Sonia, and I keep trying to find the right word, though my heart is
full of words which I don’t know how to utter; do you know I feel as
if I were split in two?”--He looked round at us all with a terribly
serious face and with perfectly genuine candour.--“Yes, I am really
split in two mentally, and I’m horridly afraid of it. It’s just as
though one’s second self were standing beside one; one is sensible
and rational oneself, but the other self is impelled to do something
perfectly senseless, and sometimes very funny; and suddenly you notice
that you are longing to do that amusing thing, goodness knows why;
that is, you want to, as it were, against your will; though you fight
against it with all your might, you want to. I once knew a doctor who
suddenly began whistling in church, at his father’s funeral. I really
was afraid to come to the funeral to-day, because, for some reason,
I was possessed by a firm conviction that I should begin to laugh or
whistle in church, like that unfortunate doctor, who came to rather a
bad end....”[75]
Listen now to Stavrogin, the strange hero of _The Possessed_: “I am
still capable, as I always was, of desiring to do something good, and
of feeling pleasure from it; at the same time I desire evil and feel
pleasure from that too.”[76] As Baudelaire says, no man but is ever
entreating God and the Devil at one and the same time.[77]
With the help of some passages from William Blake, I shall try to
throw some light on these apparent contradictions, and especially on
Stavrogin’s strange declaration. But this attempt at explanation I
shall hold over till later.
IV
At our last meeting we noticed the disquieting duality by which most
of Dostoevsky’s characters are racked and driven, and which prompts
Raskolnikov’s friend to say à propos of the hero of _Crime and
Punishment_: “It really looks as if there were in him two opposite
natures showing themselves in turn.”
And were these natures never visible but in turn, all would still be
well, but we have seen how they often come to manifest themselves
simultaneously. We have watched each of these contradictory impulses
exhausted, depreciated, and inhibited by its own expression and
manifestation, giving way to its opposite, and the hero is never nearer
love than when he has just given exaggerated expression to his hatred,
never nearer hatred than in the exaggeration of his love.
In all Dostoevsky’s creations, in his women characters especially, we
detect an uneasy presentiment of their own instability. The dread of
being unable to maintain for long the same mood or resolve drives them
often to disconcertingly abrupt action. For instance, Lizaveta in _The
Possessed_ makes up her mind with great alacrity, because she knows
from long experience that her resolutions never last more than a minute.
To-day I propose to study some of the results of this strange duality;
but first of all let me ask whether this duality really exists, or
whether Dostoevsky only imagines it? Does life provide him with any
examples? Is it observed from Nature, or does he merely obligingly
yield to his imaginative bent?
Nature, according to Oscar Wilde’s _Intentions_, copies the model set
her by Art, and this apparent paradox he delights in illustrating
by several specious insinuations, the gist of his argument being
that Nature--“as you will not have failed to observe”--has taken to
imitating Corot’s landscapes nowadays!
His meaning is undoubtedly that, accustomed to looking at Nature in
a manner that is become conventional, we recognize only what Art has
educated us to discern. When a painter essays to transmute and express
in his work a personal vision, Nature’s new aspect seems at first brush
paradoxal, insincere, freakish even. However, we speedily grow used to
contemplating her with the bias given by this new method, and recognize
only what the artist pointed out to us. Hence, to eyes unprejudiced,
Nature would really seem to _imitate_ Art.
What I have said about painting applies equally to novels and the
intimate landscapes of psychology. We exist on given premises, and
readily acquire the habit of seeing the world, not so much as it
actually is, but as we have been told and persuaded it is. How many
diseases were non-existent, so to speak, until diagnosed and described!
How many strange, pathological, abnormal states we identify round us,
aye, within us, once our eyes have been opened by reading Dostoevsky!
Yes, I firmly believe he opens our eyes to certain phenomena;--I do not
necessarily mean rare ones, but simply phenomena to which we had been
so far blind.
Faced with the complexity almost every human being offers, the eye
tends inevitably, spontaneously, unconsciously almost, to simplify to
some extent.
