talk, in imitation of De Vogüé, of a _religion of suffering_. We
French love to hear a formula, and to use one! It is one easy way of
naturalizing an author and assigning him to his place in the show-case.
Our mind likes precise data to hold fast by; and once satisfied,
what need for thought or personal contact?--Nietzsche? Oh, yes! “The
_superman_. Be ruthless. Live dangerously.”--Tolstoy? “Non-resistance
to evil.”--Ibsen? “Northern mists.”--Darwin? “Man is descended from the
monkey. The struggle for life.”--D’Annunzio? “The religion of beauty.”
Woe betide the authors whose ideas refuse to be reduced to a formula!
The bulk of the reading public simply cannot tolerate them (and Barrès
realized this when to his merchandise he affixed the label: _La Terre
et Les Morts_).
Yes, in France we tend to deceive ourselves with words, and believe
that everything possible has been achieved and that it is time to apply
the closure and pass on, once the formula has been found. In the same
way we believed victory already in our grasp, thanks to Joffre and his
“wearing down the enemy,” or to Russia and her “steam-roller advance.”
A _religion of suffering_ ... let us eliminate at once the possibility
of misinterpretation. It is not a question, or rather not solely a
question, of vicarious suffering, the world-wide suffering before which
Raskolnikov humbles himself to lie at Sonia the prostitute’s feet, or
Father Zossima at Dmitri Karamazov the predestined parricide’s, but a
theory of personal suffering.
Throughout the whole book, Velchaninov keeps asking himself whether
Trusotsky is jealous or not, whether he knows all or nothing. The
question is absurd: of course Trusotsky knows! Of course he is jealous,
but with the jealousy he fosters and cherishes within himself. It is
the torment of jealousy that Trusotsky desires and enjoys, just as we
saw the attachment of the hero of the _Underground_ to his toothache.
Of the hideous torment of the jealous husband we learn practically
nothing. Dostoevsky reveals it only indirectly, by virtue of the
cruel suffering Trusotsky inflicts on the creatures round about him,
especially on the little girl whom he adores in spite of all. The
child’s anguish helps us to measure the intensity of the father’s
own suffering. Pavel Pavelovitch tortures the child, whom he loves
passionately; he can no more hate her than he can hate his wife’s lover:
“‘Do you know what Liza has been to me?’--he suddenly recalled the
drunkard’s exclamation and felt that that exclamation was sincere,
not a pose, and that there was love in it. How could that monster be
so cruel to a child whom he loved so much? Is it credible? But every
time he made haste to dismiss that question, and, as it were, brush it
aside; there was something awful in that question, something he could
not bear and could not solve.”[88]
We may rest assured that the keenest of his suffering is due to his
inability to become jealous: of jealousy he has only the suffering,
and he cannot hate the man who was preferred to himself. The very
sufferings he inflicts on his rival, those he would fain inflict upon
him, the torments he inflicts on his little daughter, are a kind of
mystic counterpart that he sets to the horror and the anguish in whose
depths he is struggling. None the less, he dreams of revenge: not that
he has any precise desire to avenge himself, but he tells himself that
he must seek revenge, as perhaps the sole means of freeing himself
from such awful torments.
“Habit is everything, even in love,” says Vauvenargues,[89] and you
remember La Rochefoucauld’s maxim? “_How many men would never have
known love if they had never heard of love?_” Are we not justified in
asking: How many would never be jealous, if they did not hear jealousy
spoken about, and had not persuaded themselves that it was imperative
to be jealous?
Yes, convention is the great breeder of falsehood. How many are forced
to play their life long a part strangely foreign to themselves? And
how difficult it is to discern in ourselves a feeling not previously
described, labelled, and present before us as a model! Man finds it
easier to imitate everything than to invent anything. How many are
content to live their lives warped by untruth, and find, none the less,
in the very falsity of convention more comfort and less need for effort
than in straightforward affirmation of their personal feelings! Such
affirmation would require of them an effort of invention utterly beyond
them.
