Part 5

“While I was in Tobolsk, I gathered information about my future superiors. They told me that the Commandant was a very decent fellow, but that the Major, Krivzov, was an uncommon brute, a petty tyrant, a drunkard, a trickster--in short, the greatest horror that can be imagined. From the very beginning, he called both Dourov and me blockhead, and vowed to chastise us bodily at the first transgression. He had already held his position for two years, and done the most hideous and unsanctioned things; two years later he was court-martialled for them. So God protected me from him! He used to come to us mad drunk (I never once saw him sober), and would seek out some inoffensive person and flog him on the pretext that he--the prisoner--was drunk. Often he came at night and punished at random--say, because such and such a one was sleeping on his left side instead of his right, or because he talked or moaned in his sleep--in fact, anything that occurred to his drunken mind. I should have had to break out in the long run against such a man as that, and it was he who wrote the monthly reports of us to Petersburg.

“I spent the whole four years behind dungeon walls, and only left the prison when I was taken on ‘hard labour.’ The work was hard, though not always; sometimes in bad weather, in rain, or in winter during the unendurable frosts, my strength would forsake me. Once I had to spend four hours at a piece of extra work, and in such frost that the quicksilver froze; it was perhaps 40 degrees below zero. One of my feet was frost-bitten. We all lived together in one barrack-room. Imagine an old, crazy, wooden building, that should long ago have been broken up as useless. In the summer it is unbearably hot, in the winter unbearably cold. All the boards are rotten; on the ground filth lies an inch thick; every instant one is in danger of slipping and coming down. The small windows are so frozen over that even by day one can hardly read. The ice on the panes is three inches thick. The ceilings drip, there are draughts everywhere. We are packed like herrings in a barrel. The stove is heated with six logs of wood, but the room is so cold that the ice never thaws; the atmosphere is unbearable--and so through all the winter long.

“In the same room, the prisoners wash their linen, and thus make the place so wet that one scarcely dares to move. From twilight till morning we are forbidden to leave the barrack-room; the doors are barricaded; in the ante-room a great wooden trough for the calls of nature is placed; this makes one almost unable to breathe. All the prisoners stink like pigs; they say that they can’t help it, for they must live, and are but men. We sleep upon bare boards; each man was allowed one pillow only. We covered ourselves with short sheepskins, and our feet were outside the covering all the time. It was thus that we froze night after night. Fleas, lice, and other vermin by the bushel. In the winter we got thin sheepskins to wear, which didn’t keep us warm at all, and boots with short legs; thus equipped, we had to go out into the frost.

“To eat we got bread and cabbage soup; the soup should, by the regulations, have contained a quarter pound of meat per head; but they put in sausage-meat, and so I never came across a piece of genuine flesh. On feast days we got porridge, but with scarcely any butter. On fast days, cabbage and nothing else. My stomach went utterly to pieces, and I suffered tortures from indigestion.

“From all this you can see yourself that one couldn’t live there at all without money; if I had had none, I should most assuredly have perished; no one could endure such a life. But every convict does some sort of work and sells it, thus earning, every single one of them, a few pence. I often drank tea and bought myself a piece of meat; it was my salvation. It was quite impossible to do without smoking, for otherwise the stench would have choked one. All these things were done behind the backs of the officials.

“I was often in hospital. My nerves were so shattered that I had some epileptic fits--however, that was not often. I have rheumatism in my legs now, too. But except for that, I feel right well. Add to all these discomforts the fact that it was almost impossible to get one’s self a book, and that when I did get one, I had to read it on the sly; that all around me was incessant malignity, turbulence, and quarrelling; then perpetual espionage, and the impossibility of ever being alone, even for an instant--and so without variation for four long years. You’ll believe me when I tell you I was not happy! And imagine, in addition, the ever-present dread of drawing down some punishment on myself, the irons, and the utter oppression of spirits--and you have the picture of my life.

“I won’t even try to tell you what transformations were undergone by my soul, my faith, my mind, and my heart, in those four years. It would be a long story. Still, the eternal concentration, the escape into myself from bitter reality, did bear its fruit. I now have many new needs and hopes of which I never thought in other days. But all this will be pure enigma for you, and so I’ll pass to other things. I will say only one word: do not forget me, and do help me! I need books and money. Send them me, for Christ’s sake.

