MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM.
I.
Turguenief, Poet and Artist.
In reviewing the development of the School of Realists founded by
Nicholas Gogol, I shall begin with the one among his followers and
descendants who is not merely the first in chronological order, but the
most intelligible and sympathetic of the Russian novelists, Ivan
Turguenief.
The name of Turguenief has long been well known in Russia. In 1854,
before the novelist made his appearance, Humboldt said to a member of
this family, "The name you bear commands the highest respect and esteem
in this country." Alexander Turguenief was a savant, and the originator
of a new style of historiography, in which he revealed traces of the
communicative and cosmopolitan instincts that distinguish his nephew
beyond other novelists of his country, for he--the uncle--courted
acquaintance with many of the most eminent men of Europe, among them
Walter Scott. Another member of the family, Nicholaï Turguenief, was a
statesman who found himself obliged to reside in foreign lands on
account of political vicissitudes; he had the honor of preceding his
nephew Ivan in the advocacy of serf-emancipation.
Ivan was the son of a country gentleman, and his real education began
among the heathery hills and in the company of indefatigable hunters,
whose stories, colored by the blaze of the camp-fire, were transcribed
afterward by Ivan's wonderful pen. His intellect was awakened and formed
in Berlin, where he ranged through the philosophies of Kant and Hegel,
and, as he expresses it, threw himself head-first into the ocean of
German thought and came out purified and regenerated for the rest of his
life. Is it not wonderful,--the power of this German philosophy, which,
though it seems but a chilly and lugubrious labyrinth, gives a new
temper to a mind of fine and artistic quality, like the Toledo blade
thrust into the cold bath, or Achilles after washing in the waters of
the Styx? As scholasticism gave a strange power to the poetry of Dante,
so German metaphysics seems to give wings to the imagination in our
times. Those artist writers (like Zola, for example) who have not
wandered through this dark forest seem to lack a certain tension in
their mental vigor, a certain tone in their artistic spectrum!
Russian youth, about the year 1838, had their Mecca in the Faculty of
Philosophy at Berlin, of which Hegel held one chair; and there the
future celebrities of Russia were wont to meet. On leaving that radiant
atmosphere of ideas and returning to his country home in Russia,
Turguenief was overcome by the inevitable melancholy which attacks the
man who leaves civilization behind with its intellectual brightness and
activity, and enters a land where, according to the words of the hero of
"Virgin Soil," "everything sleeps but the wine-shop." This feeling of
nostalgia the novelist has analyzed with a master hand in the pages of
"The Nobles' Nest."[1]
Hungry for wider horizons and for a literary life and atmosphere,
Turguenief went to St. Petersburg. All the intellect of the time was
grouped about Bielinsky, who was a rare critic, and its sentiments were
voiced by a periodical called the "Contemporary." Bielinsky, who had
adopted the pessimist theory that Russian art could never exist until
there was political emancipation, was obliged to acknowledge the
indisputable worth of Turguenief's first efforts, and encouraged him to
publish some excellent sketches in a collection entitled "Papers of a
Sportsman." Contrary to Bielinsky's prediction, Turguenief's success was
the greater because, with that exquisite artistic intuition which he
alone of all Russian writers possesses, he preached no moral and taught
no lesson in it, which was the fashion or rather the pest of the novel
in those days.
Turguenief again went abroad soon after and spent some time in Paris,
where he finished the "Diary" and wrote "The Nobles' Nest." On his
return to Russia he wrote a clever criticism on the "Dead Souls," of
Gogol, whom he ventured to call a great man; and this called down upon
his head the ire of the police and banishment to his estates, which
punishment was not reprieved until the death of Nicholas and the war of
the Crimea changed the aspect of everything in Russia.
Notwithstanding the unjustifiable severity with which he was treated on
this occasion, Turguenief cherished no grievance or thought of revenge
in his heart. It is one of the most beautiful and attractive traits in
the amiable character of this man, that he could always preserve his
serenity of soul in the midst of the distractions occasioned him by two
equally violent parties each equally determined to embitter his life if
he did not consent to embrace it. He stood in the gulf that separates
the two halves of Russia, yet he maintained that contemplative and
thoughtful attitude which Victor Hugo ascribes to all true thinkers and
poets. Urged by family traditions and by the natural equilibrium of his
mind to give the preference (in comparing Russia with the rest of
Europe) to Western civilization, he protested, with the courage born of
conviction, against the blind vanity of the so-called National Party of
Moscow, which, while it demanded the liberation of the serfs, was
determined to create a new national condition which should be wholly
Sclavonic, and would tread under foot every vestige of foreign culture.
With equal vigor, but with a fine tact and nothing of effeminacy or
æsthetic repugnance, he protested also against the vandalism of the
nihilists, whose propositions were set forth in a clever caricature in a
satirical paper shortly after the explosion in the Winter Palace at St.
Petersburg. It represented the meeting of two nihilists amid a heap of
ruins. One asks, "Is everything gone up?" "No," replies the other, "the
planet still exists." "Blow it to pieces, then!" exclaims the first. Yet
Turguenief, who was by no means what we should call a conservative,
seeing that he lent his aid to the emancipation of the serfs, was far
from approving the new revolutionary barbarism.
Those of Turguenief's works which are best known and most discussed are
consequently those which attack the ignominy of serfdom or the threats
of revolutionary terror. In the first category may be mentioned "The
Diary of a Hunter" and most of his exquisite short stories; in the
second, "Fathers and Sons," a view of speculative nihilism, "Virgin
Soil," the active side of the same, and "Smoke," a harsh satire on the
exclusiveness and fanaticism of the Nationals, which cost him his
popularity and made him innumerable enemies. I will speak more at length
of each of these, and it is in no sense a digression from Turguenief's
biography to do so; for the life of this amiable dreamer and delicate
poet is to be found in his books, and in the trials which he endured on
their account.
