Part 6

Another observation of Mme. Hoffmann’s concerning the Russian people. It is inherently incapable of leading a strict and methodical existence, of being punctual even. It would seem as if the Russian did not suffer much in consequence of his own improvidence, for he makes no great effort to free himself from it. And if I may be permitted to seek an excuse for the lack of order in my causeries, I shall find it in the very confusion of Dostoevsky’s ideas, in their extreme entanglement and in the peculiar difficulties experienced in trying to hold them to a plan which satisfies our Western logic. This wavering and indecision Mme. Hoffmann ascribes partly to the weakening of time sense due to the endless summer days and interminable winter nights, when the rhythm of the passing hours is lost. In a short address delivered at the _Vieux Colombier_ I already quoted Mme. Hoffmann’s illustration of the Russian who met reproaches on account of his unpunctuality with “Yes, life is difficult! There are moments which must be lived well, and this is more important than the punctual keeping of any engagement!”--a sentence full of significance, for it reveals at the same time the strange consciousness a Russian has of his inner life, more important to him than all social connections.

I should like to point out, with Mme. Hoffmann, the propensity to pity and suffering, _Leiden und Mitleiden_, to compassion extending even to the criminal. In Russia there exists but one word to designate the poor and the criminal, but one to cover actual crime and ordinary offences. Add to this an almost religious contrition and we shall the better understand the Russian’s ineradicable mistrustfulness in all his relations with strangers, with foreigners in particular. Westerners often complain of this mistrustfulness, which proceeds, so Mme. Hoffmann maintains, from the uneasy consciousness of his own insufficiency and proneness to sin, rather than from any feeling that other people are of no account: it is a mistrust that springs from humility of spirit.

Nothing could better throw light on this strange religiosity of the Russian, which persists even when belief is long since dead, than the four conversations of Prince Myshkin, the hero of _The Idiot_. These I shall now read to you.

“‘As to the question of faith,’ he began, smiling, ... ‘I had four different conversations in two days last week. I came in the morning by the new railway and talked for four hours with a man in the train. We made friends on the spot. I had heard a great deal about him beforehand and had heard he was an atheist, among other things. He really is a very learned man. What’s more, he’s an unusually well-bred man, so that he talked to me quite as if I were his equal in ideas and attainments. He doesn’t believe in God. Only, one thing struck me: that he seemed not to be talking about that at all the whole time; and it struck me, just because whenever I have met unbelievers before, or read their books, it always seemed to me that they were speaking and writing in their books about something quite different, although it seemed to me about that on the surface. I said so to him at the time, but I suppose I didn’t say so clearly, or did not know how to express it, for he didn’t understand. In the evening, I stopped for the night at a provincial hotel, and a murder had just been committed there the night before, so that every one was talking about it when I arrived. Two peasants, middle-aged men, friends who had known each other for a long time, and were not drunk, had had tea and were meaning to go to bed in the same room. But one had noticed during those last two days that the other was wearing a silver watch on a yellow bead chain, which he seems not to have seen on him before. The man was not a thief: he was an honest man, in fact, and by a peasant’s standard by no means poor. But he was so taken by the watch, and so fascinated by it, that at last he could not restrain himself. He took a knife, and when his friend had turned away, he approached him cautiously from behind, and praying fervently, “God forgive me for Christ’s sake!” he cut his friend’s throat at one stroke like a sheep and took his watch.’

“Rogozhin went off into peals of laughter; he laughed as though he were in a sort of fit. It was positively strange to see such laughter after the gloomy mood that had preceded it.

“‘I do like that! Yes, that beats everything!’ he cried convulsively, gasping for breath. ‘One man doesn’t believe in God at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!... You could never have invented that, brother! Ha!--ha!--ha! That beats everything!’

