speaking of his father, and in his effort to understand the possible
relations between his father and mother, and the quality of their love,
he recollects his father’s phrase, “She married me out of humility.”
I read lately in an interview with M. Henry Bordeaux a sentence which
surprised me somewhat: “Seek first to know yourself.” The literary
creator who seeks himself runs a great risk--the risk of finding
himself. From then onwards he writes coldly, deliberately, in keeping
with the self he has found. He imitates himself. If he knows his path
and his limitations, it is only to keep strictly to them. His great
dread is no longer insincerity, but inconsistency. The true artist is
never but half-conscious of himself when creating. He does not know
exactly who he is. He learns to know himself only through his creation,
in it, and after it. Dostoevsky never set out to find himself; he gave
himself without stint in his works. He lost himself in each of the
characters of his books, and, for this reason, it is in them that he
can be found again. Presently we shall see how painfully awkward he
is when speaking in his own name, how eloquent, on the other hand,
when his own ideas are expressed by those whom he inspires. It is
in endowing them with life that he finds himself. He lives in each
of them, and the most obvious result of merging himself in their
diversity is the masking of his own inconsistencies.
I know no writer richer in contradictions and inconsistencies than
Dostoevsky: Nietzsche would describe them as _antagonisms_. Had he been
philosopher instead of novelist, he would certainly have attempted
to bring his ideas into line, whereby we should have lost the most
precious of them.
The happenings in Dostoevsky’s life, however tragic, are but surface
disturbances. The passions overwhelming him seem to shake him to the
depths; but beyond, there remains an inner chamber, unreached by
outside happenings or by passion. In this connection a few of his own
words will seem a revelation, if read in conjunction with another
passage:
“Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no man can live. When
he has lost all hope, all object in life, man often becomes a monster
in his misery.”[31]
But then he seems still in error where his real goal is concerned, for
he adds immediately after: “The one object of the prisoners was freedom
and to get out of prison.”
These words were written in 1861. Such then was his idea of an aim in
life. Of course he was suffering in that dread captivity! (He spent
ten years in Siberia: four in prison, then six more in forced military
service.) He was suffering; but once more a free man, he could realize
that the real goal, the freedom he really longed for, was something
deeper and had no connection with the throwing wide of prison gates.
In 1874 he could write this extraordinary sentence, which I like to
compare with what I read to you a moment ago:
“No aim can possibly be worth a wrecked existence.”[32]
So, according to Dostoevsky, we have each our reason for living,
superior, hidden--hidden often from ourselves--certainly far different
from the ostensible goal assigned by most of us to our existence.
Let us first of all try to picture Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky. His
friend Riesenkampf delineates him as he was at twenty years of age, in
1841:
“The face was rounded and full; the nose slightly retroussé; the hair
light brown, worn short. A broad forehead, and beneath thin eyebrows,
little grey eyes, set deep in the head. Pale cheeks, covered with
freckles. A sickly, almost livid complexion, and very thick lips.”
It is sometimes asserted that his first epileptic attacks occurred
in Siberia; but he was a sick man even before sentence was passed on
him, and the disease certainly made progress in Siberia. “A sickly
complexion.” Dostoevsky had always had poor health. And yet he, weak
and complaining, was singled out for military service while his robust
brother was exempted.
In 1841, that is, at twenty years of age, he was promoted
non-commissioned officer, and then, in 1843, he took the examinations
and was commissioned ensign. We learn that his officer’s pay amounted
to 3,000 roubles, and although he had come into his share of the
father’s fortune after the latter’s death, he led a free life, and had
to take a younger brother in charge, consequently he was always falling
into debt. This money question turns up again and again in his letters,
much more urgently than in Balzac’s. It plays an extremely important
part almost to the very end of his life, and it was not until the
closing years that he was really freed from his financial worries.