The first lengthy novel of Turguenief is "Demetrius Rudine," a type
which might have served as the model for Alphonse Daudet's "Numa
Roumestan," a study of one of those complex characters, endowed with
great aspirations and apparently rich faculties, but who lack force of
will, and have no definite aim or career in view. "The Nobles' Nest" is
to the rest of Turguenief's works what the hour of supreme and tenderest
emotion that even the hardest hearts must bow to some time is to human
life as a whole; in none of his works, save perhaps in "Living Relics,"
has Turguenief shown more depth of sentiment. The latter is a tear of
compassion crystallized and set in gold; the former is a tragedy of
happiness held before the eyes and then lost sight of, like the blue sky
seen through a rent in the clouds and then covered over with a leaden
and interminable veil. The hero is a Russian gentleman or small
proprietary nobleman, named Lawretsky, who, deceived and betrayed by his
wife, returns to his patrimonial estates, there to hide his dejection
and loneliness. Amid these scenes of honest, simple provincial life he
meets with a cousin who is young, beautiful, and open-hearted, and who
captures his heart. There is a rumor that his wife has died, and a hope
of future happiness begins to revive in him; but the aforesaid deceased
lady resuscitates, and makes her appearance, demanding with hypocritical
humility her place beneath the conjugal roof, and the other poor girl
retires to a convent. It is almost a sacrilege to extract the bare plot
of the story in this way, for it is thus made to seem a mere vulgar
complication, feeble and colorless. But the charm lies in the manner of
presenting this simple drama; the novelist seems to hold a glass before
our eyes through which we see the palpitations of these bruised and
suffering hearts. The background is worthy of the figures on it. The
description of provincial customs, the country, and the last chapter
especially, are the perfection of art in the way of novel-writing. It is
said that "The Nobles' Nest" produced in Russia an effect comparable
only to that of "Paul and Virginia" in France.
Then came the great change in Russia: serfdom was no more! and
Turguenief, leaving these touching love-stories, threw himself into the
new turmoil, and gave himself up to the study of the struggle between
the new state of society and the old, which resulted in the novel,
"Fathers and Sons." This book contains the pictures of two generations,
and each one, says Mérimée, shrewdly, found the portrait of the other
well drawn, but called Heaven to witness that that of himself was a
caricature; and the cry of the fathers was exceeded by that of the sons,
personified in the character of the positivist, Bazarof.
Two old country gentlefolk, a physician and his wife, represent the
elder generation, the society of yesterday, and two students the society
and generation of to-day. Bazarof is the leader, the ruling spirit of
the two latter; the novelist has given him so much vivacity that we seem
to hear him, to see his long, withered face, his broad brows, his great
greenish eyes, and the prominent bulges on his heavy skull. I have seen
such types as this many a time in the streets and alleys of the Latin
Quarter, which is the lurking-place of Russian refugees in Paris, and I
have said to myself, "There goes a Bazarof, exiled and half dead with
hunger, and yet perhaps more eager to set off a few pounds of dynamite
under the Grand Opera-House than to breakfast!"
Bazarof, however, is not yet the nihilist who wishes to make a political
system out of robbery and assassination, and to defend his theory in
learned treatises; he is a young fellow smarting and burning under the
contemplation of his country's sad state, and whom the knowledge got by
his studies in medicine, natural sciences, and German materialist dogmas
has made the bitterest and most intolerable of mortals, throwing away
his gifts of intellect and his heart's best and most generous impulses.
By reason of his energy of character and intellectual force, he takes
the lead over his companion Arcadio, an enthusiastic and unsophisticated
boy; and the novel begins with the return of the latter to his father's
country-house in company with his adored leader. The two generations
then find themselves face to face, two atheistical and demagogic young
students, and Arcadio's father and uncle, conservative and ceremonious
old men; the shock is immediate and terrible. Bazarof, with his mania
for dissecting frogs, his negligent dress, his harsh and dogmatic
replies, his coarse frankness, and his odor of drugs and cheap tobacco,
inspires antipathy from the first moment, and he is himself made more
captious than usual by the appearance of the uncle, Paul, an elegant and
distinguished-looking man, who preserves the traditions of French
culture, dresses with the utmost care, has a taste for all that is
refined and poetical, and wears such finger-nails as, says Bazarof,
"would be worth sending to the Exposition." The contrast is as lively as
it is curious; every motion, every breath, produces conflict and
augments the discord. Arcadio, under his friend's influence, finds a
thousand ways to annoy his elders; he sees his father reading a volume
of Puchkine, and snatches it out of his hands, giving him instead the
ninth edition of "Force and Matter." And after all the poor boy really
cannot follow the hard, harsh ideas of Bazarof; but he is so completely
under the latter's control, and looks upon him with so much respect and
awe, and stands in such fear of his ridicule, that he hides his most
innocent and natural sentiments as though they were sinful, and dares
not even confess the pleasure he feels at sight of the country and his
native village.
"What sort of fellow is your friend Bazarof?" Arcadio's father and uncle
inquire of him.
"He is a nihilist," is the response.
"That word must come from the Latin _nihil_," says the father, "and must
mean a man that acknowledges and respects nothing."
"It means a man who looks at everything from a critical point of view,"
says Arcadio, proudly.
Criticism, pitiless analysis, barren and overwhelming,--this is an
epitome of Bazarof, the spirit of absolute negation, the contemporary
Mephistopheles who begins by taking himself off to the Inferno.
The punishment falls in the right place. Consistently with his
physiological theories, Bazarof denies the existence of love, calls it a
mere natural instinct, and women _females_; but scarcely does he find
himself in contact with a beautiful, interesting, clever woman--somewhat
of a coquette too, perhaps--than he falls into her net like a clumsy
idealogue that he is, and suffers and curses his fate like the most
ardent romanticist. Quite as curious as the antithesis of the two
generations in the house of Arcadio's aristocratic father, is the
contrast shown in that of the more humble village physician, the father
of Bazarof, who is an altogether pathetic personage. He, too, is
possessed of a certain pedantic and antiquated culture, and an
excellent, kind heart; he adores his son, thinks him a demi-god, and yet
cannot by any means understand him. Arcadio's father, on hearing an
exposition of the new theories, shrugs his shoulders and exclaims, "You
turn everything inside out nowadays. God give you health and a general's
position!" The physician, quite non-plussed, murmurs sadly, "I confess
that I idolize my son, but I dare not tell him so, for he would be
displeased;" and he adds with ridiculous pathos, "What comforts me most
is to think that some day men will read in the biography of my son these
lines: 'He was the son of an obscure regiment physician who nevertheless
had the wisdom to discern his talents from the first, and spared no
pains to give him an excellent education.' Here the voice of the old man
died away," says the writer. Such details bespeak the great poet. Again
when Bazarof is seized with typhus fever and dies, it is not his fate
which affects us, but the grief of his old father and mother, who
believe that one light of their country has been put out, and that they
have lost the best treasure of their uncontaminated and tender old
hearts. The death of this atheist makes an admirable page. When, as he
is losing consciousness, extreme unction is administered to him, the
shudder of horror that passes over his face at sight of the priest in
his robes, the smoking incense, the candles burning before the images,
is communicated to our own souls.