Such is the French novelist’s instinctive effort. He singles out
the chief elements in a character, tries to discern clear-cut lines
in a figure and reproduce the contours unbroken. Whether Balzac or
another, no matter: the desire, the need, even, for _stylisation_ is
all-important. None the less I believe it would be a gross mistake--one
to which I fear many a foreigner is prone--to scorn and discredit
the psychology of French literature on account of the sharp outlines
it presents, the complete absence of indistinctness, and the lack of
shading.
Remember that Nietzsche with rare perspicacity recognized and
proclaimed the extraordinary superiority of our French psychologists,
judging them--and to an even greater degree perhaps our
moralists--Europe’s most eminent masters. True that in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries we had authors of unrivalled analytical
powers: I have our moralists chiefly in mind. But I am not wholly
satisfied that our present-day novelists are able to compete with them,
for here in France we have an unfortunate habit of keeping to formulæ
which soon become mechanical, and of resting content with them instead
of pressing onwards.
I have already remarked elsewhere that La Rochefoucauld, while
rendering splendid service to psychology, had in a measure arrested
its development by reason of the very perfection of his _Maxims_. I
must apologize for quoting myself, but I should find some difficulty in
improving on these lines I wrote in 1910:
“When La Rochefoucauld bethought himself of reducing and ascribing
every generous impulse of the human heart to the solicitations of
personal vanity, I doubt whether it was not less a proof of rare
insight than a check to further and more pertinent investigation. The
formula, once found, was strictly adhered to, and for two hundred years
people lived content with this interpretation. The most sceptical
of psychologists passed as the most highly enlightened could he but
detect in the noblest, most forgiving actions the hidden promptings
of selfishness--losing sight thereby of all that is contradictory in
the human soul. I do not make bold to criticize La Rochefoucauld’s
impeachment of personal vanity, but I most definitely take exception to
his limiting himself to this one consideration and believing that with
_amour propre_ the final word had been spoken. I blame still more his
successors for carrying the question no further.”[78]
Throughout French literature we find a horror of the formless, a
certain impatience with what is not yet formed. This is how I account
for the very small place taken by the child in French novels as
compared with English or Russian. Scarcely a child is to be met with
in our novels, and such authors as do introduce children--all too
infrequently at that--are conventional, dull, and awkward.
In Dostoevsky’s works children are numerous, and it is worth
noting that the majority of his characters--and of these the most
important--are still young, hardly set. It seems to be the genesis of
feelings that interests him chiefly, for he depicts them as indistinct,
in their larval state, so to speak.
He has a predilection for baffling cases that challenge accepted
psychology and ethics. It is plain that in the midst of everyday
morality and psychology he himself does not feel at his ease.
His temperament clashes painfully with certain rules accepted as
established, which neither please nor satisfy him.
We find a similar uneasiness and lack of satisfaction in Rousseau. We
know that Dostoevsky was an epileptic and that Rousseau went mad. I
shall dwell later on the function of the morbid state in shaping their
thought. Let us rest content to-day with recognizing in this abnormal
physiological condition an invitation, as it were, to rebel against the
psychology and the ethics of the common herd.
In man are many things unexplained, aye, unexplainable maybe, but once
we admit the duality I discussed a moment ago, we cannot but admire
the logic with which Dostoevsky pursues its consequences. In the first
place, note that nearly all Dostoevsky’s characters are polygamists;
I mean that by way of satisfying, doubtless, the complexity of
their natures, they are almost all capable of several attachments
simultaneously. Another consequence, and, if I may use the term,
corollary to this argument, is the practical impossibility of producing
jealousy. These creatures simply do not know what jealousy means!
Consider, first of all, the cases of multiple attachments he puts
before us. Prince Myshkin is divided between Aglaïa Epantchin and
Nastasya Filippovna. “I love her with my whole heart,” he says,
referring to Nastasya.
“And at the same time you have declared your love for Aglaïa Ivanovna?”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
“How so? Then you must want to love both of them?”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
“Upon my word, Prince, think what you are saying.... Do you know what,
the most likely thing is that you have never loved either of them! And
how can you love two at once? That’s interesting!”[79]
And each of the two heroines is likewise torn between two loves. Think
too of Dmitri Karamazov between Grushenka and Natasya Ivanovna, and do
not forget Versilov. Many another instance I could quote!