“‘Next morning I went out to walk about the town,’ Myshkin went on, as soon as Rogozhin was quiet again, though his lips still quivered with spasmodic convulsive laughter. ‘I saw a drunken soldier in a terribly disorderly state staggering about the wooden pavement. He came up to me. “Buy a silver cross, sir?” said he. “I’ll let you have it for twenty kopecks. It’s silver.” I saw in his hand a cross--he must have just taken it off--on a very dirty blue ribbon; but one could see at once it was only tin. It was a big one with eight corners, of a regular Byzantine pattern. I took out twenty kopecks and gave them to him, and at once put the cross round my neck; and I could see from his face how glad he was that he had cheated a stupid gentleman, and he went off immediately to drink what he had got for it, there was no doubt about that. At that time, brother, I was quite carried away by the rush of impressions that burst upon me in Russia; I had understood nothing about Russia before. I had grown up, as it were, inarticulate, and my memories of my country were somehow fantastic during those five years abroad. Well, I walked on, thinking, “Yes, I’ll put off judging that man who sold his Christ. God only knows what’s hidden in these weak drunken beasts.” An hour later, when I was going back to the hotel, I came upon a peasant woman with a tiny baby in her arms. She was quite a young woman, and the baby was about six weeks old. The baby smiled at her for the first time in its life. “What are you doing, my dear?” (I was always asking questions in those days.) “God has just such gladness every time He sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby’s face.” That was what the woman said to me almost in those words, this deep, subtle, and truly religious thought--a thought in which all the essence of Christianity finds expression; that is the whole conception of God as our Father and of God’s gladness in man, like a father’s in his own child--the fundamental idea of Christ! A simple peasant woman! It’s true she was a mother ... and who knows, very likely that woman was the wife of that soldier. Listen, Parfyon! You asked me a question just now; here is my answer. The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanours. There is something else here, and there will always be something else--something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else. But the chief thing is that you will notice it more clearly and quickly in the Russian heart than anywhere else. And this is my conclusion. It’s one of the chief convictions I’ve gathered from our Russia. There is work to be done, Parfyon! There is work to be done in our Russian world, believe me.’”[48]

And we see at the end of this story another characteristic reveal itself: the belief in the special mission of the Russian people.

This belief we find in several Russian writers: in Dostoevsky it becomes an active and painful conviction, and his chief grievance against Turgeniev was simply that he could not trace in him this national feeling, his opinion being that Turgeniev was too westernized.

In his speech at the Pushkin celebrations, Dostoevsky declared that Pushkin, still in flush of imitating Byron and Chénier, suddenly found what Dostoevsky calls the “Russian note,” a note “fresh and sincere.” Replying to the question (which he describes as “accursed”) “What faith can we have in the Russian people and in its worth?” Pushkin exclaimed, “Humble thyself, thou son of arrogance, and first conquer thy pride. Humble thyself and before the people, bend thy neck towards thy mother earth.”

Never perhaps are ethnic differences more clearly marked than when the manner of interpreting _honour_ is involved. The hidden mainspring of civilized man’s conduct seems to me to be less a matter of amour-propre, as La Rochefoucauld would have said, than a feeling for what we call the “point of honour.” This feeling for personal honour, this sensitive spot, is not exactly alike for Frenchman, Englishman, Italian, and Spaniard. But contrasted with the Russian conception, the codes of honour of all Western nations seem to fuse practically into one. When we appreciate the Russian’s idea of honour, we see at once how often the code of the Western world is opposed to the teaching of the Gospels. And the Russian idea of honour is as much closer to the Gospels by virtue of its remoteness from Western nations; in other words, Christian feeling is predominant in the Russians, and often takes precedence of “honour” as we Westerners interpret the idea.

Faced with the choice of seeking revenge or asking pardon by admitting himself in the wrong, the Westerner will often consider the second alternative lacking in dignity, the attitude of a coward or a nonentity. The Westerner tends to esteem unwillingness to forgive, forget, or remit offences a mark of strength of character, and certainly he tries never to put himself in the wrong; but, should he have done so, it would appear that the most unpleasant thing that could befall him would be the necessity for admitting the fact! The Russian, on the other hand, is ever ready to admit himself in the wrong--and even before his enemies--equally willing to humble himself and seek forgiveness.

The Greek Orthodox religion, no doubt, is only encouraging a national inclination by tolerating, nay, approving, public confession. The notion of confession, not murmured low into priestly ears, but made openly, before any and all, comes up again and again, almost with the quality of an obsession, in Dostoevsky’s novels. When Raskolnikov has confessed his crime to Sonia, in _Crime and Punishment_, she advises him, as the one means of unburdening his soul, at once to prostrate himself in the public street and cry aloud, “I have the blood of a fellow-being on my hands.” Most of Dostoevsky’s characters are seized at certain moments--and almost invariably in unexpected and ill-advised fashion--with the urgent desire to make confession, to ask pardon of some fellow-creature who often has not a notion what it is all about, the desire to place themselves in a posture of inferiority to the person addressed.