“‘I’ll tell you a killing little anecdote, Alexey Ivanovitch,’ said
Trusotsky. ‘I thought of it this morning in the carriage. I wanted to
tell you of it then. You said just now “hangs on people’s necks.” You
remember perhaps Semyon Petrovitch Livstov, he used to come and see
us when you were in T----: well, his younger brother, who was also a
young Petersburg swell, was in attendance on the Governor at V----,
and he too was distinguished for various qualities. He had a quarrel
with Gobulenko, a colonel, and considered himself insulted, but he
swallowed the affront and concealed it, and meanwhile Gobulenko cut
him out with the lady of his heart and made her an offer. And what do
you think? This Livtsov formed a genuine friendship with Gobulenko, he
quite made it up with him, and, what’s more, insisted on being his best
man: he held the wedding crown and when they came out from under it, he
went up to kiss and congratulate Gobulenko. And in the presence of the
Governor and all the honourable company, with his swallow-tail coat,
and his hair in curl, he sticks the bridegroom in the stomach with a
knife--so that he rolled over! His own best man! What a disgrace! And,
what’s more, when he’d stabbed him like that, he rushed about crying:
“Alas, what have I done! Oh, what is it that I’ve done!” with floods
of tears, trembling all over, flinging himself on people’s necks, even
ladies. “Ah, what have I done!” he kept saying, “what have I done now!”
He--he--he! he was killing. Though one feels sorry for Gobulenko,
perhaps, but after all, he recovered.’
“‘I don’t see why you told me this story,’ observed Velchaninov,
frowning sternly.
“‘Why, all because he stuck the knife in him, you know,’ Pavel
Pavlovitch tittered....”[90]
And in similar fashion, Pavel Pavlovitch’s real spontaneous feeling
expresses itself, when he is unexpectedly obliged to nurse Velchaninov,
down with a liver complaint.
“The sick man fell asleep suddenly, a minute after lying down. The
unnatural strain upon him that day, in the shattered state of his
health, had brought on a sudden crisis, and he was as weak as a child.
But the pain asserted itself again and weariness; and an hour later he
woke up and painfully got up from the sofa. The storm had subsided, the
room was full of tobacco smoke, on the table stood an empty bottle, and
Pavel Pavlovitch was asleep on another sofa. He was lying on his back,
with his head on the sofa cushion, fully dressed and with his boots
on. His lorgnette had slipped out of his pocket, and was hanging down
almost to the floor.”[91]
Strange how Dostoevsky, when leading us through the strangest by-paths
of psychology, ever must needs add the most precise and infinitesimal
of realistic details, in order to make more secure an edifice which
otherwise would appear the extreme expression of phantasy and
imagination.
Velchaninov is in great pain, and immediately Trusotsky applies every
possible means of alleviating it.
“But Pavel Pavlovitch, goodness knows why, seemed beside himself as
though it were a question of saving his own son. Without heeding
Velchaninov’s protests, he insisted on the necessity of compresses
and also of two or three cups of weak tea to be drunk on the spot,
‘and not simply hot, but boiling.’ He ran to Mavra, without waiting
for permission, with her laid a fire in the kitchen, which always
stood empty, and blew up the samovar; at the same time he succeeded in
getting the sick man to bed, took off his clothes, wrapped him up in a
quilt, and within twenty minutes had prepared tea and compresses.
“‘This is a hot plate, scalding hot!’ he said, almost ecstatically,
applying the heated plate, wrapped up in a napkin, on Velchaninov’s
aching chest. ‘There are no other compresses, and plates, I swear on my
honour, will be even better; they were laid on Pyotr Kuzmitch, I saw it
with my own eyes, and did it with my own hands. One may die of it, you
know. Drink your tea, swallow it; never mind about scalding yourself!
Life is too precious for one to be squeamish.’
“He quite flustered Mavra, who was half asleep; the plates were changed
every two or three minutes. After the third plate, and the second cup
of tea, swallowed at a gulp, Velchaninov felt a sudden relief.
“‘If once they’ve shifted the pain, thank God, it’s a good sign!’ said
Pavel Pavlovitch, and he ran joyfully to fetch a fresh plate and a
fresh cup of tea.
“‘If only we can ease the pain, if only we can keep it under!’ he kept
repeating.
“Half an hour later the pain was much less, but the sick man was so
exhausted that, in spite of Pavel Pavlovitch’s entreaties, he refused
to put up with ‘just one more nice little plate.’ He was so weak that
everything was dark before his eyes.
“‘Sleep, sleep!’ he repeated in a faint voice.
“‘To be sure,’ Pavel Pavlovitch assented.
“‘You’ll stay the night--what time is it?’
