DOSTOIEVSKY
“In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of
life; and this emotion is very variously provoked. We are moved when
Levine labours in the field, when André sinks beyond emotion, when
Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river, when
Antony, not cowardly, puts off his helmet, when Kent has infinite pity
on the dying Lear, when in Dostoiefsky’s _Despised and Rejected_, the
uncomplaining hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue. These are
notes which please the great heart of man.”
R. L. STEVENSON, _Across the Plains_
“Raskolnikoff (_Crime and Punishment_) is easily the greatest book I
have read in ten years.... I divined ... the existence of a certain
impotence in many minds of to-day which prevents them from living in
a book or a character and keeps them afar off, spectators of a puppet
show. To such I suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to
the others it is a room, a house of life, into which they themselves
enter, and are tortured and purified....
“Another has been translated--_Humiliés et offensés_. It is even more
incoherent than _Le Crime et le Châtiment_, but breathes much of _the
same lovely goodness_.”[17]
R. L. STEVENSON, _Letters_
I
INTRODUCTORY
In the autumn of 1897 I was staying in the South of Russia at the house
of a gentleman who has played no unimportant part in Russian politics.
We were sitting one evening at tea, a party of nearly thirty people
round the table, consisting of country gentlemen, neighbours and
friends. The village doctor was present: he was an ardent Tolstoyist,
and not only an admirer of Tolstoy’s genius, but a disciple, and a
believer in his religious teaching. He had been talking on this subject
for some time, and expressing his hero-worship in emphatic terms, when
the son of my host, a boy at school, only seventeen years of age, yet
familiar with the literature of seven languages, a writer, moreover, of
English and Russian verse, fired up and said:
“In fifty years’ time we Russians shall blush with shame to think that
we gave Tolstoy such fulsome admiration, when we had at the same time
a genius like Dostoievsky, the latchet of whose shoes Tolstoy is not
worthy to unloose.”
A few months after this I read an article on Dostoievsky in one of
the literary weeklies in England, in which the writer stated that
Dostoievsky was a mere _fueilletonist_, a concocter of melodrama, to be
ranked with Eugène Sue and Xavier de Montépin. I was struck at the time
by the divergence between English and Russian views on this subject. I
was amazed by the view of the English critic in itself; but the reason
that such a view could be expressed at all is not far to seek, since
there is at this moment no complete translation of Dostoievsky’s works
in England, and no literary translation of the same. Only one of his
books, _Crime and Punishment_, is known at all, and the rest of them
are difficult even to obtain in the English language.
However this may be, at the present time Dostoievsky’s fame in
Russia is every day becoming more universally and more emphatically
recognised. The present generation are inclined to consider him the
greatest of all their novelists; and although they as a rule, with the
critic Merejkowski, put him equal with Tolstoy as one of the two great
pillars which uphold the Temple of Russian literature, they are for
the most part agreed in thinking that he was a unique product, a more
startling revelation and embodiment of genius, a greater elemental
force, than Tolstoy or any other Russian writer of fiction. In fact,
they hold the same view about him that we do with regard to Shelley in
our poetical literature. We may not think that Shelley is a greater
poet than Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge or Byron, but he certainly is
a more exceptional incarnation of poetical genius. We can imagine
poets like Keats arising again,--one nearly akin to him and almost
equally exquisite did appear in the shape of Tennyson. We can imagine
there being other writers who would attain to Wordsworth’s simplicity
and communion with nature, but Shelley has as yet been without kith
or kindred, without mate or equal, in the whole range of the world’s
literary history. He does not appear to us like a plant that grows
among others, differing from them only in being more beautiful and
striking, which is true even of poets like Shakespeare, Dante and
Goethe, who reveal in the highest degree qualities which other poets
possess in a lesser degree, and complete and fulfil what the others aim
at and only partially achieve; but Shelley is altogether different in
kind: he aims at and achieves something which is beyond the range and
beyond the ken of other poets. It is as though he were not a man at
all, but an embodiment of certain elemental forces.
So it is with Dostoievsky. And for this reason those who admire him do
so passionately and extravagantly. It must not be thought that they
do not discern his faults, his incompleteness, and his limitations,
but the positive qualities that he possesses seem to them matchless,
and so precious, so rare, so tremendous, that they annihilate all
petty criticism. The example of Shelley may again serve us here.
Only a pedant, in the face of such flights of genius as “The Cloud,”
the “Ode to the West Wind,” “The Sensitive Plant,” or that high
pageant of grief, fantasy, of “thoughts that breathe and words that
burn,”--“Adonais,”--would apply a magnifying glass to such poems and
complain of the occasional lapses of style or of the mistakes in
grammar which may be found in them. These poems may be full of trivial
lapses of this kind, but such matters are of small account when a
poet has evoked for us a vision of what dwells beyond the veil of the
senses, and struck chords of a music which has the power and the wonder
of a miracle.
With Dostoievsky the case is somewhat but not in all respects similar.
He possesses a certain quality which is different in kind from those of
any other writer, a power of seeming to get nearer to the unknown, to
what lies beyond the flesh, which is perhaps the secret of his amazing
strength; and, besides this, he has certain great qualities which
other writers, and notably other Russian writers, possess also; but he
has them in so far higher a degree that when seen with other writers
he annihilates them. The combination of this difference in kind and
this difference in degree makes something so strong and so tremendous,
that it is not to be wondered at when we find many critics saying
that Dostoievsky is not only the greatest of all Russian writers,
but one of the greatest writers that the world has ever seen. I am
not exaggerating when I say that such views are held; for instance,
Professor Brückner, a most level-headed critic, in his learned and
exhaustive survey of Russian literature, says that it is not in
_Faust_, but rather in _Crime and Punishment_, that the whole grief of
mankind takes hold of us.
Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is true
to say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present day
would place Dostoievsky as being equal to Tolstoy and immeasurably
above Tourgeniev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the present
day no more dreams of comparing Tourgeniev with Dostoievsky, than it
would occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte
Brontë.
Dostoievsky’s fame came late, although his first book, _Poor Folk_,
made a considerable stir, and the publication of his _Crime and
Punishment_ ensured his popularity. But when I say “fame,” I mean the
universal recognition of him by the best and most competent judges.
This recognition is now an accomplished fact in Russia and also in
Germany. The same cannot be said positively of France, although his
books are for the most part well translated into French, and have
received the warmest and the most acute appreciation at the hands of a
French critic, namely, M. de Vogüé in _Le Roman Russe_.[18] In England,
Dostoievsky cannot be said to be known at all, since the translations
of his works are not only inadequate, but scarce and difficult to
obtain, and it is possible to come across the most amazing judgments
pronounced on them by critics whose judgment on other subjects is
excellent.[19] The reason of this tardy recognition of Dostoievsky in
his own country is that he was one of those men whose innate sense of
fairness and hatred of cant prevent them from whole-heartedly joining
a political party and swallowing its tenets indiscriminately, even
when some of these tenets are nonsensical and iniquitous. He was one
of those men who put truth and love higher than any political cause,
and can fight for such a cause only when the leaders of it, in practice
as well as in theory, never deviate from the one or the other. He was
between two fires: the Government considered him a revolutionary, and
the revolutionaries thought him a retrograde; because he refused to be
blind to the merits of the Government, such as they were, and equally
refused to be blind to the defects of the enemies of the Government.
He therefore attacked not only the Government, but the Government’s
enemies; and when he attacked, it was with thunderbolts. The Liberals
never forgave him this. Dostoievsky was unjustly condemned to spend
four years in penal servitude for a political crime; for having
taken part in a revolutionary propaganda. He returned from Siberia
a Slavophil, and, I will not say a Conservative, as the word is
misleading; but a man convinced not only of the futility of revolution,
but also of the worthlessness of a great part of the revolutionaries.
Nor did the Liberals ever forgive him this. They are only just
beginning to do so now. Moreover, in one of his most powerful books,
_The Possessed_, he draws a scathing picture of all the flotsam and
jetsam of revolution, and not only of the worthless hangers-on who are
the parasites of any such movement, but he reveals the decadence and
worthlessness of some of the men, who by their dominating character
played leading parts and were popular heroes. Still less did the
Liberals forgive him this book; and even now, few Liberal writers
are fair towards it. Again, Dostoievsky was, as I shall show later,
by nature an antagonist of Socialism and a hater of materialism; and
since all the leading men among the Liberals of his time were either
one or the other, if not both, Dostoievsky aroused the enmity of
the whole Liberal camp, by attacking not only its parasites but its
leaders, men of high principle such as Bielinsky, who were obviously
sincere and deserving of the highest consideration and respect. One can
imagine a similar situation in England if at the present time there
were an autocratic government, a backward and ignorant peasantry, and
a small and Liberal movement carried on by a minority of extremely
intellectual men, headed, let us say, by Mr. Bernard Shaw, Lord
Morley, Professor Raleigh, and Sir J. J. Thomson. I purposely take
men of widely different opinions, because in a country where there is
a fight going on for a definite thing, such as a Constitution, there
is a moment when men, who under another régime would be split up into
Liberals and Conservatives, are necessarily grouped together in one
big Liberal camp. Now, let us suppose that the men who were carrying
on this propaganda for reform were undergoing great sacrifices; let us
likewise suppose them to be Socialists and materialists to the core.
