The Russian novelists

by vicomte de Eugène-Melchior Vogüé

FOOTNOTES:

[F] “Grande et riche, mais désordonnée.” This historical phrase has become proverbial in Russia. It was used by the deputies of the Slavs when they demanded foreign chiefs to govern them.

[G] Published in English under the name of “Liza.”

[H] An English translation was published in 1884 under the title “Annouchka,” a tale.

[I] (V)itch added to the father’s name (meaning son of) is the masculine termination of proper names.

CHAPTER V.
THE RELIGION OF ENDURANCE.—DOSTOYEVSKI.

With Dostoyevski, that true Scythian, who will revolutionize all our previous habits of thought, we now enter into the heart of Moscow, with its giant cathedral of St. Basil, like a Chinese pagoda as to form and decoration, and built by Tartar architects; but dedicated to the worship of the Christian’s God.

Turgenef and Dostoyevski, although contemporaries, belonging to the same school, and borne on by the same current of ideas, present in their respective works many sharply defined contrasts; still, they possess one quality in common, the outgrowth of the period in which they lived—sympathy for humanity. In Dostoyevski, this sympathy has developed into an intense pity for the humbler class, which regards him and believes in him as its master.

All contemporary forms of art have secret bonds in common. The same causes and sentiments which inclined these Russian authors to the study of real life attracted the great French landscape-painters of the same epoch to a closer observation of nature. The works of Corot, Rousseau, and Millet present to me a perfect idea of the common tendencies and personal peculiarities of the three types of talent I am attempting to analyze. Whichever of these painters we prefer, we shall be likely to be attracted by the corresponding writer. I would not force such a comparison; but to me Turgenef has the grace and poetry of Corot; Tolstoï, the simple grandeur of Rousseau; Dostoyevski, the tragic severity of Millet.

Dostoyevski’s romances have been translated into French, and, to my astonishment, they are greatly enjoyed by the French. This places me at ease in discussing him. I should never have been believed, in attempting to present an analysis of this strange character, if these books, which reflect and typify their author, had not been well known among us. At the same time, the books can scarcely be understood without some knowledge of the life of him who created them. I had almost said, whose life and sufferings were portrayed in them; but the one expression partly implies the other.

On entering into an examination of the life and works of this man, I must present to the reader scenes invariably sad, sometimes terrible, sometimes funereal. Those persons should not attempt to read them who object to visiting hospitals, courts of justice, or prisons; or who have a horror of visiting graveyards at night. I cannot conscientiously throw a cheerful glamour upon what both destiny and character have made sombre throughout. Some will, at least, follow me with confidence. At all events, the Russia of the past twenty years will remain an inexplicable enigma to those who ignore the work which has made the most lasting impression upon this country, and shaken it to its foundations. We must, then, examine the books which have performed such a work, and, first of all, and more dramatic than all, the life of him who conceived them.

I.

He was born at Moscow, in 1821, in the charity hospital. Destiny decreed that his eyes should first open upon the sad spectacle which was to be ever before them, and upon the most terrible forms of misery. His father, a retired military surgeon, was attached to this establishment. His family belonged to one of those lower orders of the nobility from which minor functionaries are generally chosen, and possessed a small estate and a few serfs in the province of Tula. The child was sometimes taken out to this country place; and these first visions of country life occasionally reappear in his works, but very rarely. Contrary to the habit of the other Russian authors, who adore nature, and especially love the place where they were reared, Dostoyevski is not attracted in this direction. He is a psychologist; the human soul absorbs his entire vision; the scenes of his choice are the suburbs of large cities, and miserable alleys. In his childish recollections, which almost invariably give their coloring to an author’s mind, you never feel the influence of peaceful woods and broad, open skies. The source from whence his imagination draws its supplies will give you glimpses of hospital courts, pallid faces under the regulation white cap, and forms clothed in brown robes; and you will encounter the timid gaze of the “Degraded” and “Insulted.”

Dostoyevski was one of a numerous family of children, and his life as a child was not one of luxury. After leaving a Moscow school, his father procured admission for the two elder sons, Alexis and Feodor, to the military engineering school at St. Petersburg. The two brothers, bound together by a common aptitude for literature, were always deeply attached to each other, and greatly depended, in all the crises of life, upon each other’s mutual support. We gain much knowledge of the interior life of Feodor Mikhailovitch, (Dostoyevski) through his letters to his brother Alexis in his “Correspondence.” Both felt themselves out of place in this school, which, for them, took the place of a University training. A classical education was just what Dostoyevski needed; it would have given him that refinement and balance which is gained by an early training in the best literature. He made up for the want of it as best he could, by reading Pushkin and Gogol, and the French romance-writers, Balzac, Eugene Sue, and George Sand, who seems to have had a strong influence upon his imagination. But Gogol was his favorite master. The humble world which attracted him most was revealed to him in “Dead Souls.”

Leaving the school in 1843 with the grade of sub-lieutenant, he did not long wear his engineer’s uniform. A year later he sent in his resignation, to devote himself exclusively to literary occupations. From this day, the fierce struggle of our author with poverty began which was to last forty years. After the father’s death the meagre patrimony was divided among the children, and it quickly vanished. The young Feodor undertook translations for journals and publishers. For forty years his correspondence, which recalls that of Balzac, was one long agonizing lament; a recapitulation of debts accumulating and weighing upon him, a complaint of the slavish life he led. For years he is never sure of his daily bread, except in the convict prison.

Although Dostoyevski became hardened to material privations, he was not proof against the moral wounds which poverty inflicts; the pitiable pride which formed the foundation of his character suffered terribly from everything which betrayed his poverty. You feel the existence of this open wound in his letters; and all his heroes, the real incarnations of his own soul, suffer the same torture. Moreover, he was really ill, a victim of shattered nerves; and he became so visionary that he believed himself threatened with every imaginable disease. He left on his table sometimes, before retiring for the night, a paper upon which he wrote: “I may to-night fall into a lethargic sleep; be careful not to bury me before a certain number of days.” This was no trick of the imagination, but a presentiment of the fatal malady, of which he then felt the first symptoms. It has been stated that he contracted it in Siberia later than this; but a friend of his youth assures me that at this very time he was in the habit of falling down in the street foaming at the mouth. He always was, what he seemed to us to be in his latter years, but a frail bundle of irritable nerves; a feminine soul in the frame of a Russian peasant; reserved, savage, full of hallucinations; while the deepest tenderness filled his heart when he looked upon the sufferings of the lower classes.

His work was his sole consolation and delight. He narrates in his letters projected plots for his romances with the most genuine enthusiasm; and the recollection of these first transports makes him put into the mouth of one of his characters, drawn from himself, the novelist who figures in “The Degraded and Insulted,”[J] the following expressions:—

“If I ever was happy, it was not during the first intoxicating moments of success, but at the time when I had never read nor shown my manuscript to any one; during those long nights, passed in enthusiastic dreams and hopes, when I passionately loved my work; when I lived with my fancies, with the characters created by me, as with real relatives, living beings. I loved them; I rejoiced or mourned with them, and I have actually shed bitter tears over the misfortunes of my poor hero.”

His first tale, “Poor People,” contained the germ of all the rest. He wrote it at the age of twenty-three. During the latter years of his life, he used to relate the story of this first venture. The poor little engineer knew not a single soul in the literary world, or what to do with his manuscript. One of his comrades, Grigorovitch, who became a man of considerable literary reputation, has confirmed this anecdote. He carried the manuscript to Nekrasof, the poet, and friend of poor authors.

At three o’clock in the morning, Dostoyevski heard a knock at his door. It was Grigorovitch, who brought Nekrasof in with him. The poet threw himself upon the young stranger’s neck, showing strong emotion. He had been up the whole night, reading the tale, and was perfectly carried away with it. He too lived the cautious and hidden life which at that time was the lot of every Russian writer. These two repressed hearts, mutually and irresistibly attracted to each other, now overflowed with all the generous enthusiasm of youth. The dawn of day found the three enthusiasts still absorbed in an exalted conversation and an interchange of thoughts, hopes, and artistic and poetical dreams.

On leaving his protégé, Nekrasof went directly to Bielinski, the oracle of Russian literature, the only critic formidable to young beginners. “A new Gogol is born to us!” cried the poet, as he entered his friend’s house. “Gogols sprout up nowadays like mushrooms,” replied the critic, with his most forbidding air, as he took up the manuscript, handling it as if it were something poisonous, in the same way that all great critics of every country treat new manuscripts. But when Bielinski had read the manuscript through, its effect upon him was magical; so that when the trembling young man presented himself before his judge, the latter cried out excitedly:—

“Do you comprehend, young man, all the truth that you have described? No! at your age, that is quite impossible. This is a revelation of art, an inspiration, a gift from on high. Reverence, preserve this gift! and you will become a great writer!”

A few months later “Poor People” appeared in periodical review, and Russia ratified the verdict of its great critic. Bielinski’s astonishment was justifiable; for it seems incredible that any person of twenty could have produced a tragedy at once so simple and so heart-rending. In youth, happiness is our science, learned without a master, and we invent grand, heroic, showy misfortunes, and anguish which blazons its own sublimity. But how had this unhappy genius learned the meaning of that hidden, dumb, wearing misery before his time?

