Raskolnikov is obsessed by the idea, just as Macbeth is obsessed by the

prophecy of the three witches, and circumstances seem to play the part

of Fate in a Greek tragedy, and to lead him against his will to commit

a horrible crime. “He is mechanically forced,” says Professor Brückner

in his _History of Russian Literature_, “into performing the act, as

if he had gone too near machinery in motion, had been caught by a bit

of his clothing, and cut to pieces.” As soon as he has killed the old

woman, he is fatally led into committing another crime immediately

after the first crime is committed. He thinks that by committing

this crime he will have trampled on human conventions, that he will

be above and beyond morality, a Napoleon, a Superman. The tragedy of

the book consists in his failure, and in his realising that he has

failed. Instead of becoming stronger than mankind, he becomes weaker

than mankind; instead of having conquered convention and morality,

he is himself vanquished by them. He finds that as soon as the crime

is committed the whole of his relation towards the world is changed,

and his life becomes a long struggle with himself, a revolt against

the moral consequences of his act. His instinct of self-preservation

is in conflict with the horror of what he has done and the need for

confession. Raskolnikov, as I have said, is the embodiment of pride;

pride is the mainspring of his character. He is proud enough to build

gigantic conceptions, to foster the ambition of placing himself above

and beyond humanity, but his character is not strong enough to bear the

load of his ideas. He thinks he has the makings of a great man in him,

and in order to prove this to himself he commits a crime that would put

an ordinary man beyond the pale of humanity, because he thinks that

being an extraordinary man he will remain within the pale of humanity

and not suffer. His pride suffers a mortal blow when he finds that

he is weak, and that the moral consequences of his act face him at

every turn. He fights against this, he strives not to recognise it; he

deliberately seeks the company of detectives; he discusses murder and

murderers with them minutely, and with a recklessness which leads him

to the very brink of the precipice, when it would need but a word more

for him to betray himself. The examining magistrate, indeed, guesses

that he has committed the crime, and plays with him as a cat plays with

a mouse, being perfectly certain that in the long-run he will confess

of his own accord. The chapters which consist of the duel between these

two men are the most poignant in anguish which I have ever read. I have

seen two of these scenes acted on the stage, and several people in

the audience had hysterics before they were over. At last the moment

of expiation comes, though that of regeneration is still far distant.

Raskolnikov loves a poor prostitute named Sonia. His act, his murder,

has affected his love for Sonia, as it has affected the rest of his

life, and has charged it with a sullen despair. Sonia, who loves him

as the only man who has never treated her with contempt, sees that he

has some great load on his mind, that he is tortured by some hidden

secret. She tries in vain to get him to tell her what it is, but at

last he comes to her with the intention of telling her, and she reads

the speaking secret in his eyes. As soon as she knows, she tells him

that he must kiss the earth which he has stained, and confess to the

whole world that he has committed murder. Then, she says, God will send

him a new life. At first he refuses: he says that society is worse than

he, that greater crimes than his are committed every day; that those

who commit them are highly honoured. Sonia speaks of his suffering,

and of the torture he will undergo by keeping his dread secret, but he

will not yet give in, nor admit that he is not a strong man, that he is

really a _louse_--which is the name he gives to all human beings who

are not “Supermen.” Sonia says that they must go to exile together, and

that by suffering _together_ they will expiate his deed. This is one

of Dostoievsky’s principal ideas, or rather it is the interpretation

and conception of Christianity which you will most frequently meet

with among the Russian people,--that suffering is good in itself, and

especially suffering in common with some one else.

After Raskolnikov has confessed his crime to Sonia, he still hovers

round and round the police, like a moth fatally attracted by a candle,

and at last he makes open confession, and is condemned to seven years’

penal servitude. But although he has been defeated in the battle with

his idea, although he has not only failed, but failed miserably, even

after he has confessed his crime and is paying the penalty for it in

prison, his pride still survives. When he arrives in prison, it is not

the hardships of prison life, it is not the hard labour, the coarse

food, the shaven head, the convict’s dress, that weigh on his spirit;

nor does he feel remorse for his crime. But here once more in prison

he begins to criticise and reflect on his former actions, and finds

them neither foolish nor horrible as he did before. “In what,” he

thinks, “was my conception stupider than many conceptions and theories

which are current in the world? One need only look at the matter

from an independent standpoint, and with a point-of-view unbiased by

conventional ideas, and the idea will not seem so strange. And why does

my deed,” he thought to himself, “appear so ugly? In what way was it an

evil deed? My conscience is at rest. Naturally I committed a criminal

offence, I broke the letter of the law and I shed blood. Well, take

my head in return for the letter of the law and make an end of it! Of

course, even many of those men who have benefited mankind and who were

never satiated with power, after they had seized it for themselves,

ought to have been executed as soon as they had taken their first

step, but these people succeeded in taking further steps, and therefore

they are justified: I did not succeed, and therefore perhaps I had not

the right to take the first step.”

Raskolnikov accordingly considered that his crime consisted solely in

this, that he was not strong enough to carry it through to the end,

and not strong enough not to confess it. He also tortured himself with

another thought: why did he not kill himself as soon as he recognised

the truth? Why did he prefer the weakness of confession?

The other convicts in the prison disliked him, distrusted him,

and ended by hating him. Dostoievsky’s own experience of convict

life enables him in a short space to give us a striking picture of

Raskolnikov’s relations with the other convicts. He gradually becomes

aware of the vast gulf which there is between him and the others. The

class barrier which rises between him and them, is more difficult

to break down than that caused by a difference in nationality. At

the same time, he noticed that in the prison there were political

prisoners, Poles, for instance, and officers, who looked down on the

other convicts as though they were insects, ciphers of ignorance, and

despised them accordingly. But he is unable to do this, he cannot help

seeing that these ‘ciphers’ are far cleverer in many cases than the

men who look down on them. On the other hand, he is astonished that

they all love Sonia, who has followed him to the penal settlement

where his prison is, and lives in the town. The convicts rarely see

her, meeting her only from time to time at their work; and yet they

adore her, because she has followed Raskolnikov. The hatred of the

other convicts against him grows so strong that one day at Easter, when

he goes to church with them, they turn on him and say: “You have no

right to go to church: you do not believe in God, you are an atheist,

you ought to be killed.” He had never spoken with them of God or of

religion, and yet they wished to kill him as an atheist. He only

narrowly escaped being killed by the timely interference of a sentry.

To the truth of this incident I can testify by personal experience, as

I have heard Russian peasants and soldiers say that such and such a

man was religious and that such and such a man was “godless,” although

these men had never mentioned religion to them; and they were always

right.

Then Raskolnikov fell ill and lay for some time in delirium in the

hospital. After his recovery he learns that Sonia has fallen ill

herself, and has not been near the prison, and a great sadness comes

over him. At last she recovers, and he meets her one day at his work.

Something melts in his heart, he knows not how or why; he falls at her

feet and cries; and from that moment a new life begins for him. His

despair has rolled away like a cloud: his heart has risen as though

from the dead.

_Crime and Punishment_, the best known of all Dostoievsky’s works, is

certainly the most powerful. The anguish of mind which Raskolnikov

goes through tortures the reader. Dostoievsky seems to have touched

the extreme limit of suffering which the human soul can experience

when it descends into hell. At the same time, he never seems to be

gloating over the suffering, but, on the contrary, to be revealing the

agonies of the human spirit in order to pour balm upon them. There is

an episode earlier in the story, when Raskolnikov kneels down before

Sonia, and speaks words which might be taken as the motto of this book,

and indeed of nearly all of Dostoievsky’s books: “It is not before you

that I am kneeling, but before all the suffering of mankind.”

It is in this book more than in any of his other books that one has

the feeling that Dostoievsky is kneeling down before the great agonies

that the human soul can endure: and in doing this, he teaches us how to

endure and how to hope. Apart from the astounding analysis to be found

in the book, and the terrible network of details of which the conflict

between Raskolnikov and his obsession consists: apart from the duel

of tongues between the examining magistrate, who is determined that

the criminal shall be condemned, not on account of any circumstantial

evidence, but by his own confession, and who drives the criminal to

confession by playing upon his obsession: apart from all this main

action, there is a wealth of minor characters, episodes and scenes,

all of which are indispensable to the main thread of tragedy which

runs through the whole. The book, as has been pointed out, did not

receive anything like its full recognition in 1866 when it appeared,

and now, in 1909, it stands higher in the estimation of all those who

are qualified to judge it than it did then. This can be said of very

few books published in Europe in the sixties. For all the so-called

psychological and analytical novels which have been published since

1866 in France and in England not only seem pale and lifeless compared

with Dostoievsky’s fierce revelations, but not one of them has a drop

of his large humanity, or a breath of his fragrant goodness.

VI

_THE IDIOT_

Although _Crime and Punishment_ is the most powerful, and probably the

most popular of Dostoievsky’s books, I do not think it is the most

characteristic; that is to say, I do not think it possesses in so

high a degree those qualities which are peculiar to his genius. More

characteristic still is _The Idiot_, in the main character of which the

very soul and spirit of Dostoievsky breathe and live. The hero of _The

Idiot_, Prince Mwishkin, is the type of Ivan Durak, the simple fool who

by his simplicity outwits the wisdom of the wise.