“‘It’s nearly two o’clock, it’s quarter to.’
“‘You’ll stay the night?’
“‘I will, I will.’
“A minute later the sick man called Pavel Pavlovitch again. ‘You, you,’
he muttered, when the latter had run up and was bending over him: ‘You
are much better than I am! I understand it all--all.... Thank you.’
“‘Sleep, sleep,’ whispered Pavel Pavlovitch, and he hastened on tiptoe
to his sofa.
“As he fell asleep, the invalid heard Pavel Pavlovitch noiselessly
making a bed for himself, and taking off his clothes. Finally, putting
out the candle, and almost holding his breath for fear of waking the
patient, he stretched himself on his sofa.”[92]
And yet, a quarter of an hour later, Velchaninov catches Trusotsky, who
believes him sound asleep, bending over him with intent to murder him.
“Pavel Pavlovitch wanted to kill him, but didn’t know he wanted to kill
him! ‘It’s senseless, but that’s the truth,’ thought Velchaninov.”[93]
And yet he is not satisfied!
“‘And can it be that it was all true?’ he exclaimed again, suddenly
raising his head from the pillow and opening his eyes. ‘All that madman
told me yesterday about his love for me, when his chin quivered and he
thumped himself on the breast with his fist?’
“‘It was the absolute truth,’ he decided, still pondering and
analysing. ‘That quasimodo from T---- was quite sufficiently stupid and
noble to fall in love with the lover of his wife, about whom he noticed
nothing suspicious in twenty years! He had been thinking of me with
respect, cherishing my memory and brooding over my “utterances” for
nine years. Good Heavens! And I had no notion of it! He could not have
been lying yesterday. But did he love me yesterday when he declared his
feeling and said, “Let us settle our account!” Yes, it was from hatred
that he loved me; that’s the strongest of all loves....
“‘... Only he didn’t know then whether he would end by embracing me or
murdering me. Of course, it’s turned out that the best thing was to do
both. A most natural solution’.”[94]
If I have lingered so long over this slender book, it is because it is
more accessible than the rest of Dostoevsky’s novels, and helps us to
win, beyond love and hate, to that wider region I spoke about not long
since: a region where love is not, nor passion, so easily and so simply
reached: the region Schopenhauer spoke of, the meeting-place of human
brotherhood, where the limits of existence fade away, where the notion
of the individual and of time is lost, the place wherein Dostoevsky
sought--and found--the secret of happiness.
V
At our last meeting I spoke of the three strata or regions Dostoevsky
seems to discern in the human personality: first, the province of
intellectual speculation, then the domain of the passions, midway
between the former and the third region, a vast realm remote from the
play of passion.
It is plain that these three strata are not isolated or even strictly
limited, but interpenetrate.
The intermediate region, the domain of passion, I have already
discussed. Here, and on this plane, the play is staged, not merely the
play Dostoevsky presents in each of his works, but the drama of entire
mankind. We observed, too, what at first wore the air of a paradox: no
matter how restless and powerful, the passions after all are of but
slender importance, or at least do not stir the soul’s utmost depths.
Events have no hold on the soul--they are simply outwith its province.
To support my assertion, what instance could I more aptly adduce than
war? Investigations have been carried out in regard to the terrible
struggle through which we have but lately passed. Literary men were
asked to estimate its real or apparent moment, its moral after-effects,
its influence on literature. The answer is simple: to all intents and
purposes its influence has been nil.
Consider for a moment the Napoleonic wars: endeavour to trace their
repercussion in literature and determine in what way they have modified
the soul of humanity. I admit there exist poems inspired by the
imperial epic as there exist only all too many with the Great War for
theme. But where is there a deeper note, a spiritual transformation?
No exterior event, whatever its tragedy or magnitude, can effect such
a change. On the other hand, the French Revolution is different, but
here we are concerned with a disturbance that is more than physical, a
traumatism, if I may use the word. This time the convulsion proceeds
from the very soul of the nation. The influence of the French
Revolution on the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau is
enormous, although their works date from before the event for which
they prepared the way. And we shall observe the same order of things
in Dostoevsky’s novels: the idea is not consecutive to the event, but
precedes it. In most cases passion has to serve as intermediary between
thought and action.
At any rate, in Dostoevsky’s novels we shall see the intellectual
element comes at times into touch with that deeper region, which is not
the soul’s hell, but its heaven.