You may think one of their loves was of the flesh, the other of the
spirit. Much too obvious a solution, I consider. Besides, on this
score, Dostoevsky is never perfectly straightforward. He leads us on to
numerous suppositions, then leaves us in the lurch. It was not until
I was reading _The Idiot_ for the fourth time that I became conscious
of a fact now plain as daylight: all the whims and moods in Madame
Epantchin’s attitude towards Prince Myshkin, all the hesitancy of
Aglaïa, her daughter and the Prince’s betrothed, might well be due to
the intuition these two women had (the mother in particular, of course)
of some mystery in his character, and to their uncertainty whether he
could prove an effectual husband. Dostoevsky lays stress several times
on Prince Myshkin’s chastity, and doubtless this very chastity filled
Madame Epantchin, his future mother-in-law, with uneasiness.
“There is no doubt that the mere fact he could come and see Aglaïa
without hindrance, that he was allowed to talk to her, sit with her,
walk with her, was the utmost bliss to him; and who knows, perhaps he
would have been satisfied with that for the rest of his life. It was
just this contentment that Lizaveta Prokofyevna (Madame Epantchin)
secretly dreaded. She understood him; she dreaded many a thing in
secret, which she could not have put into words herself.”[80]
And note what to me seems most important: in this instance, as indeed
frequently, the less physical love is the stronger.
I have no wish to force Dostoevsky’s idea. I do not suggest that
divided love and absence of jealousy open up the way to complaisant
community of possession, at least not always, no, nor necessarily: they
lead rather to renunciation. But, as I reminded you, Dostoevsky is not
over frank on this subject....
The question of jealousy preoccupied Dostoevsky unceasingly. In one of
his first books, _Another Man’s Wife_, we find this paradox: Othello
must not be looked upon as a typical example of real jealousy. Perhaps
it behoved us to see in this contention nothing more than an urgent
desire to go against current opinion.
But later on Dostoevsky comes back to the point, and speaks again of
Othello in _A Raw Youth_, one of this last books. “Versilov said once
that Othello did not kill Desdemona and afterwards himself because he
was jealous, but because he had been robbed of his ideal.”[81]
Is this really a paradox? I recently came across a similar assertion in
Coleridge--the similarity is so marked that I wonder if Dostoevsky had
not perchance been familiar with it.
“Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction
forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago.... Othello had
no life but in Desdemona: the belief that she, his angel, had fallen
from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his
heart.... But yet the pity of it, Iago. Oh, Iago, the pity of it!”
Constitutionally incapable of jealousy, then, Dostoevsky’s heroes?
Perhaps I am going a little too far, or, at least, it would be seemly
to modify my statement slightly. It may be said that of jealousy these
creatures know only the suffering it brings, a suffering which is not
complicated by any feeling of hatred for their rivals: this point is of
primary importance. If hatred there be, as in the _Eternal Husband_,
which case we shall examine presently, the hatred is counterbalanced
and restrained by a strange, imperious affection for the rival. But
most frequently there is no suspicion of hatred, nor even suffering.
And now we are venturing on a precipitous path where we have every
chance of overtaking Jean-Jacques Rousseau, equably tolerating the
favours shown by Madame de Warens to his rival, Claude Anet, or, his
thoughts full of Madame d’Houdetot, writing in his _Confessions_:
“Anyway, no matter how ardent the passion I had conceived for her,
I found it as sweet to be the confidant as to be the object of her
affections, and never for a moment did I consider her lover as my
rival, I always held him my friend. (He refers to Saint-Lambert.)
People will say this is not love: maybe not, perhaps it is more than
love.”
Similarly, in _The Possessed_, we are told that Stavrogin, far from
feeling jealous, developed a great friendship for his rival.
At this point I propose a short detour to help us probe the question
more deeply and grasp Dostoevsky’s conception. When I recently re-read
most of his novels, I was fascinated by Dostoevsky’s manner of passing
from one book to another. Undoubtedly it was natural that after _The
House of the Dead_ he should write Raskolnikov’s story in _Crime and
Punishment_, the story of the crime that sent the latter to Siberia.
More absorbing still to watch how the last pages of this novel lead
up to _The Idiot_. You remember we left Raskolnikov in Siberia so
completely regenerated in mind that he said the happenings of his past
life had lost all importance for him: his crimes, his repentance, his
martyrdom, even, seemed to him like the life-history of a stranger.