In his young days Dostoevsky indulged in every dissipation. He was
assiduous at the play, at concerts, at the ballet. Not a care in the
world! He chooses to rent a flat simply because he has taken a fancy
to the landlord’s appearance. His servant robs him, and he finds
entertainment in watching the pilfering continue. His mood changes
abruptly, according as fortune smiles or frowns. Faced with his utter
inability to steer a course in life, his family and friends are anxious
to see him share quarters with Riesenkampf. “Take this real methodical
German as your model,” they tell him. Riesenkampf, slightly older than
Dostoevsky, was a physician, and came to settle down in Petersburg
in the year 1843. At this moment, Dostoevsky has not a penny to his
name. He is living on bread and milk--both unpaid for. “Fyodor is one
of these people in whose company a man lives well, but who himself
will remain a needy creature till the very end of his days.” They set
up quarters together, but Dostoevsky proves himself impossible as a
companion. He receives Riesenkampf’s patients in the waiting-room,
and each time one of them appears needy, Dostoevsky succours him with
Riesenkampf’s funds or with his own, when he _has_ any. One fine day
he receives a thousand roubles from Moscow, the bulk of which sum
is immediately employed in settling some debts; then, the very same
evening, Dostoevsky gambles away the rest, at billiards, by his own
account, and the following morning is obliged to borrow five roubles
from his friend. I forgot to tell you that the last fifty roubles had
been stolen by a patient of Riesenkampf’s, whom Dostoevsky, in a sudden
manifestation of friendliness, had shown into his room. Riesenkampf and
Dostoevsky parted in March, 1844, without much apparent improvement in
the latter’s ways.
In 1846, he published _Poor Folk_. This book had sudden and
considerable success. Dostoevsky’s manner of speaking about his success
is significant of the man. We read in a contemporary letter:
“It dazes me: I am not living. I haven’t time to think.... A precarious
reputation has been built up around me, and I don’t know how long the
damnable thing will last.”[33]
In 1849, along with a group of suspects, he is taken by the police.
This is the affair known as the Petrachevsky Plot.
It is difficult to say what exactly were at this time Dostoevsky’s
political and social opinions. From this frequenting of suspected
individuals we are to infer a great measure of intellectual curiosity
and a certain generous warm-heartedness which ran him into unconsidered
risks. But we have no authority for believing that Dostoevsky ever was
what can be termed an anarchist, a being threatening the safety of the
state.
Numerous passages in his letters and in the _Journal of an Author_
show him as entertaining quite the opposite ideas, and the whole of
_The Possessed_ is, as it were, a speech for the prosecution against
anarchism. At any rate, taken he was amongst these suspects meeting
round Petrachevsky. He was thrown into prison, sent to trial, and heard
himself condemned to death. It was only at the eleventh hour that the
death sentence was commuted and he was exiled to Siberia. All this is
already familiar to you. In these causeries I should like to speak only
of what you could not find elsewhere; but, for the sake of such as
are unfamiliar with them, I shall read to you some passages from his
letters dealing with his sentence and his life in the penal settlement.
I consider them very self-revealing. In them we shall see, through the
portrayal of his sufferings, appear again and again the optimism that
supported him all his days. This is what he wrote, on July 18, 1849,
from the fortress where he lay awaiting the verdict.
“Human beings have an incredible amount of endurance and will to live;
I should never have expected to find so much in myself; now I know from
experience that it is there.”[34]
Then in August, weighed down by ill-health:
“To lose courage is to sin ... work, ever more work, _con amore_,
therein lies real happiness.”[35]
And again, on September 14, 1849:
“I had expected worse. And I know now that I have in me such reserves
of vitality that it would be difficult to exhaust.”[36]
I shall read almost the whole of his short letter dated December 22.
“To-day, December 22, we were led out to Semionovsky Square. There
the death warrant was read over to us all, we were given the cross to
kiss, swords were snapped above our heads, and our last toilet was
performed (white shirts). Then, three of us were placed against posts
for execution. I was the sixth; we were called up in threes, so I came
in the second group, and I had a few moments left to live. I thought of
you, brother, and of yours; at that last moment you alone were in my
thoughts, and then I realized how much I loved you, beloved brother!
I had time to kiss Plestcheyev and Dourov, who were beside me, and bid
them farewell. At last the retreat was sounded, those tied to the posts
were fetched back, and it was read out to us that His Imperial Majesty
was pleased to spare our lives.”[37]
In Dostoevsky’s novels we shall come across again and again more or
less direct allusions to the death sentence and to the condemned man’s
last hours. I cannot dwell on this for the moment.