In Dostoevsky we find the mysterious inversion of values already
noticed in William Blake, the great mystic amongst English poets. Hell,
according to Dostoevsky, is the first region, the realm of mind and
reason. Throughout his works, if our attention be at all alert, we
shall become conscious of a depreciation of mental powers which is not
so much systematic as involuntary and inspired by the spirit of the
Gospel.
Dostoevsky never deliberately states, although he often insinuates,
that the antithesis of love is less hate than the steady activity of
the mind. In his eyes it is intellect which individualizes, which is
the enemy of the Kingdom of Heaven, life eternal, and that bliss where
time is not, reached only by renouncing the individual self and sinking
deep in a solidarity that knows no distinctions.
This passage from Schopenhauer will prove illuminating: “He sees
that the difference between him who inflicts suffering and him who
must bear it is only the phenomenon; and does not concern the thing
in itself, for this is the will living in both, which here deceived
by the knowledge which is bound to its service, does not recognize
itself, and seeking an increased happiness in _one_ of its phenomena,
produces great suffering in _another_, and thus, in the presence
of excitement, buries its teeth in its own flesh, not knowing that
it always injures only itself, revealing in this form, through the
medium of individuality, the conflict with itself, which it bears in
its inner nature. The inflicter of suffering and the sufferer are
one. The former errs in believing that he is not a partaker in the
guilt. If the eyes of both were opened, the inflicter of suffering
would see that he lives in all that suffers pain in the wide world,
and which if endowed with reason, in vain asks why it was called into
existence for such great suffering, its desert of which it does not
understand, and the sufferer would see that all the wickedness which
is, or ever was, committed in this world, proceeds from that will which
constitutes _his_ nature also, appears also in _him_, and that through
this phenomenon and its assertion he has taken upon himself all the
sufferings which proceed from such a will, and bears them as his due,
so long as he _is_ this will.”[95]
But this pessimism (which in Schopenhauer can at times virtually have
the air of a disguise) yields place in Dostoevsky to a boundless
optimism.
“If you were to give me three lives, it wouldn’t be enough for me,”[96]
says one of his characters in _A Raw Youth_. In another passage of the
same book:
“You so want to live and are so thirsting for life that I do believe
three lives would not be enough for you.”[97]
I should like to investigate further this blissful state Dostoevsky
depicts, or of which he gives us a glimpse, in each of his works, a
state wherein we lose all sense of personal limitation and of the
flight of time.
“At that moment,” said Prince Myshkin to Rogozhin, “I seem somehow
to understand the extraordinary saying that there shall be no more
time.”[98]
And compare this eloquent passage from _The Possessed_:
“‘Are you fond of children?’ asked Stavrogin.--‘I am,’ answered
Kirillov, though rather indifferently.--‘Then you are fond of
life?’--‘Yes, I’m fond of life. What of it?’--‘Though you’ve made up
your mind to shoot yourself?’--‘What of it? Why connect it? Life’s
one thing, and that’s another. Life exists, but death doesn’t at
all.’--‘You’ve begun to believe in future eternal life?’--‘No, not in
a future eternal life, but in eternal life here. There are moments,
you reach moments, and time suddenly stands still and it will become
eternal.’”[99]
I could multiply my quotations, but these doubtless will suffice.
I am struck, every time I read the Gospels, by the insistence with
which the words, “_Et nunc_,” “_And now_,” are repeated over and over
again. And certainly Dostoevsky too was struck by it. Everlasting
bliss, the bliss promised by Jesus Christ, can be attained here and
now, if only the human soul will forswear and deny itself. _Et nunc._...
Eternal life is not, or rather is more than, a thing of the future, and
if we do not reach it in this world, there is little hope of our ever
attaining to it. Listen to these admirable pages from Mark Rutherford’s
_Autobiography_:
“As I got older, I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching
after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow--and from to-morrow
only--a reason for the joyfulness of to-day. I learned, when, alas!
it was almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my
head, believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it ever
will be, and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow.
But when I was young I was the victim of that illusion, implanted for
some purpose or other in us by Nature, which causes me on the brightest
morning in June to think immediately of a brighter morning which is
to come in July. I say nothing now for or against the doctrine of
immortality. All I say is, that men have been happy without it, even
under the pressure of disaster, and that to make immortality a sole
spring of action here is an exaggeration of the folly which deludes
us all through life with endless expectation, and leaves us at death
without the thorough enjoyment of a single hour.”