From 1860 Turguenief remained in France, bound by ties that shaped his
course of life. He enjoyed there a reputation not inferior to that which
he possessed in his own country; his works were all translated, and his
soul was soothed by an almost fraternal intimacy with the greatest
French writers, notably Gustave Flaubert and George Sand; and yet his
thoughts were never absent from his far-away fatherland, and as a
reproof to his fruitless longings he wrote "Smoke," which put the
capital of Russia almost in revolt. But Turguenief was no bilious
satirist after the style of Gogol, much less a habitual vilifier of
existing classes and institutions like Tchedrine; on the contrary, he
had a keen observation like Alphonse Daudet, and the sweeping
artist-glance which takes in the moral weaknesses as well as physical
deformities. The scene of "Smoke" is laid in Baden-Baden, the resort of
rich people who go there to enjoy themselves, to gossip, to intrigue,
and to throw themselves aimlessly into the maelstrom of frivolous and
idle life. The Russian world passes rapidly before our eyes, and last of
all the hero, weary and blasé, who with bitter words compares his
country to the thin, feathery smoke that rises in the distance.
Everything in Russia is smoke,--smoke, and nothing more!
Turguenief was one of those who loved his country well enough to tell
her the truth, and to warn her--in an indirect and artistic manner, of
course--persistently and incessantly. His was the jealous love of the
master for the favorite pupil, of the confessor for the soul under his
guidance, of the ardent patriot for his too backward and unambitious
nation. Turguenief compared himself, away from his country, to a dead
fish kept sound in the snow, but spoiling in time of thaw. He said that
in a strange land one lives isolated, without any real props or profound
relation to anything whatever, and that he felt his own creative
faculties decay for lack of inspiration from his native air; he
complained of feeling the chill of old age upon him, and an incurable
vacuity of soul. While he thus pined with homesickness, in Russia his
books wrought a wholesome change in criticism; the new generation turned
its back upon him, and after a general scandal followed an oblivious
silence, of the two perhaps the harder to bear.
In 1876 the novel "Virgin Soil" appeared, first in French in the columns
of "Le Temps," and then in Russian. It dealt with the same ideas as
"Fathers and Sons," save that the nihilism described in it was of the
active rather than the speculative sort. It was said at the time that
as Turguenief had been fifteen years away from his own country, he was
not capable of seeing the nihilist world in its true aspect, a thing to
be felt rather than seen, difficult enough to describe near at hand, and
much more difficult at a distance; but one must not expect of the
novelist what would be impossible even to the political student. To us
who are not too learned in revolutionary mysteries, Turguenief's novel
is delightful. I believe that there is more or less of political warmth
in the judgments expressed upon this "Virgin Soil," and that if the book
errs in any particular, it is on the side of the truthfulness of its
representative and symbolic qualities. Otherwise, how explain the fact
that certain nihilists thought themselves personally portrayed in the
character of the hero, or that Turguenief was accused of having received
notices and information provided by the police? Yet it seems to me that
this book, which gave such offence to the nihilists, shows a lively
sympathy with them. All the revolutionary characters are grand,
interesting, sincere, and poetic; on the other hand, the official world
is made up of egoists, hypocrites, knaves, and fools. In reality,
"Virgin Soil," like all the other writings of Turguenief, is the product
of a gentle and serene mind, independent of political bias, although
both his artistic and his Sclavonic nature weigh the balance in favor of
the visionaries who represent the spirit rather than the letter.
"Virgin Soil" was the last of Turguenief's long novels. Another Russian
novelist, Isaac Paulowsky, who knew him intimately, has given us some
curious information concerning one he had in project, and which he
believed would be found among his papers; but it has not yet come to
light, and there remains only to speak of his short stories. Perhaps his
best claim to reputation and glory rests upon these admirable sketches;
and it is Zola's opinion that Turguenief depreciated and wasted his
proper talent when he left off making these fine cameo-like studies.
Perhaps this is true, as it is certainly undeniable that Turguenief had
a master touch in delicate work of this sort, and it suited his
intensity of sentiment, his graceful style, and his skill in shading,
which distinguish him above his contemporaries. Of his short stories,
his episodes of Russian life, I know not which to select; they are
filigree and jewels, wrought by the Benvenuto of his trade; brass is
gold in his hands, and his chisel excels at every point. But I must
mention a few of the most important.
"The Knight of the Steppes," in which the horse tells the story of the
love and disappointment which leads his master to despair and suicide,
is one of my favorites. The hero resembles Taras Boulba, perhaps, in his
savage grandeur; he is a remnant of Asiatic times, brave, proud,
generous, uncultured; ruined, thirsting for battle, and perhaps for
pillage, bloodshed, and violence.
Beside this I would put the first one in the collection translated and
published under the title of "Strange Stories." It is a sketch of
mysticism and religious mania peculiar, though not too common, to the
Russian temperament. Sophia, a young girl at a ball, while dancing the
mazurka with a stranger, speaks to him seriously concerning miracles,
ghosts, the immortality of the soul, and the theory of Quietism, and
manifests a wish to mortify and subdue her nature and taste martyrdom;
next day she carries out her desires by running away,--not with her
partner in the dance, but with a demented fanatic, a man of the lowest
condition, with whom she lives in chastity, and to whose infirmities she
ministers like a mother, and serves him like a slave. Such a picture
could only have been conceived in a land that cradled the heroine of
"The Threshold," and many another enthusiastic nihilist girl who was
ready to lay down her life for her ideals.
The whole volume of "Strange Stories" fascinates us with a superstitious
horror. Elias Teglevo, the hero of one of the best of these tales,
although a pronounced sceptic, yet believes in the influence of his
star, thinks he is predestined to a tragic death, and under this
persuasion works himself into a state of mind and body that becomes a
hallucination strong enough to lead to suicide, in obedience to what he
considers a supernatural mandate. In another tale, "King Lear of the
Steppes," the gigantic Karlof has a presentiment of his death on seeing
a black colt in his dreams. The great artist reproduced the souls of his
characters with laudable fidelity. If supernatural terror is a real and
genuine sentiment, the novel should not overlook it in its delineations
of the truth.
But perhaps the jewel of Turguenief's narratives is that entitled
"Living Relics." In this simple story he excels himself. The novel has
no plot, and is nothing more than a silver lake which reflects a
beautiful soul, calm and clear as the moon; and the crippled form of
Lukeria is only the pretext for the detention of such a soul in this
world. Who has not sometimes entered a convent church on leaving a
ball-room,--in the early morning hours of Ash-Wednesday, for instance?
The ears still echo the voluptuous and stirring sounds of the military
band; one is ready to drop with fatigue, dizziness, glare of lights, and
the unseasonable hour. But the church is dark and empty; the nuns in the
choir are chanting the psalms; above the altar flickers a dim light, by
whose aid one discerns a picture or a statue, though at a distance one
cannot make out details of face or figure, only an expression of vague
sweetness and mysterious peace. After a moment's contemplation of it,
the body forgets its weariness and the soul is rocked in tranquillity.