Then suppose there should appear a novelist of conspicuous power,
such as George Meredith or Mr. Thomas Hardy or Mr. H. G. Wells, who
by some error was sent to Botany Bay for having been supposed to be
mixed up with a revolutionary propaganda, and on his return announced
that he was an Anti-Revolutionary, violently attacked Mr. Shaw, wrote
a book in which he caricatured him, and drew a scathing portrait of
all his disciples,--especially of the less intelligent among them. One
can imagine how unpopular such an author would be in Liberal circles.
This was the case of Dostoievsky in Russia. It is only fair to add
that his genius has now obtained full recognition, even at the hands
of Liberals, though they still may not be able to tolerate his book,
_The Possessed_. But considering the magnitude of his genius, this
recognition has been, on the whole, a tardy one. For instance, even
in so valuable a book as Prince Kropotkin’s _Ideals and Realities in
Russian Literature_, Dostoievsky receives inadequate treatment and
scanty appreciation. On the other hand, in Merejkowsky’s _Tolstoy and
Dostoievsky_, Merejkowsky, who is also a Liberal, praises Dostoievsky
with complete comprehension and with brilliance of thought and
expression.
II
DOSTOIEVSKY’S LIFE
Dostoievsky was the son of a staff-surgeon and a tradesman’s daughter.
He was born in a charity hospital, the “Maison de Dieu,” at Moscow, in
1821. He was, as he said, a member of a stray family. His father and
five children lived in a flat consisting of two rooms and a kitchen.
The nursery of the two boys, Michael and Fedor, consisted of a small
part of the entrance hall, which was partitioned off. His family
belonged to the lowest ranks of the nobility, to that stratum of
society which supplied the bureaucracy with its minor public servants.
The poverty surrounding his earliest years was to last until the day of
his death.
Some people are, as far as money is concerned, like a negative
pole--money seems to fly away from them, or rather, when it comes to
them, to be unable to find any substance it can cleave to. Dostoievsky
was one of these people; he never knew how much money he had, and when
he had any, however little, he gave it away. He was what the French
call a _panier percé_: money went through him as through a sieve.
And however much money he had, it was never he but his friends who
benefited by it.
He received his earliest education at a small school in Moscow,
where a schoolmaster who taught Russian inspired him and his brother
with a love of literature, of Pushkin’s poetry and other writers,
introduced him also to the works of Walter Scott, and took him to see a
performance of Schiller’s _Robbers_. When his preliminary studies were
ended, he was sent with his brother to a school of military engineers
at St. Petersburg. Here his interest in literature, which had been
first aroused by coming into contact with Walter Scott’s works, was
further developed by his discovery of Balzac, George Sand, and Homer.
Dostoievsky developed a passionate love of literature and poetry. His
favourite author was Gogol. He left this school in 1843 at the age of
twenty-three, with the rank of sub-lieutenant.
His first success in literature was his novel, _Poor Folk_ (published
in 1846), which he possibly began to write while he was still at
school. He sent this work to a review and awaited the result, utterly
hopeless of its being accepted. One day, at four o’clock in the
morning, just when Dostoievsky was despairing of success and thinking
of suicide, Nekrasov the poet, and Grigorovitch the critic, came to him
and said: “Do you understand yourself what you have written? To have
written such a book you must have possessed the direct inspiration of
an artist.”
This, said Dostoievsky, was the happiest moment of his life. The book
was published in Nekrasov’s newspaper, and was highly praised on all
sides. He thus at once made a name in literature. But as though Fate
wished to lose no time in proving to him that his life would be a
series of unending struggles, his second story, _The Double_, was a
failure, and his friends turned from him, feeling that they had made
a mistake. From that time onward, his literary career was a desperate
battle, not only with poverty but also with public opinion, and with
political as well as with literary critics.
Dostoievsky suffered all his life from epilepsy. It has been said that
this disease was brought on by his imprisonment. This is not true:
the complaint began in his childhood, and one of his biographers gives
a hint of its origin: “It dates back,” he writes, “to his earliest
youth, and is connected with a _tragic event_ in their family life.”
This sentence affords us an ominous glimpse into the early years of
Dostoievsky, for it must indeed have been a tragic event which caused
him to suffer from epileptic fits throughout his life.
In 1849 came the most important event in Dostoievsky’s life. From
1840 to 1847 there was in St. Petersburg a group of young men who met
together to read and discuss the Liberal writers such as Fourier, Louis
Blanc and Prudhon. Towards 1847 these circles widened, and included
officers and journalists: they formed a club under the leadership of
Petrachevsky, a former student, the author of a Dictionary of Foreign
Terms. The club consisted, on the one hand, of certain men, followers
of the Decembrists of 1825, who aimed at the emancipation of the serfs
and the establishment of a Liberal Constitution; and, on the other
hand, of men who were predecessors of the Nihilists, and who looked
forward to a social revolution. The special function of Dostoievsky
in this club was to preach the Slavophil doctrine, according to which
Russia, sociologically speaking, needed no Western models, because
in her workmen’s guilds and her system of mutual reciprocity for
the payment of taxes, she already possessed the means of realising a
superior form of social organisation.
The meetings of this club took place shortly after the revolutionary
movement which convulsed Western Europe in 1848. The Emperor Nicholas,
who was a strong-minded and a just although a hard man, imbued with a
religious conviction that he was appointed by God to save the crumbling
world, was dreaming of the emancipation of the serfs, and by a fatal
misunderstanding was led to strike at men whose only crime was that
they shared his own aims and ideals. One evening at a meeting of this
club, Dostoievsky had declaimed Pushkin’s Ode on the Abolition of
Serfdom, when some one present expressed a doubt of the possibility
of obtaining this reform except by insurrectionary means. Dostoievsky
is said to have replied: “Then insurrection let it be!” On the 23rd
of April 1849, at five o’clock in the morning, thirty-four suspected
men were arrested. The two brothers Dostoievsky were among them. They
were imprisoned in a citadel, where they remained for eight months.
On the 22nd of December, Dostoievsky was conducted, with twenty-one
others, to the public square, where a scaffold had been erected. The
other prisoners had been released. While they were taking their places
on the scaffold, Dostoievsky communicated the idea of a book which he
wished to write to Prince Monbelli, one of his fellow-prisoners, who
related the incident later. There were, that day, 21 degrees of frost
(Réaumur); the prisoners were stripped to their shirts, and had to
listen to their sentence; the reading lasted over twenty minutes: the
sentence was that they were to be shot. Dostoievsky could not believe
in the reality of the event. He said to one of his comrades: “Is it
possible that we are going to be executed?” The friend of whom he asked
the question pointed to a cart laden with objects which, under the
tarpaulin that covered them, looked like coffins. The Registrar walked
down from the scaffold; the Priest mounted it, taking the cross with
him, and bade the condemned men make their last confession. Only one
man, of the shopkeeper class, did so: the others contented themselves
with kissing the cross. Dostoievsky thus relates the close of the scene
in a letter to his brother:
“They snapped swords above our heads, they made us put on the long
white shirts worn by persons condemned to death. We were bound in
parties of three to stakes to suffer execution. Being third in the row,
I concluded that I had only a few minutes to live. I thought of you and
your dear ones, and I managed to kiss Pleshtcheev and Dourov, who were
next to me, and to bid them farewell.”
The officer in charge had already commanded his firing party to
load; the soldiers were already preparing to take aim, when a white
handkerchief was waved in front of them. They lowered their guns, and
Dostoievsky and the other twenty-one learned that the Emperor had
cancelled the sentence of the military tribunal, and commuted the
sentence of death to one of hard labour for four years. The carts
really contained convict uniforms, which the prisoners had to put on at
once, and they started then and there for Siberia. When the prisoners
were unbound, one of them, Grigoriev, had lost his reason. Dostoievsky,
on the other hand, afterwards affirmed that this episode was his
salvation; and never, either on account of this or of his subsequent
imprisonment, did he ever feel or express anything save gratitude. “If
this catastrophe had not occurred,” said Dostoievsky, alluding to his
sentence, his reprieve and his subsequent imprisonment, “I should have
gone mad.” The moments passed by him in the expectation of immediate
death had an ineffaceable effect upon his entire after-life. They
shifted his angle of vision with regard to the whole world. He knew
something that no man could know who had not been through such moments.
He constantly alludes to the episode in his novels, and in _The Idiot_
he describes it thus, through the mouth of the principal character:
“I will tell you of my meeting last year with a certain man; this
man was connected with a strange circumstance, strange because it is
a very unusual one. He was once led, together with others, on to the
scaffold, and a sentence was read out which told him that he was to be
shot for a political crime. He spent the interval between the sentence
and the reprieve, which lasted twenty minutes, or at least a quarter of
an hour, with the certain conviction that in a few minutes he should
die. I was very anxious to hear how he would recall his impressions.