It is but an ordinary story, told in a correspondence between two persons. An inferior clerk in a court of chancery, worn with years and toil, is passing on toward the decline of life, in a continual struggle with poverty and the accompanying tortures of wounded self-love. This ignorant and honest clerk, the butt of his comrades’ ridicule, ordinary in conversation, of only medium intelligence, whose whole ambition is to be a good copyist, possesses, under an almost grotesque exterior, a heart as fresh, open, and affectionate as that of a little child; and I might almost say, sublimely stupid, indifferent to his own interests, in his noble generosity. This is the chosen type of all the best Russian authors, the one which exemplifies what is noblest in the Russian character; as, for example, Turgenef’s Lukeria in the “Living Relics,” and the Karatayef of Tolstoï in “War and Peace.” But these are of the peasant class, whereas the character of Dievushkin, in “Poor People,” is raised some degrees higher in the intellectual and social scale.

In this life, dark and cold as the long December night in Russia, there is one solitary ray of light, one single joy. In another poor lodging, just opposite the loft where the clerk copies his papers, lives a young girl, a distant relative, a solitary waif like himself, who can claim nothing in the world but the feeble protection of this friend. Both isolated, crushed by the brutal pressure of circumstances, these two unfortunates depend upon each other for mutual affection, as well as aid to keep them from starving. In the man’s affection there is a tender self-sacrifice, a delicacy, so much the more charming in that it accords not at all with the habitual bungling awkwardness of his ways and ideas; like a flower growing in sterile soil, among brambles, and betrayed only by its perfume. He imposes upon himself privations truly heroic, for the sake of comforting and gladdening the existence of his dear friend. These are, moreover, so well concealed that they are only discovered through some awkwardness on his part; as for him, they seem to him a matter of course. His sentiments are by turns those of a father, a brother, a good faithful dog. He would define them thus himself if called upon to analyze them. But although we well know a name for this feeling, let us not even whisper it to him; he would be overcome with shame at the mere mention of it.

The woman’s character is drawn with marvellous art. She is very superior to her friend in mind and education; she guides him in all intellectual things, which are quite new to him. She is weak by nature, and tender-hearted, but less faithful and resigned than he. She has not wholly given up a desire for the good things of life. She continually protests against the sacrifices which Dievushkin imposes upon himself, she begs him not to trouble himself for her; but sometimes a longing cry for something she feels the deprivation of escapes her, or perhaps a childish desire for some trifle or finery. The two neighbors can only see each other occasionally, that they may give no occasion for malicious gossip, and an almost daily correspondence has been established between them. In these letters we read of their past, the hard lives they have lived, the little incidents of their every-day life, their disappointments; the terrors of the young girl, pursued by the vicious, who try to entrap her; the agonies of the poor clerk, working for his daily bread, trying so pitifully to preserve the dignity of his manhood through the cruel treatment of those who would strip him of it.

Finally, the crisis comes; Dievushkin loses his only joy in life. You think, perhaps, that a young lover comes to steal her from him, that love will usurp in her heart the place of sisterly affection. Oh, no! the tale is much more human, far sadder.

A man who had once before sought out this young girl, with possibly doubtful intentions, offers her his hand. He is middle-aged, rich, of rather questionable character; but his proposition is an honorable one. Weary of wrestling against fate, persuaded perhaps also that she may thereby lighten some of the burdens of her friend, the unfortunate girl accepts the offer. Here the study of character is absolutely true to nature. The young girl, going suddenly from extreme poverty to luxury, is intoxicated for a moment by this new atmosphere, fine dresses, and jewels! In her cruel ingenuousness, she fills the last letters with details upon these grave subjects. From force of habit, she asks this kind Dievushkin, who always made all her purchases, to do an errand at the jeweller’s for her. Can her soul be really base, unworthy of the pure sentiment she had inspired? Not for a moment does the reader have such an impression, the writer knows so well how to maintain true harmony in his delineation of character. No, it is only that a little of youth and human nature have come to the surface in the experience of this long repressed soul. How can we grudge her such a trifling pleasure?

Then this cruelty is explained by the complete misapprehension of their reciprocal feelings. With her it is only a friendship, which will ever be faithful, grateful, if perhaps a little less single; how can she possibly understand that for him it is nothing short of despair?

It had been arranged that the wedded pair should start immediately after the marriage for a distant province. Up to the very last hour, Dievushkin replies to her letters, giving her the most minute details of the shopping that he has done for her, making great efforts to become versed in the subject of laces and ribbons. He only occasionally betrays a hint of the terror which seizes him at the thought of the near separation; but finally, in the last letter, his wounded heart breaks; the unhappy man sees before him the blank desolation of his future life, solitary, empty; he is no longer conscious of what he writes; but, in spite of all, his utter distress is kept back; he himself seems hardly yet to realize the secret of his own agony. The drama ends with an agonizing wail of despair, when he is left standing alone, behind the departing train.

I should like to quote many passages; I hesitate, and find none. This is the highest eulogium that can be bestowed upon a romance. The structure is so solid, the materials so simple, and so completely sacrificed to the impression of the whole, that a detached fragment quite loses its effect; it means no more than a single stone torn from a Greek temple, whose beauty consists in its general lines. This is the peculiar attribute of all the great Russian authors.

Another trait is also common to them, in which Turgenef excelled, and in which perhaps Dostoyevski even surpassed him: the art of awaking with a single line, sometimes with a word, infinite harmonies, a whole series of sentiments and ideas. “Poor People” is a perfect specimen of this art. The words you read upon the paper seem to produce reverberations, as, when touching the key-board of an organ, the sounds produced awake, through invisible tubes, the great interior heart of harmony within the instrument, whence come its deepest tones of thunder.

When you have read the last page you feel that you know the two characters as perfectly as if you had lived with them for years; moreover, the author has not told us a thousandth part of what we know of them, his mere indications are such revelations; for it seems he is especially effective in what he leaves unsaid, but merely suggests, and we are grateful to him for what he leaves us to imagine.

Into this tender production Dostoyevski has poured his own nature, all his sensibility, his longing for sympathy and devotion, his bitter conception of life, his savage, pitiable pride. His own letters of this period are like Dievushkin’s, where he speaks of his inconceivable mortification on account of his “wretched overcoat.”

In order to understand the high estimation of this work held by Bielinski and Nekrasof, and to realize its remarkable originality, we must remember its time and place in Russian literature. The “Annals of a Sportsman” did not appear until five years later. True, Gogol had furnished the theme in “Le Manteau,” but Dostoyevski substituted a suggestive emotion in place of his master’s fancy.

He continued to write essays in the same vein, but they were less remarkable, and he even tried his hand at writing a farce; but destiny rudely led him back into his true path, and gave the man his peculiarly tragic physiognomy among writers.

II.

About the year 1847 the students’ clubs already mentioned, which assembled to discuss the doctrines of Fourier and others, opened to receive political writers and army officers, and were at this time under the direction of a former student, the political agitator Petrachevski. The conspiracy headed by this man is still imperfectly understood, as well as the general history of that time. It is, however, certain that two different currents of ideas divided these circles. One embraced those of their predecessors, the revolutionists of December, 1825, who went no farther than to indulge in dreams of the emancipation and of a liberal government. The other set went far beyond their successors, the present nihilists, for they desired the total ruin of the entire social edifice.

Dostoyevski’s character, as we have seen, made him an easy prey to radical ideas through his generosity as well as his hardships and his rebellious spirit. He has related how he was attracted toward socialism by the influence of his learned protector, Bielinski, who tried also to convert him to atheism.

Our author soon became an enthusiastic member of the reunions inspired by Petrachevski. He was, undoubtedly, among the more moderate, or rather one of the independent dreamers. Mysticism, sympathy for the unfortunate, these must have been what attracted him in any political doctrine; and his incapacity for action made this metaphysician altogether harmless. The sentence pronounced upon him charged him with very pardonable errors: participation in the reunions; also in the discussions on the severity of the press censure; the reading or listening to the reading of seditious pamphlets, etc. These crimes seem very slight when compared with the severe punishment they provoked. The police force was then so inefficient that it for two years remained ignorant of what was going on in these circles; but finally they were betrayed by an unfaithful member.

Petrachevski and his friends also betrayed themselves at a banquet in honor of Fourier, where they were discussing the destruction of family ties, property, kings, and deities. Dostoyevski took no part in these social banquets, that occurred just after those days of June in France which spread terror throughout all Europe, and only one year after other banquets which had overturned a throne. The Emperor Nicholas, although naturally humane, now forced himself to be implacable, entertaining the firm conviction that he was the chosen servant of God to save a sinking world. He was already meditating the emancipation of the serfs; by a fatal misunderstanding he was now going to strike down men, some of whom had committed no crime but that of desiring the same reform. History is only just when she seeks the motives of all consciences and the springs of their actions. But this was not a favorable time for explanations or cool judgments.

