. At her persuasion, he
finally confesses his crime, and is deported to Siberia, where his
experiences are copied faithfully from the author's own prison life.
Sonia accompanies him, and becomes the good angel of the convicts, who
adore her. "When she appeared while they were at work, all took off
their hats and made a bow. 'Little mother, Sophia Semenova, thou art
our mother, tender and compassionate,' these churlish and branded
felons said to her. She smiled in return; they loved even to see her
walk, and turned to look upon her as she passed by. They praised her
for being so little, and knew not what not to praise her for. They
even 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 be
released. "Seven years--only seven years! At the commencement of their
happiness they were ready to look upon these seven years as seven
days. They did not know that a new life is not given for nothing; that
it has to be paid dearly for, and only acquired by much patience and
suffering, and great future efforts. But now a new history commences;
a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow, progressive
regeneration, and change from one world to another--an introduction to
the hitherto unknown realities of life. This may well form the theme
of a new tale; the one we wished to offer the 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. The
professional harlot has often been presented on the stage and in the
pages of fiction, but after learning to know Sonia, the others seem
weakly artificial. This girl, whose father's passion for drink is
something worse than madness, goes on the street to save the family
from starvation. It is the sacrifice of Monna Vanna without any reward
or spectacular acclaim. Deeply spiritual, intensely religious, she is
the illumination of the book, and seems to have stepped out of the
pages of the New Testament. Her whole story is like a Gospel parable,
and she has saved many besides Raskolnikov. . . . She dies daily, and
from her sacrifice rises a life of eternal beauty.
Two years later came another book of tremendous and irregular
power--"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 been
revised; it abounds in irrelevancies and superfluous characters. One
must have an unshakable faith in the author to read it through, and
one should never begin to read it without having acquired that faith
through the perusal of "Crime and Punishment." The novel is a
combination of a hospital and an insane asylum; its pages are filled
with sickly, diseased, silly, and crazy folk. It is largely
autobiographical; the hero's epileptic fits are described as only an
epileptic could describe them, more convincingly than even so able a
writer as Mr. De Morgan diagnoses them in "An Affair of Dishonour."
Dostoevski makes the convulsion come unexpectedly; Mr. De Morgan uses
the fit as a kind of moral punctuation point. The author's sensations
when under condemnation of death and expecting the immediate
catastrophe are also minutely given from his own never paling
recollection. Then there are allusions to Russian contemporary
authors, which occur, to be sure, in his other books. One reason why
Dostoevski is able to portray with such detail the thoughts and
fancies of abnormal persons is because he was so abnormal himself; and
because his own life had been filled with such an amazing variety of
amazing experiences. Every single one of his later novels is a
footnote to actual circumstance; with any other author, we should say,
for example, that his accounts of the thoughts that pass in a
murderer's mind immediately before he assassinates his victim were the
fantastical emanation of a diseased brain, and could never have taken
place; one cannot do that in Dostoevski's case, for one is certain
that he is drawing on his Siberian reservoir of fact. These novels are
fully as much a contribution to the study of abnormal psychology as
they are to the history of fiction.
The leading character, the epileptic Idiot, has a magnetic charm that
pulls the reader from the first, and from which it is vain to hope to
escape. The "lovely goodness" that Stevenson found in Dostoevski's
"Downtrodden and Oppressed" shines in this story with a steady
radiance. The most brilliant and beautiful women in the novel fall
helplessly in love with the Idiot, and the men try hard to despise
him, without the least success. He has the sincerity of a child, with
a child's innocence and confidence. His character is almost the
incarnation of the beauty of holiness. Such common and universal sins
as deceit, pretence, revenge, ambition, are not only impossible to
him, they are even inconceivable; he is without taint. From one point
of view, he is a natural-born fool; but the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with him. His utter harmlessness and incapacity to hurt
occasion scenes of extraordinary humour, scenes that make the reader
suddenly laugh out loud, and love him all the more ardently.