He remembered everything with extraordinary clearness, and said that
he would never forget a single one of those minutes. Twenty paces from
the scaffold round which the crowd and the soldiers stood, three stakes
were driven into the ground, there being several prisoners. The first
three were led to the stakes and bound, and the white dress of the
condemned was put on them. This consisted of a long white shirt, and
over their eyes white bandages were bound so that they should not see
the guns. Then in front of each stake a firing party was drawn up. My
friend was No. 8, so he went to the stake in the third batch. A priest
carried the cross to each of them. My friend calculated that he had
five minutes more to live, not more. He said that these five minutes
seemed to him an endless period, infinitely precious. In these five
minutes it seemed to him that he would have so many lives to live that
he need not yet begin to think about his last moment, and in his mind
he made certain arrangements. He calculated the time it would take him
to say good-bye to his comrades; for this he allotted two minutes. He
assigned two more minutes to think one last time of himself, and to
look round for the last time. He remembered distinctly that he made
these three plans, and that he divided his time in this way. He was to
die, aged twenty-seven, healthy and strong, after having said good-bye
to his companions. He remembered that he asked one of them a somewhat
irrelevant question, and was much interested in the answer. Then, after
he had said good-bye to his comrades, came the two minutes which he had
set aside for thinking of himself. He knew beforehand of what he would
think: he wished to represent to himself as quickly and as clearly as
possible how this could be: that now he was breathing and living, and
that in three minutes he would already be something else, some one or
something, but what? and where? All this he felt he could decide in
those two minutes. Not far away was the church, and the cathedral with
its gilded dome was glittering in the sunshine. He remembered that he
looked at the dome with terrible persistence, and on its glittering
rays. He could not tear his gaze away from the rays. It seemed to him
somehow that these rays were his new nature, and that in three minutes
he would be made one with them. The uncertainty and the horror of the
unknown, which was so near, were terrible. But he said that during this
time there was nothing worse than the unceasing thought: ‘What if I do
not die? What if life were restored to me now? What an eternity! And
all this would be mine. I would in that case make every minute into a
century, lose nothing, calculate every moment, and not spend any atom
of the time fruitlessly.’ He said that this thought at last made him so
angry that he wished that they would shoot him at once.”
Dostoievsky’s sentence consisted of four years’ hard labour in the
convict settlement in Siberia, and this ordeal was doubtless the most
precious boon which Providence could have bestowed on him. When he
started for prison he said to A. Milioukov, as he wished him good-bye:
“The convicts are not wild beasts, but men probably better, and perhaps
much worthier, than myself. During these last months (the months of his
confinement in prison) I have gone through a great deal, but I shall
be able to write about what I shall see and experience in the future.”
It was during the time he spent in prison that Dostoievsky really
found himself. To share the hard labour of the prisoners, to break
up old ships, to carry loads of bricks, to sweep up heaps of snow,
strengthened him in body and calmed his nerves, while the contact with
murderers and criminals and prisoners of all kinds, whose inmost nature
he was able to reach, gave him a priceless opportunity of developing
the qualities which were especially his own both as a writer and as a
man.
With the criminals he was not in the position of a teacher, but of
a disciple; he learnt from them, and in his life with them he grew
physically stronger, and found faith, certitude and peace.
At the end of the four years (in 1853) he was set free and returned to
ordinary life, strengthened in body and better balanced in mind. He
had still three years to serve in a regiment as a private soldier, and
after this period of service three years more to spend in Siberia. In
1859 he crossed the frontier and came back to Russia, and was allowed
to live first at Tver and then at St. Petersburg. He brought a wife
with him, the widow of one of his former colleagues in the Petrachevsky
conspiracy, whom he had loved and married in Siberia. Until 1865 he
worked at journalism.
Dostoievsky’s nature was alien to Socialism, and he loathed the moral
materialism of his Socialistic contemporaries. Petrachevsky repelled
him because he was an atheist and laughed at all belief; and the
attitude of Bielinsky towards religion, which was one of flippant
contempt, awoke in Dostoievsky a passion of hatred which blazed up
whenever he thought of the man. Dostoievsky thus became a martyr, and
was within an ace of losing his life for the revolutionary cause; a
movement in which he had never taken part, and in which he disbelieved
all his life.
Dostoievsky returned from prison just at the time of the emancipation
of the serfs, and the trials which awaited him on his release were
severer than those which he endured during his captivity. In January
1861 he started a newspaper called the _Vremya_. The venture was a
success. But just as he thought that Fortune was smiling upon him,
and that freedom from want was drawing near, the newspaper, by an
extraordinary misunderstanding, was prohibited by the censorship for
an article on Polish affairs. This blow, like his condemnation to
death, was due to a casual blunder in the official machinery. After
considerable efforts, in 1864 he started another newspaper called the
_Epocha_. This newspaper incurred the wrath, not of the Government
censorship, but of the Liberals; and it was now that his peculiar
situation, namely, that of a man between two fires, became evident. The
Liberals abused him in every kind of manner, went so far as to hint
that the _Epocha_ and its staff were Government spies, and declared
that Dostoievsky was a scribbler with whom the police should deal. At
this same time his brother Michael, his best friend Grigoriev, who
was on the staff of his newspaper, and his first wife, Marie, died
one after another. Dostoievsky was now left all alone; he felt that
his whole life was broken, and that he had nothing to live for. His
brother’s family was left without resources of any kind. He tried
to support them by carrying on the publication of the _Epocha_, and
worked day and night at this, being the sole editor, reading all the
proofs, dealing with the authors and the censorship, revising articles,
procuring money, sitting up till six in the morning, and sleeping
only five out of the twenty-four hours. But this second paper came to
grief in 1865, and Dostoievsky was forced to own himself temporarily
insolvent. He had incurred heavy liabilities, not only to the
subscribers of the newspaper, but in addition a sum of £1400 in bills
and £700 in debts of honour. He writes to a friend at this period: “I
would gladly go back to prison if only to pay off my debts and to feel
myself free once more.”
A publishing bookseller, Stellovsky, a notorious rascal, threatened
to have him taken up for debt. He had to choose between the debtors’
prison and flight: he chose the latter, and escaped abroad, where he
spent four years of inexpressible misery, in the last extremity of want.
His _Crime and Punishment_ was published in 1866, and this book brought
him fame and popularity; yet in spite of this, on an occasion in 1869,
he was obliged to pawn his overcoat and his last shirt in order with
difficulty to obtain two thalers.
During all this time his attacks of epilepsy continued. He was
constantly in trouble with his publishers, and bound and hampered by
all sorts of contracts. He writes at this epoch: “In spite of all this
I feel as if I were only just beginning to live. It is curious, isn’t
it? I have the vitality of a cat.” And on another occasion he talks of
his stubborn and inexhaustible vitality. He also says through the mouth
of one of his characters, Dimitri Karamazov, “I can bear anything, any
suffering, if I can only keep on saying to myself: ‘I live; I am in a
thousand torments, but I live! I am on the pillory, but I exist! I see
the sun, or I do not see the sun, but I know that it is there. And to
know that there _is_ a sun is enough.’”
It was during these four years, overwhelmed by domestic calamity,
perpetually harassed by creditors, attacked by the authorities on the
one hand and the Liberals on the other, misunderstood by his readers,
poor, almost starving, and never well, that he composed his three
great masterpieces: _Crime and Punishment_ in 1866, _The Idiot_ in
1868, and _The Possessed_ in 1871-2; besides planning _The Brothers
Karamazov_. He had married a second time, in 1867. He returned to
Russia in July 1871: his second exile was over. His popularity had
increased, and the success of his books enabled him to free himself
from debt. He became a journalist once more, and in 1873 edited
Prince Meschtcherki’s newspaper, _The Grazjdanin_. In 1876 he started
a monthly review called _The Diary of a Writer_, which sometimes
appeared once a month and sometimes less often. The appearance of
the last number coincided with his death. This review was a kind of
encyclopædia, in which Dostoievsky wrote all his social, literary
and political ideas, related any stray anecdotes, recollections and
experiences which occurred to him, and commented on the political and
literary topics of the day. He never ceased fighting his adversaries
in this review; and during this time he began his last book, _The
Brothers Karamazov_, which was never finished. In all his articles he
preached his Slavophil creed, and on one occasion he made the whole of
Russia listen to him and applaud him as one man. This was on June 8,
1880, when he made a speech at Moscow in memory of Pushkin, and aroused
to frenzy the enthusiasm even of those men whose political ideals
were the exact opposite of his own. He made people forget they were
“Slavophils” or “Westernisers,” and remember only one thing--that they
were Russians.
In the latter half of 1880, when he was working on _The Brothers
Karamazov_, Strakhov records: “He was unusually thin and exhausted;
his body had become so frail that the first slight blow might destroy
it. His mental activity was untiring, although work had grown very
difficult for him. In the beginning of 1881 he fell ill with a severe
attack of emphysema, the result of catarrh in the lung. On January 28
he had hæmorrhage from the throat. Feeling the approach of death, he
wished to confess and to receive the Blessed Sacrament. He gave the New
Testament used by him in prison to his wife to read aloud. The first
passage chanced to be Matthew iii. 14: “But John held Him back and
said, ‘It is I that should be baptized by Thee, and dost Thou come to
me?’ And Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Detain Me not; for thus it
behoves us to fulfil a great truth.’”
When his wife had read this, Dostoievsky said: “You hear: Do not detain
me. That means that I am to die.” And he closed the book. A few hours
later he did actually die, instantaneously, from the rupture of an
artery in the lungs.