On the 23d of April, 1849, at five o’clock in the morning, thirty-three persons looked upon as suspicious characters were arrested, the Dostoyevski brothers being among the number. The prisoners were carried to the citadel, and placed in solitary confinement in the gloomy casemates, which were haunted by the most terrible associations. They remained there eight months, with no distractions except the visits of the examining commissioners; finally, they were allowed the use of a few religious books. Feodor Mikhailovitch wrote once to his brother, who had been soon released through the want of sufficient evidence against him: “For five months I have lived upon my own substance; that is, upon my own brain alone…. To think constantly, and receive no outside impression to renew and sustain thought, is wearing…. I was as if placed under a receiver from which all the pure air was extracted….”

On the 22d of December the prisoners were led out, without being informed of the sentence which had been pronounced upon them. There were now only 21, the others having been discharged. They were conducted to a square where a scaffold had been erected. The cold was intense; the criminals were ordered to remove all their clothing, except their shirts, and listen to the reading of the sentence, which would last for a half-hour. When the sheriff began to read, Dostoyevski said to the prisoner next him: “Is it possible that we are going to be executed?” The idea seemed to have occurred to him for the first time. His companion pointed to a cart, loaded with what appeared to be coffins covered over with a cloth. The last words of the sentence were: “They are condemned to death, and are to be shot.”

The sheriff left the scaffold, and a priest mounted upon it with a cross in his hand, and exhorted the prisoners to confess. Only one responded to this exhortation; all the others kissed the cross. Petrachevski and two of the principal conspirators were bound to the pillar. The officer ordered the company of soldiers drawn up for the purpose to charge their weapons. As they were taking aim, a white flag was hoisted in front of them, when the twenty-one prisoners heard that the Emperor had commuted their penalty to exile in Siberia. The leaders were unbound; one of them, Grigoref, was struck with sudden insanity, and never recovered.

Dostoyevski, on the contrary, has often assured me, as if he were really convinced of it, that he should inevitably have gone mad if he had not been removed by this and following disasters from the life he was leading. Before his imprisonment he was beset by imaginary maladies, nervous depression, and “mystic terrors,” which condition would certainly have brought about mental derangement, from which he was only saved by this sudden change in his way of life, and by the necessity of steeling himself against his overwhelming trials,—which may have been true, for it is said that imaginary evils are best cured by real ones; still, I cannot but think that there was some degree of pride in this affirmation.

In each of his books he depicts a scene similar to what he himself experienced, and he has labored to make a perfect psychological study of the condemned prisoner who is about to die. You feel that these pages are the result of a nightmare, proceeding from some hidden recess of the author’s own brain.

The imperial decree, which was less severe for him than for any of the rest, reduced his punishment to four years of hard labor, after which he was to serve as a common soldier, losing his rank among the nobles as well as all civil rights.

The exiled prisoners started immediately in sledges for Siberia. At Tobolsk, after one night passed together, when they bade each other farewell, they were put in irons, their heads shaved, and they were then sent to their several destinations. It was at that temporary prison that they were visited by the wives of the revolutionists of December. These brave women had set a noble example. Belonging to the upper class, and accustomed to a life of luxury, they had renounced everything to follow their exiled husbands into Siberia, and for twenty-five years had haunted the prison gates. Learning now of the arrival of another set of refugees, they came to visit them, warned these young men of what was in store for them, and counselled them how best to support their hardships, offering to each of them all that they had to give, the Gospel.

Dostoyevski accepted his, and throughout the four years always kept it under his pillow. He read it every evening under the lamp in the dormitory, and taught others to read in it. After the hard day’s work, while his companions in chains were restoring their wasted energies in sleep, he obtained from his book a consolation more necessary still for a thinking man, a renewal of moral strength, and a support in bearing his trials. How can we imagine this intellectual man, with his delicate nervous organization, his overweening pride, his sensitive imagination, prone to exaggeration of every dreaded evil, condemned to the companionship of these low wretches in such a monotonous existence, forced to daily labor; and for the slightest negligence, or at the caprice of his keepers, threatened with a flogging by the soldiers! He was inscribed among the worst set of malefactors and political criminals, who were kept under military surveillance.

They were employed in turning a grindstone for marble works, in demolishing old boats on the ice in winter, and other rough and useless labor.

How well he has described the weariness of being forced to labor merely for the sake of being employed, feeling that his task is nothing but a gymnastic exercise. He has also said the severest trial of all, was never being allowed to be alone for a single moment for years. But the greatest torture of all for this writer, now at the height of his powers, incessantly haunted by images and ideas, was the impossibility of writing, of alleviating his lot by absorbing himself in some literary work. But he survived, and was strengthened and purified, and the personal history of this martyr can be read in his “Recollections of a Dead House,”[K] which he wrote after he left the prison. How unjust is literary fame, and what a thing of chance it is! The name and work of Silvio Pellico are known throughout the civilized world. In France the book is one of the classics; and yet there, on the great highway of all fame and of all great thoughts, even the title of this tragic work of Dostoyevski’s was but yesterday quite unknown,—a book as superior to that of the Lombard prisoner, as the tales exceed his in horror.

No work was ever more difficult to accomplish. Siberia, that mysterious land which was then only mentioned with extreme caution, must be freely described. It was, too, a former political prisoner who now undertook to walk over these burning coals and brave this cruel press-censure. He was successful; and he made us realize what exquisite refinement of suffering a man of the upper class, thrown amid such surroundings, was capable of enduring.

He gives us the biography of such a man, who had been through many years of hard labor, the penalty of some small crime. This man, who is, in reality, no other than Dostoyevski himself, occupies himself in psychological studies of these unfortunates, aiming constantly to show the divine spark always existing even in the most degraded. Many of them relate the story of their lives to him; with some he seeks to know nothing of their past, but contents himself with describing their moral natures in his broad, vague manner, which is also common to all the great Russian writers. These portraits, with their indistinct outlines, melting as into the grayness of the early dawn, recall Henner’s portraits when compared with those of Ingres. The language, too, which Dostoyevski purposely employs, of a popular type, is marvellously well fitted for his purpose.

The greater part of these natures belong to a type of character which Dostoyevski seems peculiarly to enjoy analyzing; those natures which are subject to attacks of caprice, almost amounting to sudden or temporary insanity. In a romance of his, called “The Idiot,” he quotes an example of this kind, which he declares to be strictly true:—“Two peasants, of middle age and friends of long standing, arrived at an inn. Neither of them was at all intoxicated. They took their tea and ordered a bedroom, which they shared together. One of them had noticed that within the last few days his companion had worn a silver watch, which he never had seen him wear before. The man was no thief; he was an honest man, and, moreover, in very comfortable circumstances for a peasant. But this watch so struck his fancy that he conceived a most inordinate desire to possess it, which he could not repress. He seized a knife, and, as soon as his friend’s back was turned, he approached him noiselessly, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself, and devoutly murmured this prayer: ‘Lord, forgive me, through Jesus Christ!’ He then killed his friend with as much ease as he would a sheep, and took the watch.”

Those persons who conceive a desire, when on the top of a high tower, to throw themselves into the abyss below, he says are often of a mild, peaceable, and quite ordinary type. Some natures apparently enjoy the anticipation of the horror they can inspire in others, and, in a fit of desperation, seem to court punishment as a solution of their condition of mind. Sometimes in these attacks of madness is mingled a vein of asceticism. Dostoyevski introduces an instance of this kind in “Crime and Punishment,” which illustrates the strange sense which the Russian peasant attaches to the idea of punishment, sought for itself, for its propitiatory virtue:—

“This prisoner was quite different from all the rest. He was a little pale thin man, about 60 years of age. I was struck with his appearance the first time I saw him, there was so much calmness and repose about him. I particularly liked his eyes, which were clear and intelligent. I often talked with him, and have seldom met with so kindly a nature, so upright a soul. He was expiating in Siberia an unpardonable crime. In consequence of several conversions in his parish, a movement towards the old orthodoxy, the government, wishing to encourage these good tendencies, had an orthodox church built. This man, together with a few other fanatics, determined to ‘resist for his faith’s sake,’ and set fire to the church. The instigators of the crime were all condemned to hard labor in Siberia. He had been a very successful tradesman at the head of a flourishing business. Leaving his wife and children at home, he accepted his sentence with firmness, in his blindness considering his punishment as a ‘witness to his faith.’ He was mild and gentle as a child, and one could not but wonder how he could have committed such a deed. I often conversed with him on matters of faith. He yielded up none of his convictions, but never in argument betrayed the least hatred or resentment; nor did I ever discover in him the least indication of pride or braggadocio. In the prison he was universally respected, and did not show a trace of vanity on this account. The prisoners called him ‘our little uncle,’ and never disturbed him in any way. I could realize what sway he must have had over his companions in the faith.

“In spite of the apparent courage with which he bore his fate, a secret constant pain, which he tried to hide from all eyes, seemed at times to consume him. We slept in the same dormitory. I waked one morning at four o’clock, and heard what sounded like stifled sobbing. The old man was sitting on the porcelain stove reading in a manuscript prayer-book. He was weeping bitterly, and I heard him murmur from time to time: ‘O Lord! do not forsake me! Lord, give me strength! My little children, my dearest little ones, we shall never see each other again!’ I felt such inexpressible pity for him!”

