Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (851 page)

From your last remittance I have laid by fifteen roubles. So you see, dear Papa, that I need at least twenty-five more. We break up camp in the beginning of June. If you will stand by your son in his bitter need, send him this money by the first of June. I dare not insist upon my petition: I am not asking too much, but my gratitude will be boundless.

II. To his Brother Michael

PETERSBURG,

August
9, 1838.

[The letter begins with explanations of why Dostoevsky has not written to his brother for so long: he has not had a kopeck.]

It is true that I am idle — very idle. But what will become of me, if everlasting idleness is to be my only attitude towards life? I don’t know if my gloomy mood will ever leave me. And to think that such a state of mind is allotted to man alone — the atmosphere of his soul seems compounded of a mixture of the heavenly and the earthly. What an unnatural product, then, is he, since the law of spiritual nature is in him violated.... This earth seems to me a purgatory for divine spirits who have been assailed by sinful thoughts. I feel that our world has become one immense Negative, and that everything noble, beautiful, and divine, has turned itself into a satire. If in this picture there occurs an individual who neither in idea nor effect harmonizes with the whole — who is, in a word, an entirely unrelated figure — what must happen to the picture? It is destroyed, and can no longer endure.

Yet how terrible it is to perceive only the coarse veil under which the All doth languish! To know that one single effort of the will would suffice to demolish that veil and become one with eternity — to know all this, and still live on like the last and least of creatures.... How terrible! How petty is man! Hamlet! Hamlet! When I think of his moving wild speech, in which resounds the groaning of the whole numbed universe, there breaks from
my
soul not one reproach, not one sigh.... That soul is then so utterly oppressed by woe that it fears to grasp the woe entire, lest soit lacerate itself. Pascal once said: He who protests against philosophy is himself a philosopher. A poor sort of system!

But I have talked enough nonsense. Of your letters I have had only two, besides the last of all. Now, brother, you complain of your poverty. I am not rich either. But you will hardly believe that when we broke up camp I had not a kopeck. On the way I caught cold (it rained the whole day and we had no shelter), was sick with hunger as well, and had no money to moisten my throat with so much as a sip of tea. I got well in time, but I had suffered the direst need in camp, till at last the money came from Papa. I paid my debts, and spent the rest.

[Dostoevsky enlarges further on his brother’s situation and his own financial difficulties.]

However, it is time to speak of other things. You plume yourself on the number of books you have read.... But don’t please imagine that I envy you that. At Peterhof I read at least as many as you have. The whole of Hoffmann in Russian and German (that is, “Kater Murr,” which hasn’t yet been translated), and nearly all Balzac. (Balzac is great! His characters are the creations of an all-embracing intelligence. Not the spirit of the age, but whole millenniums, with all their strivings, have worked towards such development and liberation in the soul of man.) Besides all these, I read Goethe’s “Faust” and his shorter poems, Polevois’ History, “Ugolino” and “Undine” (I’ll write at length about “Ugolino” some other time), and, finally, Victor Hugo, except “Cromwell” and “Hernani.” Farewell. Write to me, please, as often as you possibly can, for your letters are a joy and solace. Answer
this
at once. I shall expect your reply in twelve days at the very latest. Do write, that I may not utterly languish.

Thy brother,

F. DOSTOEVSKY.

I have a new plan: to go mad. That’s the way: for people to lose their heads, and then be cured and brought back to reason! If you’ve read all Hoffmann, you’ll surely remember Alban. How do you like him? It is terrible to watch a man who has the Incomprehensible within his grasp, does not know what to do with it, and sits playing with a toy called God!

III. To his Brother Michael

PETERSBURG,

  October
31, 1838.

How long since I’ve written to you, dear brother! That hateful examination — it prevented me from writing to you and Papa, and from looking up I. N. Schidlovsky.(I. Nikolay Schidlovsky, a Treasury official, who wrote high-flown poems of abstract-ideal tendency. He later ruined himself by drink.) And what came of it all? I have not yet been promoted. O horror! to live another whole year in this misery! I should not have been so furious did I not know that I am the victim of the sheerest baseness. The failure would not have worried me so very much, if our poor father’s tears had not burned into my soul. I had not hitherto known the sensation of wounded vanity. If such a feeling had got hold of me, I might well have blushed for myself.... But now you must know that I should like to crush the whole world at one blow.... I lost so much time before the examination, and was ill and miserable besides; but
underwent
it in the fullest and most literal sense of the word, and yet have failed.... It is the decree of the Professor of Algebra, to whom, in the course of the year, I had been somewhat cheeky, and who was base enough to remind me of it to-day, while ostensibly explaining to me the reason for my failure. Out of ten full marks I got an average of nine and a half, and yet I’m left.... But hang it all, if I must suffer, I will.... I’ll waste no more paper on this topic, for I so seldom have an opportunity to talk with you.