This was on the 28th of January 1881; on the 30th he was buried in
St. Petersburg. His death and his funeral had about them an almost
mythical greatness, and his funeral is the most striking comment on
the nature of the feeling which the Russian public had for him both
as a writer and as a man. On the day after his death, St. Petersburg
witnessed a most extraordinary sight: the little house in which he had
lived suddenly became for the moment the moral centre of Russia. Russia
understood that with the death of this struggling and disease-stricken
novelist, she had lost something inestimably precious, rare and
irreplaceable. Spontaneously, and without any organised preparation,
the most imposing and triumphant funeral ceremony was given to
Dostoievsky’s remains; and this funeral was not only the greatest and
most inspiring which had ever taken place in Russia, but as far as
its inward significance was concerned there can hardly ever have been
a greater one in the world. Other great writers and other great men
have been buried with more gorgeous pomp and with a braver show of
outward display, but never, when such a man has been followed to the
grave by a mourning multitude, have the trophies and tributes of grief
been so real; for striking as they were by their quantity and their
nature, they seemed but a feeble and slender evidence of the sorrow
and the love to which they bore witness. There were deputations bearing
countless wreaths, there were numerous choirs singing religious chants,
there were thousands of people following in a slow stream along the
streets of St. Petersburg, there were men and women of every class,
but mostly poor people, shabbily dressed, of the lower middle or the
lower classes. The dream of Dostoievsky, that the whole of Russia
should be united by a bond of fraternity and brotherly love, seemed
to be realised when this crowd of men, composed of such various and
widely differing elements, met together in common grief by his grave.
Dostoievsky had lived the life of a pauper, and of a man who had to
fight with all his strength in order to win his daily bread. He had
been assailed by disease and hunted by misfortune; his whole life
seemed to have rushed by before he had had time to sit down quietly and
write the great ideas which were seething in his mind. Everything he
had written seemed to have been written by chance, haphazardly, to have
been jotted down against time, between wind and water. But in spite of
this, in his work, however incomplete, however fragmentary and full
of faults it may have been, there was a voice speaking, a particular
message being delivered, which was different from that of other
writers, and at times more precious. While it was there, the public
took it for granted, like the sun; and it was only when Dostoievsky
died that the hugeness of the gap made by his death, caused them to
feel how great was the place he had occupied both in their hearts
and in their minds. It was only when he died that they recognised
how great a man he was, and how warmly they admired and loved him.
Everybody felt this from the highest to the lowest. Tolstoy, in writing
of Dostoievsky’s death, says: “I never saw the man, and never had any
direct relations with him, yet suddenly when he died I understood
that he was the nearest and dearest and most necessary of men to me.
Everything that he did was of the kind that the more he did of it the
better I felt it was for men. And all at once I read that he is dead,
and a prop has fallen from me.” This is what the whole of Russia felt,
that a support had fallen from them; and this is what they expressed
when they gave to Dostoievsky a funeral such as no king nor Captain
has ever had, a funeral whose very shabbiness was greater than any
splendour, and whose trophies and emblems were the grief of a nation
and the tears of thousands of hearts united together in the admiration
and love of a man whom each one of them regarded as his brother.
III
DOSTOIEVSKY’S CHARACTER
Such, briefly, are the main facts of Dostoievsky’s crowded life. Unlike
Tolstoy, who has himself told us in every conceivable way everything
down to the most intimate detail which is to be known about himself,
Dostoievsky told us little of himself, and all that we know about him
is gathered from other people or from his letters; and even now we
know comparatively little about his life. He disliked talking about
himself; he could not bear to be pitied. He was modest, and shielded
his feelings with a lofty shame. Strakhov writes about him thus:
“In Dostoievsky you could never detect the slightest bitterness or
hardness resulting from the sufferings he had undergone, and there was
never in him a hint of posing as a martyr. He behaved as if there had
been nothing extraordinary in his past. He never represented himself as
disillusioned, or as not having an equable mind; but, on the contrary,
he appeared cheerful and alert, when his health allowed him to do so. I
remember that a lady coming for the first time to Michael Dostoievsky’s
(his brother’s) evenings at the newspaper office, looked long at
Dostoievsky, and finally said: ‘As I look at you it seems to me that
I see in your face the sufferings which you have endured.’ These words
visibly annoyed Dostoievsky. ‘What sufferings?’ he said, and began to
joke on indifferent matters.”
Long after his imprisonment and exile, when some friends of his tried
to prove to him that his exile had been a brutal act of injustice, he
said: “The Socialists are the result of the followers of Petrachevsky.
Petrachevsky’s disciples sowed many seeds.” And when he was asked
whether such men deserved to be exiled, he answered: “Our exile was
just; the _people_ would have condemned us.”
The main characteristics of his nature were generosity, catholicity,
vehement passion, and a “sweet reasonableness.” Once when he was
living with Riesenkampf, a German doctor, he was found living on bread
and milk; and even for that he was in debt at a little milk shop.
This same doctor says that Dostoievsky was “one of those men to live
with whom is good for every one, but who are themselves in perpetual
want.” He was mercilessly robbed, but he would never blame any one
who took advantage of his kindness and his trustfulness. One of his
biographers tells us that his life with Riesenkampf proved expensive to
him, because no poor man who came to see the doctor went away without
having received something from Dostoievsky. One cannot read a page
of his books without being aware of the “sweet reasonableness” of his
nature. This pervaded his writings with fragrance like some precious
balm, and is made manifest to us in the touching simplicity of some
of his characters, such as the Idiot and Alexis Karamazov, to read of
whom is like being with some warm and comforting influence, something
sweet and sensible and infinitely human. His catholicity consists in
an almost boundless power of appreciation, an appreciation of things,
persons and books widely removed from himself by accidents of time,
space, class, nationality and character. Dostoievsky is equally able
to appreciate the very essence of a performance got up by convicts in
his prison, and the innermost beauty of the plays of Racine. This last
point is singular and remarkable. He was universal and cosmopolitan
in his admiration of the literature of foreign countries; and he was
cosmopolitan, not because he wished to cut himself away from Russian
traditions and to become European and Westernised, but because he
was profoundly Russian, and had the peculiarly Russian plastic and
receptive power of understanding and assimilating things widely
different from himself.
When he was a young man, Shakespeare and Schiller were well known,
and it was the fashion to admire them. It was equally the fashion to
despise the French writers of the seventeenth century. But Dostoievsky
was just as enthusiastic in his admiration of Racine and Corneille and
all the great classics of the seventeenth century. Thus he writes:
“But Phèdre, brother! You will be the Lord knows what if you say this
is not the highest and purest nature and poetry; the outline of it is
Shakespearian, but the statue is in plaster, not in marble.” And again
of Corneille: “Have you read _The Cid_? Read it, you wretch, read it,
and go down in the dust before Corneille!”
Dostoievsky was constantly “going down in the dust” before the great
masterpieces, not only of his own, but of other countries, which bears
out the saying that “La valeur morale de l’homme est en proportion de
sa faculté d’admirer.”
Dostoievsky never theorised as to how alms should be given, or as
to how charity should be organised. He gave what he had, simply and
naturally, to those who he saw had need of it; and he had a right to
this knowledge, for he himself had received alms in prison. Neither
did he ever theorise as to whether a man should leave the work which
he was fitted by Providence to do (such as writing books), in order to
plough fields and to cut down trees. He had practised hard labour,
not as a theoretic amateur, but as a constrained professional. He had
carried heavy loads of bricks and broken up ships and swept up heaps of
snow, not out of philosophy or theory, but because he had been obliged
to do so; because if he had not done so he would have been severely
punished. All that Tolstoy dreamed of and aimed at, which was serious
in theory but not serious in practice, that is to say, giving up his
property, becoming one with the people, ploughing the fields, was a
reality to Dostoievsky when he was in prison. He knew that hard labour
is only real when it is a necessity, when you cannot leave off doing it
when you want to; he had experienced this kind of hard labour for four
years, and during his whole life he had to work for his daily bread.
The result of this is that he made no theories about what work a man
_should_ do, but simply did as well as he could the work he _had_ to
do. In the words of a ballade written by Mr. Chesterton, he might have
said:
“We eat the cheese,--you scraped about the rind,
You lopped the tree--we eat the fruit instead.
You were benevolent, but we were kind,
You know the laws of food, but we were fed.”
And this is the great difference between Dostoievsky and Tolstoy.
Tolstoy was benevolent, but Dostoievsky was kind. Tolstoy theorised on
the distribution of food, but Dostoievsky was fed and received alms
like a beggar. Dostoievsky, so far from despising the calling of an
author, or thinking that it was an occupation “thin sown with aught of
profit or delight” for the human race, loved literature passionately.
He was proud of his profession: he was a great man of letters as well
as a great author. “I have never sold,” he wrote, “one of my books
without getting the price down beforehand. I am a literary proletarian.
If anybody wants my work he must ensure me by prepayment.”
There is something which resembles Dr. Johnson in the way he talks of
his profession and his attitude towards it. But there is, nevertheless,
in the phrase just quoted, something bitterly ironical when one
reflects that he was a poor man all his life and incessantly harassed
by creditors, and that he derived almost nothing from the great
popularity and sale of his books.
“Dostoievsky,” writes Strakov, “loved literature; he took her
as she was, with all her conditions; he never stood apart from
literature, and he never looked down upon her. This absence of
the least hint of literary snobbishness is in him a beautiful and
touching characteristic. Russian literature was the one lodestar of
Dostoievsky’s life, and he cherished for it a passionate love and
devotion. He knew very well that when he entered the lists he would
have to go into the public market-place, and he was never ashamed of
his trade nor of his fellow-workers. On the contrary, he was proud of
his profession, and considered it a great and sacred one.”