“Omsk is a hateful hole. There is hardly a tree there. In summer, heat and winds that bring sandstorms; in winter, snowstorms. I have scarcely seen anything of the country around. The place is dirty, almost exclusively inhabited by military, and dissolute to the last degree. I mean the common people. If I hadn’t discovered some human beings here, I should have gone utterly to the dogs.

“Constantine Ivanovitch Ivanov is like a brother to me. He has done everything that he in any way could for me. I owe him money. If he ever goes to Petersburg, show him some recognition. I owe him twenty-five roubles. But how can I repay his kindness, his constant willingness to carry out all my requests, his attention and care for me, just like a brother’s? And he is not the only one I have to thank in that way. Brother, there are very many noble natures in the world.

“I have already said that your silence often tortures me. I thank you for the money you sent. In your next letter (even if it’s ‘_official_,’ for I don’t know yet whether it is possible for me to correspond with you)--in your next, write as fully as you can of all your affairs, of Emilie Fyodorovna, the children, all relations and acquaintances; also of those in Moscow--who is alive and who is dead; and of your business; tell me what capital you started with, whether it is lucrative, whether you are in funds, finally, whether you will help me financially, and how much you will send me a year. But send no money with the official letter--particularly if I don’t find a covering address. For the present, give Michael Petrovitch as the consignor of all packets (you understand, don’t you?). For the time, I have some money, but I have no books. If you can, send me the magazines for this year, or at any rate the _O.Z._

“But what I urgently need are the following: I need (very necessary!) ancient historians (in French translation), modern historians: Guizot, Thierry, Thiers, Ranke, and so forth; national studies, and the Fathers of the Church. Choose the cheapest and most compact editions. Send them by return.

“People try to console me: ‘They’re quite simple sort of fellows there.’ But I dread simple men more than complex ones. For that matter, men everywhere are just--men. Even among the robber-murderers in the prison, I came to know some men in those four years. Believe me, there were among them deep, strong, beautiful natures, and it often gave me great joy to find gold under a rough exterior. And not in a single case, or even two, but in several cases. Some inspired respect, others were downright fine. I taught the Russian language to a young Circassian--he had been transported to Siberia for robbery with murder. How grateful he was to me! Another convict wept when I said good-bye to him. Certainly I had often given him money, but it was so little, and his gratitude so boundless! My character, though, was deteriorating; in my relations with others I was ill-tempered and impatient. They accounted for it by my mental condition, and bore all without grumbling. Apropos, what a number of national types and characters I became familiar with in prison! I lived _into_ their lives, and so I believe I know them really well. Many tramps’ and thieves’ careers were laid bare to me, and above all, the whole wretched existence of the common people. Decidedly I have not spent my time there in vain. I have learnt to know the Russian people as only a few know them. I am a little vain of it. I hope that such vanity is pardonable....

“Send me the Koran, and Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_, and if you have the chance of sending me anything not officially, then be sure to send Hegel, but particularly Hegel’s _History of Philosophy_. Upon that depends my whole future. For God’s sake, exert yourself to get me transferred to the Caucasus; try to find out from well-informed sources whether I shall be permitted to print my works, and in what way I should seek this sanction. I intend to try for permission in two or three years. I beg you to sustain me so long. Without money I shall be destroyed by military life. So please!...

“Now I mean to write novels and plays. But I must still read a great deal. Don’t forget me.

“Once again farewell.

“F. D.”[41]

This letter, like so many others, remained unanswered. It is evident that Dostoevsky was left without news from his family during his whole term of imprisonment. Are we to suppose, on his brother’s part, prudence, fear of compromising himself, or maybe indifference? I cannot tell. Mme. Hoffmann, in her biography, inclines to the last-mentioned supposition.

The first we know of Dostoevsky’s letters subsequent to his release and enlistment in the 7th Siberian Line Regiment is dated March 27, 1854. It does not appear in the French edition of his correspondence. In this letter we read as follows:

“Send me--not newspapers, but European histories. Economists--Church Fathers--as many of the classics as possible. Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Pliny, Flavius, Plutarch, Diodorus, etc., in French translations. And the Koran and a German Dictionary. Not all at once, of course, but as much as you can. Send me Pissaren’s _Physics_ too, and a manual of physiology, any one, in French if better than in Russian. All in the cheapest editions. Not in one consignment, but slowly, one book after another. I shall be grateful for every little thing you can do for me. Do realize how urgently I need this intellectual food!...”