You remember, I am sure, the extraordinary scene in _The Idiot_, in the course of an evening party at Nastasya Filippovna’s house. To pass the time someone suggested in place of parlour games or charades that each guest should confess the vilest act he ever committed; and the wonderful part is that the suggestion was not scouted, and that each one present commenced his or her confession, with varying degree of sincerity, no doubt, but almost without a vestige of shame.

And more curious still, an anecdote from Dostoevsky’s own life, which I have from a Russian in his intimate circle. I was imprudent enough to tell it to several individuals and already it has been made use of; but in the form I found it retailed, it was fast approaching unrecognizability. Hence my anxiety to give the exact facts here.

There are, in Dostoevsky’s life, certain extremely obscure episodes. One, in particular, already alluded to in _Crime and Punishment_ and which seems to have served as theme for a certain chapter in _The Possessed_. This chapter does not figure in the novel, having been so far withheld in Russia even. It has, I believe, been printed in Germany, but in an edition for private circulation only.[49] It deals with the rape of a young girl. The child victim hangs herself, and in the next room, Stavrogin, the guilty man, knowing that she is hanging herself, waits until life has left her little body. What measure of truth is there in this sinister tale? For the moment, it is not for me to say. The fact remains that Dostoevsky, after an adventure of this nature, was moved to what one must needs describe as remorse. This remorse preyed upon him for a while, and doubtless he said to himself what Sonia said to Raskolnikov. The need for confession became urgent, but confession not merely to a priest. He sought to find the person before whom confession would cause him the acutest suffering. Turgeniev, without the shadow of a doubt! Dostoevsky had not seen him for long, and was on uncommonly bad terms with him. M. Turgeniev was a respectable man, rich, famous, and held in wide esteem. Dostoevsky summoned up all his courage, or rather, he succumbed to a kind of giddiness, to a mysterious and awful attraction. Picture Turgeniev’s comfortable study: the author himself at his desk.--The bell rings.--A manservant announces Fyodor Dostoevsky.--What is his business?--He is shown in, and at once begins to tell his tale.--Turgeniev listens, dumb with stupefaction. What business of his is all this? No doubt the other man is mad!--After the confession, a great silence. Dostoevsky waits for some word or sign from Turgeniev, believing no doubt that like in his own novels, Turgeniev will take him in his arms, kiss him and weep over him, and be reconciled ... but nothing happens:

“Monsieur Turgeniev, I must tell you how deeply I despise myself....”

He pauses again.... The silence remains unbroken until Dostoevsky, unable to contain himself any longer, bursts out in wrath: “But _you_ I despise even more! That’s all I wanted to say to you,” and off he goes, slamming the door behind him.

Here we see how humility is suddenly displaced by a very different feeling. The man who in his humility was abasing himself, draws up in revolt at the humiliation. Humility opens the gates of Heaven: humiliation the gates of Hell. Humility implies a measure of free-will submission; it is accepted without constraint and proves the truth of the Gospel teaching: “_For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased: and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted._” Humiliation, on the other hand, degrades the soul, warping and deforming it; it irritates, impoverishes, and blights, inflicting a moral hurt most ill to heal.

There is not, I believe, one single deformation or deviation of character--these kinks that make so many of Dostoevsky’s characters so strangely morbid and disturbing--but which has its beginning in some humiliation.

_Insulted and Injured_ is the title of one of his first books, and his work as a whole is obsessed without ceasing by the idea that humiliation damns, whereas humility sanctifies. Heaven, as Alyosha Karamazov dreams and describes it to us, is a world where there will be no injured, neither insulted.

The strangest, most disturbing figure of these novels, the terrible Stavrogin in _The Possessed_, whose character at first is so different from all others, is explained, and his demoniac nature accounted for, by certain passages in the book:

“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin,” says one of the other characters, “was leading at that time in Petersburg a life, so to say, of mockery. I can’t find another word to describe it, because he is not a man who falls into disillusionment, and he disdained to be occupied with work at that time.”[50]

And Stavrogin’s mother, to whom these remarks were addressed, says a little farther on:

“No, it was something more than eccentricity, and I assure you, something sacred even! A proud man who has suffered humiliation early in life and reached the stage of ‘mockery,’ as you so subtly called it.”[51]

And later:

“And if Nikolay had always had at his side (Varvara Petrovna almost shouted) a gentle Horatio, great in his humility--another excellent expression of yours, Stepan Trofimovitch!--he might long ago have been saved from the sad and sudden demon of irony, which has tormented him all his life.”[52]

It happens that some of Dostoevsky’s characters, whose natures have been profoundly warped by humiliation, find as it were delight and satisfaction in the resultant degradation, loathsome though it be.