Before starting out for Semipalatinsk, he was granted half an hour to
take leave of his brother Michael. Of the two, he was the calmer, a
friend relates, and said:
“In the settlement, dear brother, the convicts are not wild beasts,
just men, better men than I perhaps, more deserving, too, maybe. Yes,
we shall meet again, I hope: I am sure we shall see each other again.
Only do write to me and send me books. I shall soon let you know which
to send: surely reading is permitted there.” (This, says the narrator,
was a white lie to comfort his brother.) “As soon as I am released, I
shall begin to write. I have _lived_ during these last months, and in
the days before me, what shall I not see and live through? After all
that I shall not lack material for writing.”[38]
During the four years of Siberia which followed, Dostoevsky was not
permitted to write to his family. At any rate the existing volume
of correspondence contains no letters from this period, nor do Orest
Müller’s _Documents_ (_Materialen_), published in 1883, indicate any.
But since the issue of these _Documents_ numerous Dostoevsky letters
have been found and published; doubtless still more will yet be
discovered.
According to Müller, Dostoevsky left the penal settlement on March
2, 1854: according to official records, on January 23. These same
archives mention nineteen letters written by Fyodor Dostoevsky between
March 16, 1854 and September 11, 1856 to his brother, relatives, and
friends during the years of military service at Semipalatinsk, where
his sentence was completed. The French translation gives only twelve of
these letters, omitting (and why I cannot tell) that admirable letter
dated February 22, 1854, which, originally translated and printed
in Numbers 12 and 13 of _La Vogue_, 1886, now only with difficulty
accessible, was reprinted in the February issue of the _Nouvelle Revue
Française_, 1922.
Seeing this letter is not to be found in the published volume of
Dostoevsky’s correspondence, allow me to read some lengthy extracts
from it:[39]
(February 22, 1854.) “At last I can talk with you somewhat more
explicitly, and, I believe, in a more reasonable manner. But before
I write another line I _must_ ask you: tell me, for God’s sake, why
you have never written me a single syllable till now? Could I have
expected this from you? Believe me, in my lonely and isolated state,
I sometimes fell into utter despair, for I believed that you were no
longer alive; through whole nights I would brood upon what was to
become of your children, and I cursed my fate because I could not help
them....”
You see his keenest suffering is not in the consciousness of his own
abandonment, but in the realization of his powerlessness to help.
“How can I impart to you what is now in my mind--the things I thought,
the things I did, the convictions I acquired, the conclusions I came
to? I cannot even attempt the task. It is absolutely impossible. I
don’t like to leave a piece of work half done; to say only a part is
to say nothing. At any rate, you now have my detailed report in your
hands: read it, and get from it what you will. It is my duty to tell
you all, and so I will begin with my recollections. Do you remember how
we parted from each other, dear beloved fellow? You had scarcely left
me when we three, Dourov, Yastrembsky, and I, were led out to have the
irons put on. Precisely at midnight on that Christmas Eve (1849) did
chains touch me for the first time. They weigh about ten pounds, and
make walking extraordinarily difficult. Then we were sent into open
sledges, each with a gendarme; and so, in four sledges, the orderly
opening the procession, we left Petersburg. I was heavy-hearted, and
the many different impressions filled me with confused and uncertain
sensations. My heart beat with a peculiar flutter, and that numbed
its pain. Still, the fresh air was reviving in its effect, and,
since it is usual before all new experiences to be aware of a curious
vivacity and eagerness, so I was at the bottom quite tranquil. I looked
attentively at all the festively-lit houses of Petersburg, and said
good-bye to each. They drove us past your abode, and at Krayevsky’s the
windows were brilliantly lit. You had told me he was giving a Christmas
party and tree, and that your children were going to it, with Emilie
Fyodorovna; I did feel dreadfully sad as we passed that house. I took
leave, as it were, of the little ones. I felt so lonely for them, and
even years afterwards I often thought of them with tears in my eyes. We
were driven beyond Yaroslavl; after three or four stations we stopped,
in the first grey of morning, at Schlüsselburg, and went into an inn.