“Now you know my chief occupations,” he writes a little later. “Really I have none but these connected with my duty. No outside events, no disturbances in my life, no mishaps. But what is happening in soul, heart, and mind, what has sprung up, ripened or been blighted, what has been cast aside with the tares, _that_ cannot be told and written down on a scrap of paper. Here I live in isolation; I shrink out of sight, as usual. Moreover, for five years I lived with an escort, and there are times when it is pure bliss for me to be alone. On the whole, prison has destroyed many things in me and created new. For example, I’ve already spoken about my illness: strange attacks resembling epilepsy. And yet not epilepsy. Some day I shall give you

## particulars.”[42]

In the last of these causeries we shall come back to this terrible question of his illness.

In a letter dated November 6 of the same year we find:

“It will soon be ten months since I took up my new life. As for the other four years, I look upon them as a period when I was buried alive and closed in a coffin. What terrible years! I cannot, my friend, tell you how terrible. Unspeakable suffering without end, for every hour, every minute lay heavy on my soul. During the whole of these four years, not a moment but what I was conscious of my prison walls.”[43]

But, immediately after, watch how far his optimism rises above it all:

“I was so busy all summer that I had scarcely time for sleep. But now I have grown used to things. My health too has improved slightly. And, hope not wholly lost, I can look at the future with moderate fortitude.”[44]

Three letters from the same period were given in the _Niva_, April, 1898. Of these the French edition of Dostoevsky’s _Correspondence_ includes the first only. In one (August 21, 1855) there is reference to a letter of the previous October, which has not been traced.

“When, in my letter of last October, I repeated my complaints at your silence, you answered that these had made very painful reading for you. Oh, Mysha! for the love of God, bear me no ill-will; remember my loneliness. I am like a pebble cast aside. I’ve always been of a gloomy, sickly, susceptible disposition. I am myself thoroughly convinced I was in the wrong.”

Dostoevsky returned to Petersburg on November 29, 1859. At Semipalatinsk he had married the widow of a deportee, mother of a growing son whose intelligence seemingly was less than mediocre. Dostoevsky adopted the boy, for whom he made himself answerable. He had a perfect mania for assuming burdens.

“He was but little altered,” his friend Miliukov tells us. “His mien is more confident than of yore, and his features have lost none of the energy they used to express.”

In 1861 he published _Insulted and Injured_; in 1861-2 his _Memories of the House of the Dead_. _Crime and Punishment_, the first of his great novels, did not appear till 1866.

During the years 1863-1865, he busied himself actively with a review. One of his letters speaks so eloquently of the years between that I must read further passages: this is, I think, the last time I shall quote to you from his correspondence! This particular letter is dated March 31, 1865.

“I am going to recount my life during this time. Not the whole of it, though. That is impossible, for in such a case one never tells in letters the essential facts. There are things I cannot narrate simply. That’s why I shall confine myself to a summary account of the past year of my life.

“You probably know that four years ago my brother Michael undertook the publication of a review, wherein I collaborated. Everything was going well. My _House of the Dead_ had met with considerable success and given a fresh lease of life to my literary reputation. When my brother began publication, he owed a lot of money; his debts were being paid off when suddenly, in May, 1863, the review was suspended on account of a strong and patriotic article, which, misinterpreted, was read as a protest against the conduct of the Government and public opinion. The blow killed him; debt after debt accumulated, and his health became impaired. At the moment, I was far away, in Moscow, at the bedside of my dying wife. Yes, dear friend, you wrote to sympathize in my cruel loss, the death of my beloved brother, but you did not know how heavy the hand of fate was upon me. Another creature who loved me, and whom I loved infinitely--my wife--died of consumption in Moscow, where she had been settled for a twelvemonth. The whole winter of 1864 I never left her bedside....

“... Ah, dear friend, she loved me deeply, and I returned her love; yet, we did not live happily together. I shall tell you all about it when I see you. Let me say just this. Although we were unhappy (by reason of her difficult character--she was hypochondriac, and full of a sick woman’s whims), we could not cease to love each other. Indeed, the unhappier we grew, the closer we were drawn together. Strange though it may seem, it is true. She was the best, the noblest, the most generous-hearted woman I have ever known. After she was gone (despite all my anxieties during the twelvemonth I watched her dying), although I felt and painfully realized what I was burying with her, I could not picture the emptiness and misery of my life. That is a year ago now, and the feeling is still the same.

“Immediately after the funeral, I hastened to Petersburg to my brother. He alone was left me! Three months later he, too, was no more. His illness lasted only a month. It did not appear serious and the attack which carried him off in three days was practically unforeseen.