He speaks of himself as a literary hack: he writes at so much a line,
three and a half printed pages of a newspaper in two days and two
nights. “Often,” he says, “it happened in my literary career that the
beginning of the chapter of a novel or story was already set up, and
the end was still in my mind and had to be written by the next day.”
Again: “Work from want and for money has crushed and devoured me. Will
my poverty ever cease? Ah, if I had money, then I should be free!”
I have said that one of the main elements of Dostoievsky’s character
was vehement passion. There was more than a vehement element of passion
in Dostoievsky; he was not only passionate in his loves and passionate
in his hates, but his passion was unbridled. In this he resembles
the people of the Renaissance. There were perilous depths in his
personality; black pools of passion; a seething whirlpool that sent
up every now and then great eddies of boiling surge; yet this passion
has nothing about it which is undefinably evil; it never smells of the
pit. The reason of this is that although Dostoievsky’s soul descended
into hell, it was purged by the flames, and no poisonous fumes ever
came from it. There was something of St. Francis in him, and something
of Velasquez. Dostoievsky was a violent hater. I have already told
how he hated Bielinsky, the Socialists and the materialists whom he
attacked all his life, but against Tourgeniev he nourished a blind and
causeless hatred. This manifests itself as soon as he leaves prison, in
the following outburst: “I know very well,” he writes, “that I write
worse than Tourgeniev, but not so very much worse, and after all I hope
one day to write quite as well as he does. Why, with my crying wants,
do I receive only 100 roubles a sheet, and Tourgeniev, who possesses
two thousand serfs, receives 400 roubles? Owing to my poverty I am
_obliged_ to hurry, to write for money, and consequently to spoil my
work.” In a postscript he says that he sends Katkov, the great Moscow
editor, fifteen sheets at 100 roubles a sheet, that is, 1500 roubles
in all. “I have had 500 roubles from him, and besides, when I had sent
three-quarters of the novel, I asked him for 200 to help me along, or
700 altogether. I shall reach Tver without a farthing. But, on the
other hand, I shall shortly receive from Katkov seven or eight hundred
roubles.”
It must not be forgotten that the whole nature of Dostoievsky, both as
man and artist, was profoundly modified by the disease from which he
suffered all his life, his epilepsy. He had therefore two handicaps
against him: disease and poverty. But it is his epilepsy which was
probably the cause of his dislikes, his hatreds and his outbreaks of
violent passion. The attacks of epilepsy came upon him about once a
month, and sometimes, though not often, they were more frequent. He
once had two in a week. His friend Strakov describes one of them thus:
“I once saw one of his ordinary attacks: it was, I fancy, in 1863,
just before Easter. Late in the evening, about eleven o’clock, he came
to see me, and we had a very animated conversation. I cannot remember
the subject, but I know that it was important and abstruse. He became
excited, and walked about the room while I sat at the table. He said
something fine and jubilant. I confirmed his opinion by some remark,
and he turned to me a face which positively glowed with the most
transcendent inspiration. He paused for a moment, as if searching for
words, and had already opened his lips to speak. I looked at him all
expectant for fresh revelation. Suddenly from his open mouth issued a
strange, prolonged, and inarticulate moan. He sank senseless on the
floor in the middle of the room.”
The ancients called this “the sacred sickness.” Just before the
attacks, Dostoievsky felt a kind of rapture, something like what people
say they feel when they hear very great music, a perfect harmony
between himself and the world, a sensation as if he had reached the
edge of a planet, and were falling off it into infinite space. And this
feeling was such that for some seconds of the rapture, he said, you
might give ten years of your life, or even the whole of it. But after
the attack his condition was dreadful, and he could hardly sustain the
state of low-spirited dreariness and sensitiveness into which he was
plunged. He felt like a criminal, and fancied there hung over him an
invisible guilt, a great transgression. He compares both sensations,
suddenly combined and blended in a flash, to the famous falling pitcher
of Mahomet, which had not time to empty itself while the Prophet
on Allah’s steed was girdling heaven and hell. It is no doubt the
presence of this disease and the frequency of the attacks, which were
responsible for the want of balance in his nature and in his artistic
conceptions, just as his grinding poverty and the merciless conditions
of his existence are responsible for the want of finish in his style.
But Dostoievsky had the qualities of his defects, and it is perhaps
owing to his very illness, and to its extraordinary nature, that he
was able so deeply to penetrate into the human soul. It is as if the
veil of flesh and blood dividing the soul from that which is behind all
things, was finer and more transparent in Dostoievsky than in other
men: by his very illness he may have been able to discern what is
invisible to others. It is certainly owing to the combined poverty and
disease which made up his life, that he had such an unexampled insight
into the lives and hearts of the humble, the rejected, the despised,
the afflicted, and the oppressed. He sounded the utmost depths of human
misery, he lived face to face with the lowest representatives of human
misfortune and disgrace, and he was neither dispirited nor dismayed. He
came to the conclusion that it was all for the best, and like Job in
dust and ashes consented to the eternal scheme. And though all his life
he was one of the conquered, he never ceased fighting, and never for
one moment believed that life was not worth living. On the contrary, he
blessed life and made others bless it.
His life was “a long disease,” rendered harder to bear and more
difficult by exceptionally cruel circumstances. In spite of this,
Dostoievsky was a happy man: he was happy and he was cheerful; and he
was happy not because he was a saint, but because, in spite of all his
faults, he radiated goodness; because his immense heart overflowed
in kindness, and having suffered much himself, he understood the
sufferings of others; thus although his books are terrible, and deal
with the darkest clouds which can overshadow the human spirit, the
descent into hell of the human soul, yet the main impression left by
them is not one of gloom but one of comfort. Dostoievsky is, above all
things, a healer and a comforter, and this is because the whole of
his teaching, his morality, his art, his character, are based on the
simple foundation of what the Russians call “dolgoterpjenie,” that is,
forbearance, and “smirenie,” that is to say, resignation. In the whole
history of the world’s literature there is no literary man’s life which
was so arduous and so hard; but Dostoievsky never complained, nor, we
can be sure, would he have wished his life to have been otherwise. His
life was a martyrdom, but he enjoyed it. Although no one more nearly
than he bears witness to Heine’s saying that “where a great spirit is,
there is Golgotha,” yet we can say without hesitation that Dostoievsky
was a happy man, and he was happy because he never thought about
himself, and because, consciously or unconsciously, he relieved and
comforted the sufferings of others. And his books continued to do so
long after he ceased to live.
All this can be summed up in one word: the value of Dostoievsky’s life.
And the whole reason that his books, although they deal with the
tragedies of mankind, bring comfort to the reader instead of gloom,
hope instead of despair, is, firstly, that Dostoievsky was an altruist,
and that he fulfilled the most difficult precept of Christianity--to
love others better than oneself; and, secondly, that in leading us down
in the lowest depths of tragedy, he shows us that where man ends, God
takes up the tale.
IV
_POOR FOLK_ AND THE _LETTERS FROM A DEAD HOUSE_
In his first book, _Poor Folk_, which was published in 1846, we
have the germ of all Dostoievsky’s talent and genius. It is true
that he accomplished far greater things, but never anything more
characteristic. It is the story of a poor official, a minor clerk in
a Government office, already aged and worn with cares, who battles
against material want. In his sombre and monotonous life there is a ray
of light: in another house as poor and as squalid as his own, there
lives a girl, a distant relation of his, who is also in hard and humble
circumstances, and who has nothing in the world save the affection
and friendship of this poor clerk. They write to each other daily.
In the man’s letters a discreet unselfishness is revealed, a rare
delicacy of feeling, which is in sharp contrast to the awkwardness
of his everyday actions and ideas, which verge on the grotesque. At
the office, he has to cringe and sacrifice his honour in order not
to forfeit the favour of his superiors. He stints himself, and makes
every kind of small sacrifice, in order that this woman may be relieved
of her privations. He writes to her like a father or brother; but it
is easy for us to see in his simple phrases that he is in love with
her, although she does not realise it. The character of the woman is
equally clear to us: she is superior to him in education and mind, and
she is less resigned to her fate than he is. In the course of their
correspondence we learn all that is to be known about their past, their
melancholy history and the small incidents of their everyday life, the
struggle that is continually working in the mind of the clerk between
his material want and his desire not to lose his personal honour. This
correspondence continues day by day until the crisis comes, and the
clerk loses the one joy of his life, and learns that his friend is
engaged to be married. But she has not been caught up or carried off
in a brilliant adventure: she marries a middle-aged man, very rich and
slightly discredited, and all her last letters are full of commissions
which she trusts to her devoted old friend to accomplish. He is sent to
the dress-makers about her gowns, and to the jeweller about her rings;
and all this he accepts and does with perfect self-sacrifice; and his
sacrifice seems quite accidental, a matter of course: there is not the
slightest pose in it, nor any fuss, and only at the end, in his very
last letter, and even then only in a veiled and discreet form, does he
express anything of the immense sorrow which the blow is bringing to
him.
The woman’s character is as subtly drawn as the man’s; she is more
independent than he, and less resigned; she is kind and good, and it
is from no selfish motives that she grasps at the improvement in her
fortunes. But she is still young, and her youth rises within her and
imperatively claims its natural desires. She is convinced that by
accepting the proposal which is made to her she will alleviate her
friend’s position as much as her own; moreover, she regards him as
a faithful friend, and nothing more. But we, the outsiders who read
his letters, see clearly that what he feels for her is more than
friendship: it is simply love and nothing else.
