Part 4

Some time before the war I was preparing for Charles Péguy’s _Cahiers de la Quinzaine_, a _Life of Dostoevsky_ after the manner of Romain Rolland’s fine monographs on Beethoven and Michelangelo. War came, and I was forced to lay aside the notes I had taken. For long other cares and duties absorbed me and my project was to all intents and purposes abandoned, when recently at the celebration of Dostoevsky’s Centenary, Jacques Copeau asked me to address a meeting in his theatre, the _Vieux Colombier_. I brought my packet of notes out into the light of day again, and re-reading them after the lapse of time, I found the ideas I had jotted down seemed worth our attention, but that chronological order, though necessary for biographical purposes, was perhaps not the most advisable on this occasion. It is often a difficult task to separate the ideas Dostoevsky weaves, as it were, into a fine web in each of his novels, but we never lose track of them. In my eyes these ideas are all that is most precious in Dostoevsky and I have made them my own. If I took up each of his works in turn, I could not possibly avoid repeating myself. There is, however, another--and better--way: pursuing his ideas from one novel to another, I shall try to lay hold of them and set them forth as plainly as is possible despite their apparent confusion. Psychologist, sociologist, moralist--Dostoevsky is all three, and novelist as well. Whereas in his works ideas are never presented in their crude state, but always through the medium of the character expressing them (which accounts for their confusion and relativity), I, for my part, will try to avoid abstractions and outline the ideas as sharply as possible. I should like first of all to introduce you to Dostoevsky in person, and speak of some incidents in his life that reveal his character and help us to draw a clear likeness of him.

My pre-war plan of the biography comprised an introduction in which I proposed to discuss the commonly accepted idea of him. To throw light on the subject, I should have drawn a parallel between him and Rousseau--and no arbitrary one, I can assure you. Their natures reveal such deep-laid analogies that Rousseau’s _Confessions_ were able to exert an extraordinary influence on Dostoevsky. But in my opinion Rousseau, from the very beginning of his life, was poisoned, as it were, by Plutarch, through whom he fashioned for himself a somewhat rhetorical and pompous notion of a “great man.” He set up before himself the image of a fancied hero, and his life was one prolonged effort to be like it. He tried hard to _be_ what he wanted to _seem_. I allow that his painting of his own character may be sincere, but he is ever thinking of his pose, which pride alone dictates.

“False greatness,” in the admirable words of La Bruyère, “is shy and inaccessible. Conscious of its foible, it hides away, or at least never shows an open face, letting be seen only as much as will make an impression and save it from being revealed for what it really is, something mean and small.”

And if I do not go so far as to recognize Rousseau in this description, I _do_ think of Dostoevsky when a little farther on I read:

“True greatness is free, gentle, familiar, unaffected; it can be touched and handled, and loses nothing when seen at close quarters. The better you are acquainted with it, the more you admire it. It bends out of goodness of heart to its inferiors, and returns to its own level without effort. Sometimes it lets itself go, neglecting and surrendering its natural advantages, but ever ready to recover them and put them to use.”

With Dostoevsky there is this complete absence of pose or stage-management. He never considers himself a _superman_. He is most humbly human, and I do not think that pride of intellect could ever properly understand him.

The word _humility_ comes up again and again in his letters and works. “Why should they deny me? I make no demands. I am but a humble petitioner.” (November 23, 1869.)--“I do not demand, I only seek in all humility.” (December 7, 1869.)--“I have made the humblest of requests.” (February 12, 1870.)

“He often astonished me by a kind of humility,” says the _Raw Youth_ in speaking of his father, and in his effort to understand the possible relations between his father and mother, and the quality of their love, he recollects his father’s phrase, “She married me out of humility.”

I read lately in an interview with M. Henry Bordeaux a sentence which surprised me somewhat: “Seek first to know yourself.” The literary creator who seeks himself runs a great risk--the risk of finding himself. From then onwards he writes coldly, deliberately, in keeping with the self he has found. He imitates himself. If he knows his path and his limitations, it is only to keep strictly to them. His great dread is no longer insincerity, but inconsistency. The true artist is never but half-conscious of himself when creating. He does not know exactly who he is. He learns to know himself only through his creation, in it, and after it. Dostoevsky never set out to find himself; he gave himself without stint in his works. He lost himself in each of the characters of his books, and, for this reason, it is in them that he can be found again. Presently we shall see how painfully awkward he is when speaking in his own name, how eloquent, on the other hand, when his own ideas are expressed by those whom he inspires. It is in endowing them with life that he finds himself. He lives in each of them, and the most obvious result of merging himself in their diversity is the masking of his own inconsistencies.