We make his acquaintance in a third-class railway carriage of the train

which is arriving at St. Petersburg from Warsaw. He is a young man

about twenty-six years old, with thick fair hair, sloping shoulders,

and a very slight fair beard; his eyes are large, light-blue, and

penetrating; in his expression there is something tranquil but

burdensome, something of that strange look which enables physicians

to recognise at a first glance a victim of the falling sickness. In

his hand he is carrying a bundle made of old _foulard_, which is his

whole luggage. A fellow-traveller enters into conversation with him.

He answers with unusual alacrity. Being asked whether he has been

absent long, he says that it is over four years since he was in Russia,

that he was sent abroad on account of his health--on account of some

strange nervous illness like St. Vitus’ dance. As he listens, his

fellow-traveller laughs several times, and especially when to the

question, “Did they cure you?” the fair-haired man answers, “No, they

did not cure me.” The dark-haired man is Rogozhin, a merchant. These

two characters are the two figures round which the drama of the book

centres and is played.

The purpose of Prince Mwishkin in coming to St. Petersburg is to find

a distant relation of his, the wife of a General Epanchin. He has

already written to her from Switzerland, but has received no answer.

He presents himself at the general’s house with his bundle. A man in

livery opens the door and regards him with suspicion. At last, after he

has explained clearly and at some length that he is Prince Mwishkin,

and that it is necessary for him to see the general on important

business, the servant leads him into a small front-hall into which the

anteroom (where guests are received) of the general’s study opens.

He delivers him into the hands of another servant who is dressed in

black. This man tells the prince to wait in the anteroom and to leave

his bundle in the front-hall. He sits down in his armchair and looks

with severe astonishment at the prince, who, instead of taking the

suggestion, sits down beside him on a chair, with his bundle in his

hands.

“If you will allow me,” said the prince, “I would rather wait here

with you. What should I do there alone?”

“The hall,” answered the servant, “is not the place for you, because

you are a visitor, or in other words, a guest. You wish to see the

general himself?” The servant obviously could not reconcile himself

with the idea of showing in such a visitor, and decided to question him

further.

“Yes, I have come on business,” began the prince.

“I do not ask you what is your business. My business is simply to

announce you. But without asking the secretary I said I would not

announce you.” The suspicions of the servant continually seemed to

increase. The prince was so unlike the ordinary run of everyday

visitors. “... You are, so to speak, from abroad?” asked the servant

at last, and hesitated as if he wished to say, “You are really Prince

Mwishkin?”

“Yes, I have this moment come from the train. I think that you wished

to ask me whether I am really Prince Mwishkin, and that you did not ask

me out of politeness.”

“H’m!” murmured the astonished servant.

“I assure you that I was not telling lies, and that you will not get

into trouble on account of me. That I am dressed as I am and carrying

a bundle like this is not astonishing, for at the present moment my

circumstances are not flourishing.”

“H’m! I am not afraid of that. You see I am obliged to announce you,

and the secretary will come to see you unless ... the matter is like

this: You have not come to beg from the general, may I be so bold as to

ask?”

“Oh no, you may rest assured of that. I have come on other business.”

“Pardon me. Please wait for the secretary; he is busy....”

“Very well. If I shall have to wait long I should like to ask you

whether I might smoke. I have a pipe and some tobacco.”

“Smoke!” The servant looked at him with contempt, as if he could not

believe his ears. “Smoke? No, you cannot smoke here. And what is more,

you should be ashamed of thinking of such a thing. Well, this is queer!”

“I did not mean in this room, but I would go somewhere if you would

show me, because I am accustomed to it, and I have not smoked now for

three hours. But as you like.”

“Now, how shall I announce you?” murmured the servant as though almost

unwillingly to himself. “In the first place you ought not to be here,

but in the anteroom, because you are a visitor, that is to say, a

guest, and I am responsible. Have you come to live here?” he asked,

looking again at the prince’s bundle, which evidently disturbed him.

“No, I don’t think so; even if they invited me, I should not stay. I

have simply come to make acquaintance, nothing more.”

“How do you mean, to make acquaintance?” the servant asked, with

trebled suspicion and astonishment. “You said at first that you had

come on business.”

“Well, it’s not exactly business; that is to say, if you like, it _is_

business,--it is only to ask advice. But the chief thing is that I

have come to introduce myself, because I and the general’s wife are

both descendants from the Mwishkins, and besides myself there are no

Mwishkins left.”

“So, what’s more you are a relation!” said the frightened servant.

“No, not exactly a relation,--that is to say, if you go back far

enough, we are, of course, relations; but so far back that it doesn’t

count! I wrote to the general’s wife a letter from abroad, but she

did not answer me. All the same, I considered it necessary to make

her acquaintance as soon as I arrived. I am explaining all this to

you so that you should not have any doubts, because I see that you

are disquieted. Announce that it is Prince Mwishkin, and that will be

enough to explain the object of my visit. If they will see me, all will

be well. If they do not, very likely all will be well too. But I don’t

think they can help receiving me, because the general’s wife will

naturally wish to see the oldest, indeed the only representative of her

family; and she is most particular about keeping up relations with her

family, as I have heard.”

“The conversation of the prince seemed as simple as possible, but the

simpler it was, the more absurd it became under the circumstances; and

the experienced footman could not help feeling something which was

perfectly right between man and man, and utterly wrong between man

and servant. Servants are generally far cleverer than their masters

think, and this one thought that two things might be possible; either

the prince had come to ask for money, or that he was simply a fool

without ambition,--because an ambitious prince would not remain in the

front-hall talking of his affairs with a footman, and would he not

probably be responsible and to blame in either the one case or the

other?”

I have quoted this episode, which occurs in the second chapter of

the book, in full, because in it the whole character of the prince

is revealed. He is the wise fool. He suffers from epilepsy, and this

“sacred” illness which has fallen on him has destroyed all those parts

of the intellect out of which our faults grow, such as irony, arrogance

and egoism. He is absolutely simple. He has the brains of a man, the

tenderness of a woman and the heart of a child. He knows nothing

of any barriers, either of class or character. He is the same and

absolutely himself with every one he meets. And yet his unsuspicious

_naïveté_, his untarnished sincerity and simplicity, are combined with

penetrating intuition, so that he can read other people’s minds like a

book.

The general receives him, and he is just as frank and simple with

the general as he has been with the servant. He is entirely without

means, and has nothing in the world save his little bundle. The general

inquires whether his handwriting is good, and resolves to get him some

secretarial work; he gives him 25 roubles, and arranges that the prince

shall live in his secretary’s house. The general makes the prince stay

for luncheon, and introduces him to his family. The general’s wife

is a charming, rather childish person, and she has three daughters,

Alexandra, Adelaide and Aglaia. The prince astonishes them very much

by his simplicity. They cannot quite understand at first whether he is

a child or a knave, but his simplicity conquers them. After they have

talked of various matters, his life in Switzerland, the experiences of

a man condemned to death, which had been related to him and which I

have already quoted, an execution which he had witnessed, one of the

girls asks him if he was ever in love.

“No,” he says, “I have never been in love ... I was happy otherwise.”

“How was that?” they ask.

Then he relates the following: “Where I was living they were all

children, and I spent all my time with the children, and only with

them. They were the children of the village; they all went to school. I

never taught them, there was a schoolmaster for that.... I perhaps did

teach them too, in a way, for I was more with them, and all the four

years that I spent there went in this way. I had need of nothing else.

I told them everything, I kept nothing secret from them. Their fathers

and relations were angry with me because at last the children could not

do without me, and always came round me in crowds, and the schoolmaster

in the end became my greatest enemy. I made many enemies there, all

on account of the children. And what were they afraid of? You can

tell a child everything--everything. I have always been struck by the

thought of how ignorant grown-up people are of children, how ignorant

even fathers and mothers are of their own children. You should conceal

nothing from children under the pretext that they are small, and that

it is too soon for them to know. That is a sad, an unhappy thought.

And how well children themselves understand that their fathers are

thinking they are too small and do not understand anything--when they

really understand everything. Grown-up people do not understand that a

child even in the most difficult matter can give extremely important

advice. Heavens! when one of these lovely little birds looks up at you,

confiding and happy, it is a shame to deceive it. I call them birds

because there is nothing better than birds in the world. To go on with

my story, the people in the village were most angry with me because of

one thing: the schoolmaster simply envied me. At first he shook his

head, and wondered how the children understood everything I told them,

and almost nothing of what he told them. Then he began to laugh at me

when I said to him that we could neither of us teach them anything, but

that they could teach us. And how could he envy me and slander me when

he himself lived with children? Children heal the soul.”

Into the character of the hero of this book Dostoievsky has put all the

sweetness of his nature, all his sympathy with the unfortunate, all

his pity for the sick, all his understanding and love of children. The

character of Prince Mwishkin reflects all that is best in Dostoievsky.

He is a portrait not of what Dostoievsky was, but of what the author

would like to have been. It must not for a moment be thought that

he imagined that he fulfilled this ideal: he was well aware of

his faults: of the sudden outbursts and the seething deeps of his

passionate nature; his capacity for rage, hatred, jealousy and envy;

none the less Dostoievsky could not possibly have created the character

of Prince Mwishkin, the Idiot, had he not been made of much the same

substance himself.

