Part 3

Decidedly, submissiveness, to this degree, is disconcerting! Nothing here for nihilists, anarchists, or even socialists, to use for their own ends. What! not a cry of revolt? Perhaps it was prudent to show respect for the Tsar, but why no revolt against society, or against the prison-cell from which he emerged an aged man? Just listen to what he says about his prison, in a letter to Michael dated February 22, 1856: “What has happened to my soul and my beliefs, my intellect and my affections in the space of these four years, I shall not tell you! The tale would be too long. The unbroken meditation, wherein I found refuge from the bitterness of reality, has surely not been vain. I now have hopes and desires which in bygone days I did not even anticipate.” And in another passage: “Do not imagine, I pray you, that I am still as moody and suspicious as I was in my last years in Petersburg. All that has gone for ever. God, too, is leading us.” And not long after, in another letter to S. D. Janovsky in 1872,[23] we come across this extraordinary confession (the italics are Dostoevsky’s!): “You loved me, cared for me, and I was then _sick in mind_ (I realize it now) _before my journey to Siberia_, where I was cured.”

Not a word of protest; only gratitude. An unrepaying martyr, indeed! In what faith does he live and move? What are the convictions that lend him strength? Perhaps an examination of his opinions, so far as his letters make them plain, will help us to understand the secret causes, already faintly indicated, of his disfavour and lack of success with the public, and explain why Dostoevsky still lingers on, as if in purgatory, in a middle state between obscurity and fame.

II

Dostoevsky was no partisan. Dreading party feeling and the dissensions it creates, he wrote: “My thoughts are chiefly concerned with what constitutes our community of ideas, the common ground whereon we all might meet, irrespective of tendency.” Profoundly convinced that “in Russian thought lay reconciliation for Europe’s antagonisms”, “veteran European Russian” as he termed himself, he devoted the whole strength of his being to the Russian unity which was to confound party and faction in one great love of country and of humanity. “Yes, I, too, hold your opinion that in Russia, by the very nature of her mission, Europe will be consummated. This has long been plain to me,” so he wrote from Siberia. Elsewhere he describes Russia as “a nation awaiting her mission,” “fit to lead the common interests of entire humanity.” And if, by virtue of a conviction which, perchance, was no more than premature, he deceived himself as to the importance of the Russian people (which is by no means _my_ opinion), it was not infatuated jingoism, but his intuition and the deep understanding he had, simply because he himself was a Russian, of the beliefs and party passions dividing Europe. Speaking of Pushkin, he credits himself with the poet’s “gift of world-wide sympathy,” adding, “It is this very faculty, his in common with all our people, which makes him truly national.” He considers the Russian soul as “a meeting-ground whereon all European aims may be reconciled,” exclaiming, “Where is the true Russian who does not first and foremost think of Europe?” and uttering even these strange words, “the Russian wanderer has need of world-wide happiness in order to find peace himself.”

Persuaded that “Russia’s future activity must be in the highest degree pan-human,” and that “maybe the Russian idea will be the synthesis of all the ideas developed with such courage and persistence in the various European nationalities,” his gaze is constantly directed outside Russia. His political and social judgments of France and of Germany are, to us, perhaps the most interesting passages of his correspondence. He travelled abroad, lingering in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, attracted in the first instance by his desire to know them, detained ultimately for months on end by the eternal question of money, either having an insufficiency of funds to continue his journey or fearing debts he has left behind in Russia, and the possibility of tasting imprisonment again. “With my health in the state it is,” he wrote when he was forty-nine, “I could not stand even six months’ confinement, nor, what is more, could I work.”

But in foreign parts he misses from the very first the air of Russia and contact with the Russian people. For him, Sparta, Toledo and Venice might as well not exist, he cannot become acclimatized, nor can he content himself anywhere for a moment. “I have no words to tell you how unbearable living abroad is to me,” he writes to his friend Strakhov. Not a letter written in exile but breathes the same lament: “I _must_ go back to Russia; the monotony of life here is crushing.” And as though in Russia were hidden the source of nourishment for his work, and the sap failed as soon as he was torn from his native soil, he wrote: “I have no taste for writing, or else, when I do write, it is with much suffering. I cannot think what this means, except it be that I have need of Russia, to work and to create.... I was only too clearly conscious that whether we lived at Dresden or elsewhere was a matter of indifference, for I should always be a foreigner in a foreign land.” Again: “If only you knew how good-for-nothing and alien I feel here. I am growing stupid and dull, and am losing touch with Russia. No breath of Russian air, no Russian spirit. I don’t understand the Russian exiles: madmen all!”