I know no writer richer in contradictions and inconsistencies than Dostoevsky: Nietzsche would describe them as _antagonisms_. Had he been philosopher instead of novelist, he would certainly have attempted to bring his ideas into line, whereby we should have lost the most precious of them.

The happenings in Dostoevsky’s life, however tragic, are but surface disturbances. The passions overwhelming him seem to shake him to the depths; but beyond, there remains an inner chamber, unreached by outside happenings or by passion. In this connection a few of his own words will seem a revelation, if read in conjunction with another passage:

“Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no man can live. When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man often becomes a monster in his misery.”[31]

But then he seems still in error where his real goal is concerned, for he adds immediately after: “The one object of the prisoners was freedom and to get out of prison.”

These words were written in 1861. Such then was his idea of an aim in life. Of course he was suffering in that dread captivity! (He spent ten years in Siberia: four in prison, then six more in forced military service.) He was suffering; but once more a free man, he could realize that the real goal, the freedom he really longed for, was something deeper and had no connection with the throwing wide of prison gates. In 1874 he could write this extraordinary sentence, which I like to compare with what I read to you a moment ago:

“No aim can possibly be worth a wrecked existence.”[32]

So, according to Dostoevsky, we have each our reason for living, superior, hidden--hidden often from ourselves--certainly far different from the ostensible goal assigned by most of us to our existence.

Let us first of all try to picture Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky. His friend Riesenkampf delineates him as he was at twenty years of age, in 1841:

“The face was rounded and full; the nose slightly retroussé; the hair light brown, worn short. A broad forehead, and beneath thin eyebrows, little grey eyes, set deep in the head. Pale cheeks, covered with freckles. A sickly, almost livid complexion, and very thick lips.”

It is sometimes asserted that his first epileptic attacks occurred in Siberia; but he was a sick man even before sentence was passed on him, and the disease certainly made progress in Siberia. “A sickly complexion.” Dostoevsky had always had poor health. And yet he, weak and complaining, was singled out for military service while his robust brother was exempted.

In 1841, that is, at twenty years of age, he was promoted non-commissioned officer, and then, in 1843, he took the examinations and was commissioned ensign. We learn that his officer’s pay amounted to 3,000 roubles, and although he had come into his share of the father’s fortune after the latter’s death, he led a free life, and had to take a younger brother in charge, consequently he was always falling into debt. This money question turns up again and again in his letters, much more urgently than in Balzac’s. It plays an extremely important part almost to the very end of his life, and it was not until the closing years that he was really freed from his financial worries.

In his young days Dostoevsky indulged in every dissipation. He was assiduous at the play, at concerts, at the ballet. Not a care in the world! He chooses to rent a flat simply because he has taken a fancy to the landlord’s appearance. His servant robs him, and he finds entertainment in watching the pilfering continue. His mood changes abruptly, according as fortune smiles or frowns. Faced with his utter inability to steer a course in life, his family and friends are anxious to see him share quarters with Riesenkampf. “Take this real methodical German as your model,” they tell him. Riesenkampf, slightly older than Dostoevsky, was a physician, and came to settle down in Petersburg in the year 1843. At this moment, Dostoevsky has not a penny to his name. He is living on bread and milk--both unpaid for. “Fyodor is one of these people in whose company a man lives well, but who himself will remain a needy creature till the very end of his days.” They set up quarters together, but Dostoevsky proves himself impossible as a companion. He receives Riesenkampf’s patients in the waiting-room, and each time one of them appears needy, Dostoevsky succours him with Riesenkampf’s funds or with his own, when he _has_ any. One fine day he receives a thousand roubles from Moscow, the bulk of which sum is immediately employed in settling some debts; then, the very same evening, Dostoevsky gambles away the rest, at billiards, by his own account, and the following morning is obliged to borrow five roubles from his friend. I forgot to tell you that the last fifty roubles had been stolen by a patient of Riesenkampf’s, whom Dostoevsky, in a sudden manifestation of friendliness, had shown into his room. Riesenkampf and Dostoevsky parted in March, 1844, without much apparent improvement in the latter’s ways.

In 1846, he published _Poor Folk_. This book had sudden and considerable success. Dostoevsky’s manner of speaking about his success is significant of the man. We read in a contemporary letter:

“It dazes me: I am not living. I haven’t time to think.... A precarious reputation has been built up around me, and I don’t know how long the damnable thing will last.”[33]

In 1849, along with a group of suspects, he is taken by the police. This is the affair known as the Petrachevsky Plot.