All through Dostoievsky’s books, whenever children are mentioned or

appear, the pages breathe a kind of freshness and fragrance like that

of lilies-of-the-valley. Whatever he says about children or whatever

he makes them say, has the rare accent of truth. The smile of children

lights up the dark pages of his books, like spring flowers growing at

the edge of a dark abyss.

In strong contrast to the character of the prince is the merchant

Rogozhin. He is the incarnation of the second type, that of the

obdurate spirit, which I have already said dominates Dostoievsky’s

novels. He is, perhaps, less proud than Raskolnikov, but he is far

stronger, more passionate and more vehement. His imperious and

unfettered nature is handicapped by no weakness of nerves, no sapping

self-analysis. He is undisciplined and centrifugal. He is not “sicklied

o’er with the pale cast of thought,” but it is his passions and not his

ideas which are too great for the vessel that contains them. Rogozhin

loves Nastasia, a _hetaira_, who has likewise unbridled passions

and impulses. He loves her with all the strength of his violent and

undisciplined nature, and he is tormented by jealousy because she does

not love him, although she cannot help submitting to the influence of

his imperious personality. The jealous poison in him takes so complete

a possession of his body and soul that he ultimately kills Nastasia

almost immediately after she has married him and given herself to him,

because he feels that she is never his own, least of all at the moment

when she abandons herself to him for ever. So great is his passion,

that this woman, even while hating him, cannot resist going to him

against her will, knowing well that he will kill her.

The description of the night that follows this murder, when Rogozhin

talks all night with the prince in front of the bed where Nastasia is

lying dead, is by its absence of melodrama and its simplicity perhaps

the most icily terrible piece of writing that Dostoievsky ever penned.

The reason why Nastasia does not love Rogozhin is that she loves Prince

Mwishkin, the Idiot, and so does the third daughter of the general,

Aglaia, although he gives them nothing but pity, and never makes love

to them. And here we come to the root-idea and the kernel of the book,

which is the influence which the Idiot exercises on everybody with

whom he comes in contact. Dostoievsky places him in a nest of rascals,

scoundrels and villains, a world of usurers, liars and thieves,

interested, worldly, ambitious and shady. He not only passes unscathed

through all this den of evil, but the most deadly weapons of the

wicked, their astuteness, their cunning and their fraud, are utterly

powerless against his very simplicity, and there is not one of these

people, however crusted with worldliness, however sordid or bad, who

can evade his magical influence. The women at first laugh at him; but

in the end, as I have already said, he becomes a cardinal factor in the

life of both Nastasia the unbridled and passionate woman, and Aglaia

the innocent and intelligent girl: so much so that they end by joining

in a battle of wild jealousy over him, although he himself is naïvely

unconscious of the cause of their dispute.

This book, more than any other, reveals to us the methods and the

art of Dostoievsky. This method and this art are not unlike those of

Charlotte Brontë. The setting of the picture, the accessories, are

fantastic, sometimes to the verge of impossibility, and this no more

matters than the fantastic setting of _Jane Eyre_ matters. All we see

and all we feel is the white flame of light that burns throughout

the book. We no more care whether a man like General Epanchin could

or could not have existed, or whether the circumstances of his life

are possible or impossible than we care whether the friends of Mr.

Rochester are possible or impossible. Such things seem utterly trivial

in this book, where at every moment we are allowed to look deep down

into the very depths of human nature, to look as it were on the spirit

of man and woman naked and unashamed. For though the setting may be

fantastic if not impossible, though we may never have seen such people

in our lives, they are truer than life in a way: we seem to see right

inside every one of these characters as though they had been stripped

of everything which was false and artificial about them, as though they

were left with nothing but their bared souls, as they will be at the

Day of Judgment.

With regard to the artistic construction of the book, the method is

the same as that of most of Dostoievsky’s books. In nearly all his

works the book begins just before a catastrophe and occupies the space

of a few days. And yet the book is very long. It is entirely taken

up by conversation and explanation of the conversation. There are no

descriptions of nature; everything is in a dialogue. Directly one

character speaks we hear the tone of his voice. There are no “stage

directions.” We are not told that so and so is such and such a person,

we feel it and recognise it from the very first word he says. On the

other hand, there is a great deal of analysis, but it is never of an

unnecessary kind. Dostoievsky never nudges our elbow, never points

out to us things which we know already, but he illuminates with a

strong searchlight the deeps of the sombre and tortuous souls of his

characters, by showing us what they are themselves thinking, but not

what he thinks of them. His analysis resembles the Greek chorus, and

his books resemble Greek tragedies in the making, rich ore mingled with

dark dross, granite and marble, the stuff out of which Æschylus could

have hewn another _Agamemnon_, or Shakespeare have written another

_King Lear_.

_The Idiot_ may not be the most artistic of all his books, in the sense

that it is not centralised and is often diffuse, which is not the case

with _Crime and Punishment_, but it is perhaps the most characteristic,

the most personal, for none but Dostoievsky could have invented and

caused to live such a character as Prince Mwishkin, and made him

positively radiate goodness and love.

VII

_THE POSSESSED_

_The Possessed_, or _Devils_, which is the literal translation of

the Russian title, is perhaps inferior to Dostoievsky’s other work

as a whole, but in one sense it is the most interesting book which

he ever wrote. There are two reasons for this: in the first place,

his qualities and his defects as a writer are seen in this book

intensified, under a magnifying glass as it were, at their extremes, so

that it both gives you an idea of the furthest range of his powers, and

shows you most clearly the limitations of his genius. Stevenson points

out somewhere that this is the case with Victor Hugo’s least successful

novels. In the second place, the book was far in advance of its time.

In it Dostoievsky shows that he possessed “a prophetic soul.”

The book deals with the Nihilists who played a prominent part in the

sixties. The explanation of the title is to be found in a quotation

from the 8th chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel.

“And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain;

and they besought Him that He would suffer them to enter into them.

And He suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man and entered

into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the

lake and were choked. When they that fed them saw what was done, they

fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country.

“Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found

the man out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of

Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind; and they were afraid. They also

which saw it, told them by what means he that was possessed of the

devils, was healed.”

The book, as I have said, undoubtedly reveals Dostoievsky’s powers at

their highest pitch, in the sense that nowhere in the whole range of

his work do we find such isolated scenes of power; scenes which are, so

to speak, white hot with the fire of his soul; and characters in which

he has concentrated the whole dæmonic force of his personality, and the

whole blinding strength of his insight. On the other hand, it shows us,

as I added, more clearly than any other of his books, the nature and

the extent of his limitations. It is almost too full of characters and

incidents; the incidents are crowded together in an incredibly short

space of time, the whole action of the book, which is a remarkably long

one, occupying only the space of a few days, while to the description

of one morning enough space is allotted to make a bulky English novel.

Again, the narrative is somewhat disconnected. You can sometimes

scarcely see the wood for the trees. Of course, these objections are in

a sense hypercritical, because, as far as my experience goes, any one

who takes up this book finds it impossible to put it down until he has

read it to the very end, so enthralling is the mere interest of the

story, so powerful the grip of the characters. I therefore only suggest

these criticisms for those who wish to form an idea of the net result

of Dostoievsky’s artistic scope and achievement.

With regard to the further point, the “prophetic soul” which speaks in

this book is perhaps that which is its most remarkable quality. The

book was some thirty years ahead of its time: ahead of its time in

the same way that Wagner’s music was ahead of its time,--and this was

not only on account of the characters and the state of things which

it divined and foreshadowed, but also on account of the ideas and the

flashes of philosophy which abound in its pages. When the book was

published, it was treated as a gross caricature, and even a few years

ago, when Professor Brückner first published his _History of Russian

Literature_, he talked of this book as being a satire not of Nihilism

itself, but of the hangers-on, the camp-followers which accompany

every army. “Dostoievsky,” he says, “did not paint the heroes but the

Falstaffs, the silly adepts, the half and wholly crazed adherents of

Nihilism. He was indeed fully within his rights. Of course there were

such Nihilists, particularly between 1862 and 1869, but there were not

only such: even Nechaev, the prototype of Petrushka, impressed us by a

steel-like energy and a hatred for the upper classes which we wholly

miss in the wind-bag and intriguer Petrushka.”

There is a certain amount of truth in this criticism. It is true

that Dostoievsky certainly painted the Falstaffs and the half-crazy

adherents of Nihilism. But I am convinced that the reason he did not

paint the heroes was that he did not believe in their existence: he

did not believe that the heroes of Nihilism were heroes; this is plain

not only from this book, but from every line which he wrote about the

people who played a part in the revolutionary movement in Russia; and

so far from the leading personage in his book being merely a wind-bag,

I would say that one is almost more impressed by the steel-like energy

of the character, as drawn in this book, than by the sayings and doings

of his prototype--or rather his prototypes in real life. The amazing

thing is that even if a few years ago real life had not furnished

examples of revolutionaries as extreme both in their energy and in

their craziness as Dostoievsky paints them, real life has done so in

the last four years. Therefore, Dostoievsky not only saw with prophetic

divination that should circumstances in Russia ever lead to a general

upheaval, such characters might arise and exercise an influence, but

his prophetic insight has actually been justified by the facts.