There we drank tea with as much avidity as if we had not touched
anything for a week. After the eight months’ captivity, sixty versts in
a sledge gave us appetites of which, even to-day, I think with pleasure.
“I was in a good temper. Dourov chattered incessantly, and Yastryembsky
expressed unwonted apprehensions for the future. We all laid ourselves
out to become better acquainted with our orderly. He was a good old
man, very friendly inclined towards us: a man who had seen a lot of
life; he had travelled all over Europe with dispatches. On the way he
showed us many kindnesses. His name was Kusma Prokofyevitch Prokofyev.
Among other things he let us have a covered sledge, which was very
welcome, for the frost was fearful.
“The second day was a holiday; the drivers, who were changed at the
various stations, wore cloaks of grey German cloth and bright red
belts; in the village streets there was not a soul to be seen. It was
a splendid winter day. They drove us through the remote parts of the
Petersburg, Novgorod, and Yaroslavl Governments. There were quite
insignificant little towns, at great distances from one another. But
as we were passing through on a holiday, there was always plenty to
eat and drink; we drove--drove terribly. We were warmly dressed, it is
true, but we had to sit for ten hours at a time in the sledges, halting
at only five or six stations; it was almost unendurable. I froze to
the marrow, and could scarcely thaw myself in the warm rooms at the
stations. Strange to say, the journey completely restored me to health.
Near Perm, we had a frost of 40 degrees during some of the nights. I
don’t recommend that to you. It was highly disagreeable.
“Mournful was the moment when we crossed the Ural. The horses and
sledges sank deep in the snow; a snowstorm was raging. We got out
of the sledge--it was night--and waited, standing, till they were
extricated. All about us whirled the snowstorm. We were standing on the
confines of Europe and Asia; before us lay Siberia and the mysterious
future--behind us, our whole past; it was very melancholy. Tears came
to my eyes. On the way, the peasants would stream out of all the
villages to see us; and although we were fettered, prices were trebled
to us at all the stations. Kusma Prokofyevitch took half our expenses
on himself, though we tried hard to prevent him; in this way each of
us, during the whole journey, spent only fifteen roubles.
“On January 12, 1850, we came to Tobolsk. After we had been paraded
before the authorities, and searched, in which proceeding all our money
was taken from us, myself, Dourov and Yastryembsky were taken into one
cell; the others, Spejechynov, etc., who had arrived before us, were
in another section, and during the whole time we hardly once saw each
other. I should like to tell you more of our six days’ stay in Tobolsk,
and of the impression it made upon me. But I haven’t room here. I will
only tell you that the great compassion and sympathy which was shown to
us there, made up to us, like a big piece of happiness, for all that
had gone before. The prisoners of former days[40] (and still more their
wives) cared for us as if they had been our kith and kin. Those noble
souls, tested by five-and-twenty years of suffering and self-sacrifice!
We saw them but seldom, for we were very rigidly guarded; still they
sent us clothes and provisions, they comforted and encouraged us. I had
brought far too few clothes, and had bitterly repented it; but they
sent me clothes. Finally we left Tobolsk, and reached Omsk in three
days.
“While I was in Tobolsk, I gathered information about my future
superiors. They told me that the Commandant was a very decent
fellow, but that the Major, Krivzov, was an uncommon brute, a petty
tyrant, a drunkard, a trickster--in short, the greatest horror that
can be imagined. From the very beginning, he called both Dourov
and me blockhead, and vowed to chastise us bodily at the first
transgression. He had already held his position for two years, and
done the most hideous and unsanctioned things; two years later he
was court-martialled for them. So God protected me from him! He used
to come to us mad drunk (I never once saw him sober), and would
seek out some inoffensive person and flog him on the pretext that
he--the prisoner--was drunk. Often he came at night and punished at
random--say, because such and such a one was sleeping on his left side
instead of his right, or because he talked or moaned in his sleep--in
fact, anything that occurred to his drunken mind. I should have had to
break out in the long run against such a man as that, and it was he who
wrote the monthly reports of us to Petersburg.