And yet at Geneva, at Vevey, he wrote _The Idiot_, at Dresden _The Eternal Husband_ and _The Possessed_. “You have spoken golden words about my work here. Right enough, I shall fall behind, not behind the times, but I shall lose touch with what is happening at home (I know it better than you do, because every day in life I read three Russian newspapers, every line of them, and I take out a couple of reviews), I shall become deaf to the living pulse of life, and how that tells on artistic creation!”

So this “world sympathy” exists together with and is strengthened by an ardent nationalism--its natural complement in Dostoevsky’s mind. He never wearies or flags in his protest against those that were at that time called the “Progressists,” that is to say (I borrow this definition from Strakhov), “the generation of politicians which expected the advancement of Russian civilization to proceed not from an organic development of the national character, but from an overhasty assimilation of Western teachings.” “The Frenchman is first and foremost a Frenchman, and an Englishman, an Englishman, and their highest aim is to remain true to themselves. Therein lies their strength.” He takes his stand against the “men who seek to uproot the Russians,” and does not wait for Barrès to warn the young intellectual “who tears himself away from society and disowns it, and does not ‘go to the people,’ but loses himself in foreign parts, in ‘Europeanism,’ in the kingdom of the universal man who has never existed, and in so doing breaks with the people, scorns it and misjudges it.” Like Barrès dealing with “sickly Kantism,” he writes in the preface to the review[24] he edits: “No matter how fertile an idea imported from abroad, it can only strike root here, become acclimatized, and prove of genuine use to us if our national life, spontaneously and without pressure from without, made the idea grow up, naturally and practically, to meet its own needs--needs which have been recognized by practical experience. No nation on earth, no society with a certain measure of stability has been developed to order, on the lines of a programme imported from abroad.”

Here follows a remark I regret not to have found in Barrès: “The capacity for separating oneself temporarily from one’s mother-earth for the purposes of self-contemplation, all prejudices apart, is the mark of a very strong personality, just as the power to look on the foreigner with kindly eyes is one of nature’s highest and noblest gifts.” And did Dostoevsky not seem to foresee how this doctrine was to lead and blind us?--“It is impossible to undeceive a Frenchman and prevent his believing himself the most important being in the wide world. Besides, of the wide world he is pretty ignorant. And what is more, he is not keen to be enlightened. This is a characteristic common to the whole nation, and very typical.”

Dostoevsky’s individualism, too, differentiates him more sharply--and more happily--from Barrès. And, set against Nietzsche, he becomes for us a shining example of how little infatuation and self-sufficiency may at times accompany belief in the value of the personality. “The hardest thing on earth,” he writes, “is to remain yourself,” and “no high aim is worth a life wrecked,” because for him, without individualism as without patriotism, there exists no way of serving humanity. If some Barrès enthusiasts were won over to him by the declarations I quoted a moment ago, is there one of them who would not be alienated by these fresh statements?

So, too, on reading these words: “In the new humanity, the æsthetic idea lacks clarity. The moral basis of society, held fast by positivism, not only gives no results, but cannot define itself, for it is lost in cloudy aspirations and ideals. Are there yet not enough facts to prove that society is not established thus, that these are not the paths leading to happiness, and that this is not, as has been believed till now, the source of happiness? But what _is_ its source then? So many volumes are written, and the essential point is ever missed: the Western World has lost Christ Jesus--and for this, and this alone, the Western World must perish.” Not a French Catholic but would applaud--were he not drawn up sharply by the phrase I dropped at the beginning: “Christ has been lost, by the error of Catholicism.”

What French Catholic will now dare let himself be touched by the tears of devotion that are shed throughout these letters of Dostoevsky’s? Vain hope, “to desire to reveal to the world a Russian Christ, unknown to the wider world, and whose very being is contained in our orthodoxy.”

The French Catholic, by virtue of his own personal orthodoxy, will refuse to listen, and for the moment, at least, Dostoevsky’s further remark is made in vain: “In my opinion, here is found the principle of our future civilizing force and of Europe’s resurrection at our hands, the very essence of our future strength.”

Although Dostoevsky gives M. de Vogüé grounds for discerning in him a “bitter animosity against thought and against life in its fullness,” a “sanctification of the mindless, colourless, and invertebrate,” and so on, we read in another passage from a letter to his brother: “Simple folk, you will say. Aye, but I dread simple men more than complex ones.”[25] This was his reply to a girl who “was anxious to make herself useful,” and had expressed her desire to become a midwife or hospital nurse: “By giving regular attention to your general education you will fit yourself for an activity more useful a hundred times. Would it not be better to give thought to the higher branches of your general education?... The majority of our specialists are fundamentally ignorant--and most of our students, of both sexes, are absolutely uneducated. What good can _they_ do to humanity?”[26] Frankly I did not need these words to realize M. de Vogüé’s mistake; but, all the same, this mistake _was_ possible.