I must also translate a terrible piece of realism, the death of Mikhailof: “I knew him but slightly; he was a young man about twenty-five years of age, tall, slender, and had a remarkably fine form. He belonged to the section in which the worst criminals were placed, and was always extremely reticent and seemed very sad and depressed. He had literally wasted away in prison. I remember that his eyes were very fine, and I know not why his image so often comes before me. He died in the afternoon of a fine, clear, frosty day. I remember how the sun shone obliquely through our greenish window-panes, thickly covered with frost. The bright shaft of sunlight shone directly upon this poor unfortunate, as he lay dying. Though he might have been unconscious, he had a hard struggle, the death agony lasting many hours. He had recognized no one since morning. We tried to relieve his suffering, which evidently was intense; he breathed with great difficulty, with a rattling sound, and his chest labored heavily. He threw off all his coverings and tore his shirt, as if the weight of it was insupportable. We went to his aid and took the shirt off. That emaciated body was a terrible sight, the legs and arms wasted to the bone, every rib visible like those of a skeleton. Only his chains and a little wooden cross remained upon him. His wasted feet might almost have escaped through the rings of the fetters.

“For a half-hour before his death all sounds ceased in our dormitory, and no one spoke above a whisper, and all moved as noiselessly as possible. Finally his hand, wavering and uncertain, sought the little cross, and tried to tear it off, as if even that was too heavy a weight and was stifling him. They took it away, and ten minutes after he expired. They went to inform the guard, who came and looked indifferently upon the corpse, then went to call the health officer, who came immediately, approached the dead man with a rapid step which resounded in the silent chamber, and with a professional air of indifference, assumed for the occasion, felt his pulse, made a significant gesture as if to say that all was over, and went out. One of the prisoners suggested that the eyes should be closed, which was done by one of the others, who also, seeing the cross lying on the pillow, took it up, looked at it, and put it around Mikhailof’s neck; then he crossed himself. The face was already growing rigid, the mouth was half open, showing the handsome white teeth under the thin lips, which closely adhered to the gums. Finally, the second officer of the guard appeared in full uniform and helmet, followed by two soldiers. He slowly advanced, looking hesitatingly at the solemn circle of prisoners standing about him. When he drew near the body, he stopped short as if nailed to the spot. The spectacle of this wasted, naked form in irons evidently shocked him. He unfastened his helmet, took it off, which no one expected of him, and crossed himself reverentially. He was a gray-haired veteran officer, and a severe disciplinarian. One of the soldiers with him seemed much affected, and, pointing to the corpse, murmured as he left: ‘He, too, once had a mother!’ These words, I remember, shot through me like an arrow…. They carried away the corpse, with the camp bed it lay upon; the straw rustled, the chains dragged clanking against the floor, breaking the general silence. We heard the second officer in the corridor sending some one for the blacksmith. The corpse must be unfettered….”

This gives an example of Dostoyevski’s method, showing his persistence in giving all the minutiæ of every action. He shows us, how, sometimes, among these tragic scenes, kind souls come to bring consolation to the exiles, as in the case of a widow who came daily to bring little gifts or a bit of news, or at least to smile upon the wretched creatures. “She could give but little, for she was very poor; but we prisoners felt that we had at least, close by the walls of our prison, one being wholly devoted to us,—and that was something.”

On opening this book, the key-note from the very beginning has a tone so melancholy, so harrowing, that you wonder how long the author can continue in this vein, and how he can ever manage the gradation into another. But he is successful in this, as those will see who have the courage to go on as far as the chapter on corporal punishments, and the description of the hospital, to which the prisoners afterwards come to recover from the effects of these chastisements. It is impossible to conceive of sufferings more horrible than these, or more graphically portrayed.

Nevertheless, Dostoyevski does not properly belong to the “natural school.” The difference is not easily explained, but there is a difference. Everything depends upon the master’s intention, which never deceives the reader. When the realistic writer only seeks to awake a morbid curiosity, we inwardly condemn him; but when it is evident that he is aiming to develop some moral idea, or impress a lesson the more strongly upon our minds, we may criticize the method, but we must sympathize with the author. His portrayals, even when disgusting to us, are ennobled, like the loathsome wound under the hands of the gentle Sister of Charity. This is the case with Dostoyevski. His object in writing was reform. With a cautious but pitiless hand, he has torn away the curtain which concealed this distant Siberian hell from the eyes of the Russians themselves. The “Recollections of a Dead House” gave the death-blow to the sentence of exile, as “Annals of a Sportsman” gave the signal for the abolition of serfdom. To-day I am thankful to say these repulsive scenes belong only to the history of the past; corporal punishment has been abolished, and the prisons in Siberia are regulated with as much humanity as with us. We can then pardon the tortures this author has inflicted upon us in his graphic recitals of these scenes of martyrdom. We must persevere and continue to the end, and we shall realize better than from a host of philosophical dissertations what things are possible in such a country, what has taken place there so recently, and how this writer could calmly relate such horrors without a single expression of revolt or astonishment. This reserved impartiality is, I know, partly his own peculiar style, and partly the result of the severe press-censure; but the fact that the writer can speak of these horrors as natural phenomena of social life, reminds us that we are looking into a different world from ours, and must be prepared for all extremes of evil and good, barbarism, courage, and sacrifice. Those men who carried the Testament into the prison with them, those extreme souls are filled with the spirit of a Gospel which has passed through Byzantium, written for the ascetic and the martyr; their errors as well as their virtues are all derived from that same source. I almost despair of making this world intelligible to ours, which is haunted by such different images, moulded by such different hands.

Dostoyevski has since said, many times, that the experience in Siberia was beneficial to him, that he had learned to love his brothers of the lower classes, and to discover nobleness even among the very worst criminals. “Destiny,” he said, “in treating me with the severity of a step-mother, became a true mother to me.”

The last chapter of this work might be entitled: “A Resurrection.” In it are described, with rare skill, the sentiments of a prisoner as he approaches the time of his liberation. During the last few weeks, his hero has the privilege of obtaining a few books, and occasionally an odd number of a review. For ten years he had read nothing but his Gospel, had heard nothing of the outside world.

In taking up the thread of life among his contemporaries, he experiences unusual sensations; he enters into a new universe; he cannot explain many simple words and events; he asks himself, almost with terror, what giant strides his generation has made without him; these feelings must resemble those of a man who has been resuscitated.

At last the solemn hour has come. He tenderly bids his companions farewell, feeling real regret at parting with them; he leaves a portion of his heart wherever he goes, even in a prison. He goes to the forge, his fetters fall, he is a free man!

III.

The freedom which Dostoyevski entered into was, however, only a relative one. He entered a Siberian regiment as a common soldier. The new reign, two years after, in 1856, brought him pardon. At first he was promoted to the rank of officer, and his civil rights restored to him, and then authorized to send in his resignation. But it was a long time before he could obtain permission to leave the country, or to publish anything. At last, in 1859, after ten years of exile, he recrossed the Ural mountains and returned to a country which he found greatly changed, and at that moment palpitating with impatience and hope, on the eve of the Emancipation. He brought a companion with him from Siberia, the widow of one of his old comrades in the conspiracy of Petrachevski, whom he there met, fell in love with, and married. But, as in every phase of his life, this romantic marriage too was destined to be crossed by misfortune and ennobled by self-sacrifice. The young wife conceived a stronger attachment for another man, whom she threatened to join. For a whole year Dostoyevski’s letters prove that he was working to secure the happiness of his wife and his rival, writing constantly to his friends at St. Petersburg to help him to remove all obstacles to their union. “As for me,” he added, at the close of one of those letters, “God knows what I shall do! I shall either drown myself or take to drinking.”

It was this page of his personal history which he reproduced in “The Degraded and Insulted,” the first of his romances which was translated into French, but not the best. The position of the confidant favoring a love affair which only brought despair for himself, was true to nature, for it was his own experience. Whether it was not skilfully presented, or whether we ourselves are more selfish by nature, I cannot say, but it is hard for us to accept such a situation, or not to see a ridiculous side to it. The general public cannot appreciate such subtleties. His characters are too melodramatic. On the very rare occasions when he draws his types from the upper classes, he always makes a failure, for he understands nothing of the complex and restrained passions of souls hardened by intercourse with the world. Natasha’s lover, the giddy creature for whom she has sacrificed everything, is not much better. I know that we must not expect lovers to be reasonable beings, and that it is more philosophical to admire the power of love, irrespectively of its object; but the general novel-reader is not supposed to be a philosopher; he would like the adored hero to be interesting at least, and would prefer even a rascal to an idiot. In France, at all events, we cannot endorse such a spectacle, although it is both true to nature and consoling; an exquisite type of woman devoted to a fool. Our gallantry, however, forces us to admit that a man of genius may be permitted to adore a foolish woman, but that is all we are willing to concede. Dostoyevski himself has surpassed the most severe criticisms of this work in his article on the “Degraded and Insulted”: “I realize that many of the characters in my book are puppets rather than men.”

With these exceptions, we must acknowledge that we recognize the hand of a master in the two female characters. Natasha is the very incarnation of intense, jealous passion; she speaks and acts like a victim of love in a Greek tragedy. Nelly, a charming and pathetic little creature, resembles one of Dickens’ beautiful child characters.