As soon as such circumstances arose, as they did after the Japanese

War of 1904, characters such as Dostoievsky depicted immediately came

to the front and played a leading part. When M. de Vogüé published

his book, _La Roman Russe_, in speaking of _The Possessed_, he said

that he had assisted at several of the trials of Anarchists in 1871,

and he added that many of the men who came up for trial, and many of

the crimes of which they were accused, were identical reproductions

of the men and the crimes imagined by the novelist. If this was true

when applied to the revolutionaries of 1871, it is a great deal truer

applied to those of 1904-1909. That Dostoievsky believed that this

would happen, I think there can be no doubt. Witness the following

passage:

“Chigalev,” says the leading character of _The Possessed_, speaking of

one of his revolutionary disciples, a man with long ears, “is a man of

genius: a genius in the manner of Fourier, but bolder and cleverer. He

has invented ‘equality.’ In his system, every member of society has an

eye on every one else. To tell tales is a duty. The individual belongs

to the community and the community belongs to the individual. All are

slaves and equal in their bondage. Calumny and assassination can be

used in extreme cases, but the most important thing is equality. The

first necessity is to lower the level of culture science and talent.

A high scientific level is only accessible to superior intellects, and

we don’t want superior intellects. Men gifted with high capacities

have always seized upon power and become despots. Highly gifted men

cannot help being despots, and have always done more harm than good.

They must be exiled or executed. Cicero’s tongue must be cut out,

Copernicus’ eyes must be blinded, Shakespeare must be stoned. That is

Chigalevism. Slaves must be equal. Without despotism, up to the present

time, neither liberty nor equality has existed, but in a herd, equality

should reign supreme,--and that is Chigalevism.... I am all for

Chigalevism. Down with instruction and science! There is enough of it,

as it is, to last thousands of years, but we must organise obedience:

it is the only thing which is wanting in the world. The desire for

culture is an aristocratic desire. As soon as you admit the idea of the

family or of love, you will have the desire for personal property. We

will annihilate this desire: we will let loose drunkenness, slander,

tale-telling, and unheard-of debauchery. We will strangle every genius

in his cradle. We will reduce everything to the same denomination,

complete equality. ‘We have learnt a trade, and we are honest men: we

need nothing else.’ Such was the answer which some English workman made

the other day. The indispensable alone is indispensable. Such will

thenceforth be the watchword of the world, but we must have upheavals.

We will see to that, we the governing class. The slaves must have

leaders. Complete obedience, absolute impersonality, but once every

thirty years Chigalev will bring about an upheaval, and men will begin

to devour each other: always up to a given point, so that we may not

be bored. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation, and in Chigalevism

there will be no desires. We will reserve for ourselves desire and

suffering, and for the slaves there will be Chigalevism.... We will

begin by fermenting disorder; we will reach the people itself. Do you

know that we are already terribly strong? those who belong to us are

not only the men who murder and set fire, who commit injuries after

the approved fashion, and who bite: these people are only in the way.

I do not understand anything unless there be discipline. I myself am

a scoundrel, but I am not a Socialist. Ha, ha! listen! I have counted

them all: the teacher who laughs with the children whom he teaches, at

their God and at their cradle, belongs to us; the barrister who defends

a well-educated assassin by proving that he is more educated than his

victims, and that in order to get money he was obliged to kill, belongs

to us; the schoolboy who in order to experience a sharp sensation

kills a peasant, belongs to us; the juries who systematically acquit

all criminals, belong to us; the judge who at the tribunal is afraid of

not showing himself to be sufficiently liberal, belongs to us; among

the administrators, among the men of letters, a great number belong

to us, and they do not know it themselves. On the other hand, the

obedience of schoolboys and fools has reached its zenith. Everywhere

you see an immeasurable vanity, and bestial, unheard-of appetites. Do

you know how much we owe to the theories in vogue at present alone?

When I left Russia, Littré’s thesis, which likens crime to madness,

was the rage. I return, and crime is already no longer considered even

as madness: it is considered as common sense itself, almost a duty, at

least a noble protest. ‘Why should not an enlightened man kill if he

has need of money?’ Such is the argument you hear. But that is nothing.

The Russian God has ceded his place to drink. The people are drunk, the

mothers are drunk, the children are drunk, the churches are empty. Oh,

let this generation grow: it is a pity we cannot wait. They would be

drunk still. Ah, what a pity that we have no proletariat! But it will

come, it will come. The moment is drawing near.”

In this declaration of revolutionary faith, Dostoievsky has

concentrated the whole of an ideal on which thousands of ignorant men

in Russia have acted during the last three years. All of the so-called

Hooliganism which came about in Russia after the war, which although

it has greatly diminished has by no means yet been exterminated by a

wholesale system of military court-martials, proceeds from this, and

its adepts are conscious or unconscious disciples of this creed. For

the proletariat which Dostoievsky foresaw is now a living fact, and

a great part of it has been saturated with such ideas. Not all of

it, of course. I do not for a moment mean to say that every ordinary

Russian social-democrat fosters such ideas; but what I do mean to say

is that these ideas exist and that a great number of men have acted on

a similar creed which they have only half digested, and have sunk into

ruin, ruining others in doing so, and have ended by being hanged.

Thus the book, _Devils_, which, when it appeared in 1871, was thought

a piece of gross exaggeration, and which had not been out long before

events began to show that it was less exaggerated than it appeared at

first sight--has in the last three years, and even in this year of

grace, received further justification by events such as the rôle that

Father Gapon played in the revolutionary movement, and the revelations

which have been lately made with regard to Azev and similar

characters. Any one who finds difficulty in believing a story such as

that which came to light through the Azev revelations, had better read

_The Possessed_. It will throw an illuminating light on the motives

that cause such men to act as they do, and the circumstances that

produce such men.

The main idea of the book is to show that the whole strength of what

were then the Nihilists and what are now the Revolutionaries,--let us

say the Maximalists,--lies, not in lofty dogmas and theories held by

a vast and splendidly organised community, but simply in the strength

of character of one or two men, and in the peculiar weakness of the

common herd. I say the peculiar weakness with intention. It does not

follow that the common herd, to which the majority of the revolutionary

disciples belong, is necessarily altogether weak, but that though the

men of whom it is composed may be strong and clever in a thousand ways,

they have one peculiar weakness, which is, indeed, a common weakness

of the Russian character. But before going into this question, it is

advisable first to say that what Dostoievsky shows in his book, _The

Possessed_, is that these Nihilists are almost entirely devoid of

ideas; the organisations round which so many legends gather, consist in

reality of only a few local clubs,--in this particular case, of one

local club. All the talk of central committees, executive committees,

and so forth, existed only in the imagination of the leaders. On the

other hand, the character of those few men who were the leaders and who

dominated their disciples, was as strong as steel and as cold as ice.

And what Dostoievsky shows is how this peculiar strength of the leaders

exercised itself on the peculiar weakness of the disciples. Let us now

turn to the peculiar nature of this weakness. Dostoievsky explains it

at the very beginning of the book. In describing one of the characters,

Chatov, who is an unwilling disciple of the Nihilist leaders, he says:

“He is one of those Russian Idealists whom any strong idea strikes

all of a sudden, and on the spot annihilates his will, sometimes for

ever. They are never able to react against the idea. They believe in

it passionately, and the rest of their life passes as though they were

writhing under a stone which was crushing them.”

The leading figure of the book is one Peter Verkhovensky, a political

agitator. He is unscrupulous, ingenious, and plausible in the highest

degree, as clever as a fiend, a complete egotist, boundlessly

ambitious, untroubled by conscience, and as hard as steel. His

prototype was Nachaef, an actual Nihilist. The ambition of this man is

to create disorder, and disorder once created, to seize the authority

which must ultimately arise out of any disorder. His means of effecting

this is as ingenious as Chichikov’s method of disposing of “dead

souls” in Gogol’s masterpiece. By imagining a central committee, of

which he is the representative, he organises a small local committee,

consisting of five men called “the Fiver”; and he persuades his dupes

that a network of similar small committees exists all over Russia. He

aims at getting the local committee entirely into his hands, and making

the members of it absolute slaves to his will. His ultimate aim is to

create similar committees all over the country, persuading people in

every new place that the network is ready everywhere else, and that

they are all working in complete harmony and in absolute obedience to

a central committee, which is somewhere abroad, and which in reality

does not exist. This once accomplished, his idea is to create disorder

among the peasants or the masses, and in the general upheaval to seize

the power. It is possible that I am defining his aim too closely, since

in the book one only sees his work, so far as one local committee is

concerned. But it is clear from his character that he has some big idea

at the back of his head. He is not merely dabbling with excitement in a

small local sphere, for all the other characters in the book, however

much they hate him, are agreed about one thing; that in his cold and

self-seeking character there lies an element of sheer enthusiasm.

The manner in which he creates disciples out of his immediate

surroundings, and obtains an unbounded influence over them, is by

playing on the peculiar weakness which I have already quoted as being

the characteristic of Chigalevism. He plays on the one-sidedness of the

Russian character; he plays on the fact that directly one single idea

takes possession of the brain of a certain kind of Russian idealist, as

in the case of Chatov, or Raskolnikov, for instance, he is no longer

able to control it. Peter works on this. He also works on the vanity of

his disciples, and on their fear of not being thought advanced enough.

“The principal strength,” he says on one occasion, “the cement which

binds everything, is the fear of public opinion, the fear of having

an opinion of one’s own. It is with just such people that success is

possible. I tell you they would throw themselves into the fire if I

told them to do so, if I ordered it. I would only have to say that

they were bad Liberals. I have been blamed for having deceived my

associates here in speaking of a central committee and of ‘innumerable

ramifications.’ But where is the deception? The central committee is

you and me. As to the ramifications, I can have as many as you wish.”