The second important book which Dostoievsky wrote (for the stories he
published immediately after _Poor Folk_ were not up to his mark) was
the _Letters from a Dead House_, which was published on his return to
Russia in 1861. This book may not be his finest artistic achievement,
but it is certainly the most humanly interesting book which he ever
wrote, and one of the most interesting books which exist in the whole
of the world’s literature. In this book he told his prison experiences:
they were put forward in the shape of the posthumous records of a
nobleman who had committed murder out of jealousy, and was condemned
to spend some years in the convict prison. The book is supposed to be
the papers which this nobleman left behind him. They cover a period
of four years, which was the term of Dostoievsky’s sentence. The most
remarkable characteristic of the book is the entire absence of egotism
in the author. Many authors in similar circumstances would have written
volumes of self-analysis, and filled pages with their lamentations
and in diagnosing their sensations. Very few men in such a situation
could have avoided a slight pose of martyrdom. In Dostoievsky there
is nothing of this. He faces the horror of the situation, but he has
no grievance; and the book is all about other people and as little
as possible about himself. And herein lies its priceless value, for
there is no other book either of fiction or travel which throws such a
searching light on the character of the Russian people, and especially
on that of the Russian peasants. Dostoievsky got nearer to the Russian
peasant than any one has ever done, and necessarily so, because he
lived with them on equal terms as a convict. But this alone would not
suffice to produce so valuable a book; something else was necessary,
and the second indispensable factor was supplied by Dostoievsky’s
peculiar nature, his simplicity of mind, his kindness of heart, his
sympathy and understanding. In the very first pages of this book we
are led into the heart of a convict’s life: the _milieu_ rises before
us in startling vividness. The first thing which we are made aware
of is that this prison life has a peculiar character of its own. The
strange family or colony which was gathered together in this Siberian
prison consisted of criminals of every grade and description, and in
which not only every class of Russian society, but every shade and
variety of the Russian people was represented; that is to say, there
were here assassins by profession, and men who had become assassins by
chance, robbers, brigands, tramps, pick-pockets, smugglers, peasants,
Armenians, Jews, Poles, Mussulmans, soldiers who were there for
insubordination and even for murder; officers, gentlemen, and political
prisoners, and men who were there no one knew why.
Now Dostoievsky points out that at a first glance you could detect one
common characteristic in this strange family. Even the most sharply
defined, the most eccentric and original personalities, who stood
out and towered above their comrades, even these did their best to
adopt the manners and customs, the unwritten code, the etiquette of
the prison. In general, he continues, these people with a very few
exceptions (innately cheerful people who met with universal contempt)
were surly, envious, extraordinarily vain, boastful, touchy, and in
the highest degree punctilious and conventional. To be astonished at
nothing was considered the highest quality; and in all of them the
one aim and obsession was outward demeanour and the wish to keep up
appearances. There were men who pretended to have either great moral
or great physical strength and boasted of it, who were in reality
cowards at heart, and whose cowardice was revealed in a flash. There
were also men who possessed really strong characters; but the curious
thing was, Dostoievsky tells us, that these really strong characters
were abnormally vain. The main and universal characteristic of the
criminal was his vanity, his desire, as the Italians say, to _fare
figura_ at all costs. I have been told that this is true of English
prisons, where prisoners will exercise the most extraordinary ingenuity
in order to shave. The greater part of these people were radically
vicious, and frightfully quarrelsome. The gossip, the backbiting, the
tale-bearing, and the repeating of small calumnies were incessant; yet
in spite of this not one man dared to stand up against the public
opinion of the prison, according to whose etiquette and unwritten law
a particular kind of demeanour was observed. In other words, these
prisoners were exactly like private schoolboys or public schoolboys. At
a public school, boys will create a certain etiquette, which has its
unwritten law; for instance, let us take Eton. At Eton you may walk on
one side of the street but not on the other, unless you are a person
of sufficient importance. When you wear a great-coat, you must always
turn the collar up, unless you are a person of a particular importance.
You must likewise never go about with an umbrella unrolled; and, far
more important than all these questions, there arrives a psychological
moment in the career of an Eton boy when, of his own accord, he wears
a stick-up collar instead of a turned-down collar, by which act he
proclaims to the world that he is a person of considerable importance.
These rules are unwritten and undefined. Nobody tells another boy
not to walk on the wrong side of the road; no boy will ever dream of
turning down his collar, if he is not important enough; and in the
third and more special case, the boy who suddenly puts on a stick-up
collar must feel himself by instinct when that psychological moment
has arrived. It is not done for any definite reason, it is merely the
expression of a kind of atmosphere. He knows at a given moment that
he can or cannot go into stick-ups. Some boys can go into stick-ups
for almost nothing, if they have in their personality the necessary
amount of imponderable prestige; others, though the possessors of many
trophies and colours, can only do so at the last possible minute. But
all must have some definite reason for going into stick-ups: no boy
can go into stick-ups merely because he is clever and thinks a lot of
himself,--that would not only be impossible, but unthinkable.
Dostoievsky’s account of the convicts reminds me so strongly of the
conduct of private and public schoolboys in England, that, with a
few slight changes, his _Letters from a Dead House_ might be about
an English school, as far as the mere etiquette of the convicts is
concerned. Here, for instance, is a case in point: Dostoievsky says
that there lived in this prison men of dynamic personalities, who
feared neither God nor man, and had never obeyed any one in their
lives; and yet they at once fell in with the standard of behaviour
expected of them. There came to the prison men who had been the terror
of their village and their neighbourhood. Such a “new boy” looked
round, and at once understood that he had arrived at a place where he
could astonish no one, and that the only thing to do was to be quiet
and fall in with the manners of the place, and into what Dostoievsky
calls the universal etiquette, which he defines as follows: “This
etiquette,” he says, “consisted outwardly of a kind of peculiar dignity
with which every inhabitant of the prison was impregnated, as if the
fact of being a convict was, _ipso facto_, a kind of rank, and a
respectable rank.” This is exactly the point of view of a schoolboy
at a private school. A schoolboy prefers to be at home rather than at
school. He knows that he is obliged to be at school, he is obliged to
work against his will, and to do things which are often disagreeable to
him; at the same time his entire efforts are strained to one object,
towards preserving the dignity of his status. That was the great
ambition of the convicts, to preserve the dignity of the status of a
convict. Throughout this book one receives the impression that the
convicts behaved in many ways like schoolboys; in fact, in one place
Dostoievsky says that in many respects they were exactly like children.
He quotes, for instance, their delight in spending the little money
they could get hold of on a smart linen shirt and a belt, and walking
round the whole prison to show it off. They did not keep such finery
long, and nearly always ended by selling it for almost nothing; but
their delight while they possessed it was intense. There was, however,
one curious item in their code of morals, which is singularly unlike
that of schoolboys in England, in Russia, or in any other country:
they had no horror of a man who told tales to the authorities, who, in
schoolboy language, was a sneak. “The Sneak” did not expose himself
to the very smallest loss of caste. Indignation against him was an
unthinkable thing: nobody shunned him, people were friends with him;
and if you had explained in the prison the whole odiousness of his
behaviour, they would not have understood you at all.
“There was one of the gentlemen prisoners, a vicious and mean fellow,
with whom from the first moment I would have nothing to do. He made
friends with the major’s orderly, and became his spy; and this man
told everything he heard about the prisoners to the major. We all knew
this, and nobody ever once thought of punishing or even of blaming the
scoundrel.”
This is the more remarkable from the fact that in Russian schools,
and especially in those schools where military discipline prevails,
sneaking is the greatest possible crime. In speaking of another man
who constantly reported everything to the authorities, Dostoievsky
says that the other convicts despised him, not because he sneaked, but
because he did not know how to behave himself properly.
The convicts, although they never showed the slightest signs of remorse
or regret for anything they had done in the past, were allowed by
their etiquette to express, as it were officially, a kind of outward
resignation, a peaceful logic, such as, “We are a fallen people. We
could not live in freedom, and now we must break stones.... We could
not obey father and mother, and now we must obey the beating of the
drum.” The criminals abused each other mercilessly; they were adepts
in the art, more than adepts, artists. Abuse in their hands became a
science and a fine art; their object was to find not so much the word
that would give pain, as the offensive thought, the spirit, the idea,
as to who should be most venomous, the most razor-like in his abuse.
Another striking characteristic which also reminds one of schoolboys,
was that the convict would be, as a rule, obedient and submissive in
the extreme. But there were certain limits beyond which his patience
was exhausted, and when once this limit was overstepped by his warders
or the officer in charge, he was ready to do anything, even to commit
murder, and feared no punishment.
Dostoievsky tells us that during all the time he was in prison he never
noticed among the convicts the slightest sign of remorse, the slightest
burden of spirit with regard to the crimes they had committed; and
the majority of them in their hearts considered themselves perfectly
justified. But the one thing they could not bear, not because it roused
feelings of emotion in them, but because it was against the etiquette
of the place, was that people should dwell upon their past crimes. He
quotes one instance of a man who was drunk--the convicts could get
wine--beginning to relate how he had killed a child of five years old.
The whole prison, which up till then had been laughing at his jokes,
cried out like a man, and the assassin was obliged to be silent.