After his return to St. Petersburg, in 1865, Dostoyevski became absorbed in journalism. He conceived an unfortunate passion for this form of literature, and devoted to it the best years of his life. He edited two journals to defend the ideas which he had adopted. I defy any one to express these ideas in any practical language. He took a position between the liberal and the Slavophile parties, inclining more toward the latter. It was a patriotic form of religion, but somewhat mysterious, with no precise dogmas, and lending itself to no rational explanation. One must either accept or reject it altogether. The great error of the Slavophile party has been to have filled so many pages of paper for twenty-five years, in arguing out a mere sentiment. Whoever questions their arguments is considered incapable of understanding them; while those who do not enter into the question at all are despised, and taxed with profound ignorance.

At this time of transition, during the first years following the Emancipation, men’s ideas, too long repressed, were in a state of vertigo, of chaotic confusion. Some were buoyed up with the wildest hopes; others felt the bitterness of disenchantment, and many disappointed enthusiasts embraced Nihilism, which was taken up at this time by romance writers as well as by politicians. Dostoyevski abandoned his purely artistic ideals, withdrew from the influence of Gogol, and consecrated himself to the study of this new doctrine.

From 1865, our author experienced a series of unfortunate years. His second journal was unsuccessful, failed, and he was crushed under the burden of heavy debts incurred in the enterprise. He afterwards lost his wife, as related above, and also his brother Alexis, his associate in his literary labors. He fled to escape his creditors, and dragged out a miserable existence in Germany and Italy. Attacks of epilepsy interrupted his work, and he only returned home from time to time to solicit advance pay from his editors. All that he saw in his travels seems to have made no impression upon him, with the exception of an execution he witnessed at Lyons. This spectacle was retained in his memory, to be described in detail by characters of his future romances.

In spite of his illness and other troubles, he wrote at this time three of his longest novels,—“Crime et Châtiment,” “l’Idiot,” and “Les Possédés.” “Crime and Punishment” was written when he was at the height of his powers. It has been translated, and can therefore be criticised. Men of science who enjoy the study of the human soul, will read with interest the profoundest psychological study which has been written since Macbeth. The curious of a certain type will find in this book the entertaining mode of torture which is to their taste; but I think it will terrify the greater number of readers, and that very many will have no desire to finish it. We generally read a novel for pleasure, and not for punishment. This book has a powerful effect upon women, and upon all impressionable natures. The writer’s graphic scenes of terror are too much for a nervous organization. I have myself seen in Russia numerous examples of the infallible effect of this romance upon the mind. It can be urged that the Slav temperament is unusually susceptible, but I have seen the same impression made upon Frenchmen. Hoffmann, Edgar Poe, Baudelaire, all writers of this type, are mere mystics in comparison with Dostoyevski. In their fictions you feel that they are only pursuing a literary or artistic venture; but in “Crime and Punishment,” you are impressed with the fact that the author is as much horrified as you are yourself by the character that he has drawn from the tissue of his own brain.

The subject is very simple. A man conceives the idea of committing a crime; he matures it, commits the deed, defends himself for some time from being arrested, and finally gives himself up to the expiation of it. For once, this Russian artist has adopted the European idea of unity of action; the drama, purely psychological, is made up of the combat between the man and his own project. The accessory characters and facts are of no consequence, except in regard to their influence upon the criminal’s plans. The first part, in which are described the birth and growth of the criminal idea, is written with consummate skill and a truth and subtlety of analysis beyond all praise. The student Raskolnikof, a nihilist in the true sense of the word, intelligent, unprincipled, unscrupulous, reduced to extreme poverty, dreams of a happier condition. On returning home from going to pawn a jewel at an old pawnbroker’s shop, this vague thought crosses his brain without his attaching much importance to it:—

“An intelligent man who had that old woman’s money could accomplish anything he liked; it is only necessary to get rid of the useless, hateful old hag.”

This was but one of those fleeting thoughts which cross the brain like a nightmare, and which only assume a distinct form through the assent of the will. This idea becomes fixed in the man’s brain, growing and increasing on every page, until he is perfectly possessed by it. Every hard experience of his outward life appears to him to bear some relation to his project; and by a mysterious power of reasoning, to work into his plan and urge him on to the crime. The influence exercised upon this man is brought out into such distinct relief that it seems to us itself like a living actor in the drama, guiding the criminal’s hand to the murderous weapon. The horrible deed is accomplished; and the unfortunate man wrestles with the recollection of it as he did with the original design. The relations of the world to the murderer are all changed, through the irreparable fact of his having suppressed a human life. Everything takes on a new physiognomy and a new meaning to him, excluding from him the possibility of feeling and reasoning like other people, or of finding his own place in life. His whole soul is metamorphosed and in constant discord with the life around him. This is not remorse in the true sense of the word. Dostoyevski exerts himself to distinguish and explain the difference. His hero will feel no remorse until the day of expiation; but it is a complex and perverse feeling which possesses him; the vexation at having derived no satisfaction from an act so successfully carried out; the revolting against the unexpected moral consequences of that act; the shame of finding himself so weak and helpless; for the foundation of Raskolnikof’s character is pride. Only one single interest in life is left to him: to deceive and elude the police. He seeks their company, their friendship, by an attraction analogous to that which draws us to the extreme edge of a dizzy precipice; the murderer keeps up interminable interviews with his friends at the police office, and even leads on the conversation to that point, when a single word would betray him; every moment we fear he will utter the word; but he escapes and continues the terrible game as if it were a pleasure.

The magistrate Porphyre has guessed the student’s secret; he plays with him like a tiger with its prey, sure of his game. Then Raskolnikof knows he is discovered; and through several chapters a long fantastic dialogue is kept up between the two adversaries; a double dialogue, that of the lips, which smile and wilfully ignore; and that of the eyes which know and betray all. At last when the author has tortured us sufficiently in this way, he introduces the salutary influence which is to break down the culprit’s pride and reconcile him to the expiation of his crime. Raskolnikof loves a poor street-walker. The author’s clairvoyance divines that even the sentiment of love was destined in him to be modified, like every other, to be changed into a dull despair.

Sonia is a humble creature, who has sold herself to escape starvation, and is almost unconscious of her dishonor, enduring it as a malady she cannot prevent. She wears her ignominy as a cross, with pious resignation. She is attached to the only man who has not treated her with contempt; she sees that he is tortured by some secret, and tries to draw it from him. After a long struggle the avowal is made, but not in words. In a mute interview, which is tragic in the extreme, Sonia reads the terrible truth in her friend’s eyes. The poor girl is stunned for a moment, but recovers herself quickly. She knows the remedy; her stricken heart cries out:—

“We must suffer, and suffer together … we must pray and atone … let us go to prison!…”

Thus are we led back to Dostoyevski’s favorite idea, to the Russian’s fundamental conception of Christianity: the efficacy of atonement, of suffering, and its being the only solution of all difficulties.

To express the singular relations between these two beings, that solemn, pathetic bond, so foreign to every pre-conceived idea of love, we should make use of the word compassion in the sense in which Bossuet used it: the suffering with and through another being. When Raskolnikof falls at the feet of the girl who supports her parents by her shame, she, the despised of all, is terrified at his self-abasement, and begs him to rise. He then utters a phrase which expresses the combination of all the books we are studying: “It is not only before thee that I prostrate myself, but before all suffering humanity.” Let us here observe that our author has never yet once succeeded in representing love in any form apart from these subtleties, or the simple natural attraction of two hearts toward each other. He portrays only extreme cases; either that mystic state of sympathy and self-sacrifice for a distressed fellow-creature, of utter devotion, apart from any selfish desire: or the mad, bestial cruelty of a perverted nature. The lovers he represents are not made of flesh and blood, but of nerves and tears. Yet this realist evokes only harrowing thoughts, never disagreeable images. I defy any one to quote a single line suggestive of anything sensual, or a single instance where the woman is represented in the light of a temptress. His love scenes are absolutely chaste, and yet he seems to be incapable of portraying any creation between an angel and a beast.

You can imagine what the dénouement will be. The nihilist, half conquered, prowls for some time around the police office; and finally he acknowledges his guilt, and is condemned. Sonia teaches him to pray, and the wretched creatures go to Siberia. Dostoyevski gladly seizes the opportunity to rewrite, as a sort of epilogue, a chapter of his “Recollections of a Dead House.”

Apart from the principal characters of this book, there are secondary characters and scenes which are impossible to forget, such is the impression they leave upon you after one reading. There is one scene where the murderer, always mysteriously attracted back to the fatal spot, tries to recall every detail of his crime; he even goes to pull the cracked bell of the apartment, in order to recall more vividly by this sound the impression of the terrible moment. Detached fragments of this work seem to lose their signification, and if you skip a few pages the whole thing becomes unintelligible. One may feel impatient with the author’s prolixity, but if he omits anything the magnetic current is interrupted. This I have been told by those who have tried the experiment. The reader requires as much of an effort of concentration and memory as for a philosophical treatise. This is a pleasure or a penalty according to the reader. Besides, a translation, however good, cannot possibly render the continuous smooth course of the original text, or give its under-currents of meaning.