But as Peter’s plans advance, this cement, consisting of vanity and the

fear of public opinion, is not sufficient for him; he wants a stronger

bond to bind his disciples together, and to keep them under his own

immediate and exclusive control; and such a bond must be one of blood.

He therefore persuades his committee that one of their members, Chatov,

to whom I have already alluded, is a spy. This is easy, because Chatov

is a member of the organisation against his will. He became involved

in the business when he was abroad, in Switzerland; and on the first

possible occasion he says he will have nothing to do with any Nihilist

propaganda, since he is absolutely opposed to it, being a convinced

Slavophil and a hater of all acts of violence. Peter lays a trap for

him. At a meeting of the committee he asks every one of those present

whether, should they be aware that a political assassination were about

to take place, they would denounce the man who was to perform it. With

one exception all answer no, that they would denounce an ordinary

assassin, but that political assassination is not murder. When the

question is put to Chatov he refuses to answer. Peter tells the others

that this is the proof that he is a spy, and that he must be made away

with. His object is that they should kill Chatov, and thenceforth be

bound to him by fear of each other and of him. He has a further plan

for attributing the guilt of Chatov’s murder to another man. He has

come across an engineer named Kirilov. This man is also possessed by

one idea, in the same manner as Raskolnikov and Chatov, only that,

unlike them, his character is strong. His idea is practically that

enunciated many years later by Nietzsche, that of the Superman. Kirilov

is a maniac: the single idea which in his case has taken possession of

him is that of suicide. There are two prejudices, he reasons, which

prevent man committing suicide. One of them is insignificant, the other

very serious, but the insignificant reason is not without considerable

importance: it is the fear of pain. In exposing his idea he argues that

were a stone the size of a six-storied house to be suspended over a

man, he would know that the fall of the stone would cause him no pain,

yet he would instinctively dread its fall, as causing extreme pain. As

long as that stone remained suspended over him, he would be in terror

lest it should cause him pain by its fall, and no one, not even the

most scientific of men, could escape this impression. Complete liberty

will come about only when it will be immaterial to man whether he lives

or not: that is the aim.

The second cause and the most serious one that prevents men from

committing suicide, is the idea of another world. For the sake of

clearness I will here quote Kirilov’s conversation on this subject

with the narrator of the story, which is told in the first person:

“... That is to say, punishment?” says his interlocutor.

“No, that is nothing--simply the idea of another world.”

“Are there not atheists who already disbelieve in another world?”

Kirilov was silent.

“You perhaps judge by yourself.”

“Every man can judge only by himself,” said Kirilov, blushing.

“Complete liberty will come about when it will be entirely immaterial

to man whether he lives or whether he dies: that is the aim of

everything.”

“The aim? Then nobody will be able or will wish to live.”

“Nobody,” he answered.

“Man fears death, and therefore loves life,” I remarked. “That is how I

understand the matter, and thus has Nature ordained.”

“That is a base idea, and therein lies the whole imposture. Life is

suffering, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Everything now is in pain

and terror. Man loves life now, because he loves pain and terror. Thus

has he been made. Man gives his life now for pain and fear, and therein

lies the whole imposture. Man is not at present what he ought to be.

A new man will rise, happy and proud, to whom it will be immaterial

whether he lives or dies. That will be the new man. He who vanquishes

pain and fear, he will be God, and the other gods will no longer exist.”

“Then, according to you, the other God does exist?”

“He exists without existing. In the stone there is no pain, but in the

fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain which arises from the

fear of death. He who vanquishes the pain and the fear, he will be God.

Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything new. Then history

will be divided into two parts. From the gorilla to the destruction of

God, and from the destruction of God to....”

“To the gorilla...?”

“To the physical transformation of man and of the world. Man will be

God, and will be transformed physically.”

“How do you think man will be transformed physically?”

“The transformation will take place in the world, in thought,

sentiments, and actions.”

“If it will be immaterial to men whether they live or die, then men

will all kill each other. That is perhaps the form the transformation

will take?”

“That is immaterial. The imposture will be destroyed. He who desires

to attain complete freedom must not be afraid of killing himself. He

who dares to kill himself, has discovered where the error lies. There

is no greater liberty than this: this is the end of all things, and

you cannot go further. He who dares to kill himself is God. It is at

present in every one’s power to bring this about: that God shall be no

more, and that nothing shall exist any more. But nobody has yet done

this.”

“There have been millions of suicides.”

“But they have never been inspired with this idea. They have always

killed themselves out of fear, and never in order to kill fear. He who

will kill himself simply in order to kill fear, he will be God.”

In this last sentence we have the whole idea and philosophy of Kirilov.

He had made up his mind to kill himself, in order to prove that he was

not afraid of death, and he was possessed by that idea, and by that

idea alone. In another place he says that man is unhappy because he

does not know that he is happy: simply for this reason: that is all.

“He who knows that he is happy will become happy at once, immediately.”

And further on he says: “Men are not good, simply because they do not

know they are good. When they realise this, they will no longer commit

crimes. They must learn that they are good, and instantly they will

become good, one and all of them. He who will teach men that they are

good, will end the world.” The man to whom he is talking objects that

He who taught men that they were good was crucified.

“The man will come,” Kirilov replies, “and his name will be the

Man-God.”

“The God-Man?” says his interlocutor.

“No, the Man-God,--there is a difference.”

Here we have his idea of the Superman.[20]

As soon as Peter discovers Kirilov’s obsession, he extracts from him a

promise that, as he has determined to commit suicide, and that as it is

quite indifferent to him how and when he does it, he shall do it when

it is useful to him, Peter. Kirilov consents to this, although he feels

himself in no way bound to Peter, and although he sees through him

entirely and completely, and would hate him were his contempt not too

great for hatred. But Peter’s most ambitious plans do not consist merely

in binding five men to him by an indissoluble bond of blood: that is

only the means to an end. The end, as I have already said, is vaguely

to get power; and besides the five men whom he intends to make his

slaves for life, Peter has another and far more important trump card.

This trump card consists of a man, Nicholas Stavrogin, who is the hero

of the book. He is the only son of a widow with a landed estate, and

after being brought up by Peter’s father, an old, harmless and kindly

Radical, he is sent to school at the age of sixteen, and later on goes

into the army, receiving a commission in one of the most brilliant of

the Guards regiments in St. Petersburg. No sooner does he get to St.

Petersburg, than he distinguishes himself by savage eccentricities. He

is what the Russians call a _skandalist_. He is a good-looking young

man of Herculean strength, and quiet, pleasant manners, who every now

and then gives way to the wildest caprices, the most extravagant and

astounding whims, when he seems to lose all control over himself. For

a time he leads the kind of life led by Prince Harry with Falstaff,

and his extravagances are the subject of much talk. He drives over

people in his carriage, and publicly insults a lady of high position.

Finally, he takes part in two duels. In both cases he is the aggressor.

One of his adversaries is killed, and the other severely wounded. On

account of this he is court-martialled, degraded to the ranks, and

has to serve as a common soldier in an infantry regiment. But in 1863

he has an opportunity of distinguishing himself, and after a time his

military rank is given back to him. It is then that he returns to the

provincial town, where the whole of the events told in the book take

place, and plays a part in Peter’s organisation. Peter regards him,

as I have said, as his trump card, because of the strength of his

character. He is one of those people who represent the extreme Lucifer

quality of the Russian nature. He is proud and inflexible, without any

trace of weakness. There is nothing in the world he is afraid of, and

there is nothing he will not do if he wishes to do it. He will commit

the wildest follies, the most outrageous extravagances, but as it were

_deliberately_, and not as if he were carried away by the impetuosity

of his temperament. On the contrary, he seems throughout to be as cold

as ice, and eternally unruffled and cool; and he is capable when he

chooses of showing a self-control as astonishing and remarkable as

his outbursts of violence. Peter knows very well that he cannot hope

to influence such a man. Stavrogin sees through Peter and despises

him. At the same time, Peter hopes to entangle him in his scheme, as

he entangles the others, and thinks that, this once done, a man with

Stavrogin’s character cannot help being his principal asset. It is on

this very character, however, that the whole of Peter’s schemes break

down. Stavrogin has married a lame, half-witted girl; the marriage is

kept secret, and he loves and is loved by an extremely beautiful girl

called Lisa. Peter conceives the idea of getting a tramp, an ex-convict

who is capable of everything, to murder Stavrogin’s wife and the

drunken brother with whom she lives, and to set fire to a part of the

town and the house where the two are living. He hopes that Stavrogin

will marry Lisa, and then not be able to withdraw from his organisation

for fear of being held responsible for the murder of his wife.

