Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (873 page)

Yes, I am resolute to return, and shall certainly be in Petersburg early in the year. Here, I am constantly in such a frightful state of mind that I can hardly write at all. Work is dreadfully difficult to me. I follow Russian and German happenings with feverish interest; I have been through much in these four years. It has been a strenuous, if a lonely, existence. Whatever God shall send me in the future, I will humbly accept. My family, too, weighs heavily on my mind. In a word, I need human intercourse.

Strachov has written to me that everything in our society is still fearfully puerile and crude. If you knew how acutely one realizes that from here! But if you knew, besides, what a deep-drawn repulsion, almost approaching hatred, I have conceived for the whole of Western Europe during these four years!

My God, how terrible are our prepossessions with regard to foreign countries! Are Russians simpletons, then, that they can believe it -is through their schooling that the Prussians have come off conquerors? Such a view is positively sinful: it’s a fine schooling whereby children are harassed and tormented, as it were by Attila’s horde, and even worse.

You write that the national spirit of France is in revolt against brute force. From the beginning I have never doubted that if only the French will not hasten to make peace, if they will but hold out for as much as three months, the Germans will be driven forth with shame and ignominy. I should have to write you a long letter if I tried to give you a series of my personal observations — for example, of the way in which soldiers are sent to France, how they are recruited, equipped, housed and fed, transported. It is extraordinarily interesting. An unfortunate poverty-stricken woman, say, who lives by letting two furnished rooms (rooms are all “furnished” here; she would have about twopence worth of furniture of her own)... such a woman is forced, because she “has her own furniture,” to supply quarters and food for ten soldiers. The quartering lasts a day, or two, or three — at most a week. But the business costs her from twenty to thirty thalers.

I have myself read letters from German soldiers in France to their parents (small business-folk). Good God, the things they have to tell! O, how ill they are, and how hungry! But it would take too long to relate. One more observation, though, I’ll give you: at first, one often heard the people in the streets singing the “Wacht am Rhein”: now, one
never hears it at all.
By far the greatest excitement and pride exists among the professors, doctors, and students; the crowd are but little interested. Indeed, they are very quiet. But the professors are extraordinarily arrogant. I encounter them every evening in the public library. A very influential scholar with silver-white hair loudly exclaimed, the day before yesterday, “Paris must be bombarded!” So that’s the outcome of all their learning. If not of their learning, then of their stupidity. They may be very scholarly, but they’re frightfully limited! Yet another observation: all the populace here can read and write, but every one of them is terribly unintelligent, obtuse, stubborn, and devoid of any high ideals. But enough of this. Till we meet. I embrace you and thank you in anticipation. For God’s sake, don’t forget me, and do write to me.

Your DOSTOEVSKY.

LXIII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov

DRESDEN,

March
2 [14], 1871.

[At first the topic is a pending transaction between Dostoevsky and the publisher Stellovsky.]

I was delighted by your flattering opinion of the beginning of my novel. My God, how I feared for that book, and how I still fear! By the time you read these lines, you will have seen the second half of the first part in the February number of the
Roussky Viestnik.
What do you say to it? I am terribly anxious. I can’t at all tell if I shall get on with the sequel. I am in despair. There are to be only four parts in all — that is, forty sheets. Stepan Trofimovitch is a figure of superficial importance; the novel will not in any real sense deal with him; but his story is so closely connected with the principal events of the book that I was obliged to take him as basis for the whole. This Stepan Trofimovitch will take his “benefit” in the fourth part; his destiny is to have a most original climax. I won’t answer for anything else, but for
that
I answer without limitations. And yet I must once more say: I tremble like a frightened mouse. The idea tempted me, and I got tremendously carried away by it; but whether I shall bring it off, whether the whole novel isn’t a [...] — well, that’s my great trouble.

Only think: I have already had letters from several quarters congratulating me on the first part. This has enormously encouraged me. I tell you quite truthfully, with no idea of flattering you, that your judgment has more weight with me than any other. In the first place, I know that you are absolutely frank; in the second, your letter contains an inspired saying: “
They are Turgenev’s heroes in their old age.”
That’s admirably said! As I wrote, some such idea hovered before me; but you have expressed it in a word or two, in a formula, as it were. Aye — for those words I thank you; you have illuminated the whole book thereby. The work goes very heavily forward; I feel unwell, and soon now returns the period of my frequent attacks. I am afraid I shall not be ready in time. But I do not mean to hurry. True, I have thoroughly constructed and thoroughly studied my plan; nevertheless, if I hurry, I may spoil the whole thing. I have quite decided to return in the spring.

LXIV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov

DRESDEN,

April
23
[May
5], 1871.

[In the first half of the letter Dostoevsky advises Strachov on no account to abandon his critical work.] —

As a consequence of the colossal revolutions which are taking place in politics as well as in the narrower literary sphere, we behold general culture and capacity for critical judgment momentarily shattered and undone. People have taken it into their heads that they have no time for literature (as if literature were a pastime — fine culture, that!); in consequence of which the level of literary taste is so terribly low that no critic of to-day, however remarkable he may be, can have his proper influence on the public. Dobrolyubov’s and Pissarev’s successes really derive from their having totally ignored any such thing as literature, that sole domain of intellectual and spiritual vitality here below. But one must not reckon with such phenomena; one is bound to continue one’s critical work. Forgive my offering you advice: but that is how I should act, were I in your place.