We cannot but pity the man who has written such a book, so evidently drawn from the substance of his own brain. To understand how he was led so to write, we must note what he once said to a friend in regard to his mental condition, after one of his severe attacks of illness:—“The state of dejection into which they plunge me makes me feel in this way: I seem to be like a criminal who has committed some terrible deed which weighs upon his conscience.” The review which published Dostoyevski’s novels often gave but a few pages at a time, followed by a brief note of apology. Every one understood that Feodor Mikhailovitch had had one of his severe attacks of illness.

“Crime and Punishment” established the author’s popularity. Its appearance was the great literary event of the year 1866. All Russia was made ill by it, so to speak. When the book first appeared, a Moscow student murdered a pawnbroker in almost precisely the way described by the novelist; and I firmly believe that many subsequent attempts, analogous to this, may have been attributable to the influence of this book. Dostoyevski’s intention, of course, was undoubtedly to dissuade men from such acts by representing their terrible consequences; but he did not foresee that the intensity of his portrayals might act in an opposite sense, and tempt the demon of imitation existing in a certain type of brain. I therefore hesitate to pronounce upon the moral value of the work. Our writers may say that I am over-scrupulous. They may not admit that the moral value of a work of art is a thing to be taken into account in regard to the appreciation of it as a work of art. But does anything exist in this world wholly independent of a moral value?

The Russian authors claim that they aim to nourish souls, and the greatest offence you could offer them would be to accuse them of making a collection of purposeless words. Dostoyevski’s novels will be judged either as useful or harmful according as one decides for or against the morality of public executions and sentences. It is an open question. For myself, I should decide against them.

IV.

In this work Dostoyevski’s talent had reached its culminating point. In “The Idiot,” “The Possessed,” and especially in “The Karamazof Brothers,” many parts are intolerably tedious. The plot amounts to nothing but a framework upon which to hang all the author’s favorite theories, and display every type of his eccentric fancy. The book is nearly filled with conversations between two disputants, whose ideas are continually clashing, each trying to worm out the other’s secrets with the most cunning art, and expose some secret intrigue either of crime or of love. These interviews recall the terrible trials under Ivan the Terrible, or Peter the First; there is the same combination of terror, duplicity, and obstinacy still existing in the race. Sometimes the disputants attempt to penetrate the labyrinth of each other’s religious or philosophical beliefs. They vie with each other in the use of arguments, now fine-spun, now eccentric, like a pair of scholastic doctors of the Sorbonne. Some of these conversations recall Hamlet’s dialogues with his mother, Ophelia, or Polonius. For more than two hundred years critics have discussed the question whether Hamlet was mad when he thus spoke. When that question has been settled, the decision may be applied to Dostoyevski’s heroes. It has been said more than once that this writer and the heroes of his creation are simply madmen. They are mad in the same degree that Hamlet was. For my own part, I consider this statement neither an intelligent nor reasonable one. Such an opinion must be held only by those very short-sighted people who refuse to admit the existence of states of mind different from those they know from personal experience.

In studying Dostoyevski and his work, we must keep in mind one of his favorite phrases, which he often repeats: “Russia is a freak of nature.” A strange anomaly exists in some of these lunatics he describes. They are absorbed in the contemplation of their own minds, intent upon self-analysis. If the author leads them into action, they throw themselves into it impetuously, obedient to the irregular impulses of their nerves, giving free rein to their unbridled wills, which are uncontrollable as are elementary forces. Observe how minutely he describes every physical peculiarity. The condition of the body explains the perturbation of the soul. Whenever a character is introduced to us, he is never by any chance sitting comfortably by a table or engaged in any occupation. “He was extended upon a divan, with his eyes closed, although he was not asleep…. He walked along the street without having any idea where he was…. He was motionless, his eyes absently fixed upon space.”…

These people never eat; they drink tea through the night. Many are given to strong drink. They rarely sleep, and when they do they dream. There are more dreams described in Dostoyevski’s works than in the whole of our classic literature. They are nearly always in a “feverish condition.” Whenever any of these creatures come into relations with their fellow-beings, you meet with such expression as these in almost every line:—“He shuddered … he sprang up with a bound … his features contracted … he became ashy pale … his lower lip trembled … his teeth chattered….” Sometimes there are long pauses in a conversation, when the disputants look fixedly into each other’s eyes.

The writer’s most elaborate creation, and evidently his favorite one, the analysis of which fills a large volume, is “The Idiot.” Feodor Mikhailovitch has described himself in this character, in the way that many authors do: certainly not as he was, but what he wished to be considered. In the first place, “The Idiot” is subject to epilepsy; his attacks furnish a most convenient and effective climax for all emotional scenes. The author evidently greatly enjoys describing these; he assures us that the whole being is bathed in an ecstasy, for a few seconds preceding the attack. We are quite willing to take his word for this. The nickname “Idiot” becomes fixed upon the hero, Prince Myshkin, because his malady produced such an effect upon his faculties in childhood that he has always been eccentric. Starting with this pathological idea, this fictitious character is persistently developed with an astonishing consistency.

Dostoyevski at first had the idea of producing another Don Quixote, the ideal redresser of wrongs. Occasionally you feel the impress of this idea; but soon the author is carried away by his own creation; his aim is loftier, he creates in the soul in which he sees himself mirrored the most sublime, Christ-like qualities, he makes a desperate effort to elevate the character to the moral proportions of a saint. Imagine, if you can, an exceptional being, possessing the mind and reasoning faculties of a man, while his heart retains the simplicity of a child, who, in short, can personify the gospel precept: “Be as little children.” Such a character is Prince Myshkin, the “Idiot.” The nervous disease has, by a happy chance, produced this phenomenon; it has destroyed that part of the intellect which is the seat of all our defects: irony, arrogance, selfishness, avarice; while the noble qualities are largely developed. On leaving the hospital, this extraordinary young man is thrown into the current of ordinary life. It would seem that he must perish in such an atmosphere, not having the weapons of defence that others are armed with. Not so; his simple straightforwardness is stronger than any of the malicious tricks practised upon him; it carries him through every difficulty, saves him from every snare. His innocent wisdom has the last word in all discussions; he utters phrases proceeding from a profound asceticism, such as this, addressed to a dying man:—“Pass on before us, and forgive us our happiness.”—Elsewhere he says: “I fear I am unworthy of my sufferings—” and many similar expressions. He lives among a set of usurers, liars, and rascals. These people treat him as they would an idiot, but respect and venerate him; they feel his influence, and become better men. The women also laugh at the idiot at first, but they all end by falling desperately in love with him; while he responds to their adoration only by a tender pity, a compassionate love, the only sort that Dostoyevski permits his favorite characters to indulge in.

The writer constantly returns to his ruling idea, the supremacy of the suffering and poor in spirit. Why do all the Russian idealists, without exception, cry out against prosperity in life? What I believe to be the secret, unconscious solution of this unreasonable feeling is this: they feel the force of that fundamental truth, that the life of a living, acting, thinking being must perforce be a mixture of good and evil. Whoever acts, creates and destroys at the same time, makes for himself a place in the world at the expense of some other person or thing. Therefore, if one neither acts nor thinks, this fatality must naturally be suppressed,—this production of evil as well as of good; and, as the evil he does has more effect than the good, he takes refuge in a non-existence. So these writers admire and sanctify the idiot,—the neutral, inactive being. It is true, he does no good, but then he can do no evil: therefore, from the point of view of pessimists, in their conception of the world, he is the most admirable.

As I read, I am overwhelmed by the number of these moral giants and monsters around me; but I cannot pass by one of the most striking of them, Rogozhin, the merchant, a very forcibly drawn figure. The twenty pages descriptive of the workings of passion in the heart of this man are written by the hand of a great master. Passion, in this strange nature, has developed to such intensity, and bestows upon the man such a gift of fascination, that the woman he loves accepts, in spite of herself, this savage whom she abhors, and moreover with the certainty that he will murder her. So he does; and, throughout an entire night, beside the bed where lies the body of his strangled victim, he calmly discusses philosophy with his friend. There is nothing melodramatic about this scene. It is simple as possible; to the author, at least, it appears quite natural; and this is why it makes us shiver with terror. I must also mention,—there are so few such touches in the work—the little drunken money-lender who “offers a prayer every night for the repose of the soul of Mme. du Barry.” Do not suppose that Dostoyevski means to enliven us with anything approaching a joke. Through the lips of this character, he seriously indulges in compassionate sympathy for the martyrdom endured by Mme. du Barry during the
long passage of the cart through the streets and the struggle with the executioner. He evidently has always before him that half-hour of the 22d December, 1849.

“Les Possédés” is a description of the revolutionary world of the Nihilists. This title is a slight modification of the Russian title, “The Demons,” which is too obscure. All Dostoyevski’s characters might be said to be possessed, as the word was understood in the Middle Ages. A strange, irresistible will urges them on, in spite of themselves, to commit atrocious deeds. Natasha, in “The Degraded and Insulted,” is an example; as also Raskolnikof, in “Crime and Punishment,” and Rogozhin, in “The Idiot,” besides all the conspirators who commit murder or suicide without any definite aim or motive. The history of the origin of “Les Possédés” is rather curious. Dostoyevski was always opposed to Turgenef in politics and even more seriously through literary jealousy. At this time, Tolstoï had not yet established his reputation; and the other two were the only competitors in the field ready to dispute empire over the imaginations of their countrymen. The inevitable rivalry between them amounted, on Dostoyevski’s part, to hatred. He was always the wronged party; and into this volume he most unjustifiably introduced his brother author under the guise of a ridiculous actor. But his secret, unpardonable grievance was that Turgenef was the first to take up and treat the subject of Nihilism, introducing it into his celebrated novel, “Fathers and Sons.” Since 1861 Nihilism had, however, developed from a metaphysical doctrine into practical action. Dostoyevski wrote “Les Possédés” out of revenge; three years after, Turgenef accepted the challenge, by publishing “Virgin Soil.” The theme of both romances is the same—a revolutionary conspiracy in a small provincial town.