It is difficult to say what exactly were at this time Dostoevsky’s political and social opinions. From this frequenting of suspected individuals we are to infer a great measure of intellectual curiosity and a certain generous warm-heartedness which ran him into unconsidered risks. But we have no authority for believing that Dostoevsky ever was what can be termed an anarchist, a being threatening the safety of the state.

Numerous passages in his letters and in the _Journal of an Author_ show him as entertaining quite the opposite ideas, and the whole of _The Possessed_ is, as it were, a speech for the prosecution against anarchism. At any rate, taken he was amongst these suspects meeting round Petrachevsky. He was thrown into prison, sent to trial, and heard himself condemned to death. It was only at the eleventh hour that the death sentence was commuted and he was exiled to Siberia. All this is already familiar to you. In these causeries I should like to speak only of what you could not find elsewhere; but, for the sake of such as are unfamiliar with them, I shall read to you some passages from his letters dealing with his sentence and his life in the penal settlement. I consider them very self-revealing. In them we shall see, through the portrayal of his sufferings, appear again and again the optimism that supported him all his days. This is what he wrote, on July 18, 1849, from the fortress where he lay awaiting the verdict.

“Human beings have an incredible amount of endurance and will to live; I should never have expected to find so much in myself; now I know from experience that it is there.”[34]

Then in August, weighed down by ill-health:

“To lose courage is to sin ... work, ever more work, _con amore_, therein lies real happiness.”[35]

And again, on September 14, 1849:

“I had expected worse. And I know now that I have in me such reserves of vitality that it would be difficult to exhaust.”[36]

I shall read almost the whole of his short letter dated December 22.

“To-day, December 22, we were led out to Semionovsky Square. There the death warrant was read over to us all, we were given the cross to kiss, swords were snapped above our heads, and our last toilet was performed (white shirts). Then, three of us were placed against posts for execution. I was the sixth; we were called up in threes, so I came in the second group, and I had a few moments left to live. I thought of you, brother, and of yours; at that last moment you alone were in my thoughts, and then I realized how much I loved you, beloved brother! I had time to kiss Plestcheyev and Dourov, who were beside me, and bid them farewell. At last the retreat was sounded, those tied to the posts were fetched back, and it was read out to us that His Imperial Majesty was pleased to spare our lives.”[37]

In Dostoevsky’s novels we shall come across again and again more or less direct allusions to the death sentence and to the condemned man’s last hours. I cannot dwell on this for the moment.

Before starting out for Semipalatinsk, he was granted half an hour to take leave of his brother Michael. Of the two, he was the calmer, a friend relates, and said:

“In the settlement, dear brother, the convicts are not wild beasts, just men, better men than I perhaps, more deserving, too, maybe. Yes, we shall meet again, I hope: I am sure we shall see each other again. Only do write to me and send me books. I shall soon let you know which to send: surely reading is permitted there.” (This, says the narrator, was a white lie to comfort his brother.) “As soon as I am released, I shall begin to write. I have _lived_ during these last months, and in the days before me, what shall I not see and live through? After all that I shall not lack material for writing.”[38]

During the four years of Siberia which followed, Dostoevsky was not permitted to write to his family. At any rate the existing volume of correspondence contains no letters from this period, nor do Orest Müller’s _Documents_ (_Materialen_), published in 1883, indicate any. But since the issue of these _Documents_ numerous Dostoevsky letters have been found and published; doubtless still more will yet be discovered.

According to Müller, Dostoevsky left the penal settlement on March 2, 1854: according to official records, on January 23. These same archives mention nineteen letters written by Fyodor Dostoevsky between March 16, 1854 and September 11, 1856 to his brother, relatives, and friends during the years of military service at Semipalatinsk, where his sentence was completed. The French translation gives only twelve of these letters, omitting (and why I cannot tell) that admirable letter dated February 22, 1854, which, originally translated and printed in Numbers 12 and 13 of _La Vogue_, 1886, now only with difficulty accessible, was reprinted in the February issue of the _Nouvelle Revue Française_, 1922.

Seeing this letter is not to be found in the published volume of Dostoevsky’s correspondence, allow me to read some lengthy extracts from it:[39]

(February 22, 1854.) “At last I can talk with you somewhat more explicitly, and, I believe, in a more reasonable manner. But before I write another line I _must_ ask you: tell me, for God’s sake, why you have never written me a single syllable till now? Could I have expected this from you? Believe me, in my lonely and isolated state, I sometimes fell into utter despair, for I believed that you were no longer alive; through whole nights I would brood upon what was to become of your children, and I cursed my fate because I could not help them....”

You see his keenest suffering is not in the consciousness of his own abandonment, but in the realization of his powerlessness to help.