Read some novel of the world's life, and then read "Living Relics": it
is like going from the ball-room to the chapel of a convent.
This faculty of putting the reader in contact with the invisible world
is not the talent of Turguenief exclusively, for all the great Russian
novelists possess it in some degree; but Turguenief uses it with such
exquisite tact and poetic charm that he seems to look serenely upon the
strange psychical phenomenon he has produced in the soul of the reader,
who is roused to a state of excitement that reflects the vision evoked
by the artist's words. Other instances of his power in this direction
are "The Dog," "Apparitions," and "Clara Militch," a confession from
beyond the tomb.
The last page written by Turguenief bore the title of "Despair,"--the
voice of the Russian soul whose depths he had searched for forty years,
says Voguié. He was then laboring under an incurable disease, cancer of
the brain, which, after causing him horrible sufferings, ended his life.
But though worn-out, dying, and stupefied by doses of opium and
injections of morphine, his artistic faculties died hard; and he related
his dreams and hallucinations with wonderful vividness, only regretting
his lack of strength to put them on paper. It is said that some of these
feverish visions are preserved in his "Prose Poems," which are examples
of the adaptability of Turguenief's talent to miniature, condensed,
bird's-eye pictures. Like Meissonier, Turguenief saw the light upon
small surfaces, enhanced rather than lessened in brilliancy. I will
translate one of these prose-poems, so that the reader may see how
Turguenief cuts his medallions. This one is entitled "Macha":--
"When I was living in St. Petersburg, some time ago, I was
in the habit of entering into conversation with the
sleigh-driver, whenever I hired one.
"I particularly liked to chat with those who were engaged
at night,--poor peasants from the surrounding country, who
came to town with their old-fashioned rattling vehicles,
besmeared with yellow mud and drawn by one poor horse, to
earn enough for bread and taxes.
"On a certain day I called one of these to me. He was a lad
of perhaps twenty years, strong and robust-looking, with
blue eyes and red cheeks. Ringlets of reddish hair escaped
from under his patched cap, which was pressed down over his
eyebrows, and a torn caftan, too small for him, barely
covered his broad shoulders.
"It seemed to me that this handsome, beardless young
driver's face was sad and gloomy; we fell to chatting, and
I noticed that his voice had a sorrowful tone.
"Why so sad, brother?' I asked. 'Are you in trouble?'
"At first he did not reply.
"'Yes, barino, I am in trouble,' he said at last,--'a
trouble so great that there is no other like it,--my wife
is dead.'
"'By this I judge that you were very fond of her.'
"The lad, without turning, nodded his head.
"'Barino, I loved her. It is now eight months, and I cannot
get my thoughts away from her. There is something gnawing
here at my heart continually. I do not understand why she
died; she was young and healthy. In twenty-four hours she
was carried off by the cholera.'
"'And was she good?'
"'Ah, barino!' the poor fellow sighed deeply, 'we were such
good friends! And she died while I was away. As soon as I
heard up here that--that they had buried her--that very
moment I started on foot to my village, to my home. I
arrived; it was past midnight. I entered my _isba_; I stood
still in the middle of it, and called very low, "Macha, oh
Macha!" No answer,--nothing but the chirp of a cricket in a
corner. Then I burst into tears; I sat down on the ground
and beat it with my hand, saying, "O thou greedy earth,
thou hast swallowed her! thou must swallow me too! Macha,
oh Macha!" I repeated hoarsely.'
"Without loosening his hold on the reins, he caught a
falling tear on his leather glove, shook it off at one
side, shrugged his shoulders, and said not another word.
"On alighting from the sleigh I gave him a good fee; he
bowed himself to the ground before me, taking off his cap
with both hands, turned again to his sleigh, and started
off at a weary trot down the frozen and deserted street,
which was fast filling with a cold, gray, January fog."
Is it a mistake to say that in this commonplace little episode there is
more of poetry than in many elegies and innumerable sonnets? I believe
there is no Spanish or French writer who would know how to gather up and
thread like a pearl the tear of a common coachman. There is something in
the Latin character that makes us hard toward the lower classes and the
vulgar professions.
Like many another author, Turguenief was not a good judge of his own
merits, and gave great importance to his longer novels in preference to
his admirable shorter ones, in which he scarcely has a rival. He had
great expectations of "Smoke," and the dislike it met with in Russia
surprised him painfully. So keen was his disappointment that he
determined to write no more original novels, but devote himself to his
early cherished plan of translating "Don Quixote." He also suffered in
one way like most souls who hang upon the lips of public opinion,--the
slightest censure hurt him like a mortal wound. The cordial and
enthusiastic reception which, in spite of past indignation, he was
accorded in Russia in 1878, and the homage and attentions of the
students of Moscow, renewed his courage and reanimated his soul.... But
his strong constitution failed him at last, and his physical and mental
abilities weakened. "The saddest thing that has happened to me," he said
to Paulowsky, "is that I take no more pleasure in my work. I used to
love literary labor, as one loves to caress a woman; now I detest it. I
have many plans in my head, but I can do nothing at all with them." But
after all, what posthumous work of Turguenief would bear with a deeper
meaning on his literary life than the admirable words of his letter to
Count Léon Tolstoï:--
"It is time I wrote you; for, be it said without the least
exaggeration, I have been, I am, on my death-bed. I have no
false hopes. I know there is no cure. Let this serve to tell
you that I rejoice to have been your contemporary, and to
make of you one supreme last request to which you must not
turn a deaf ear. Go back, dear friend, to your literary
work. The gift you have is from above, whence comes every
good gift we possess. How happy I should be if I could
believe that my entreaty would have the effect I desire!
"As for myself, I am a drowning man. The physicians have
not come to any conclusion about my disease. They say it
may be gouty neuralgia of the stomach. I cannot walk, nor
eat, nor sleep; but it would be tiresome to enter into
details. My friend, great and beloved writer in Russian
lands, hear my prayer. With these few lines receive a warm
embrace for yourself, your wife, and all your family. I
can write no more. I am tired."
This pathetic document contains the essence of the writer's life, the
synthesis of a soul that loved art above all things else, and believed
that of the three divine attributes, truth, goodness, and beauty, the
last is the one especially revealed to the artist, and the one it is his
especial duty to show forth; and that he who allows his sacred flame to
go out, commits a sin which is great in proportion to his talents, and a
sin incalculable when commensurate with the genius of Tolstoï.