The prize in this tilting match must be adjudged to the dramatic psychologist rather than to the gentle artist who created “Virgin Soil.” Dostoyevski lays bare the inmost recesses of those intricate natures more completely; the scene of Shatof’s murder is rendered with a diabolical power which Turgenef was utterly incapable of. Still, it must be admitted that Bazarof, the cynic in “Fathers and Sons,” was the imperishable prototype of all Nihilists who came after him. Dostoyevski felt this, and keenly regretted it. His book, however, may be called a prophecy as well as an explanation. It was truly prophetic; for in 1871, when anarchy was still in the process of fermentation, he looked deeply enough into the future to relate facts precisely analogous to what we have since seen developed. I attended the trials of the Nihilists and can testify that many of the men and the conspiracies that were judged at that time were exact reproductions of those the novelist had previously created.

The book is also an explanation; for the world will understand from it the true face of the problem, which is even to-day imperfectly understood, because its solution is sought only in politics. Dostoyevski presents to us the various classes of minds from which the sect is recruited. First, the simple unbeliever, who devotes all his capacity for religious fervor to the service of atheism.—The author illustrates this type by the following anecdote (in every Russian’s bedroom stands a little altar, with its holy images of the saints): “Lieutenant Erkel, having thrown down the images and broken them in pieces with an axe, arranged upon the tablets three atheistic books; then he lighted some church tapers and placed one before each volume.”—Secondly, there is the weak class, who feel the magnetism of the strong, and blindly follow their chiefs. Then the logical pessimists, among whom the engineer Kirilof is an example. These are inclined toward suicide, through moral inability to live. Their party takes advantage of these yielding natures; for a man without principles, who decides to die because he can settle upon no principles, is one who will easily lend himself to whatever is exacted of him. Finally, the worst class: those who will not hesitate to commit murder, as a protest against the order of the world, which they do not comprehend, and in order to make a singular and novel use of their will power, to enjoy inspiring terror in others, and satisfy the animal cravings within them.

The greatest merit of this confusing book, which is badly constructed, often ridiculous, and loaded with doubtful theories, is that it gives us, after all, a clear idea of what constitutes the real power of the Nihilists. This does not lie in the doctrines in themselves, nor in the power of organization of this sect, which is certainly overrated; it lies simply and only in the character of a few men. Dostoyevski thinks, and the revelations brought to light in the trials have justified his opinion, that the famous organization may be reduced to only a few local circles, badly organized; and that all these phantoms, central committees and executive committees, exist only in the imaginations of the adepts. On the other hand, he brings into bold relief those iron wills, those souls of frozen steel, in striking contrast with the timidity and irresolution of the legal authorities. Between these two poles he shows us the mass of weak natures, attracted toward that pole which is most strongly magnetized. It is, indeed, the force of character of these resolute men, and not their ideas, which has acted upon the Russian people; and here the piercing eye of the philosopher is keener than that of Russia herself. Men become less and less exacting in regard to ideas, and more and more skeptical as to the way of carrying them out. Those who believe in the absolute virtue of doctrines are becoming every day more rare; but what is seductive to them is force of character, even if its energy be applied to an evil cause,—because it promises to be a guide, and guarantees a strong leadership, the very first requisition of any association of men. Man is the born slave of every strong will which he comes in contact with.

The last period of Dostoyevski’s life, after the publication of this book, and his return to Russia, was somewhat easier and less melancholy. He had married an intelligent and courageous woman, who helped him out of his pecuniary embarrassments. His popularity increased, while the success of his books freed him from debt. Taking up journalism again, he established a paper in St. Petersburg, and finally an organ peculiarly his own, which he conducted quite by himself. It was called the “Note-book of an Author” (Carnet d’un Ecrivain), and it appeared—whenever he chose. It did not at all resemble what we call a journal or review, but might have been called something similar to the Delphic oracle. Into this encyclopædia, the principal work of his latter years, he poured all the political, social, and literary ideas which beset him, and related anecdotes and reminiscences of his life. I have already stated what his politics were; but the obscure productions of this period can neither be analyzed nor controverted. This periodical, which first appeared just before the war with Turkey, reflected the states of enthusiasm and discouragement of Russia through those years of feverish patriotism. Everything could be found in this summary of dreams, in which every question relating to human life was mooted. Only one thing was wanting: a solid basis of doctrine that the mind could take hold of. There were occasionally some touching episodes and artistic bits of composition recalling the great novelist. The “Note-book of an Author” was in fact a success, although the public now really cared less for the ideas than for the person, and were, besides, so accustomed to and fond of the sound of his voice. His last book, “The Karamazof Brothers,” was so interminably long that very few Russians had patience to read it to the end. But it contains some scenes equal to his best of early days, especially that of the death of the child. The French novel grows ever smaller, is easily slipped into a travelling-bag, to while away a few hours on a journey; but the heavy Russian romance reigns long upon the family table in country homes, through the long winter evenings. I well remember seeing Dostoyevski entering a friend’s house, on the day his last novel appeared, with the heavy volumes under his arm; and his saying with pride: “They weigh, at least, five pounds”;—a fact he should rather have regretted than have taken pride in.

I should say here that the three books which best show the different phases of his talent are: “Poor People,” “Recollections of a Dead House,” and “Crime and Punishment.” As to the criticism of his works as a whole, every one will have to use his own judgment. We must look upon Dostoyevski as a phenomenon of another world, an abnormal and mighty monster, quite unique as to originality and intensity. In spite of his genius, you feel that he lacks both moderation and breadth. The world is not composed of shadows and tears alone. Even in Russia there is light and gayety, there are flowers and pleasures. Dostoyevski has never seen but one half of life; for he has never written any books except either sad or terrible ones. He is like a traveller who has seen the whole universe, and described what he has seen, but who has never travelled except by night. He is an incomparable psychologist when he studies souls either blackened by crime or wounded by sorrow; and as skilful a dramatist, but limited to scenes of terror and of misery. No one has carried realism to such an extreme point as he. He depicts real life, but soars above reality in a superhuman effort toward some new consummation of the Gospel. He possesses a double nature, from whatever side you view him: the heart of a Sister of Charity and the spirit of a Grand Inquisitor. I think of him as belonging to another age, to the time of great sacrifices and intense devotion, hesitating between a St. Vincent de Paul and a Laubardemont, preceding the first in his search for destitute children, lingering behind the other, unwilling to lose the last crackling of the funeral pile.

According as we are affected by particular examples of his talent, we call him a philosopher, an apostle, a lunatic, a consoler of the afflicted, or the torturer of a tranquil mind; the Jeremiah of the prison or the Shakespeare of the mad-house. Every one of these appellations belongs to him; but no one of them, taken alone, will suffice. What he himself said of his race, in “Crime and Punishment,” we may say of him:—

“The soul of the Russian is great, like his vast country; but terribly prone to everything fantastic and excessive; it is a real misfortune to be great without any special genius.”

I subscribe to this; but also to the opinion that I have heard expressed upon this book by one of our masters of psychology: “This author opens up unknown horizons, and discloses souls different from ours; he reveals to us a new world of beings, with stronger natures, both for good and evil, having stronger wills and greater endurance.”

V.

I must apologize for returning to personal recollections in order to make this sketch complete, and must therefore recall the man himself, and give some idea of his extraordinary influence. By chance I met Feodor Mikhailovitch many times during the last three years of his life. The impression he made upon you was as profound as was that of the most striking scenes of his romances; if you had once seen him, you would never forget him. His appearance exactly corresponded with his life and its work. He was short and spare, and seemed to be all nerves; worn and haggard at the age of sixty. He was, in fact, prematurely old, and looked ill, with his long beard and blond hair, but, in spite of all, as vivacious as ever. His face was of the true peasant type of Moscow: the flat nose; the small, twinkling eyes, full of fire and tenderness; the broad forehead, all seamed with wrinkles, and with many indentations and protuberances; the sunken temples, and, most noticeable of all, a mouth of inexpressible sadness. I never saw in any human face such an expression of accumulated sorrow—as if every trial of soul and body had left its imprint upon it. You could read in his face better than in any book his recollections of the dead house, and his long experience of terror, mistrust, and martyrdom. His eyelids, lips, and every fibre of his face quivered with nervous contractions. His features would grow fierce with anger when excited over some subject of discussion, and at another time would wear the gentle expression of sadness you so often see in the saints on the ancient Slavonic altar-pieces, so venerated by the Slav nation. The man’s nature was wholly plebeian, with the curious mixture of roughness, sagacity, and mildness of the Russian peasant, together with something incongruous—possibly an effect of the concentration of thought illumining this beggar’s mask. At first he rather repelled you, before his strange magnetism had begun to act upon you. He was generally taciturn, but when he spoke it was in a low tone, slow and deliberate, growing gradually more earnest, and defending his opinions without regard to any one. While sustaining his favorite theme of the superiority of the Russian lower classes, he often observed to ladies in the fashionable society he was drawn into, “You cannot pretend to compare with the most inferior peasant.”