Cheerfully would I cry: “What betides life eternal, without
ever-present consciousness of that eternity even now? Eternal life can
be present in us here below. We are partakers in it from the moment we
are resigned to die to ourselves and accomplish the surrender which
enables us to resurrect straightway into eternity!”
Neither behest nor ruling: simply the secret of the supreme felicity
revealed by Jesus Christ in the Gospels. “_If ye know these things,
happy are ye if ye do them_” (John xiii. 17). Not “_happy shall ye
be_” but “_happy are ye_.” Here and now we can share in that perfect
bliss.
What serenity! Time indeed ceases to exist: eternity lives, we inherit
the Kingdom of God.
Yes, here is the mysterious essence of Dostoevsky’s philosophy and of
Christian ethics too; the divine secret of happiness. The individual
triumphs by renunciation of his individuality. He who lives his life,
cherishing personality, shall lose it: but he who surrenders it shall
gain the fullness of life eternal, not in the future, but in the
present made one with eternity. Resurrection in the fullness of life,
forgetful of all individual happiness.--Oh! perfect restoration!
Such glorification of feeling and inhibition of thought is nowhere
better indicated than in the following passage from _The Possessed_
which complements the one I read a few moments since:
“‘You seem to be very happy, Kirillov,’ said Stavrogin.
“‘Yes, very happy,’ he answered, as though making the most ordinary
reply.
“‘But you were distressed so lately, angry with Liputin?’
“‘H’m!... I’m not scolding now, I didn’t know then I was happy. Have
you seen a leaf, a leaf from a tree?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘I saw one lately, a little green. It was decayed at the edges. It was
blown by the wind. When I was ten years old I used to shut my eyes in
the winter on purpose and fancy a green leaf, bright, with veins on
it, and the sun shining. I used to open my eyes and not believe them,
because it was very nice, and I used to shut them again.’
“‘What’s that? An allegory?’
“‘N-no.... Why? I’m not speaking of an allegory, but of a leaf, only a
leaf. The leaf is good: everything’s good.’
“‘When did you find out you were so happy?’
“‘Last week, on Tuesday--no, Wednesday, for it was Wednesday by that
time, in the night.’
“‘By what reasoning?’
“‘I don’t remember. I was walking about the room ... never mind. I
stopped my clock. It was thirty-seven minutes past two.’”[100]
But, you may well contend, if feeling is to overcome thought, and the
soul know no state but this vague expectancy susceptible to every
outside influence, what can result except complete anarchy? It has been
said, and of late more frequently, that anarchy is the consummation of
Dostoevsky’s doctrine. A discussion of his beliefs would lead us into a
far country, for I can anticipate the storm of protest I should provoke
if I dared affirm that Dostoevsky does not plunge us into anarchy,
but simply and naturally leads us to the Gospels. On this point we
must be clear. Christian doctrine as contained in the New Testament is
usually seen by people of our nation through the medium of the Roman
Catholic Church, as she has modified it, moreover, in harmony with her
own needs. Now, Dostoevsky abhors all churches, the Church of Rome in
particular. He claims it his right to accept Christ’s teaching directly
from the Scriptures, and from them alone, which is precisely what the
Catholic cannot possibly concede.
In his letters we come across countless passages inveighing against
the Roman Catholic Church, accusations so vehement and so categorical
that I dare not repeat them to you here. But they confirm the general
impression I gather at each fresh reading of Dostoevsky and help me to
a better understanding of him. I know no author at once more Christian
and less Catholic in spirit.
“But you have put your finger on the very crux of the question,” Roman
Catholics will say, “and you have yourself explained it, many and many
a time, seemingly with full understanding. The Gospels, the words of
our Lord Jesus Christ, considered apart, lead but to anarchy, whence
the need for St. Paul, for the Church, for Catholicism as a whole....”
I shall not attempt to argue with them.
Dostoevsky leads us, we may take it, if not to anarchy, to a sort of
Buddhism, or at least _quietism_, and we shall see that in the judgment
of the orthodox, this is not his only heresy. He draws us far away from
Rome--the Rome of the Encyclicals, I mean--far, too, from worldly codes
of honour.