“Was there resentment in my heart?” says the hero of _A Raw Youth_ just when his amour-propre had been cruelly wounded, “I don’t know. Perhaps there was. Strange to say, I always had, perhaps from my earliest childhood, one characteristic; if I were ill-treated, absolutely wronged and insulted to the last degree, I always showed at once an irresistible desire to submit passively to the insult, and even to accept more than my assailant wanted to inflict on me, as though I would say: ‘All right, you have humiliated me, so I will humiliate myself even more; look and enjoy it.’”[53]

For if humility be a surrender of pride, humiliation, on the other hand, but serves to strengthen it.

Listen to the tale told by the wretched hero of the _Notes from Underground_:

“One night, as I was passing a tavern, I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times, I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window--and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.’

“I was not drunk--but what is one to do?--depression will drive a man to such a pitch of hysteria! But nothing happened. It seemed that I was not even equal to being thrown out of the window, and I went away without having my fight.

“An officer put me in my place from the first moment. I was standing by the billiard-room tables and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word, without warning or explanation, moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me.

“Devil knows what I would have given for a real, regular quarrel--a more decent, a more literary one, so to speak. I had been treated like a fly. This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little fellow. But the quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I certainly would have been thrown out of the window. But I changed my mind, and preferred to beat a resentful retreat.”[54]

But if we carry the story further, we shall soon see the excess of hatred to be nothing other than love inverted.

“... I often met that officer afterwards in the street, and noticed him very carefully. I am not quite sure whether he recognized me: I imagine not, I judge from certain signs. But I--I stared at him with spite and hatred, and so it went on--for several years! My resentment grew even deeper with years. At first I began making stealthy inquiries about this officer. It was difficult for me to do so, for I knew no one. But one day I heard one shout his name in the street as I was following him at a distance, as though I was tied to him,--and so I learned his surname. Another time I followed him to his flat, and for ten kopecks learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey, whether he lived alone or with others, and so on--in fact, everything one could learn from a porter. One morning, though I had never tried my hand with the pen, it suddenly occurred to me to write a satire on this officer in the form of a novel which would unmask his villainy; I even exaggerated it: at first I so altered his surname that it could not easily be recognized, but on second thoughts I changed it, and sent the story to the _O.Z._

“But at that time such attacks were not the fashion and my story was not printed. That was a great vexation to me. Sometimes I positively choked with resentment. At last I determined to challenge my enemy to a duel. I composed a splendid, charming little letter to him, imploring him to apologize to me, and hinting rather plainly at a duel in case of refusal. The letter was so composed that if the officer had had the least understanding of the good and beautiful, he would certainly have flung himself on my neck and offered his friendship. And how fine that would have been! How we should have got on together!”[55]

So often in Dostoevsky one particular feeling is suddenly supplanted in this way by its direct opposite! We can find example after example of it. For instance, that unhappy child (in _The Karamazovs_) biting with hatred into Alyosha’s finger when the latter holds out his hand to him, just at the time when the child, though he does not recognize it, is developing for the same Alyosha a shy, wild affection.

And what, in this young child, could have caused such a warping of affection?

He had seen Dmitri Karamazov, Alyosha’s brother, come drunk out of an inn, thrash his father, and pull him insolently by the beard: “Papa, papa, how he humiliated you!” he cried later.

Thus, over against humility--on the same moral plane, if I may be permitted to say so, but at the other extreme of the scale--there is pride, which humiliation exaggerates, exasperates, and deforms, sometimes hideously.

Certainly, psychological axioms appear to Dostoevsky for what they really are, special definitions of truth. As novelist (for Dostoevsky is no mere theoretician, he is an explorer) he steers clear of induction and realizes how imprudent (on his part, at least) any attempts to formulate general laws.[56] It is for us, if we choose, to discover these laws in his books, by cutting, as it were, paths through the thicket. Here is one of the laws we can establish: the man who has suffered humiliation seeks to inflict humiliation in his turn.[57]