Turguenief is the supreme type of the artist, for he had the
tranquillity and equipoise of soul, the bright serenity, and the
æsthetic sensibility which should distinguish it. According to able
critics, such as Taine, Turguenief was one of the most artistic natures
that has been born among men since classic times. Those who can read his
works in the Russian sing marvellous praises of his style, and even
through the haze of translation we are caught by its charms. Let me
quote some lines of Melchior de Voguié:
"Turguenief's periods flow on with a voluptuous languor,
like the broad expanse of the Russian rivers beneath the
shadows of the trees athwart them, slipping melodiously
between the reeds and rushes, laden with floating blossoms
and fallen bird's-nests, perfumed by wandering odors,
reflecting sky and landscape, or suddenly darkened by a
lowering cloud. It catches all, and gives each a place; and
its melody is blended with the hum of bees, the cawing of
the crows, and the sighing of the breeze. The most fugitive
sounds of Nature's great organ he can echo in the infinite
variety of the tones of the Russian speech,--flexible and
comprehensive epithets, words strung together to please a
poet's fancy, and bold popular sallies."
Such is the effect produced by a thorough reading of Turguenief's works;
it is a symphony, a sweet and solemn music like the sounds of the
forest. Turguenief is, without exaggeration, the best word-painter of
landscape that ever wrote. His descriptions are neither very long nor
very highly colored; there is a charming sobriety about them that
reminds one of the saving strokes with which the skilful painter puts
life into his trees and skies without stopping over the careful
delineation of leaf and cloud after the manner of the Japanese. The
details are not visible, but felt. He rarely lays stress on minor
points; but if he does so, it is with the same sense of congruity that a
great composer reiterates a motive in music. Turguenief's enemies make
ground of this very dexterity, which is displayed in all his works, for
denying him originality,--as though originality must need be independent
of the eternal laws of proportion and harmony which are the natural
measures of beauty.
Ernest Renan pronounced quite another opinion, however, when, according
to the custom of the French, he delivered a discourse over the tomb that
was about to receive the mortal remains of Turguenief, on the 1st of
October, 1883. He said that Turguenief was not the conscience of one
individual, but in a certain sense that of a whole people,--the
incarnation of a race, the voice of past generations that slept the
sleep of ages until he evoked them. For the multitude is silent, and the
poet or the prophet must serve as its interpreter; and Turguenief holds
this attitude to the great Sclavonic race, whose entrance upon the
world's stage is the most astounding event of our century. Divided by
its own magnitude, the Sclav race is united in the great soul and the
conciliatory spirit of Turguenief, Genius having accomplished in a day
that which Time could not do in ages. He has created an atmosphere of
beautiful peace, wherein those who fought as mortal enemies may meet and
clasp each other by the hand.
It was just this impartiality and universality, which Renan praises so
highly, that alienated from Turguenief many of his contemporaries and
compatriots. Where ideas are at war, whoever takes a neutral position
makes himself the enemy to both parties. Turguenief knew this, and he
used sometimes to say, on hearing the bitter judgments passed upon him,
"Let them do what they like: my soul is not in their hands." Not only
the revolutionaries took it ill that he did not explicitly cast his
adhesion with them, but the country at large, whose national pride
spurned foreign civilization, was offended at the candor and realism of
his observations. And Turguenief, though Russian every inch of him,
loved Latin culture, and had developed and perfected by association with
French writers, such as Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Flaubert, those
qualities of precision, clearness, and skill in composition, which
distinguish him above all his countrymen; yet this was a serious
offence to the most of these latter.
Among modern French novelists, those who, to my mind, most resemble
Turguenief in the nature of their talents, are, first, Daudet, for
intensity of emotion and richness of design, and then the brothers
Goncourt in some, though not very many, pages. Yet there is a notable
difference in all. Daudet is less the epic poet than Turguenief, because
he devotes himself to the study of certain special aspects of Parisian
fife, while Turguenief takes in the whole physiognomy of his immense
country. From the laboring peasants and the nihilist students to the
generals and government clerks, he depicts every condition,--except the
highest society, which has been reserved for Léon Tolstoï. And
everything is vivid, interesting, fascinating,--the poor paralytic of
"Living Relics," as well as the courageous heroine of "Virgin
Soil,"--everything is real as well as poetical. Truth and poetry are
united in him as closely as soul and body. Though he is an indefatigable
observer, he never tires the reader; his heart overflowed with
sentiment, yet his good taste never permitted him to utter a false note
either of brutality or cant; he was a most eloquent advocate of
emancipation, moderation, and peace, yet no diatribe of either a social
or political character ever ruffled the celestial calm of his muse.
Puchkine and Turguenief are, to my mind, the two Russian spirits worthy
to be called _classic_.
Those who knew him and associated with him speak of his goodness as one
speaks of a mountain's height when gazing upward from its foot. Voguié
calls him a heavenly soul, one of the poor in spirit burning with the
fire of inspiration, one who seemed, amid the hard and selfish world,
the vain and jealous world of French letters, a visionary with gaze
distraught and heart unsullied, a member of some shepherd tribe or
patriarchal family. Every Russian that arrived penniless in Paris went
straight to his house for protection and assistance.
[1] This work is better known to American readers in a translation
entitled "Lisa."--Tr.
II.
Gontcharof and Oblomovism.
The rival and competitor of Turguenief--not in Europe, but in
Russia--was a novelist of whom I must say something at least, though I
do not consider that he holds a place among the great masters; I mean
Gontcharof. This author's talents were fostered under the influence of
the famous critic Bielinsky, who professed and taught the principles
promulgated by Gogol,--demanded that art should be a faithful
representation of life, and its principal object the study of the
people.
Ivan Gontcharof was not of the nobility, like Turguenief, but came of a
family of traders, and was born in the critical year of 1812. His life
was humble and laborious; he was a tutor, and then a government
employee, and made a tour of the world aboard the frigate "Pallas." He
began his literary career in the middle of that most glorious decade for
Russian letters known as "the forties." His first novel, entitled "A
Vulgar History," attracted public attention, and it is said that a
secret notice from the imperial censor in consequence was the cause of
the long silence of twelve years which the author maintained until the
time when he wrote "Oblomof," which is, to my mind, one of the most
pleasing and characteristic Russian novels. I must admit that I am
acquainted with only the first volume of it, for the simple reason that
it is the only one translated; and I must add that this volume begins
with the moment when the hero awakes from sleep, and ends with his
resolve to get up and dress and go out into the street! Yet this odd
little volume has an indescribable charm, an intensity of feeling which
takes the place of action, and incidents as easily invented by the
idealist as observed by the realist. In these days the art of
story-telling has undergone a great change; the hero no longer keeps a
dagger, a cup of poison, rope-ladders, and rivals at hand, but he runs
to the other extreme, not less trivial and puerile perhaps, of
exaggerating small incidents that are uninteresting, and irrelevant to
the subject or the essential thought of the work from an artistic point
of view. But in "Oblomof," whose hero does nothing but lie still in bed,
there is not a detail or a line that is superfluous to the harmonious
effect of the whole. Of course I can only speak of the one volume I have
read. One may imagine that the author would like to portray the state
of enervation and disorganization to which the essence of autocratic
despotism had brought Russian society; or perhaps it is one aspect of
the Russian soul, the dreamy indolence and insuperable apathy of the
body, which weighs down the active work of the imagination. It is only a
study of a psychical condition, yet what intense life throbs in its
pages!