Stavrogin sees through the whole scheme. He announces his marriage

publicly; but this act, instead of alienating Lisa from him, increases

her passion. Nevertheless Stavrogin’s wife and her brother are

murdered, and a large quarter of the town is burned. When Lisa asks

Stavrogin if he is in any way connected with this murder, he replies

that he was opposed to it, but that he had guessed that they would

be murdered, and that he had taken no steps to prevent it. Lisa

herself is killed, almost by accident, on the scene of the murder of

Stavrogin’s wife. She is killed by an excited man in the crowd, who

holds her responsible for the deed, and thinks that she has come to

gloat over her victims. After this Stavrogin washes his hands of the

whole business, and leaves the town. It is then that Peter carries

out the rest of his plans. Chatov is murdered, and Peter calls upon

Kirilov to fulfil his promise and commit suicide. He wishes him, before

committing the act, to write a paper in which he shall state that he

has disseminated revolutionary pamphlets and proclamations, and that he

has employed the ex-convict who committed the murders. He is also to

add that he has killed Chatov on account of his betrayal. But Kirilov

has not known until this moment that Chatov is dead, and he refuses to

say a word about him. Then begins a duel between these two men in the

night, which is the most exciting chapter in the book, and perhaps one

of the most exciting and terrifying things ever written. Peter is in

terror lest Kirilov should fail him, and Kirilov is determined not to

be a party to Peter’s baseness. Peter plays upon his vanity, and by

subtle taunts excites to a frenzy the man’s monomania, till at last

he consents to sign the paper. Then snatching a revolver he goes into

the next room. Peter waits, not knowing what is going to happen. Ten

minutes pass, and Peter, consumed by anxiety, takes a candle and opens

the door of the room in which Kirilov has shut himself. He opens the

door, and somebody flies at him like a wild beast. He shuts the door

with all his might, and remains listening. He hears nothing, and as he

is now convinced that Kirilov will not commit suicide, he makes up his

mind to kill Kirilov himself, now that he has got the paper. He knows

that in a quarter of an hour his candle will be entirely consumed; he

sees there is nothing else to be done but to kill Kirilov, but at the

same time he does not wish to do it.

At last he takes the revolver in his right hand and the candle in his

left hand, and with his left hand manages to open the door. The room

is apparently empty. At first he thinks that Kirilov has fled; then he

becomes aware that against the wall, between a window and a cupboard,

Kirilov is standing, stiff and motionless as a ghost. He rushes toward

him. Kirilov remains motionless, but his eye is fixed on Peter, and a

sardonic smile is on his lips, as though he had guessed what was in

Peter’s mind. Peter, losing all self-control, flies at Kirilov, who

knocks the candle out of Peter’s hand, and bites his little finger

nearly in two. Peter beats him on the head with the butt of his

revolver, and escapes from the room. As he escapes, he hears terrifying

screams of “At once! at once! at once!” Peter is running for his life,

and is already in the vestibule of the house, when he hears a revolver

shot. Then he goes back and finds that Kirilov has killed himself.

This is practically the end of the book. Peter gets away to St.

Petersburg, and all his machinations are discovered. The corpse of

Chatov is found; the declaration in Kirilov’s handwriting at first

misleads the police, but the whole truth soon comes out, since nearly

all the conspirators confess, each being overcome with remorse. Peter

escapes and goes abroad. Nicholas Stavrogin returns to his home from

St. Petersburg; he is not inculpated in any way in the plots, since the

conspirators bear witness that he had nothing to do with them. But he

hangs himself nevertheless.

As I have said before, the chief characters of this book, Stavrogin,

Peter, Chatov, and Kirilov, who seemed such gross exaggerations

when the book was published, would surprise nobody who has had any

experience of contemporary Russia. Indeed, Peter is less an imitation

of Nechaev than a prototype of Azev. As to Kirilov, there are dozens of

such men, possessed by one idea and one idea only, in Russia. Stavrogin

also is a type which occurs throughout Russian history. Stavrogin has

something of Peter the Great in him, Peter the Great run to seed, and

of such there are also many in Russia to-day.

VIII

_THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV_

The subject of _The Brothers Karamazov_[21] had occupied Dostoievsky’s

mind ever since 1870, but he did not begin to write it until 1879,

and when he died in 1881, only half the book was finished; in fact,

he never even reached what he intended to be the real subject of

the book. The subject was to be the life of a great sinner, Alosha

Karamazov. But when Dostoievsky died, he had only written the prelude,

in itself an extremely long book; and in this prelude he told the story

of the bringing up of his hero, his surroundings and his early life,

and in so doing he tells us all that is important about his hero’s

brothers and father. The story of Alosha’s two brothers, and of their

relations to their father, is in itself so rich in incident and ideas

that it occupies the whole book, and Dostoievsky died before he had

reached the development of Alosha himself.

The father is a cynical sensualist, utterly wanting in balance, vain,

loquacious, and foolish. His eldest son, Mitya, inherits his father’s

sensuality, but at the same time he has the energy and strength of

his mother, his father’s first wife; Mitya is full of energy and

strength. His nature does not know discipline; and since his passions

have neither curb nor limit, they drive him to catastrophe. His nature

is a mixture of fire and dross, and the dross has to be purged by

intense suffering. Like Raskolnikov, Mitya has to expiate a crime.

Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that he has killed his

father. Everything points to it, so much so that when one reads the

book without knowing the story beforehand, one’s mind shifts from

doubt to certainty, and from certainty to doubt, just as though one

were following some absorbing criminal story in real life. After a

long series of legal proceedings, cross-examinations, and a trial in

which the lawyers perform miracles of forensic art, Mitya is finally

condemned. I will not spoil the reader’s pleasure by saying whether

Mitya is guilty or not, because there is something more than idle

curiosity excited by this problem as one reads the book. The question

seems to test to the utmost one’s power of judging character, so

abundant and so intensely vivid are the psychological data which the

author gives us. Moreover, the question as to whether Mitya did or did

not kill his father is in reality only a side-issue in the book; the

main subjects of which are, firstly, the character of the hero, which

is made to rise before us in its entirety, although we do not get as

far as the vicissitudes through which it is to pass. Secondly, the

root-idea of the book is an attack upon materialism, and the character

of Alosha forms a part of this attack. Materialism is represented in

the second of the brothers, Ivan Karamazov, and a great part of the

book is devoted to the tragedy and the crisis of Ivan’s life.

Ivan’s mind is, as he says himself, Euclidean and quite material.

It is impossible, he says, to love men when they are near to you.

You can only love them at a distance. Men are hateful, and there is

sufficient proof of this in the sufferings which children alone have

to endure upon earth. At the same time, his logical mind finds nothing

to wonder at in the universal sufferings of mankind. Men, he says, are

themselves guilty: they were given Paradise, they wished for freedom,

and they stole fire from heaven, knowing that they would thereby

become unhappy; therefore they are not to be pitied. He only knows

that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that one thing follows

from another perfectly simply, that everything proceeds from something

else, and that everything works out as in an equation. But this is not

enough for him: it is not enough for him to recognise that one thing

proceeds simply and directly from another. He wants something else;

he must needs have compensation and retribution, otherwise he would

destroy himself; and he does not want to obtain this compensation

somewhere and some time, in infinity, but here and now, on earth, so

that he should see it himself. He has not suffered, merely in order

that his very self should supply, by its evil deeds and its passions,

the manure out of which some far-off future harmony may arise. He

wishes to see with his own eyes how the lion shall lie down with the

lamb. The great stumbling-block to him is the question of children:

the sufferings of children. If all men have to suffer, in order that by

their suffering they may build an eternal harmony, what have children

got to do with this? It is inexplicable that they should suffer, and

that it should be necessary for them to attain to an eternal harmony by

their sufferings. Why should _they_ fall into the material earth, and

make manure for some future harmony? He understands that there can be

solidarity in sin between men; he understands the idea of solidarity

and retaliation, but he cannot understand the idea of solidarity with

children in sin. The mocker will say, he adds, that the child will grow

up and have time to sin; but he is not yet grown up. He understands,

he says, what the universal vibration of joy must be, when everything

in heaven and on earth joins in one shout of praise, and every living

thing cries aloud, “Thou art just, O Lord, for Thou hast revealed Thy

ways.” And when the mother shall embrace the man who tormented and tore

her child to bits,--when mother, child, and tormentor shall all join in

the cry, “Lord, Thou art just!” then naturally the full revelation will

be accomplished and everything will be made plain. Perhaps, he says,

he would join in the Hosanna himself, were that moment to come, but he

does not wish to do so; while there is yet time, he wishes to guard

himself against so doing, and therefore he entirely renounces any idea

of the higher harmony. He does not consider it worth the smallest tear

of one suffering child; it is not worth it, because he considers that

such tears are irreparable, and that no compensation can be made for

them; and if they are not compensated for, how can there be an eternal

harmony? But for a child’s tears, he says, there is no compensation,

for retribution--that is to say, the punishment of those who caused

the suffering--is not compensation. Finally, he does not think that

the mother has the right to forgive the man who caused her children to

suffer; she may forgive him for her own sufferings, but she has not

the right to forgive him the sufferings of her children. And without

such forgiveness there can be no harmony. It is for love of mankind

that he does not desire this harmony: he prefers to remain with his

irreparable wrong, for which no compensation can be made. He prefers to

remain with his unavenged and unavengeable injuries and his tireless

indignation. Even if he is not right, they have put too high a price,

he says, on this eternal harmony. “We cannot afford to pay so much for

it; we cannot afford to pay so much for the ticket of admission into

it. Therefore I give it back. And if I am an honest man, I am obliged

to give it back as soon as possible. This I do. It is not because I do

not acknowledge God, only I must respectfully return Him the ticket.”