There was not much opportunity for literary discussion with Dostoyevski. He would stop you with one word of proud disdain. “We possess the best qualities of every other people, and our own peculiar ones in addition; therefore we can understand you, but you are not capable of understanding us.”

May I be forgiven, but I shall now attempt to prove the contrary. In spite of his assertion, his views on European life were laughably ingenuous. I remember well one of his tirades against the city of Paris, one evening when the inspiration seized him. He spoke of it with fiery indignation, as Jonah would have spoken concerning Nineveh. I remember the very words:—

“Some night a prophet will appear in the ‘Café Anglais’! He will write on the wall the three words of fire; that will be the signal for the end of the old world, and Paris will be destroyed in fire and blood, in all its pride, with its theatres and its ‘Café Anglais.’” In the seer’s imagination, this inoffensive establishment represented the heart of Sodom, a den of enticing and infernal orgies, which he thought it his duty to call down curses upon. He enlarged long and eloquently upon this theme.

He often reminded me of J. J. Rousseau. That pedantic genius has often come before me since I have studied the character and works of this distrustful philanthropist of Moscow. Both entertained the same notions, had the same combination of roughness and ideality, of sensibility and ill-humor, as well as the same deep sympathy for humanity which compels the attention of their contemporaries. After Rousseau, no man had greater literary defects than Dostoyevski: boundless self-love, over-sensitiveness, jealousy, and spite, none knew better how to win the hearts of his fellow-men by showing them how they filled his heart. This writer, so forbidding in society, was the idol of a large proportion of the young men of Russia, who awaited with feverish impatience the appearance of his novels, as well as his periodical; who consulted him as they would a spiritual adviser and director, and sought his help in all moral questions.

The most important work of the latter years of his life was to reply to the scores of letters which brought to him the echo of strangers’ grievances. One must have lived in Russia during those troublous times, to understand the ascendancy he obtained over the world of “Poor People” in their search for a new ideal, as well as over the class just above the very poor. The influence of Turgenef’s literary and artistic work was most unjustly eclipsed; Tolstoï with his philosophy influenced only the most intellectual minds, but Dostoyevski won all hearts and obtained a most powerful sway over them. In 1880, at the time of the inauguration of the monument to Pushkin, when all the Russian authors assembled in full force to celebrate the fête, Dostoyevski’s popularity entirely obliterated that of all his rivals. The audience sobbed when he addressed them. They bore him in triumph in their arms; the students crowded upon the platform and took possession of it, that they might see and be near him and touch him; and one of these young enthusiasts swooned from emotion when he had succeeded in reaching him. The current of feeling ran so high that had he lived a few years longer he would have found himself in a very difficult position. In the official hierarchy of the empire there is no place for plants of such exuberant growth; no field for the influence of a Goethe or a Voltaire. In spite of his consistency in politics and his perfect orthodoxy, the old exile would have seriously risked being compromised by his blind partisans, and even considered dangerous. They only realized on the day of his death how dangerous he was.

Although I regret to finish this sombre sketch with a funereal scene, I cannot refrain from speaking of the apotheosis accorded to him, and the impression it made upon me, for it will show, more than any extended criticism, what this man was to his native country. On the 10th of February, 1881, some friends of Dostoyevski told me that he had died the preceding night, after a short illness. We went to his house to attend the service which the Russian Church holds twice a day over the remains of the dead, from the time of the decease until the burial. He lived in a populous quarter of St. Petersburg. We found an immense crowd before the door and on the staircase, and with great difficulty threaded our way to the study, where the great author lay. It was a small apartment, strewn with papers and pamphlets, and crowded by the visitors, who filed around the coffin, which rested upon a little table at one end of the room. I saw that face for the first time at peace, utterly free from pain. He seemed to be happily dreaming under the profusion of roses, which quickly disappeared, divided among the crowd as relics. The crowd increased every moment, all the women were in tears, the men boisterously pushing and crowding, eager to see his face. The temperature of the room became suffocating, being closed quite tightly from the air, as Russian rooms are in winter. Suddenly the air seemed to be exhausted, all the candles went out, and only the little flickering lamp before the holy images remained. Just at this moment, in the darkness, there was a terrible rush from the staircase, bringing a new influx of people. It seemed as if the whole crowd outside were mounting the stairs; the first comers were hurled against the coffin, which tottered—the poor widow, crowded, with her two children, between the table and the wall, threw herself over the body of her husband, and held it, screaming with terror. For a few moments we thought the corpse would be crushed under foot by the crowd. It oscillated, pressed upon by this mass of humanity, by the ardent and brutal affection of the rushing throngs below. At this moment there came before me a rapid vision of the author’s whole work, with all the cruelty, terror, and tenderness he tried to portray in it. This throng of strangers seemed to assume names and forms quite familiar to me. Fancy had sketched them in books, but now they stood living before me, taking part in a similar scene of horror. His characters seemed to have come to torment him, even after death, to bring him their rough homage, even to the profanation of the object of it. He would have appreciated just such exaggerated homage.

Two days after, this vision was repeated more completely, and on a larger scale. The 12th February, 1881, was a memorable day in Russia. Except on the occasion of the death of Skobelef, there were never seen in St. Petersburg such significant and imposing obsequies. From an early hour the whole population were standing in the street, one hundred thousand persons along the line where the procession was to pass. More than twenty thousand persons followed it. The government was alarmed, fearing some serious disturbance. They thought the corpse might be seized, and they had to repress the students who wanted to have the chains of the Siberian prisoner carried behind the funeral car. The timorous officials insisted upon preventing all risk of a revolutionary uprising. This was at the time of the most important of the Nihilist conspiracies, only one month previous to that one which cost the Tsar his life, during the time of that experiment of the liberal leader, Loris Melikof. Russia was at this moment in a state of fermentation, and the most trifling incident might produce an explosion. Loris thought it wiser to associate himself with the popular sentiment than to try to crush it out. He was right; the wicked designs of a few men were absorbed in the general grief. Through one of those unexpected combinations, of which Russia alone possesses the secret, all parties, all adversaries, all the disjointed fragments of the empire, now came together, through the death of this man, in a general communion of grief and enthusiasm. Whoever witnessed this funeral procession saw this country of contrasts illustrated in all its phases; the priests who chanted the service, the students of the universities, the school children, the young female students from the medical schools, the Nihilists, easily recognized by their peculiarities of dress and bearing, the men wearing a plaid over the shoulder, the spectacles and closely cut hair of the women; all the literary and scientific societies, deputations from every part of the empire, old Muscovite merchants, peasants, lackeys, and beggars. In the church waited the official dignitaries, the minister of public instruction, and the young princes of the imperial family.

A forest of banners, crosses, and wreaths were borne by that army, which was made up of such various elements, and produced in the spectator such a medley of impressions. To me everything that passed seemed an illustration of the author’s work, formed of elements both formidable and restless, with all their folly and grandeur. In the first rank, and most numerous, were those he loved best, the ‘poor people,’ the ‘degraded,’ the ‘insulted,’ the ‘possessed’ even, glad to take part in leading the remains of their advocate over this path of glory;—but accompanying and surrounding all were the uncertainty and confusion of the national life, as he had painted it, filled with all the vague hopes that he had stirred.

The crowd pressed into the little church, decked with flowers, and into the cemetery around it. Then there was a Babel of words. Before the altar the high-priest discoursed of God and of eternity, while others took the body to carry it to the grave, and discoursed of glory. Official orators, students, Slavophile and liberal committees, men of letters and poets,—every one came there to set forth his own ideal, to claim the departed spirit for his cause, and parade his own ambition over this tomb.

While the winter wind bore away all this eloquence with the rustling leaves and the snow-dust raised by the spades of the grave-diggers, I made an effort to make, in my own mind, a fair estimate of the man’s moral worth and of his life’s work. I felt as much perplexed as when I had to pronounce judgment upon his literary merit. He had sympathized with the people, and awakened sympathy, and even piety, in them. But what excessive ideas and what moral convulsions he engendered! He had given his heart to the cause, it is true; but unaccompanied by reason, that inseparable companion of the heart. I reviewed the whole course of that strange life;—born in a hospital, to a youth of poverty, illness, and trial, exiled to Siberia, then sent to the barracks, ever pursued by poverty and distress, always crushed, and yet ennobled by a labor which was his salvation. I now felt that this persecuted life should not be judged by our standards, which may not apply to his peculiar case, and that I must leave him to Him who judges all hearts according to their true merits. When I bent over his grave, covered with laurel wreaths, the farewell words which came to my lips were those of the student to the poor abandoned girl, and which express Dostoyevski’s entire creed: “It is not only before thee that I prostrate myself, but before all suffering humanity!”