“Then I was suddenly left alone; and I knew fear! It has become terrible! My life is broken in two. On one hand, the past, with all that I had to live for; on the other, the unknown, with not one loving heart to comfort me in my loss. There was literally no reason why I should go on living. Forge new links, start a fresh existence? The very thought revolted me! Then I realized for the first time that I could not replace my loved ones; they were all I held dear, and new loves could not, ought not to exist.”[45]

This letter was continued in April, and a fortnight after this cry of despair, we read, under the date April 14: “Of all my reserves of strength and energy, there is nothing left save a vague uneasiness of soul, a state bordering on despair. Bitterness and indecision--a mood foreign to me. And then I’m utterly alone. I’ve lost the friend of a lifetime. Yet I always have the feeling that I am going to begin to live! Ridiculous, isn’t it? The cat and its nine lives?”[46]

He adds these words: “I write to you at great length, and I see that of the very essence of my moral or spiritual life I have given you not a notion,” which passage I should like to set side by side with an extraordinary paragraph I find in _Crime and Punishment_.

In this novel Dostoevsky tells us the story of Raskolnikov, who commits a crime and is sent to Siberia. In the last pages he speaks of the strange feeling that takes possession of his hero’s being, the feeling that at last he is going to live. “And what were all, all the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, sentence, and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external, strange fact, with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed consciously, he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory.”[47]

These sentences I have read to you in justification of my opening remarks. The great external events of Dostoevsky’s life, tragic though they were, are less important than this one small fact which it is now time to consider. During his years in Siberia, Dostoevsky made the acquaintance of a woman who put the New Testament into his hand--this, by the way, being the only officially sanctioned reading matter in gaol. This reading and meditating the Gospels was of vital importance to Dostoevsky. All his subsequently written works are steeped in the teaching of the Gospels, and we shall be obliged again and again to revert to the truths he discovered in reading them.

I find it highly interesting to observe and compare in two natures akin in so many respects, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, the very different reactions to contact with the Gospels. With Nietzsche the reaction, immediate and marked, was, we may as well admit, jealousy. It does not seem to me possible to understand Nietzsche’s works without taking account of this feeling. Nietzsche was jealous of Jesus Christ, jealous to the point of madness. In writing his _Zarathustra_, Nietzsche is ever harassed by his desire to write a counterpart to the Gospels. He even adopts at times the form of the Beatitudes the better to make mockery of them. He wrote the _Anti-Christ_, and in his last work, _Ecce Homo_, he poses as the adversary triumphant of Him he sought to oust.

With Dostoevsky the reaction is far different. He felt at once that he was face to face with something superior, not only to himself, but to entire mankind, something divine.... The humility of which I spoke earlier in the day, and to which I shall time and again return, predisposed him to making submission before what was avowedly better and higher than himself. He bowed his head humbly before Jesus Christ, and the first, the greatest consequence of his submission and self-surrender was the safeguarding intact his nature’s rich complexity. No artist ever more truly practised the teaching of the Gospel: “_For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it._”

By reason of this sacrifice and renunciation the most discordant elements are able to live side by side in Dostoevsky’s soul, and the extraordinary wealth of antagonisms is preserved.

At our next meeting we shall inquire whether several of Dostoevsky’s characteristics, which to us Westerners seem perchance more than strange, are not common to all Russians, and by so inquiring we may be enabled to discern such features as are more purely individual and personal.

II

The few psychological and moral truths Dostoevsky’s works will permit us to touch upon are in my estimation so important that I am all eagerness to reach them. By their very boldness and originality they would seem paradoxical to you if I approached them directly. I needs must proceed warily.

In our last talk I spoke to you of the figure of the man himself. The moment is favourable, I think, for presenting it in its own atmosphere the better to bring its particular features into relief.

I have been on intimate terms with some Russians, but I have never been in Russia; hence, without help, my task would be extremely difficult. I shall first of all submit a few observations on the Russian people that I found in a German monograph on Dostoevsky. Mme. Hoffmann, in her excellent biography, insists first and foremost on the solidarity, the common brotherhood between all classes of Russian society, which end in sweeping away social barriers and facilitate naturally the freedom of intercourse we find in all Dostoevsky’s novels. An introduction, a sudden feeling of sympathetic understanding; and we have at once what one of his heroes so expressively describes as “chance relationships.” Homes are transformed into hostelries, the stranger of yesterday becomes the honoured guest of to-day: a friend’s friend visits you, and immediately everything between you is on a footing of intimacy.