They did not cry out from indignation, but because it was not _the
thing_ to speak of _that_, because to speak of _that_ was considered
to be violating the unwritten code of the prison. The two things
which Dostoievsky found to be the hardest trials during his life as a
convict were, first, the absolute absence of privacy, since during the
whole four years he was in prison he was never for one minute either
by day or night alone; and, secondly, the bar which existed between
him and the majority of the convicts, owing to the fact that he was a
gentleman. The convicts hated people of the upper class; although such
men were on a footing of social equality with them, the convicts never
recognised them as comrades. Quite unconsciously, even sincerely, they
regarded them as gentlemen, although they liked teasing them about
their change of circumstance. They despised them because they did not
know how to work properly, and Dostoievsky says that he was two years
in prison before he won over some of the convicts, though one can see
from his accounts of what they said to him, how much they must have
liked him, and he admits that the majority of them recognised, after
a time, that he was a good fellow. He points out how much harder such
a sentence was on one of his own class than on a peasant. The peasant
arrives from all ends of Russia, no matter where it be, and finds in
prison the _milieu_ he is accustomed to, and into which he falls at
once without difficulty. He is treated as a brother and an equal by the
people who are there. With a gentleman it is different, and especially,
Dostoievsky tells us, with a political offender, whom the majority of
the convicts hate. He never becomes an equal; they may like him, as
they obviously did in Dostoievsky’s case, but they never regard him as
being on a footing of equality with themselves. They preferred even
foreigners, Germans for instance, to the Russian gentlemen; and the
people they disliked most of all were the gentlemen Poles, because they
were almost exaggeratedly polite towards the convicts, and at the same
time could not conceal their innate hatred of them. With regard to the
effect of this difference of class, Dostoievsky, in the course of the
book, tells a striking story. Every now and then, when the convicts
had a grievance about their food or their treatment, they would go
on strike, and assemble in the prison yard. Dostoievsky relates that
one day there was a strike about the food. As all the convicts were
gathered together in the yard, he joined them, whereupon he was
immediately told that that was not his place, that he had better go
to the kitchen, where the Poles and the other gentlemen were. He was
told this kindly by his friends, and men who were less friendly to him
made it plain by shouting out sarcastic remarks to him. Although he
wished to stay, he was told that he must go. Afterwards the strike was
dispersed and the strikers punished, and Dostoievsky asked a friend
of his, one of the convicts, whether they were not angry with the
gentlemen convicts.
“Why?” asked this man.
“Why, because we did not join in the strike.”
“Why should you have joined in the strike?” asked the convict, trying
to understand, “You buy your own food.”
“Many of us eat the ordinary food,” answered Dostoievsky, “but I should
have thought that apart from this we ought to have joined, out of
fellowship, out of comradeship.”
“But you are not our comrade,” said the other man quite simply; and
Dostoievsky saw that the man did not even understand what he meant.
Dostoievsky realised that he could never be a real comrade of these
men; he might be a convict for a century, he might be the most
experienced of criminals, the most accomplished of assassins, the
barrier existing between the classes would never disappear: to them
he would always be a gentleman, it would always be a case of “You go
your way, we go ours.” And this, he said, was the saddest thing he
experienced during the whole of his prison life.
The thing which perhaps caused him the most pleasure was the insight
he gained into the kindness shown to convicts by outsiders. Alluding
to the doctors in the prison hospital, he says: “It is well known to
prisoners all over Russia that the men who sympathise with them the
most are the doctors: they never make the slightest difference in their
treatment of prisoners, as nearly all outsiders do, except perhaps the
Russian poor. The Russian poor man never blames the prisoner for his
crime, however terrible it may be; he forgives him everything for the
punishment that he is enduring, and for his misfortune in general.
It is not in vain that the whole of the Russian people call crime a
misfortune and criminals ‘unfortunates.’ This definition has a deep
meaning; it is all the more valuable in that it is made unconsciously
and instinctively.”
It is an incident revealing this pity for the unfortunate which gave
Dostoievsky more pleasure than anything during his stay in prison. It
was the first occasion on which he directly received alms. He relates
it thus:
“It was soon after my arrival in the prison: I was coming back from my
morning’s work, accompanied only by the guard. There met me a mother
and her daughter. The little girl was ten years old, as pretty as a
cherub; I had already seen them once; the mother was the wife of a
soldier, a widow; her husband, a young soldier, had been under arrest,
and had died in the hospital in the same ward in which I had lain ill.
The wife and the daughter had come to say good-bye to him, and both had
cried bitterly. Seeing me, the little girl blushed, whispered something
to her mother, and she immediately stopped and took out of her bundle a
quarter of a kopeck and gave it to the little girl. The child ran after
me and called out, ‘Unfortunate! For the sake of Christ, take this
copper.’ I took the piece of money, and the little girl ran back to her
mother quite contented. I kept that little piece of money for a very
long time.”
What is most remarkable about the book, are the many and various
discoveries which Dostoievsky made with regard to human nature: his
power of getting behind the gloomy mask of the criminal to the real man
underneath, his success in detecting the “soul of goodness” in the
criminals. Every single one of the characters he describes stands out
in startling relief; and if one began to quote these one would never
end. Nevertheless I will quote a few instances.
There is Akim Akimitch, an officer who had earned his sentence thus:
He had served in the Caucasus, and been made governor of some small
fortress. One night a neighbouring Caucasian prince attacked his
fortress and burnt it down, but was defeated and driven back. Akim
Akimitch pretended not to know who the culprit was. A month elapsed,
and Akim Akimitch asked the prince to come and pay him a visit. He
came without suspecting any evil. Akim Akimitch marched out his
troops, and in their presence told him it was exceedingly wrong to
burn down fortresses; and after giving him minute directions as to
what the behaviour of a peaceful prince should be, shot him dead on
the spot, and reported the case to his superiors. He was tried and
condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to twelve years’
hard labour. Akim Akimitch had thus once in his life acted according
to his own judgment, and the result had been penal servitude. He had
not common sense enough to see where he had been guilty, but he came
to the conclusion that he never under any circumstances ought to judge
for himself. He thenceforth renounced all initiative of any kind or
sort, and made himself into a machine. He was uneducated, extremely
accurate, and the soul of honesty; very clever with his fingers, he
was by turn carpenter, bootmaker, shoemaker, gilder, and there was no
trade which he could not learn. Akim Akimitch arranged his life in
so methodical a manner in every detail, with such pedantic accuracy,
that at first he almost drove Dostoievsky mad, although Akim Akimitch
was kindness itself to him, and helped him in every possible way
during the first days of his imprisonment. Akim Akimitch appeared to
be absolutely indifferent as to whether he was in prison or not. He
arranged everything as though he were to stay there for the rest of his
life; everything, from his pillow upwards, was arranged as though no
change could possibly occur to him. At first Dostoievsky found the ways
of this automaton a severe trial, but he afterwards became entirely
reconciled to him.
Then there was Orlov, one of the more desperate criminals. He was a
soldier who had deserted. He was of small stature and slight build,
but he was absolutely devoid of any sort of fear. Dostoievsky says
that never in his life had he met with such a strong, such an iron
character as this man had. There was, in this man, a complete triumph
of the spirit over the flesh. He could bear any amount of physical
punishment with supreme indifference. He was consumed with boundless
energy, a thirst for action, for revenge, and for the accomplishment
of the aim which he set before him. He looked down on everybody in
prison. Dostoievsky says he doubts whether there was any one in the
world who could have influenced this man by his authority. He had a
calm outlook on the world, as though there existed nothing that could
astonish him; and although he knew that the other convicts looked up to
him with respect, there was no trace of swagger about him: he was not
at all stupid, and terribly frank, although not talkative. Dostoievsky
would ask him about his adventures. He did not much like talking about
them, but he always answered frankly. When once he understood, however,
that Dostoievsky was trying to find out whether he felt any pangs of
conscience or remorse for what he had done, he looked at him with a
lofty and utter contempt, as though he suddenly had to deal with some
stupid little boy who could not reason like grown-up people. There
was even an expression of pity in his face, and after a minute or two
he burst out in the simplest and heartiest laugh, without a trace of
irony, and Dostoievsky was convinced that when left to himself he must
have laughed again time after time, so comic did the thought appear to
him.
One of the most sympathetic characters Dostoievsky describes is a
young Tartar called Alei, who was not more than twenty-two years old.
He had an open, clever, and even beautiful face, and a good-natured
and naïve expression which won your heart at once. His smile was so
confiding, so childlike and simple, his big black eyes so soft and
kind, that it was a consolation merely to look at him. He was in prison
for having taken part in an expedition made by his brothers against a
rich Armenian merchant whom they had robbed. He retained his softness
of heart and simplicity and his strict honesty all the time he was in
prison; he never quarrelled, although he knew quite well how to stand
up for himself, and everybody liked him. “I consider Alei,” writes
Dostoievsky, “as being far from an ordinary personality, and I count my
acquaintance with him as one of the most valuable events of my life.
There are characters so beautiful by nature, so near to God, that even
the very thought that they may some day change for the worse seems
impossible. As far as they are concerned you feel absolutely secure,
and I now feel secure for Alei. Where is he now?”