The result of Ivan’s philosophy is logical egotism and materialism. But

his whole theory is upset, owing to its being pushed to its logical

conclusion by a half-brother of the Karamazovs, a lackey, Smerdyakov,

who puts into practice the theories of Ivan, and commits first a

crime and then suicide. This and a severe illness combine to shatter

Ivan’s theories. His physical being may recover, but one sees that his

epicurean theories of life cannot subsist.

In sharp contrast to the two elder brothers is the third brother,

Alosha, the hero of the book. He is one of the finest and most

sympathetic characters that Dostoievsky created. He has the simplicity

of “The Idiot,” without his naïveté, and without the abnormality

arising from epilepsy. He is a normal man, perfectly sane and sensible.

He is the very incarnation of “sweet reasonableness.” He is _Ivan

Durak_, Ivan the Fool, but without being a fool. Alosha, Dostoievsky

says, was in no way a fanatic; he was not even what most people call

a mystic, but simply a lover of human beings; he loved humanity;

all his life he believed in men, and yet nobody would have taken

him for a fool or for a simple creature. There was something in him

which convinced you that he did not wish to be a judge of men, that

he did not wish to claim or exercise the right of judging others.

One remarkable fact about his character, which is equally true of

Dostoievsky’s own character, was that Alosha with this wide tolerance

never put on blinkers, or shut his eyes to the wickedness of man, or

to the ugliness of life. No one could astonish or frighten him, even

when he was quite a child. Every one loved him wherever he went. Nor

did he ever win the love of people by calculation, or cunning, or

by the craft of pleasing. But he possessed in himself the gift of

making people love him. It was innate in him; it acted immediately and

directly, and with perfect naturalness. The basis of his character was

that he was a _Realist_. When he was in the monastery where he spent

a part of his youth, he believed in miracles; but Dostoievsky says,

“Miracles never trouble a Realist; it is not miracles which incline

a Realist to believe. A true Realist, if he is not a believer, will

always find in himself sufficient strength and sufficient capacity to

disbelieve even in a miracle. And if a miracle appears before him as an

undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve in his senses than admit the

fact of the miracle. If, on the other hand, he admits it, he will admit

it as a natural fact, which up to the present he was unaware of. The

Realist does not believe in God because he believes in miracles, but he

believes in miracles because he believes in God. If a Realist believes

in God, his realism will necessarily lead him to admit the existence of

miracles also.”

Alosha’s religion, therefore, was based on common sense, and admitted

of no compromise. As soon as, after having thought about the matter,

he becomes convinced that God and the immortality of the soul exist,

he immediately says to himself quite naturally: “I wish to live for

the future life, and to admit of no half-way house.” And just in the

same way, had he been convinced that God and the immortality of the

soul do not exist, he would have become an atheist and a socialist. For

Dostoievsky says that Socialism is not only a social problem, but an

_atheistic_ problem. It is the problem of the incarnation of atheism,

the problem of a Tower of Babel to be made without God, not in order to

reach Heaven from earth, but to bring Heaven down to earth.

Alosha wishes to spend his whole life in the monastery, and to give

himself up entirely to religion, but he is not allowed to do so. In the

monastery, Alosha finds a spiritual father, Zosima. This character,

which is drawn with power and vividness, strikes us as being a blend

of saintliness, solid sense, and warm humanity. He is an old man, and

he dies in the convent; but before he dies, he sees Alosha, and tells

him that he must leave the convent for ever; he must go out into

the world, and live in the world, and suffer. “You will have many

adversaries,” he says to him, “but even your enemies will love you.

Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will be happy on account

of them, and you will bless life and cause others to bless it. That is

the most important thing of all.” Alosha is to go into the world and

submit to many trials, for he is a Karamazov too, and the microbe of

lust which rages in the blood of that family is in him also. He is to

put into practice Father Zosima’s precepts: “Be no man’s judge; humble

love is a terrible power which effects more than violence. Only active

love can bring out faith. Love men and do not be afraid of their sins:

love man in his sin; love all the creatures of God, and pray God to

make you cheerful. Be cheerful as children and as the birds.” These are

the precepts which Alosha is to carry out in the face of many trials.

How he does so we never see, for the book ends before his trials

begin, and all we see is the strength of his influence, the effect of

the sweetness of his character in relation to the trials of his two

brothers, Mitya and Ivan.

That Dostoievsky should have died before finishing this monumental

work which would have been his masterpiece, is a great calamity.

Nevertheless the book is not incomplete in itself: it is a large piece

of life, and it contains the whole of Dostoievsky’s philosophy and

ideas. Moreover, considered merely as a novel, as a book to be read

from the point of view of being entertained, and excited about what

is going to happen next, it is of enthralling interest. This book,

therefore, can be recommended to a hermit who wishes to ponder over

something deep, in a cell or on a desert island, to a philosopher who

wishes to sharpen his thoughts against a hard whetstone, to a man who

is unhappy and wishes to find some healing balm, or to a man who is

going on a railway journey and wishes for an exciting story to while

away the time.

IX

This study of Dostoievsky, or rather this suggestion for a study of

his work, cannot help being sketchy and incomplete. I have not only

not dealt with his shorter stories, such as _White Nights_, _The

Friend of the Family_, _The Gambler_ and _The Double_, but I have not

even mentioned two longer novels, _The Hobbledehoy_ and _Despised

and Rejected_. The last named, though it suffers from being somewhat

melodramatic in parts, contains as strong a note of pathos as is to be

found in any of Dostoievsky’s books; and an incident of this book has

been singled out by Robert Louis Stevenson as being--together with the

moment when Mark Antony takes off his helmet, and the scene when Kent

has pity on the dying Lear--one of the most greatly moving episodes in

the whole of literature. The reason why I have not dwelt on these minor

works is that to the English reader, unacquainted with Dostoievsky,

an exact and minute analysis of his works can only be tedious. I have

only dealt with the very broadest outline of the case, so as to enable

the reader to make up his mind whether he wishes to become acquainted

with Dostoievsky’s work at all. My object has been merely to open the

door, and not to act as a guide and to show him over every part of

the house. If I have inspired him with a wish to enter the house, I

have succeeded in my task. Should he wish for better-informed guides

and fuller guide-books, he will find them in plenty; but guides and

guide-books are utterly useless to people who do not wish to visit the

country of which they treat. And my sole object has been to give in the

broadest manner possible a rough sketch of the nature of the country,

so as to enable the traveller to make up his mind whether he thinks

it worth while or not to buy a ticket and to set forth on a voyage of

exploration. Should such an one decide that the exploration is to him

attractive and worth his while, I should advise him to begin with _The

Letters from a Dead House_, and to go on with _The Idiot_, _Crime and

Punishment_, and _The Brothers Karamazov_; and to read _The Possessed_

last of all. If he understands and appreciates _The Letters from a Dead

House_, he will be able to understand and appreciate the character of

Dostoievsky and the main ideas which lie at the root of all his books.

If he is able to understand and appreciate _The Idiot_, he will be able

to understand and appreciate the whole of Dostoievsky’s writings. But

should he begin with _Crime and Punishment_, or _The Possessed_, it is

possible that he might be put off, and relinquish the attempt; just

as it is possible that a man who took up Shakespeare’s plays for the

first time and began with _King Lear_, might make up his mind not to

persevere, but to choose some more cheerful author. And by so doing he

would probably lose a great deal, since a man who is repelled by _King

Lear_ might very well be able to appreciate not only _The Merchant of

Venice_, but _Henry IV_ and the _Winter’s Tale_. If one were asked to

sum up briefly what was Dostoievsky’s message to his generation and

to the world in general, one could do so in two words: love and pity.

The love which is in Dostoievsky’s work is so great, so bountiful, so

overflowing, that it is impossible to find a parallel to it, either

in ancient or in modern literature. It is human, but more than human,

that is to say, divine. Supposing the Gospel of St. John were to be

annihilated and lost to us for ever, although nothing, of course,

could replace it, Dostoievsky’s work would go nearer to recalling the

spirit of it than any other books of any other European writer.[22]

It is the love which faces everything and which shrinks from nothing.

It is the love which that saint felt who sought out the starving and

freezing beggar, and warmed and embraced him, although he was covered

with sores, and who was rewarded by the beggar turning into His Lord

and lifting him up into the infinite spaces of Heaven.

Dostoievsky tells us that the most complete of his characters, Alosha,

is a Realist, and that was what Dostoievsky was himself. He was a

Realist in the true sense of the word, and he was exactly the contrary

of those people who when they wrote particularly filthy novels in which

they singled out and dwelt at length on certain revolting details of

life, called themselves Realists. He saw things as they really are;

he never shut his eyes or averted his gaze from anything which was

either cruel, hateful, ugly, bitter, diseased or obscene; but the more

he looked at the ugly things, the more firmly he became convinced of

the goodness that is in and behind everything: To put it briefly,

the more clearly he realised mortal misery and sin, the more firmly

he believed in God. Therefore, as I have more than once said in this

study, although he sounds the lowest depths of human gloom, mortal

despair, and suffering, his books are a cry of triumph, a clarion peal,

a hosanna to the idea of goodness and to the glory of God. There is

a great gulf between Dostoievsky and such novelists as make of their

art a clinical laboratory, in which the vices and the sores, and only

the vices and the sores, are dissected and observed, not under a

microscope, but under a magnifying-glass, so that a totally distorted

and exaggerated impression of life is the result. And this is all the

more remarkable, because a large part of his most important characters

are abnormal: monomaniacs, murderers, or epileptics. But it is in

dealing with such characters that the secret of Dostoievsky’s greatness

is revealed. For in contradistinction to many writers who show us what

is insane in the sanest men, who search for and find a spot of disease

in the healthiest body, a blemish in the fairest flower, a flaw in the

brightest ruby, Dostoievsky seeks and finds the sanity of the insane, a

healthy spot in the sorest soul, a gleam of gold in the darkest mine, a

pearl in the filthiest refuse heap, a spring in the most arid desert.