Perhaps this admirable and original novel was not translated in its
entirety for fear of offending French taste, which demands more
excitement, and could not stand a long analytical narrative full of
detail, mere intellectual filigree. Turguenief was undeniably a greater
artist than his rival; but he never attained to the precision, lucidity,
and singular strength of "Oblomof" in any of his novels.
As the character of the hero was drawn to the life, the nation
recognized it at once, and the word _oblomovism_ became incorporated
into the language, implying the typical indolence of the Sclav. On some
accounts I find Turguenief's "Living Relics" more comparable to this
novel than any others of his. Both present one single phase or state of
the soul; both are purely psychological studies; the chief character of
both does not change position, the position in which he has been fixed
by the will of the novelist,--I had almost said the dissecting surgeon.
"Oblomof" is in reality a type of the Sclav who chases the butterfly of
his dreams through the still air. Study he regards, from his pessimist
point of view, as useless, because it will not lead him to earthly
happiness; and yet his soul is full of poetry and his heart of
tenderness; he reaches out toward illimitable horizons, and his
imagination is hard at work, but all his other faculties are asleep.
III.
Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary.
Now let us turn to that visionary novelist whom Voguié introduces to his
readers in these words:
"Here comes the Scythian, the true Scythian, who puts off
the habiliments of our modern intellect, and leads us by the
hand to the centre of Moscow, to the monstrous Cathedral of
St. Basil, wrought and painted like a Chinese pagoda, built
by Tartar architects, and yet consecrated to the God whom
the Christians adore. Dostoiëwsky was educated at the same
school, led by the same current of thought, and made his
first appearance in the same year as Turguenief and Tolstoï;
but the latter are opposite poles, and have but one ground
in common, which is the sympathy for humanity, which was
incarnate and expanded in Dostoiëwsky to the highest degree
of piety, to pious despair, if such a phrase is possible."
Dostoiëwsky is really the barbarian, the primitive type, whose
heart-strings still reverberate certain motive tones of the Russian soul
that were incompatible with the harmonious and tranquil spirit of
Turguenief. Dostoiëwsky has the feverish, unreasoning, abnormal
psychological intensity of the cultivated minds of his country. Let no
one of tender heart and weak nerves read his books; and those who cling
to classic serenity, harmony, and brightness should not so much as touch
them. He leads us into a new region of æsthetics, where the horrible is
beautiful, despair is consoling, and the ignoble has a halo of
sublimity: where guilty women teach gospel truths, and men are
regenerated by crimes; where the prison is the school of compassion, and
fetters are a poetic element. Much against our will we are forced to
admire a novelist whose pages almost excite to assassination and
nightmare horrors, this Russian Dante who will not allow us to omit a
single circle of the Inferno.
Feodor, son of Michael Dostoiëwsky, was born in Moscow in 1821, in a
hospital at which his father was a medical attendant. There is
frequently a strange connection between the environment of great writers
and the development and direction of their genius, not always evident to
the general public, but apparent to the careful critic; in Dostoiëwsky's
case it seems plain enough to all, however. His family belonged to the
country gentlefolk from whom the class of government employees are
drawn; Feodor, with his brother Alexis, whom he dearly loved, entered
the school of military engineers, though his tastes were rather for
belles-lettres and the humanities than for dry and unartistic details.
His literary education was therefore reduced to fitful readings of
Balzac, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and especially of Gogol, whose works
first inspired him with tenderness toward the humble, the outcast, and
the miserable. Shortly after leaving college he abandoned his career
for a literary life, and began the usual struggle with the difficulties
of a young writer's precarious condition. The struggle lasted almost to
the end of his life; for forty years he was never sure of any other than
prison bread. Proud and suspicious by nature, the humiliations and
bitterness of poverty must have contributed largely to unsettle his
nerves, disconcert his mind, and undermine his health, which was so
precarious that he used sometimes to leave on his table before going to
sleep a paper with the words: "I may fall into a state of insensibility
to-night; do not bury me until some days have passed." He was sometimes
afflicted with epilepsy, cruelly aggravated later in Siberia under the
lashes laid upon his bleeding shoulders.
Like one of his own heroes he dreamed of fame; and without having read
or shown his manuscripts to any one, alone with his chimeras and
vagaries, he passed whole nights in imaginary intercourse with the
characters he created, loving them as though they had been his relatives
or his friends, and weeping over their misfortunes as though they had
been real. These were hours of pure emotion, ideal love, which every
true artist experiences some time in his life. Dostoiëwsky was hen
twenty-three years old. One day he begged a friend to take a few
chapters of his first novel called "The Poor People" to the popular poet
Nekrasof; his friend did so, and in the early hours of the morning the
famous poet called at the door of the unknown writer and clasped him in
his arms under the excitement of the emotion caused by perusal of the
story. Nekrasof did not remit his attentions; he at once sought the
dreaded critic Bielinsky, the intellectual chief and lawgiver of the
glorious company of writers to which Turguenief, Tolstoï, and Gontcharof
belonged, the Russian Lessing, who died of consumption at the age of
thirty-eight years, just when others are beginning to acquire
discernment and tranquillity,--the great Bielinsky, who had formed two
generations of great artists and pushed forward the national literature
to a complete development. A man in his position, more prone to meet
with the sham than the genuine in art, would naturally be not
over-delighted to receive people armed with rolls of manuscript. When
Nekrasof entered his room exclaiming, "A new Gogol is born to us!" the
critic replied in a bad humor, "Gogols are born nowadays as easily as
mushrooms in a cellar." But when the author came in a tremor to learn
the dictum of the judge, the latter cried out impetuously, "Young man,
do you understand how much truth there is in what you have written? No,
for you are scarcely more than twenty years old, and it is impossible
that you should understand. It is a revelation of art, a gift of Heaven.
Respect this gift, and you will be a great writer!" The success achieved
by this novel on its publication in the columns of a review did not
belie Bielinsky's prophecy.