I cannot help quoting two incidents in Dostoievsky’s prison life which
seem to me to throw light on the characteristics of the people with
whom he mixed, and their manner of behaviour; the first is a story of
how a young soldier called Sirotkin came to be a convict. Here is the
story which Dostoievsky gives us in the man’s own words:
“My mother loved me very much. When I became a recruit, I have since
heard, she lay down on her bed and never rose again. As a recruit I
found life bitter. The colonel did not like me, and punished me for
everything. And what for? I was obedient, orderly, I never drank wine,
I never borrowed, and that, Alexander Petrovitch, is a bad business,
when a man borrows. All round me were such hard hearts, there was no
place where one could have a good cry. Sometimes I would creep into
a corner and cry a little there. Once I was standing on guard as a
sentry; it was night. The wind was blowing, it was autumn, and so
dark you could see nothing. And I was so miserable, so miserable! I
took my gun, unscrewed the bayonet, and laid it on the ground; then I
pulled off my right boot, put the muzzle of the barrel to my heart,
leaned heavily on it and pulled the trigger with my big toe. It was
a miss-fire. I examined the gun, cleaned the barrel, put in another
cartridge and again pressed it to my breast. Again a miss-fire. I put
on my boot again, fixed the bayonet, shouldered my gun, and walked up
and down in silence; and I settled that whatever might happen I would
get out of being a recruit. Half an hour later the colonel rode by, at
the head of the patrol, right past me.
“‘Is that the way to stand on guard?’ he said.
“I took the gun in my hand and speared him with the bayonet right up to
the muzzle of the gun. I was severely flogged, and was sent here for
life.”
The second story is about a man who “exchanged” his sentence. It
happened thus: A party of exiles were going to Siberia. Some were
going to prison, some were merely exiled; some were going to work in
factories, but all were going together. They stopped somewhere on the
way in the Government of Perm. Among these exiles there was a man
called Mikhailov, who was condemned to a life sentence for murder. He
was a cunning fellow, and made up his mind to exchange his sentence. He
comes across a simple fellow called Shushilov, who was merely condemned
to a few years’ transportation, that is to say, he had to live in
Siberia and not in European Russia for a few years. This latter man
was naïve, ignorant, and, moreover, had no money of his own. Mikhailov
made friends with him and finally made him drunk, and then proposed to
him an exchange of sentences. Mikhailov said: “It is true that I am
going to prison, but I am going to some _special department_,” which he
explained was a particular favour, as it was a kind of first class.
Shushilov, under the influence of drink, and being simple-minded,
was full of gratitude for the offer, and Mikhailov taking advantage
of his simplicity bought his name from him for a red shirt and a
silver rouble, which he gave him on the spot, before witnesses. On
the following day Shushilov spent the silver rouble and sold the red
shirt for drink also, but as soon as he became sober again he regretted
the bargain. Then Mikhailov said to him: “If you regret the bargain
give me back my money.” This he could not do; it was impossible for
him to raise a rouble. At the next _étape_ at which they stopped,
when their names were called and the officer called out Mikhailov,
Shushilov answered and Mikhailov answered to Shushilov’s name, and the
result was that when they left Tobolsk, Mikhailov was sent somewhere
to spend a few years in exile, and Shushilov became a “lifer”; and the
special department which the other man talked of as a kind of superior
class, turned out to be the department reserved for the most desperate
criminals of all, those who had no chance of ever leaving prison, and
who were most strictly watched and guarded. It was no good complaining;
there was no means of rectifying the mistake. There were no witnesses.
Had there been witnesses they would have perjured themselves. And
so Shushilov, who had done nothing at all, received the severest
sentence the Russian Government had power to inflict, whereas the
other man, a desperate criminal, merely enjoyed a few years’ change
of air in the country. The most remarkable thing about this story is
this: Dostoievsky tells us that the convicts despised Shushilov, not
because he had exchanged his sentence, but because he had made so bad
a bargain, and had only got a red shirt and a silver rouble. Had he
exchanged it for two or three shirts and two or three roubles, they
would have thought it quite natural.
The whole book is crammed with such stories, each one of which throws a
flood of light on the character of the Russian people.
These _Letters from a Dead House_ are translated into French, and a
good English translation of them by Marie von Thilo was published by
Messrs. Longmans in 1881. But it is now, I believe, out of print. Yet
if there is one foreign book in the whole world which deserves to be
well known, it is this one. Not only because it throws more light on
the Russian people than any other book which has ever been written,
but also because it tells in the simplest possible way illuminating
things about prisoners and prison life. It is a book which should be
read by all legislators; it is true that the prison life it describes
is now obsolete. It deals with convict life in the fifties, when
everything was far more antiquated, brutal and severe than it is now.
Yet although prisoners had to run the gauntlet between a regiment
of soldiers, and were sometimes beaten nearly to death, in spite of
the squalor of the prison and in spite of the dreariness and anguish
inseparable from their lives, the life of the prisoners stands out in
a positively favourable contrast to that which is led by our convicts
in what Mr. Chesterton calls our “clean and cruel prisons,” where our
prisoners pick oakum to-day in “separate” confinement. The proof of
this is that Dostoievsky was able to write one of the most beautiful
studies of human nature that have ever been written out of his prison
experience. In the first place, the prisoners enjoyed human fellowship.
They all had tobacco; they played cards; they could receive alms, and,
though this was more difficult, they could get wine. There were no
rules forbidding them to speak. Each prisoner had an occupation of his
own, a hobby, a trade, in which he occupied all his leisure time. Had
it not been for this, Dostoievsky says, the prisoners would have gone
mad. One wonders what they would think of an English prison, where the
prisoners are not even allowed to speak to each other. Such a régime
was and is and probably always will be perfectly unthinkable to a
Russian mind. Indeed this point reminds me of a startling phrase of a
Russian revolutionary, who had experiences of Russian prisons. He was
a member of the second Russian Duma; he had spent many years in prison
in Russia. In the winter of 1906 there was a socialistic conference
in London which he attended. When he returned to Russia he was asked
by his fellow-politicians to lecture on the liberty of English
institutions. He refused to do so. “A Russian,” he said, “is freer in
prison than an Englishman is at large.”
The secret of the merit of this extraordinary book is also the secret
of the unique quality which we find in all Dostoievsky’s fiction. It
is this: Dostoievsky faces the truth; he faces what is bad, what is
worst, what is most revolting in human nature; he does not put on
blinkers and deny the existence of evil, like many English writers,
and he does not, like Zola, indulge in filthy analysis and erect out
of his beastly investigations a pseudo-scientific theory based on the
belief that all human nature is wholly bad. Dostoievsky analyses, not
in order to experiment on the patient and to satisfy his own curiosity,
but in order to cure and to comfort him. And having faced the evil and
recognised it, he proceeds to unearth the good from underneath it; and
he accepts the whole because of the good, and gives thanks for it.
He finds God’s image in the worst of the criminals, and shows it to
us, and for that reason this book is one of the most important books
ever written. Terrible as it is, and sad as it is, no one can read it
without feeling better and stronger and more hopeful. For Dostoievsky
proves to us--so far from complaining of his lot--that life in the Dead
House is not only worth living, but full of unsuspected and unexplored
riches, rare pearls of goodness, shining gems of kindness, and secret
springs of pity. He leaves prison with something like regret, and
he regards his four years’ experience there as a special boon of
Providence, the captain jewel of his life. He goes out saved for ever
from despair, and full of that wisdom more precious than rubies which
is to be found in the hearts of children.
V
_CRIME AND PUNISHMENT_
_Crime and Punishment_ was published in 1866. It is a book which
brought Dostoievsky fame and popularity, and by which, in Europe at
any rate, he is still best known. It is the greatest tragedy about a
murderer that has been written since _Macbeth_.
In the chapter on Tolstoy and Tourgeniev, I pointed out that the
Russian character could roughly be divided into two types, which
dominate the whole of Russian fiction, the two types being Lucifer, the
embodiment of invincible pride, and Ivan Durak, the wise fool. This is
especially true with regard to Dostoievsky’s novels. Nearly all the
most important characters in his books represent one or other of these
two types. Raskolnikov, the hero of _Crime and Punishment_, is the
embodiment of the Lucifer type, and the whole motive and mainspring of
his character is pride.
Raskolnikov is a Nihilist in the true sense of the word, not a
political Nihilist nor an intellectual Nihilist like Tourgeniev’s
Bazarov, but a moral Nihilist; that is to say, a man who strives to act
without principle and to be unscrupulous, who desires to put himself
beyond and above human moral conventions. His idea is that if he can
trample on human conventions, he will be a sort of Napoleon. He goes
to pawn a jewel at an old woman pawnbroker’s, and the idea which is to
affect his whole future vaguely takes root in his mind, namely, that an
intelligent man, possessed of the fortune of this pawnbroker, could do
anything, and that the only necessary step is to suppress this useless
and positively harmful old woman. He thus expresses the idea later:
“I used to put myself this question: If Napoleon had found himself
in my position and had not wherewith to begin his career, and there
was neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor the passage of the Alps, and if
there were, instead of these splendid and monumental episodes, simply
some ridiculous old woman, a usurer whom he would have to kill in
order to get her money, would he shrink from doing this if there were
no other alternative, merely because it would not be a fine deed and
because it would be sinful? Now I tell you that I was possessed by this
problem for a long time, and that I felt deeply ashamed when I at last
guessed, suddenly as it were, that not only would he not be frightened
at the idea, but that the thought that the thing was not important
and grandiose enough would not even enter into his head: he would not
even understand where the need for hesitation lay; and if there were
no other way open to him, he would kill the woman without further
reflection. Well, I ceased reflecting, and I killed her, following the
example of my authority.”