In depicting humanity at its lowest depth of misery and the human soul

at its highest pitch of anguish, he is making a great act of faith, and

an act of charity, and conferring a huge benefit on mankind. For in

depicting the extremest pain of abnormal sufferers, he persuades us of

the good that exists even in such men, and of the goodness that is in

suffering itself; and by taking us in the darkest of dungeons, he gives

us a glimpse such as no one else has given us of infinite light and

love.

On the other hand, Dostoievsky is equally far removed from such writers

(of which we have plenty in England) who throw a cloak over all evil

things, and put on blinkers, and who, because the existence of evil

is distasteful to them, refuse to admit and face it. Such an attitude

is the direct outcome of either conscious or unconscious hypocrisy.

Dostoievsky has not a grain of hypocrisy in his nature, and therefore

such an attitude is impossible to him.

Dostoievsky is a Realist, and he sees things as they are all through

life, from the most important matters down to the most trivial. He is

free from cant, either moral or political, and absolutely free from all

prejudice of caste or class. It is impossible for him to think that

because a man is a revolutionary he must therefore be a braver man than

his fellows, or because a man is a Conservative he must therefore be a

more cruel man than his fellows, just as it is impossible for him to

think the contrary, and to believe that because a man is a Conservative

he cannot help being honest, or because a man is a Radical he must

inevitably be a scoundrel. He judges men and things as they are, quite

apart from the labels which they choose to give to their political

opinions. That is why nobody who is by nature a doctrinaire[23] can

appreciate or enjoy the works of Dostoievsky, since any one who bases

his conduct upon theory cannot help at all costs being rudely shocked

at every moment by Dostoievsky’s creed, which is based on reality and

on reality alone. Dostoievsky sees and embraces everything as it really

is. The existence of evil, of ugliness and of suffering, inspires him

with only one thing, and this is pity; and his pity is like that which

King Lear felt on the Heath when he said:

“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou may’st shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just.”

Dostoievsky has a right to say such things, because throughout his life

he not only exposed himself, but was exposed, to feel what wretches

feel; because he might have said as King Lear said to Cordelia:

“I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears

Do scald like molten lead.”

He knew what wretches feel, by experience and not by theory, and all

his life he was bound upon a “wheel of fire.”

With regard to Dostoievsky’s political opinions, he synthesised and

expressed them all in the speech which he made in June 1880, at Moscow,

in memory of Pushkin. “There was never,” he said, “a poet who possessed

such universal receptivity as Pushkin. It was not only that he was

receptive, but this receptivity was so extraordinarily deep, that

he was able to embrace and absorb in his soul the spirit of foreign

nations. No other poet has ever possessed such a gift; only Pushkin;

and Pushkin is in this sense a unique and a prophetic apparition,

since it is owing to this gift, and by means of it, that the strength

of Pushkin--that in him which is national and Russian--found

expression.... For what is the strength of the Russian national spirit

other than an aspiration towards a universal spirit, which shall

embrace the whole world and the whole of mankind? And because Pushkin

expressed the national strength, he anticipated and foretold its

future meaning. Because of this he was a prophet. For what did Peter

the Great’s reforms mean to us? I am not only speaking of what they

were to bring about in the future, but of what they were when they

were carried out. These reforms were not merely a matter of adopting

European dress, habits, instruction and science.... But the men who

adopted them aspired towards the union and the fraternity of the

world. We in no hostile fashion, as would seem to have been the case,

but in all friendliness and love, received into our spirit the genius

of foreign nations, of all foreign nations, without any distinction

of race, and we were able by instinct and at the first glance to

distinguish, to eliminate contradictions, to reconcile differences;

and by this we expressed our readiness and our inclination, we who

had only just been united together and had found expression, to bring

about a universal union of all the great Aryan race. The significance

of the Russian race is without doubt European and universal. To be a

real Russian and to be wholly Russian means only this: to be a brother

of all men, to be universally human. All this is called Slavophilism;

and what we call ‘Westernism’ is only a great, although a historical

and inevitable misunderstanding. To the true Russian, Europe and the

affairs of the great Aryan race, are as dear as the affairs of Russia

herself and of his native country, because our affairs are the affairs

of the whole world, and they are not to be obtained by the sword, but

by the strength of fraternity and by our brotherly effort towards the

universal union of mankind.... And in the long-run I am convinced that

we, that is to say, not we, but the future generations of the Russian

people, shall every one of us, from the first to the last, understand

that to be a real Russian must signify simply this: to strive towards

bringing about a solution and an end to European conflicts; to show to

Europe a way of escape from its anguish in the Russian soul, which is

universal and all-embracing; to instil into her a brotherly love for

all men’s brothers, and in the end perhaps to utter the great and final

word of universal harmony, the fraternal and lasting concord of all

peoples according to the gospel of Christ.”

So much for the characteristics of Dostoievsky’s moral and political

ideals. There remains a third aspect of the man to be dealt with: his

significance as a writer, as an artist, and as a maker of books; his

place in Russian literature, and in the literature of the world. This

is, I think, not very difficult to define. Dostoievsky, in spite of

the universality of his nature, in spite of his large sympathy and

his gift of understanding and assimilation, was debarred, owing to

the violence and the want of balance of his temperament, which was

largely the result of disease, from seeing life steadily and seeing

it whole. The greatest fault of his genius, his character, and his

work, is a want of proportion. His work is often shapeless, and the

incidents in his books are sometimes fantastic and extravagant to the

verge of insanity. Nevertheless his vision, and his power of expressing

that vision, make up for what they lose in serenity and breadth, by

their intensity, their depth and their penetration. He could not look

upon the whole world with the calm of Sophocles and of Shakespeare;

he could not paint a large and luminous panorama of life unmarred

by any trace of exaggeration, as Tolstoy did. On the other hand, he

realised and perceived certain heights and depths of the human soul

which were beyond the range of Tolstoy, and almost beyond that of

Shakespeare. His position with regard to Tolstoy, Fielding, and other

great novelists is like that of Marlowe with regard to Shakespeare.

Marlowe’s plays compared with those of Shakespeare are like a series

of tumultuous fugues, on the same theme, played on an organ which

possesses but a few tremendous stops, compared with the interpretation

of music, infinitely various in mood, by stringed instruments played

in perfect concord, and rendering the finest and most subtle gradations

and shades of musical phrase and intention. But every now and then the

organ-fugue, with its thunderous bass notes and soaring treble, attains

to a pitch of intensity which no delicacy of blended strings can

rival: So, every now and then, Marlowe, in the scenes, for instance,

when Helena appears to Faustus, when Zenocrate speaks her passion,

when Faustus counts the minutes to midnight, awaiting in an agony of

terror the coming of Mephistopheles, or when Edward II is face to face

with his executioners, reaches a pitch of soaring rapture, of tragic

intensity which is not to be found even in Shakespeare. So it is with

Dostoievsky. His genius soars higher and dives deeper than that of

any other novelist, Russian or European. And what it thus gains in

intensity it loses in serenity, balance and steadiness. Therefore,

though Dostoievsky as a man possesses qualities of universality, he

is not a universal artist such as Shakespeare, or even as Tolstoy,

although he has one eminently Shakespearian gift, and that is the

faculty for discerning the “soul of goodness in things evil.” Yet, as

a writer, he reached and expressed the ultimate extreme of the soul’s

rapture, anguish and despair, and spoke the most precious words of pity

which have been heard in the world since the Gospels were written.

In this man were mingled the love of St. John, and the passion and

the fury of a fiend; but the goodness in him was triumphant over the

evil. He was a martyr; but bound though he was on a fiery wheel, he

maintained that life was good, and he never ceased to cry “Hosanna to

the Lord: for He is just!” For this reason Dostoievsky is something

more than a Russian writer: he is a brother to all mankind, especially

to those who are desolate, afflicted and oppressed. He had “great

allies”:

“His friends were exaltations, agonies,

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”

FOOTNOTES:

[17] These italics are mine.

[18] No finer estimate of Dostoievsky’s genius exists than M. de

Vogüé’s introduction to _La Maison des Morts_.

[19] This is, of course, not universal. See Mr. Gosse’s _Questions at

Issue_.

[20] It is characteristic that Dostoievsky puts the idea of the

“Superman” into the mouth of a monomaniac.

[21] The French translation of this book is an abridgment. It is quite

incomplete.

[22] This sentence has been misunderstood by some of my readers and

critics. What I mean is that the Christian charity and love preached

in the Gospel of St. John are reflected more sharply and fully in

Dostoievsky’s books than in those of any other writer I know of.

[23] By a doctrinaire I mean not a man who has strong principles and

convictions; but a man who deliberately shuts his eyes to those facts

which contradict his theory, and will pursue it to the end even when by

so doing the practice resulting is the contrary of his aim.