It is easy to understand the surprise of the critic on reading this work
of a scarcely grown man, who yet seemed to have observed life with a
vivid and deep sense of realism, and an unequivocal minuteness that is
generally learned only through the bitter experience of prosaic
sufferings, and comes forth after the illusions and vague
sentimentalities of youth have been dispelled and practical life has
begun. I said once, and I repeat it, that a true artist under
twenty-five would be a marvel; Dostoiëwsky was indeed such a marvel.
This first novel was the humble drama of two lonely souls, wounded and
ground down by poverty, but not spoiled by it; a case such as one might
meet with on turning the very next corner, and never think worthy of
attention or study, and which, even in the midst of modern currents of
thought, the novelist is quite likely to pass by. Yet the book is a work
of art,--of the new and the old art compounded, classic art infused with
the new warm blood of truth. This work of Dostoiëwsky, this touching,
tearful story, had a model in Gogol's "The Cloak," but it goes beyond
the latter in energy and depth of sadness. If Dostoiëwsky ever invoked a
muse, it must have been the muse of Hypochondria.
It was not likely that Dostoiëwsky would escape the political fatality
which pursued the generality of Russian writers. During those memorable
_forties_ the students were wont to meet more or less secretly for the
purpose of reading and discussing Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon.
About 1847 these circles began to expand, and to admit public and
military men; they were moved by one desire, and what began as an
intellectual effervescence ended in a conspiracy. Dostoiëwsky was good
material for any revolutionary cabal, being easily disposed thereto by
his natural enmity to society, his continuous poverty, his nervous
excitement, his Utopian dreams, and his inordinate and fanatical
compassion for the outcast classes. The occasion was ill-timed, and the
hour a dangerous one, being just at the time of the French outbreak,
which seemed a menace to every throne in Europe. The police got wind of
it, and on the 23rd of April, 1849, thirty-four suspected persons were
arrested, the brothers Feodor and Alexis Dostoiëwsky among them. The
novelist was thrown into a dungeon of the citadel, and when at last he
came forth, it was to mount the scaffold in a public square with some of
his companions. They stood there in shirt-sleeves, in an intense cold,
expecting at first only to hear read the sentence of the Council of War.
While they waited, Dostoiëwsky began to relate to a friend the plan of a
new novel he had been thinking about in prison; but he suddenly
exclaimed, as he heard the officer's voice, "Is it possible we are to be
executed?" His friend pointed to a car-load of objects which, though
covered with a cloth, were shaped much like coffins. The suspicion was
soon confirmed; the prisoners were all tied to posts, and the soldiers
formed in line ready to fire. Suddenly, as the order was about to be
given, word arrived from the emperor commuting the death-sentence to
exile to Siberia. The prisoners were untied. One of them had lost his
reason.
Dostoiëwsky and the others then set out upon their sad journey; on
arriving at Tobolsk they were each shaved, laden with chains, and sent
to a different station. During this painful experience a pathetic
incident occurred which engraved itself indelibly upon the mind of the
novelist, and is said to have largely influenced his works. The wives of
the "Decembrists" (conspirators of twenty-five years before), most of
them women of high rank who had voluntarily exiled themselves in order
to accompany their husbands, came to visit in prison the new generation
of exiles, and having nothing of material value to offer them, they gave
each one a copy of the Gospels. During his four years of imprisonment,
Dostoiëwsky never slept without this book under his pillow; he read it
incessantly, and taught his more ignorant fellow-prisoners to read it
also.
He now found himself among outcasts and convicts, and his ears were
filled with the sounds of unknown languages and dialects, and speech
which, when understood, was profane and abhorrent, and mixed with yells
and curses more dreadful than all complaints. What horrible martyrdom
for a man of talent and literary vocation,--reckoned with evil-doers,
compelled to grind gypsum, and deprived of every means of satisfying the
hunger and activity of his mind! Why did he not go mad? Some may answer,
because he was that already,--and perhaps they would not be far wrong;
for no writer in Russia, not excepting even Gogol and Tolstoï, so
closely approaches the mysterious dividing line, thin as a hair, which
separates insanity and genius. The least that can be said is, that if
Dostoiëwsky was not subject to mental aberration from childhood, he had
a violent form of neurosis. He was a bundle of nerves, a harp with
strings too tense; he was a victim of epilepsy and hallucinations, and
the results are apparent in his life and in his books. But it is a
strange fact that he himself said that had it not been for the terrible
trials he endured, for the sufferings of the prison and the scaffold, he
certainly _would have gone mad_, and he believed that these experiences
fortified his mind; for, the year previous to his captivity, he declared
that he suffered a terrible temptation of the Devil, was a victim to
chimerical infirmities, and overwhelmed with an inexplicable terror
which he calls _mystic fear_, and thus describes in one of his novels:
"On the approach of twilight I was attacked by a state of soul which
frequently comes upon me in the night; I will call it _mystic fear_. It
is an overwhelming terror of _something_ which I can neither define nor
imagine, which has no existence in the natural order of things, but
which I feel may at any moment become real, and appear before me as an
inexorable and horrible _thing_." It seems then quite possible that the
writer was cured of his imaginary ills by real ones.
I have remarked that Gogol's "Dead Souls" reminded me of "Don Quixote"
more than any book I know; let me add that the book inspired by the
prison-life of Dostoiëwsky--"The Dead House"--reminds me most strongly
of Dante's Inferno. There is no exact likeness or affinity of literary
style; for "The Dead House" is not a poem, but a plain tale of the
sufferings of a few prisoners in a miserable Siberian fort. And yet it
is certainly _Dantesque_. Instead of the laurel-crowned poet in
scholar's gown, led by the bright genius of antiquity, we see the
wistful-eyed, tearful Sclav, his compressed lips, his attitude of
resignation,--and in his hands a copy of the Gospels; but the Florentine
and the Russian manifest the same melancholy energy, use the same burin
to trace their burning words on plates of bronze, and unite a prophetic
vision with a brutal realism of miserable and sinful humanity.
"The Dead House" also has the merit of being perhaps the most profound
study written in Europe upon the penitentiary system and criminal
physiology; it is a more powerful teacher of jurists and legislators
than all didactic treatises. Dostoiëwsky shows especially, and with
implacable clearness, the effect produced on the minds of the prisoners
by the cruel penalty of the lash. The complacency of narration, the
elaborateness of detail, the microscopic precision with which he notes
every phase of this torture, inflict positive pain upon the nervous
system of the reader. It is fascinating, it is the refinement of
barbarism, but it was also a work of charity, for it finally brought
about the abolition of that kind of punishment, and wiped out a foul
stain upon the Russian Code. It makes one turn cold and shudder to read
those pages which describe this torture,--so calmly and carefully
related without one exclamation of pity or comment, and even sometimes
painfully humorous. The trepidation of the condemned for days before it
is inflicted, his frenzy after it is over, his subterfuges to avoid it,
the blind fury with which sometimes he yields to it, throwing himself
under the painful blows as a despairing man throws himself into the
sea,--these are word-pictures never to be forgotten.