Dostoevsky is not any more easily enrolled “for” or “against” Socialism; for, if Mme. Hoffmann is justified in saying, “A Socialist, in the most human acceptation of the word, Dostoevsky never for a moment ceased to be!” do we not read in his letters, “Socialism has already undermined Europe: if we delay too long, it will bring it to complete ruin”?

Conservative, but not hide-bound by tradition: monarchist, but of democratic opinions: Christian, but not a Roman Catholic: liberal, but not a progressive: Dostoevsky remains ever the man of whom there is no way to make use! He is of the stuff which displeases every party. Why? Because he never persuaded himself that less than the whole of his intelligence was necessary to the part he chose to play, or that for the sake of immediate issues he would be justified in forcing so delicate an instrument or upsetting its balance. “À propos of all _these possible tendencies_,” he wrote (and the italics are his own), “which were united in an expression of welcome to me (April 9, 1876),[27] I should gladly have written an article on the impression made by the letters, but, on reflection, I realized that it would be impossible to write it in all sincerity: now, lacking sincerity, could it be worth while?” What does he mean? Doubtless this: to write a reasonable article so as to please everybody and make a success of it, he would have to strain his ideas, simplify them to excess, in short, force his convictions beyond natural limits. And that is just what he cannot concede.

His individualism, while not harsh, and in reality one with his honesty of thought, does not allow him to submit his idea unless in its integrity, complex though this may be. And there is no stronger or subtler reason for his unpopularity amongst us.

I do not mean to insinuate that strong convictions ordinarily involve a certain dishonesty in reasoning; but they _do_ willingly dispense with intelligence. And yet, M. Barrès is too clever not to have quickly grasped the fact that not by impartial illumination of all its aspects can we ensure the speedy dissemination of an idea, but by giving it a definite bias.

If you want ideas to succeed, you must submit them one at a time; or, better, to succeed, submit one idea and no more. It is not enough to invent a good medium of expression; it is a question of never outgrowing it. The public likes to know exactly where it stands when a great name is mentioned. And tolerates ill what would congest its brain! At the mention of Pasteur, it likes to be able to say to itself, without hesitation: Yes, hydrophobia. Nietzsche? the _superman_. Curie? radium. Barrès? France and her dead. Quinton? plasma. Just as if you were to say. Lazenby? pickles. And Parmentier, if so be it that he did “invent” the potato, is better known, thanks to this solitary vegetable, than if we had to thank him for the entire produce of our kitchen gardens.

Dostoevsky all but reached success in France, when M. de Vogüé had the bright idea of calling, and thus stereotyping in this handy phrase--_the religion of suffering_--the doctrine he found worked into the closing chapters of _Crime and Punishment_.

That it is there, I am willing to concede; also that the phrase was a happy invention.... Unfortunately it did not contain the whole being of the man: he was too great in every way to be compressed into such small bulk. For if he was of these for whom “only one thing is needful: to know God,” at least this knowledge of God he tried to diffuse throughout his works in all its human and anxious complexity.

Ibsen was not easy to pin down either; like any other writer whose work is interrogative rather than affirmative. The relative success of the two plays, _A Doll’s House_ and _An Enemy of the People_, is due, certainly not to their outstanding excellence, but to the shadow of a conclusion which escaped Ibsen in them both. The public is but ill-pacified by the author who does not come to a strikingly evident solution. In its eyes, it is the sin of uncertainty, indolence of mind, lukewarmness of convictions. And most often, having little liking for intelligence, the public gauges the strength of a conviction by naught but the violence, persistence, and uniformity of the affirmation.

Anxious not to extend a field already so vast, I shall not attempt to define his doctrine here. I merely wanted to indicate its wealth of contradictions to the Western mind, unused to this need of reconciling extremes. Dostoevsky remains steadfast in the belief that between nationalism and europeanism, individualism and self-abnegation, the contradiction is apparent only. He holds that because each understands but one aspect of this vital question, the opposing

## parties remain uniformly remote from the truth. One more quotation:

it will, I am sure, throw more light on Dostoevsky’s position than any commentary. “To be happy must one be impersonal? Does salvation lie in self-effacement? Far from it, I should say. Not only must there be no self-effacement, but one must become a personality, even in a degree beyond what is possible in the West. Be clear as to my meaning: voluntary sacrifice, offered consciously and without constraint, sacrifice of the individual for the good of mankind, is, to my mind, the mark of personality in its noblest and highest development, of perfect self-control ... the absolute expression of the will. A strongly developed personality, conscious of its right to be such, having cast out fear, cannot use itself, cannot be used, except in sacrifice for others, that these may become, like unto itself, self-determining and happy personalities. It is Nature’s law, and mankind tends to reach it.”[28] This solution is taught him by Christ: “_For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it._”

Back in Petersburg in the winter of 1871-2, being then fifty years of age, he writes to Janovsky:[29] “There is no use hiding the fact that old age is coming near, and yet one doesn’t think of it, and makes preparation for a new work (_The Karamazovs_), for at last publishing something that will please; one still hopes for something out of life, and yet it is possible that everything has already been received. I am speaking of myself! Well, I am thoroughly happy!” This is the happiness, the joy beyond suffering latent in all Dostoevsky’s life and work, a joy that Nietzsche had rightly sensed, and which I charge M. de Vogüé with having missed entirely.