My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be for ever in a state of exaltation, your philosophy is not true and not just. To
know
more, one must
feel
less, and
vice versa.
Your judgment is feather-headed — it is a delirium of the heart. What do you mean precisely by the word
know
? Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart, and not through the reason. Were we spirits, we could dwell in that region of ideas over which our souls hover, seeking the solution. But we are earth-born beings, and can only guess at the Idea — not grasp it by all sides at once. The guide for our intelligences through the temporary illusion into the innermost centre of the soul is called
Reason.
Now, Reason is a material capacity, while the soul or spirit lives on the thoughts which are whispered by the heart. Thought is born in the soul. Reason is a tool, a machine, which is driven by the spiritual fire. When human reason (which would demand a chapter for itself) penetrates into the domain of knowledge, it works independently of the
feeling,
and consequently of the
heart.
But when our aim is the understanding of love or of nature, we march towards the very citadel of the heart. I don’t want to vex you, but I do want to say that I don’t share your views on poetry or philosophy. Philosophy cannot be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity! Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God, and consequently does the philosopher’s work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than philosophical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry! It is odd that you reason quite in the sense of our contemporary philosophy. What a lot of crazy systems have been born of late in the cleverest and most ardent brains! To get a right result from this motley troop one would have to subject them all to a mathematical formula. And yet they are the “laws” of our contemporary philosophy! I have jabbered enough. And if I look upon your flabby system as impossible, I think it quite likely that my objections are no less flabby, so I won’t bother you with any more of them.

Brother, it is so sad to live without hope! When I look forward I shudder at the future. I move in a cold arctic atmosphere, wherein no sunlight ever pierces. For a long time I have not had a single outbreak of inspiration.... Hence I feel as the Prisoner of Chillon felt after his brother’s death. The Paradise-bird of poetry will never, never visit me again — never again warm my frozen soul. You say that I am reserved; but all my former dreams have long since forsaken me, and from those glorious arabesques that I once could fashion all the gilding has disappeared. The thoughts that used to kindle my soul and heart have lost their glow and ardency; or else my heart is numbed, or else.... I am afraid to go on with that sentence. I won’t admit that all the past was a dream, a bright golden dream.

Brother, I have read your poem. It urged some tears from my soul, and lulled it for a while by the spell of memories. You say that you have an idea for a drama. I am glad of that. Write your drama, then. If you had not these last crumbs from the Elysian feast, what would be left you in life? I am so sorry that these last few weeks I have not been able to look up Ivan Nikolayevitch (Schidlovsky); I was ill. Now listen. I think that the poet’s inspiration is increased by success. Byron was an egoist;
his
longing for fame was petty. But the mere thought that through one’s inspiration there will one day lift itself from the dust to heaven’s heights some noble, beautiful human soul; the thought that those lines over which one has wept are consecrated as by a heavenly rite through one’s inspiration, and that over them the coming generations will weep in echo... that thought, I am convinced, has come to many a poet in the very moment of his highest creative rapture. But the shouting of the mob is empty and vain. There occur to me those lines of Pushkin, where he describes the mob and the poet:

“So let the foolish crowd, thy work despising, scream,

And spit upon the shrine where burns thy fire supreme,

Let them in childish arrogance thy tripod set a-tremble....”

Wonderful, isn’t it? Farewell.

Your friend and brother,

F. DOSTOEVSKY.

By the way, do tell me what is the leading idea in Châteaubriand’s work, “Génie du Christianisme.”

I read lately in
Ssyn Otetschestva
an attack by the critic Nisard on Victor Hugo. How little the French esteem him! How low does Nisard rate his dramas and romances! They are unfair to him; and Nisard (though he is so intelligent) talks nonsense. Tell me, too, the leading motive of your drama; I am sure it is fine.