“I spent the whole four years behind dungeon walls, and only left the
prison when I was taken on ‘hard labour.’ The work was hard, though
not always; sometimes in bad weather, in rain, or in winter during
the unendurable frosts, my strength would forsake me. Once I had to
spend four hours at a piece of extra work, and in such frost that
the quicksilver froze; it was perhaps 40 degrees below zero. One of
my feet was frost-bitten. We all lived together in one barrack-room.
Imagine an old, crazy, wooden building, that should long ago have been
broken up as useless. In the summer it is unbearably hot, in the winter
unbearably cold. All the boards are rotten; on the ground filth lies an
inch thick; every instant one is in danger of slipping and coming down.
The small windows are so frozen over that even by day one can hardly
read. The ice on the panes is three inches thick. The ceilings drip,
there are draughts everywhere. We are packed like herrings in a barrel.
The stove is heated with six logs of wood, but the room is so cold that
the ice never thaws; the atmosphere is unbearable--and so through all
the winter long.
“In the same room, the prisoners wash their linen, and thus make the
place so wet that one scarcely dares to move. From twilight till
morning we are forbidden to leave the barrack-room; the doors are
barricaded; in the ante-room a great wooden trough for the calls of
nature is placed; this makes one almost unable to breathe. All the
prisoners stink like pigs; they say that they can’t help it, for they
must live, and are but men. We sleep upon bare boards; each man was
allowed one pillow only. We covered ourselves with short sheepskins,
and our feet were outside the covering all the time. It was thus that
we froze night after night. Fleas, lice, and other vermin by the
bushel. In the winter we got thin sheepskins to wear, which didn’t keep
us warm at all, and boots with short legs; thus equipped, we had to go
out into the frost.
“To eat we got bread and cabbage soup; the soup should, by the
regulations, have contained a quarter pound of meat per head; but they
put in sausage-meat, and so I never came across a piece of genuine
flesh. On feast days we got porridge, but with scarcely any butter. On
fast days, cabbage and nothing else. My stomach went utterly to pieces,
and I suffered tortures from indigestion.
“From all this you can see yourself that one couldn’t live there at
all without money; if I had had none, I should most assuredly have
perished; no one could endure such a life. But every convict does some
sort of work and sells it, thus earning, every single one of them, a
few pence. I often drank tea and bought myself a piece of meat; it
was my salvation. It was quite impossible to do without smoking, for
otherwise the stench would have choked one. All these things were done
behind the backs of the officials.
“I was often in hospital. My nerves were so shattered that I had some
epileptic fits--however, that was not often. I have rheumatism in my
legs now, too. But except for that, I feel right well. Add to all these
discomforts the fact that it was almost impossible to get one’s self a
book, and that when I did get one, I had to read it on the sly; that
all around me was incessant malignity, turbulence, and quarrelling;
then perpetual espionage, and the impossibility of ever being alone,
even for an instant--and so without variation for four long years.
You’ll believe me when I tell you I was not happy! And imagine, in
addition, the ever-present dread of drawing down some punishment on
myself, the irons, and the utter oppression of spirits--and you have
the picture of my life.
“I won’t even try to tell you what transformations were undergone by my
soul, my faith, my mind, and my heart, in those four years. It would be
a long story. Still, the eternal concentration, the escape into myself
from bitter reality, did bear its fruit. I now have many new needs and
hopes of which I never thought in other days. But all this will be pure
enigma for you, and so I’ll pass to other things. I will say only one
word: do not forget me, and do help me! I need books and money. Send
them me, for Christ’s sake.
“Omsk is a hateful hole. There is hardly a tree there. In summer, heat
and winds that bring sandstorms; in winter, snowstorms. I have scarcely
seen anything of the country around. The place is dirty, almost
exclusively inhabited by military, and dissolute to the last degree. I
mean the common people. If I hadn’t discovered some human beings here,
I should have gone utterly to the dogs.
“Constantine Ivanovitch Ivanov is like a brother to me. He has done
everything that he in any way could for me. I owe him money. If he ever
goes to Petersburg, show him some recognition. I owe him twenty-five
roubles. But how can I repay his kindness, his constant willingness to
carry out all my requests, his attention and care for me, just like a
brother’s? And he is not the only one I have to thank in that way.
Brother, there are very many noble natures in the world.