The tone of the letters changes brusquely at this period. His usual correspondents being, like himself, in Petersburg, he is no longer writing to them but to strangers, chance correspondents who turn to him for edification, comfort, guidance. I should require to quote almost all the letters; my better plan is to refer you to the book; I am writing this article solely to bring my reader into touch with it.

At last, freed from his horrible financial worries, he busies himself during the closing years of his life with editing the _Journal of an Author_, published only at irregular intervals. “I confess,” he wrote to the well-known Aksakov in November, 1880 (that is, three months before his death), “I confess, in all friendship, that intending to undertake next year the publication of the _Journal_, I have besought God often and long to make me pure in heart and pure of lips; without sin or envy, and incapable of wounding.”[30]

In this _Journal_ wherein M. de Vogüé could see only “obscure pæans, evading alike analysis and discussion,” the Russian people happily discovered something different, and Dostoevsky was able to feel that round about his work his dream of spiritual harmony was almost being realized, without any arbitrary unification.

When his death was announced, this communion and blending of spirits was shiningly manifested, and if, at first, “subversive elements planned to monopolize his dead body,” very soon, “by the miracle of one of these unexpected fusions that are Russia’s secret, when a national conviction rouses her, all parties, all antagonists, all scattered fragments of the empire were seen to be joined in a fresh bond of enthusiasm by this death.” The sentence is M. de Vogüé’s, and I rejoice after all the strictures I have made concerning his study, to be able to quote such noble words. “As it was said of the Tsars of old, that they gathered together the land of Russia,” he says later, “this spiritual King had ‘gathered together’ the heart of Russia.”

The same rallying of individual energies is at work now throughout Europe, slowly, mysteriously, almost--chiefly in Germany, where the editions of his works are multiplying, in France, too, where the rising generation recognizes and appreciates, better than that of M. de Vogüé, his strength. The hidden reasons which delayed his success will be the builders of a more enduring fame.

FOOTNOTES

[5] M. Gide refers to J. W. Bienstock’s translation, _Correspondance et Voyage à l’Étranger_, Paris, 1908. (_Translator’s note._)

[6] Letter to his brother Michael, Semipalatinsk, May 31, 1858.

[7] Bienstock, p. 122. Letter to A. N. Maïkov, Semipalatinsk, January 18, 1856.

[8] Bienstock, p. 364. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, February 26, 1870.

[9] Bienstock, p. 387-388. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, December 2, 1870.

[10] Bienstock, p. 415. Letter to A. N. Maïkov, Dresden, March 2, 1871.

[11] Bienstock, pp. 364-365. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, February 26, 1870.

[12] Bienstock, p. 55. Letter to his brother Michael, March 24, 1845.

[13] Mayne, p. 198. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, October 9, 1870.

[14] Bienstock, pp. 386-387. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, December 2, 1870.

[15] Bienstock, p. 267. Letter to A. N. Maïkov, Geneva, September 15, 1867.

[16] Bienstock, pp. 470-471. Letter to Mlle. N. N----, Petersburg, April 11, 1880.

[17] Bienstock, p. 235. Letter to Baron Alexander Wrangel, Petersburg, March 31, 1865.

[18] Bienstock, p. 239. Letter to Baron Alexander Wrangel, Petersburg, April 9, 1865.

[19] “To defend the theories he fancies are his,” says M. de Vogüé.

[20] Bienstock, p. 159. Letter to his brother Michael, Semipalatinsk, July 19, 1858.

[21] Mayne, p. 51.

[22] Bienstock, p. 135. Letter to Baron Alexander Wrangel, Semipalatinsk, May 23, 1856.

[23] Bienstock, p. 438.

[24] See Bienstock, pp. 592-598: Preface to _The Epoch_, 1865.

[25] Mayne, p. 62.

[26] Bienstock, pp. 447-448. Letter to Mlle. Guérassimov, Petersburg, March 7, 1877.

[27] Bienstock, p. 442. Letter to Mme. C. D. Altschevsky, Petersburg, April 9, 1876.

[28] Bienstock, p. 540.

[29] Bienstock, p. 437. Letter to S. D. Janovsky, Petersburg, February 4, 1872.

[30] Bienstock, p. 479. Letter to I. S. Aksakov, Petersburg, November 4, 1880.

ADDRESSES

(1922)

I