“How can I impart to you what is now in my mind--the things I thought, the things I did, the convictions I acquired, the conclusions I came to? I cannot even attempt the task. It is absolutely impossible. I don’t like to leave a piece of work half done; to say only a part is to say nothing. At any rate, you now have my detailed report in your hands: read it, and get from it what you will. It is my duty to tell you all, and so I will begin with my recollections. Do you remember how we parted from each other, dear beloved fellow? You had scarcely left me when we three, Dourov, Yastrembsky, and I, were led out to have the irons put on. Precisely at midnight on that Christmas Eve (1849) did chains touch me for the first time. They weigh about ten pounds, and make walking extraordinarily difficult. Then we were sent into open sledges, each with a gendarme; and so, in four sledges, the orderly opening the procession, we left Petersburg. I was heavy-hearted, and the many different impressions filled me with confused and uncertain sensations. My heart beat with a peculiar flutter, and that numbed its pain. Still, the fresh air was reviving in its effect, and, since it is usual before all new experiences to be aware of a curious vivacity and eagerness, so I was at the bottom quite tranquil. I looked attentively at all the festively-lit houses of Petersburg, and said good-bye to each. They drove us past your abode, and at Krayevsky’s the windows were brilliantly lit. You had told me he was giving a Christmas party and tree, and that your children were going to it, with Emilie Fyodorovna; I did feel dreadfully sad as we passed that house. I took leave, as it were, of the little ones. I felt so lonely for them, and even years afterwards I often thought of them with tears in my eyes. We were driven beyond Yaroslavl; after three or four stations we stopped, in the first grey of morning, at Schlüsselburg, and went into an inn. There we drank tea with as much avidity as if we had not touched anything for a week. After the eight months’ captivity, sixty versts in a sledge gave us appetites of which, even to-day, I think with pleasure.

“I was in a good temper. Dourov chattered incessantly, and Yastryembsky expressed unwonted apprehensions for the future. We all laid ourselves out to become better acquainted with our orderly. He was a good old man, very friendly inclined towards us: a man who had seen a lot of life; he had travelled all over Europe with dispatches. On the way he showed us many kindnesses. His name was Kusma Prokofyevitch Prokofyev. Among other things he let us have a covered sledge, which was very welcome, for the frost was fearful.

“The second day was a holiday; the drivers, who were changed at the various stations, wore cloaks of grey German cloth and bright red belts; in the village streets there was not a soul to be seen. It was a splendid winter day. They drove us through the remote parts of the Petersburg, Novgorod, and Yaroslavl Governments. There were quite insignificant little towns, at great distances from one another. But as we were passing through on a holiday, there was always plenty to eat and drink; we drove--drove terribly. We were warmly dressed, it is true, but we had to sit for ten hours at a time in the sledges, halting at only five or six stations; it was almost unendurable. I froze to the marrow, and could scarcely thaw myself in the warm rooms at the stations. Strange to say, the journey completely restored me to health. Near Perm, we had a frost of 40 degrees during some of the nights. I don’t recommend that to you. It was highly disagreeable.

“Mournful was the moment when we crossed the Ural. The horses and sledges sank deep in the snow; a snowstorm was raging. We got out of the sledge--it was night--and waited, standing, till they were extricated. All about us whirled the snowstorm. We were standing on the confines of Europe and Asia; before us lay Siberia and the mysterious future--behind us, our whole past; it was very melancholy. Tears came to my eyes. On the way, the peasants would stream out of all the villages to see us; and although we were fettered, prices were trebled to us at all the stations. Kusma Prokofyevitch took half our expenses on himself, though we tried hard to prevent him; in this way each of us, during the whole journey, spent only fifteen roubles.

“On January 12, 1850, we came to Tobolsk. After we had been paraded before the authorities, and searched, in which proceeding all our money was taken from us, myself, Dourov and Yastryembsky were taken into one cell; the others, Spejechynov, etc., who had arrived before us, were in another section, and during the whole time we hardly once saw each other. I should like to tell you more of our six days’ stay in Tobolsk, and of the impression it made upon me. But I haven’t room here. I will only tell you that the great compassion and sympathy which was shown to us there, made up to us, like a big piece of happiness, for all that had gone before. The prisoners of former days[40] (and still more their wives) cared for us as if they had been our kith and kin. Those noble souls, tested by five-and-twenty years of suffering and self-sacrifice! We saw them but seldom, for we were very rigidly guarded; still they sent us clothes and provisions, they comforted and encouraged us. I had brought far too few clothes, and had bitterly repented it; but they sent me clothes. Finally we left Tobolsk, and reached Omsk in three days.