Voguié makes a striking comparison of the different fates awarded to
certain books, and says that while "My Prisons," by Silvio Pellico, went
all over the world, this autobiographical fragment by Dostoiëwsky was
unknown to Europe until very recently; yet it is far superior in
sincerity and energy to that of the Italian prisoner. The most
interesting and moving stories of captivity that I know of are Russian,
and chief among them I would mention "Memories of a Nihilist," by
Paulowsky. The tone of resignation, of melancholy simplicity, in all
these tales, however, is sure to touch all hearts. I will not quote a
line from "The Dead House;" it must be read, attentively and patiently,
and, like most Russian books, it has not the merit of brevity. But the
style is so shorn of artifice and rhetorical pretension, and the story
runs along so unaffectedly, that I cannot select any one page as an
example of excellence; for the excellence of the book depends on the
whole,--on the accumulated force of observation, on the complete aspect
of a soul that feels deeply and sees clearly,--and we must not break the
icy ring of Siberian winter which encloses it. It is enhanced by the
apparent serenity of the writer, by his sweetness, his half-Christian,
half-Buddhist resignation. With the Gospels in his hand, Dostoiëwsky at
last leaves his house of pain, without rancor or hatred or choleric
protests; more than this, he leaves it declaring that the trial has been
beneficial to him, that it has regenerated body and soul; that in prison
he has learned to love the brethren, and to find the spark of goodness
and truth lighted by God's hand even in the souls of reprobates and
criminals; to know the charity that passes understanding and the pity
that is foolishness to the wise; he has learned, in fact, _to
love_,--the only learning that can redeem the condemned.
Although he had been (at the time of writing this) four years released
from prison, he delayed still six years longer before returning to
Europe to publish his works. When he began his labors for the press, he
did not unite himself to the liberal party, but, erratic as usual, he
turned to the Sclavophiles,--the blind lovers of old usages and customs,
the bitter enemies of the civilization of the Occident. Fate was not yet
weary in persecuting him. After the death of his wife and brother he was
obliged to flee the country on account of his creditors. His sorrows
were not exactly of the sublime nature of Puchkine's and the melancholy
poet's; they were on the contrary very prosaic,--lack of money, combined
with terrible fits of epilepsy. To understand the mortifications of
poverty to a proud and sensitive man, one must read Dostoiëwsky's
correspondence,--so like Balzac's in its incessant complaints against
pecuniary affairs. He exclaims, "The details of my poverty are shameful.
I cannot relate them. Sometimes I spend the whole night walking my room
like a caged beast, tearing my hair in despair. I must have such or such
a sum to-morrow, without fail!" Gloomy and ill, he wandered through
Germany, France, and Italy, caring nothing for the wonders of
civilization, and impressed by no sights except the guillotine. He wrote
during this time his three principal novels, whose very names are
nightmares,--"Possessed with Devils," "The Idiot," and "Crime and
Punishment."
I know by experience the diabolical power of Dostoiëwsky's psychological
analysis. His books make one ill, although one appear to be well. No
wonder that they exercise a perturbing influence on Russian
imaginations, which are only too prone to hallucination and mental
ecstasy. I will briefly mention his best and most widely known book,
"Crime and Punishment," of which the following is the argument: A
student commits a crime, and then voluntarily confesses it to the
magistrate. This seems neither more nor less than an ordinary notice in
the newspaper, but what an analysis is conveyed by means of it! It is
horrible to think that the sentiments so studiously wrought out can be
human, and that we all carry the germs of them hidden in some corner of
the soul; and not only human, but possessed even by a person of great
intellectual culture, like the hero, whose crime is the result of great
reading reduced to horrible sophisms. Those two Parisian students who,
after saturating their minds with Darwin and Haeckel, cut a woman to
pieces with their histories, must have been prototypes of Rodion
Romanovitch, the hero of this novel of Dostoiëwsky. This young man is
not only clever, but possesses really refined sentiments; one of the
motives that lead to his crime is that one of his sisters, the most
dearly loved, may have to marry an unworthy man in order to insure the
welfare of the family. Such a _sale_ as this poor girl's marriage would
be seems to the student a greater wrong than the assassination of the
old money-lender. The first seed of the crime falls upon his soul on
overhearing at a wine-shop a dialogue between another student and an
officer. "Here you have on the one hand," says the student, "an old
woman, sick, stupid, wicked, useful to nobody, and only doing harm to
all the world about her, who does not know what she lives for, and who,
when you least expect it, will die a natural death; you have on the
other hand a young creature whose strength is being wasted for lack of
sustenance, a hundred lives that might be guided into a right path,
dozens of families that might be saved from destitution, dissolution,
ruin, and vice if that old woman's money were only available. If
somebody were to kill her and use her fortune for the good of humanity,
do you not think that a thousand good deeds would compensate for the
crime? It is a mathematical question. What weight has a stupid,
evil-minded old shrew in the social scale? About as much as a bed-bug."
"Without doubt," replies the officer, "the old woman does not deserve to
live. But--what can you do? Nature--"
"My friend," the other replies, "Nature can be corrected and amended.
If it were not so we should all be buried to the neck in prejudices, and
there would not be a great man amongst us."
This atrocious ratiocination takes hold upon Rodion's mind, and he
carries it out to terribly logical consequences. Napoleon sacrificed
thousands of men on the altar of his genius; why had he not the right to
sacrifice one ridiculous old woman to his own great needs? The ordinary
man must not infringe the law; but the extraordinary man may authorize
his conscience to do away with certain obstacles in his path.
It has been said that Dostoiëwsky's talents were influenced in some
measure by the fascinating personality of Edgar Poe. The analogies are
apparent; but the author of "The Gold Beetle," with all his suggestive
intensity and his feverish imagination, never achieved any such
tremendous psychological analyses as those of "Crime and Punishment." It
is impossible to select an example from it; every page is full of it.
The temptation that precedes the assassination, the horrible moment of
committing it, the manner of disposing of the traces of it, the
agonizing terror of being discovered, the instinct which leads him back
to the scene of the crime with no motive but to yield to a desire as
irresistible as inexplicable, his fearful visit to the place where he
lives over again the moment when he plunged the knife into the old
woman's skull,--examining all the furniture, laying his hand upon the
bell again, with a fiendish enjoyment of the sound of it, and looking
again for the marks of blood on the floor,--it is too well done; it
makes one excited, nervous, and ill.