“He was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of
feeling.”[82] This is the frame of mind in which we find Prince Myshkin
at the beginning of _The Idiot_, a frame of mind which could be, and in
Dostoevsky’s eyes doubtless was, the Christian state _par excellence_.
I shall revert to this point.
Dostoevsky seems to establish in the human soul--or simply recognizes
as already existing--a kind of stratification. I can distinguish
in the characters of his novels three strata or regions. First the
intellectual, remote from the soul and whence proceed the worst
temptations. Therein dwells, according to Dostoevsky, the treacherous
demonic element. For the moment I am concerned only with the second
region, the region of passion, ravaged and desolated by storms; but
tragic though the happenings be that these storms determine, the very
soul of Dostoevsky’s characters is scarcely affected. There is a
region deeper still, where passion exists not. This is the region that
resurrection (and I grant the word the full significance bestowed on
it by Tolstoy), re-birth, in Christ’s words, enables us to reach as
Raskolnikov reached it. In this region Myshkin lives and moves.
The transition from _The Idiot_ to the _Eternal Husband_ is more
interesting still. You surely remember that at the close of _The Idiot_
we leave Prince Myshkin at the bedside of Nastasya Filippovna whom her
lover Rogozhin, the prince’s rival, has just murdered. There stand the
rivals, face to face, close to each other. Will they kill each other?
No, indeed! They weep together, and spend a wakeful night stretched out
side by side at the foot of Nastasya’s bed.
“Every time the delirious man (Rogozhin) broke into screaming or
babble, he hastened to pass his trembling hand softly over his hair and
cheeks, as though caressing and soothing him.”[83]
Almost the theme of _The Eternal Husband_! _The Idiot_ dates from 1868,
_The Eternal Husband_ from 1870. Some men of letters--and as clever a
critic as Marcel Schwob was amongst them--consider the latter novel
Dostoevsky’s masterpiece. His masterpiece! Perhaps that is excessive.
But, at any rate, it is _a masterpiece_, and it is interesting to hear
what Dostoevsky himself had to say about the book.
“I have a story,” he wrote to his friend Strakhov on March 18, 1869,
“not a very long one. I had already thought of writing it three or
four years ago, the year my brother died, encouraged by some words of
Apollon Gregoriev who, praising my _Notes from Underground_, said to
me, ‘Just write something in this style.’ But it will be something
quite different, as far as form goes: the foundation, however, will
still be the same. My everlasting theme.... I can write the story very
quickly, because there is not a word or line of it but what is clear to
me. It is already written in my head, although nothing is down on paper
so far.”[84]
And in a letter dated October 27, 1869, he continues:
“Two-thirds of the story are almost completely written and recopied.
I’ve done my best to cut it down, but that was impossible. It is not a
question, though, of quantity, but of quality. Of its quality I cannot
speak, for I have no notion myself: others will decide that point.”[85]
And here is what the others have to say:
“Your short story,” writes Strakhov, “is making a very lively
impression here, and will, in my opinion, have an unchallenged success.
It is one of the best worked-out of your novels, and by reason of
its subject, one of the most interesting you have ever written.
I am speaking of Trusotsky: the majority will have difficulty in
understanding this character, but the book is being read and will be
read eagerly.”
_Notes from Underground_ appeared a short time before this volume. I
believe that with these _Notes_ we reach the height of Dostoevsky’s
career. I consider this book (and I am not alone in my belief) as the
keystone of his entire works. But with it we return to the intellectual
region, so I shall not speak further of it to-day. Let us linger with
_The Eternal Husband_ in the realm of passion. In this short tale there
are but two characters, the husband and the lover. Concentration could
be carried no further. The whole book responds to an ideal we should
nowadays call classical: the action itself, or at least the initial
fact that provokes the drama, had already taken place, like in one of
Ibsen’s plays.