In one of your brochures there was a wonderful piece of observation which nobody before you has made, namely, that every writer of any significance, any authentic talent, has finally yielded to national sentiment and become a Slavophil. Thus, for example, the facile Pushkin created, long before any of the Slavophils, that figure of the Chronicler in the monastery at Tchudov — that is to say, he grasped, far better than all the Kireyevskys, Chomyakovs, etc., the inmost essence of Slavophilism. And then, look at Herzen: what a longing, what a need, to strike into the true path! Only because of his personal weaknesses did he fail to do it. Nor is that all: this law of the conversion to nationality is not only to be observed in writers and poets, but in all other directions. So that one can in the end set up yet another law: if any man has genuine talent, he will have also that impulse to return to the people from the crumbling upper regions of society; but if he has no talent, he will not only remain in those crumbling regions, but even exile himself to foreign lands, or turn to Catholicism, or what not.

Bielinsky, whom you even to-day admire, was, as regards talent, feeble and impotent; therefore he condemned Russia and, in full consciousness of what he was doing, reviled his native land (people will have much to say of Bielinsky in the future, and then you’ll see). But I want only to say one thing more: that idea which you have expressed is enormously important, and demands further and more specialized treatment.

Your letters give me great delight. But about your last opinion on my novel I want to say this to you: first, you praise far too highly those excellencies which you find therein; second, you point with admirable acumen to its principal fault. Yes, that was and ever is my greatest torment — I never can control my material. Whenever I write a novel, I crowd it up with a lot of separate stories and episodes; therefore the whole lacks proportion and harmony. You have seen this astonishingly well; how frightfully have I always suffered from it, for I have always been aware that it was so. And I have made another great mistake besides: without calculating my powers, I have allowed myself to be transported by poetic enthusiasm, and have undertaken an idea to which my strength was not equal. (N.B. — The force of poetic enthusiasm is, to be sure, as for example with Victor Hugo, always stronger than the artistic force. Even in Pushkin one detects this disproportion.) But
I
destroy myself thereby.

I must further add that the move to Russia and the many anxieties which await me in the summer, will immensely injure the novel. Anyhow, I thank you for your sympathy. What a pity it is that we shall not see one another for so long. In the meantime

I am your most devoted

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.

LXV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov

DRESDEN,

May
18 [30], 1871.

MUCH-ESTEEMED NIKOLAY NIKOLAYEVITCH, So you really
have
begun your letter with Bielinsky, as I foresaw. But do reflect on Paris and the Commune. Will you perchance maintain, as others do, that the whole thing failed simply because of the lack of men, and as a result of unfavourable circumstances? Through the whole of this 19th century, that school has dreamed of the setting-up of earthly paradises (for instance, the phalansteries), and then, directly it came to action (as in the years 1848, 1849, and now), has shown a contemptible incapacity for any practical expression of itself. At bottom, the entire movement is but a repetition of the Russian delusion that men can reconstruct the world by reason and experience (Positivism). But we have seen enough of it by now to be entitled to declare that such impotence as is displayed can be no chance phenomenon. Why do they cut off heads? Simply because it’s the easiest of all things to do. To say something sensible is far more difficult. Effort is, after all, a lesser thing than attainment. They desire the common good, but when it comes to defining “good,” can only reiterate Rousseau’s aphorism — that “good” is a fantasy never yet ratified by experience. The burning of Paris is something utterly monstrous: “Since we have failed, let the whole world perish!” — for the Commune is more important than the world’s weal, and France’s! Yet they (and many others) see in that madness not monstrosity, but only
beauty.
Since that is so, the aesthetic idea must be completely clouded over in the modern mind. A moral basis (taken from Positivist teachings) for society is not only incapable of producing any results whatever, but can’t possibly even define itself to itself, and so must always lose its way amid aspirations and ideals. Have we not sufficient evidence by this time to be able to prove that a society is not thus to be built up, that quite otherwhere lie the paths to the common good, and that this common good reposes on things different altogether from those hitherto accepted? On what, then,
does
it repose? Men write and write, and overlook the principal point. In Western Europe the peoples have lost Christ (Catholicism is to blame), and therefore Western Europe is tottering to its fall. Ideas have changed — how evidently! And the fall of the Papal power, together with that of the whole Romano-German world (France, etc.) — what a coincidence!

All this would take long wholly to express, but what I really want to say to you is: If Bielinsky, Granovsky, and all the rest of the gang, had lived to see this day, they would have said: “No, it was not to this that we aspired! No, this is a mistake; we must wait a while, the light will shine forth, progress will win, humanity will build on new and healthier foundations, and be happy at last!” They would never admit that their way can lead at best but to the Commune or to Felix Pyat. That crew was so obtuse that even
now,
after the event, they would not be able to see their error, they would persist in their fantastic dreaming. I condemn Bielinsky less as a personality than as a most repulsive, stupid, and humiliating phenomenon of Russian life. The best one can say for it is that it’s inevitable. I assure you that Bielinsky would have been moved, to-day, to take the following attitude: “The Commune has accomplished nothing, because before all things it was French — that is to say, was steeped in nationalism. Therefore we must now seek out another people, which will not have the tiniest spark of national feeling, but will be ready, like me, to box its mother’s (Russia’s) ears.” Wrathfully he would continue to foam forth his wretched articles; he would go on reviling Russia, denying Russia’s greatest phenomena (such as Pushkin), so that he might thus make Russia seem to turn into an
empty
nation, which might take the lead in universal human activities. The Jesuitry and insincerity of our prominent public men, he would regard as great good fortune. And then, for another thing: you never knew him; but I had personal intercourse with him, and now can give his full measure. The man, talking with me once, reviled the Saviour, and yet surely he could never have undertaken to compare himself and the rest of the gentry who move the world, with Christ. He was not capable of seeing how petty, angry, impatient, base, and before all else covetous and vain, they, every one of them, are.
He
never asked himself the question: “But what can we put in His place? Of a surety not ourselves, so evil as we are?” No; he never reflected in any sort of way upon the possibility that he might be evil; he was to the last degree content with himself, and in that alone is expressed his personal, petty, pitiable stupidity.