I pity our poor father! He has such a remarkable character. What trouble he has had. It is so bitter that I can do nothing to console him! But, do you know, Papa is wholly a stranger in the world. He has lived in it now for fifty years, and yet he has the same opinions of mankind that he had thirty years ago. What sublime innocence! Yet the world has disappointed him, and I believe that that is the destiny of us all. Farewell.

IV. To his Brother Michael

PETERSBURG,

January
1, 1840.

I thank you from my heart, good brother, for your dear letter. I am certainly quite a different sort of person from you; you could never imagine how delightfully my heart thrills when they bring me a letter from you, and I have invented a new sort of enjoyment: I put myself on the rack. I take your letter in my hand, turn it about for some minutes, feel it to see whether it’s long, and when I’ve satiated myself with the sealed envelope, I put it in my pocket. You’d never guess what a pleasant state of heart and soul I thus procure for myself. I often wait a quarter of an hour; at last I fall greedily upon the packet, unseal it, and devour your lines — your dear lines! Countless feelings awake in my heart while I read your letter. So many tender and painful, sweet and bitter, emotions crowd into my soul — yes, dear brother, there are painful and bitted ones. You cannot dream how bitter it is for me when people don’t understand me, when they mistake what I say, and see it in the wrong light. After I had read your last letter, I was quite
enragé
because you were not near me; I saw the dearest dreams of my heart, my most sacred principles, which I have won by hard experience, wholly distorted, mutilated, deformed. You said to me yourself: “Do write to me, contradict me, dispute with me.” You anticipated some profit therefrom. Dear brother, it has not been of the least use! The only thing that you have got from it is, that in your egoism (we are all egoists, for that matter) you have formed just such an opinion of me, my views, ideas, and peculiarities, as happens to suit yourself. And that is an extremely insulting one! No — polemics in intimate letters are a subtle poison. How will it be now, when we see one another again? I believe that all this will be subject for endless contention. But enough of it.

Now for your verses — hear me yet again, dear brother! I believe that in human life are infinite pain and infinite joy. In the poet’s life spring thorns and roses. The lyric is like the poet’s shadow, always with him, for he is an articulate creature. Your lyric poems are charming: “The Walk,” “The Morning,” “Visions of the Mother,” “Roses,” “The Horse of Phoebus” — these and many others are lovely. They are all like a vital piece of news from you — and a piece of news that moves me profoundly. For in those days I could understand you so well; and they are months which have stamped themselves deeply in my consciousness. How many strange and wondrous things had I just then lived through! It is a long story, and I shall never tell it to anyone.

When I last met Schidlovsky I took a walk with him in Ekaterinhof. What an amazing talk we had that evening! We were recalling the past winter, when we talked much of Homer, Shakespeare, Schiller, and Hoffmann — particularly Hoffmann. We spoke of ourselves also, of the future, and of you, my dear fellow. But he has been away a long time now, and I have no news of him. Is he still alive even? For his health was very bad. So do write to him!

All through last winter I was in a strangely exalted mood. Intercourse with Schidlovsky had procured me many hours of fuller life, though that was not the only reason for my inspired state. You were, perhaps, hurt with me, and may be even so still, because I did not write to you at that time. Stupid service-matters were the hindrance. I must confess to you, my dear fellow, that though I have always loved you, it was for your verses, for the poetry of your life, for your sufferings... that was all. It was neither brother-love nor comrade-love. For I had with me at that time a friend, a man, whom I
did
love so. You said once, brother, that I had not read Schiller. You are mistaken. I have him by heart, I have spoken his speech and dreamed his dreams; and I believe that it was a peculiarly good stroke of luck that made me acquainted with the great poet in that special period of my life. I could never have learnt to know Schiller so well as precisely in those days. When I read Schiller with
him,
I saw
in him
the noble and fiery Don Carlos, the Marquis Posa, and Mortimer. That friendship was of great value to me, and has caused me great pain. But I desire to keep silence about it for ever. The name of Schiller is for me a beloved and intimate password, which awakens countless memories and dreams. Those memories are bitter, and that is why I have always avoided talking with you about Schiller and the impressions which I owe to him. Even to hear his name sets my heart aching.