Dostoevski loved children and animals, and so-called simple folk; what
is more, he not only loved them, he looked upon them as his greatest
teachers. It is a delight to hear this Idiot talk:--
"What has always surprised me, is the false idea that grown-up people
have of children. They are not even understood by their fathers and
mothers. We ought to conceal nothing from children under the pretext
that they are little and that at their age they should remain ignorant
of certain things. What a sad and unfortunate idea! And how clearly
the children themselves perceive that their parents take them for
babies who can't understand anything, when really they understand
everything! Great folks don't know that in even the most difficult
affairs a child is able to give advice that is of the utmost
importance. O God! when this pretty little bird stares at you with a
happy and confiding look, you are ashamed to deceive him! I call them
little 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 room
peacefully, when one of them, lusting to possess the other's watch,
drew a knife, sneaked up behind his victim stealthily, raised his eyes
to heaven, crossed himself, and piously murmured this prayer: "O Lord,
pardon me through the merits of Christ!" then stabbed his friend to
death, and quietly took the watch. Naturally the listener roars with
laughter, but the Idiot quietly continues: "I once met a peasant woman
crossing herself so piously, so piously! 'Why do you do that, my
dear?' said I (I am always asking questions). 'Well,' said she, 'just
as a mother is happy when she sees the first smile of her nursling, so
God experiences joy every time when, from the height of heaven, he
sees a sinner lift toward Him a fervent prayer.' It was a woman of the
people who told me that, who expressed this thought so profound, so
fine, so truly religious, which is the very basis of Christianity,
that is to say, the idea that God is our father, that He is delighted
at the sight of a man as a mother is at the sight of her child,--the
chief thought of Christ! A simple peasant woman! To be sure, she was a
mother. . . . The religious sentiment, in its essence, can never be
crushed by reasoning, by a sin, by a crime, by any form of atheism;
there is something there which remains and always will remain beyond
all that, something which the arguments of atheists will never touch.
But the chief thing is, that nowhere does one notice this more clearly
than in the heart of Russia. It is one of the most important
impressions that I first received from our country."
The kindness of the Idiot toward his foes and toward those who are
continually playing on his generosity and exploiting him, enrages
beyond all endurance some of his friends. A beautiful young society
girl impatiently cries: "There isn't a person who deserves such words
from you! here not one of them is worth your little finger, not one
who has your intelligence or your heart! You are more honest than all
of 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 handkerchief
you let fall, so why then do you humiliate yourself and place yourself
below everybody! Why have you crushed yourself, why haven't you any
pride?"
She had begun her acquaintance with him by laughing at him and trying
to cover him with ridicule. But in his presence those who come to
scoff remain to pray. Such men really overcome the world.
He is not the only Idiot in fiction who is able to teach the wise, as
every one knows who remembers his "David Copperfield." How Betsy
Trotwood would have loved Dostoevski's hero! Dickens and Dostoevski
were perhaps the biggest-hearted of all novelists, and their respect
for children and harmless men is notable. The sacredness of mad folk
is a holy tradition, not yet outworn.
"The Eternal Husband" is a story dealing, of course, with an abnormal
character, in abnormal circumstances. It is a quite original variation
on the triangle theme. It has genuine humour, and the conclusion
leaves one in a muse. "The Hobbledehoy," translated into French as "Un
Adolescent," is, on the whole, Dostoevski's worst novel, which is
curious enough, coming at a time when he was doing some of his best
work. He wrote this while his mind was busy with a great masterpiece,
"The Karamazov Brothers," and in this book we get nothing but the
lees. It is a novel of portentous length and utter vacuity. I have
read many dull books, but it is hard to recall a novel where the
steady, 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 of
ten years' reflection, study, and labour, and he died without
completing it. It is a very long novel as it stands; had he lived five
years more, it would probably have been the longest novel on the face
of the earth, for he seems to have regarded what he left as an
introduction. Even as it is, it is too long, and could profitably be
cut down one-third. It is incomplete, it is badly constructed, it is
very badly written; but if I could have only one of his novels, I
would take "The Karamazov Brothers." For Dostoevski put into it all
the sum of his wisdom, all the ripe fruit of his experience, all his
religious aspiration, and in Alosha he created not only the greatest
of all his characters, but his personal conception of what the ideal
man should be. Alosha is the Idiot, minus idiocy and epilepsy.