Velchaninov is come to that time of life when the past begins to look
different to his eyes:
“Now that he was verging on the forties, the brightness and good humour
were almost extinguished. These eyes, which were already surrounded by
tiny wrinkles, had begun to betray the cynicism of a worn-out man of
doubtful morals, a duplicity, an ever-increasing irony, and another
shade of feeling, which was new: a shade of sadness and of pain--a sort
of absent-minded sadness as though about nothing in particular, and yet
acute. This sadness was specially marked when he was alone.”[86]
What is happening with Velchaninov? What _does_ happen at this age,
at this turning point in life? So far, we have had the joy out of
life; but suddenly we realize that our actions, the happenings we have
brought about, once separated from us and launched out into the world,
like a skiff on the sea, continue a separate existence often unknown
to us. George Eliot speaks admirably of this in _Adam Bede_. Yes, the
events in his own past no longer appear to Velchaninov in quite the
same light, because he suddenly realizes his _responsibility_. At this
period he meets one whom he knew in bygone days, the husband of a woman
who had been his mistress. This husband appears in rather whimsical
fashion. It is impossible to decide whether he is avoiding Velchaninov
or pursuing him. He seems to spring up without warning from between
the very paving stones in the street. He wanders around mysteriously,
haunting the vicinity of Velchaninov’s house, unrecognized at first.
I shall not attempt to recount the gist of the book, nor how after
a late night visit from Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky, the husband,
Velchaninov decides to call upon him. Their standpoints, obscure at
first, become clearer:
“‘Tell me, Pavel Pavlovitch, you are not alone here, then? Whose little
girl is that I found with you just now?’
“Pavel Pavlovitch was positively amazed and raised his eyebrows, but he
looked frankly and pleasantly at Velchaninov.
“‘Whose little girl? Why, it’s Liza!’ he said, with an affable smile.
“‘What Liza?’ muttered Velchaninov, with a sort of inward tremor. The
shock was too sudden. When he came in and saw Liza, just before, he was
surprised, but had absolutely no presentiment of the truth, and thought
nothing particular about her.
“‘Yes, our Liza, our daughter Liza!’ Pavel Pavlovitch smiled.
“‘Your daughter? Do you mean that you and Natalya Vassilyevna had
children?’ Velchaninov asked timidly and mistrustfully in a very low
voice.
“‘Why, of course! But there, upon my word, how should you have heard of
it? What am I thinking about! It was after you went away God blessed us
with her!’
“Pavel Pavlovitch positively jumped up from his chair, in some
agitation, though it seemed agreeable too.
“‘I heard nothing about it,’ said Velchaninov, and he turned pale.
“‘To be sure, to be sure, from whom could you have heard it?’ said
Pavel Pavlovitch, in a voice weak with emotion, ‘My poor wife and I
had lost all hope, as no doubt you remember, and suddenly God sent us
this blessing, and what it meant to me He only knows! Just a year after
you went away, I believe. No, not a year, not nearly a year. Wait a
bit--why, you left us, if my memory does not deceive me, in October or
November, I believe.’
“‘I left T---- at the beginning of September, the twelfth of September,
I remember it very well.’
“‘In September, was it? H’m! what was I thinking
about?’ cried Pavel Pavlovitch, much surprised. ‘Well,
if that’s so, let me see, you went away on the twelfth
of September, and Liza was born on the eighth of May,
so--September--October--November--December--January--February--March--April--a
little over eight months! And if you only knew how my poor wife ...’
“‘Show me--call her,’ Velchaninov faltered in a breaking voice.”[87]
And thus Velchaninov learns that his passing whim, by which he had
set so little store, has left its mark. At once the question presents
itself--does the husband know? Almost to the very end of the book the
reader is left in doubt. Dostoevsky keeps us undecided, and this very
indecision tortures Velchaninov. He does not know where he is. Or
rather, it seems to us early in the day that Pavel Pavlovitch knows,
but feigns ignorance, precisely in order to torture the lover by the
indecision he skilfully maintains in his mind.
Here is one way of considering this strange book. _The Eternal Husband_
depicts the struggle between genuine and sincere feeling on one hand,
and conventional feeling, accepted and current psychology on the other.
“There is but one way out--a duel,” cries Velchaninov. But you realize
what a base issue that is, bringing satisfaction to no existing
feeling, and simply pandering to an artificial conception of honour,
one I touched on lately, a Western conception, for which we have no use
here. We soon realize that, in his heart of hearts, Pavel Pavlovitch
hugs his very jealousy. Yes, he positively loves and welcomes his
suffering. This eagerness to suffer played already an important part in
_Notes from Underground_.