I
Vladimir Soloviev used to call Dostoevsky 'the prophet,' and even 'the prophet of God.' Immediately after Soloviev, though often in complete independence of him, very many people looked upon Dostoevsky as the man to whom the books of human destiny were opened; and this happened not only after his death, but even while he was yet alive. Apparently Dostoevsky himself too, if he did not regard himself as a prophet—he was too eagle-eyed for that—at least thought it right that all people should see a prophet in him. To this bears witness the tone of The Journal of an Author, no less than the questions upon which he generally touches therein. The Journal of an Author began to appear in 1873, that is on Dostoevsky's return from abroad, and therefore coincides with what his biographers call 'the highest period of his life.' Dostoevsky was then the happy father of a family, a man of secure position, a famous writer, the author of a whole series of novels known to all: The House of the Dead, The Idiot, The Possessed. He has everything which can be required from life, or, more truly, he has taken everything which can be taken from life. You remember Tolstoi's deliberations in his Confession? 'Finally, I shall be as famous as Pushkin, Gogol, Goethe and Shakespeare—and what shall come after?' Indeed, it is difficult to become a more famous writer than Shakespeare; and even if one succeeded, the inevitable question, 'And what shall come after?' would by no means be removed. Sooner or later in the activity of a great writer a moment comes when further perfection seems impossible. How shall a man be greater than himself in the world of literature? If he would move, then by his own will or in spite of it he must step on to another plane. And this is plainly the beginning of prophecy in a writer. In the general view the prophet is greater than the writer; and even the possession of genius is not always a guarantee against the general view. Even men so sceptical as Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, men always ready to doubt everything, more than once were the victims of prejudices. Prophetic words were expected of them, and they went out to meet men's desires, Dostoevsky even more readily than Tolstoi. Moreover both prophesied clumsily: they promised one thing, and something wholly different happened. So Tolstoi promised long ago that men would awake to their error soon and would put away from them fratricidal war, and would begin to live as true Christians should, fulfilling the Gospel commandment of love. Tolstoi prophesied and preached; people read him, as, it seems, they read no other writer: but they have not changed their habits nor their tastes. For the last ten years Tolstoi has perforce been a witness of a whole series of horrible and most savage wars. And now there is our present revolution[1]—armed mobs rioting, the gallows set up, men shot down, bombs—the revolution which came to replace the bloody war in the Far East!
And this is in Russia, where Tolstoi was born, lived, taught and prophesied, where millions of people sincerely hold him to be the greatest genius of all! Even in his own family Tolstoi could not effect the change that he desired. One of his sons is an officer in the army; the other writes in the Novoïe Vremya, as though he were Souvorin's[2] son, not Tolstoi's.... Where, then, is the gift of prophecy? Why is it that a man so great as Tolstoi can foresee nothing, and seems to peer his way through life? 'What will to-morrow bring forth?' 'To-morrow I'll work miracles,' said the magician to the Russian prince of old. For reply the prince drew his sword and struck off the magician's head; and the excited mob, which believed in the magician-prophet, became calm and departed home. History is ever striking off the heads of prophetic predictions, and yet the crowd still runs after the prophets. Of little faith, the crowd looks for a sign, because it desires a miracle. But can the ability to predict be accounted as evidence of the power to work miracles? It is possible to predict an eclipse of the sun or the appearance of a comet, but this surely means a miracle only to the ignorant. An enlightened mind is secure in the knowledge that where prediction is possible, there is no miracle, since the possibility of prediction and of foreseeing presupposes a strict uniformity. Therefore not he will appear a prophet who has great spiritual gifts, nor he who desires to dominate the world and to command the very laws, neither the magician, nor the sorcerer, nor the artist, but he who, having yielded himself beforehand to the actual and its laws, has devoted himself to the mechanical labour of record and calculation. Bismarck could foretell the greatness of Russia and Germany; and not only Bismarck, but an ordinary German politician, for whom everything is reduced to Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, could read the future for many years ahead; yet Dostoevsky and Tolstoi could foresee nothing. In Dostoevsky the failure is still more remarkable than in Tolstoi, because he more often attempted prediction: more than half of his Journal consists in unfulfilled prophecies. So often did he commit his prophetic genius.
[1] This essay was written during the revolution of 1905.
[2] The famous editor of the Novoïe Vremya.
II
To some it may perhaps seem out of place that in an article devoted to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the writer's death, I call to mind his mistakes and errors. The reproach is hardly just. A certain kind of defect in a great man is at least as characteristic and important as his qualities.
Dostoevsky was not a Bismarck. But is that so terrible that we must lament it? Moreover, for writers of the type of Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, their social and political ideas are without any value. They know well that no one obeys them. Whatever they may say, history and political life will go on in the same way, since it is not their books and articles which guide events. And, probably, here is the explanation of the amazing boldness of their opinions. If Tolstoi really imagined that it would be enough for him to write an article demanding that all 'soldiers, policemen, judges, ministers' and the rest, all those guardians of the public peace, whom he detested—and, by the way, who loves them?—should be dismissed, for all prison-doors to be flung wide before the murderers and robbers—who can tell whether he would have shown himself sufficiently firm and resolute in his opinions, to take upon himself the responsibility for the effects of the measures which he proposed? But he knows beyond all doubt that he will not be obeyed, and therefore he calmly preaches anarchy. Dostoevsky's part as a preacher was quite different; but it too was, so to speak, platonic. Probably it came as a surprise even to himself, that he became the prophet, not of 'ideal' politics, but of those most realistic tasks which governments always set themselves in countries where a few men direct the destinies of peoples. Listening to Dostoevsky, one may imagine that he is discovering ideas which the government must take for its guidance and set itself to realise. But you will soon convince yourself that Dostoevsky did not discover one single original political idea. Everything of the kind that he possessed he had borrowed without examination from the Slavophiles, who in their turn appeared original only to the extent to which they were able without outside assistance to translate from the German and the French: Russland, Russland über alles. (Even the rhythm of the verse is not affected by the substitution of the one word.) But what is most important is, that the Slavophiles with their Russo-German glorification of nationality, and with them Dostoevsky who joined the chorus, have neither taught nor educated one single man among the ruling classes. Our government knew all that it needed to know by itself, without the Slavophiles and without Dostoevsky. From time immemorial it had gone its way by the road which the theorists so passionately praised: so that nothing was left to them but to eulogise those in power and to defend the policy of the Russian government against the public opinion which was hostile to it. Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality—all these were held so firmly in Russia that in the 'seventies when Dostoevsky began to preach they needed no support whatever. And surely every one knows that power never seriously reckons upon the help of literature. Certainly it requires that the Muses should pay tribute to it with the others, nobly formulating its demands in the words: Blessed be the union of the sword and the lyre. It used to happen that the Muses did not refuse the request, sometimes sincerely, sometimes because, as Heine said, it is particularly disagreeable to wear iron chains in Russia, on account of the heavy frosts. In any case the Muses were only allowed to sing the praises of the sword, but by no means to wield it. There are all kinds of unions. And here again Dostoevsky, for all his independent nature, still appeared in the rôle of a prophet of the Russian government: that is, he divined the secret devices of the powers that were, and in this connection then recalled all the 'high and beautiful' words which he had managed to hoard up in the course of his long wanderings. For instance, the government began to cast covetous glances towards the East (at that time the Near East still); Dostoevsky begins to argue that we must have Constantinople, and to prophesy that Constantinople will soon be ours. His 'argument' is, of course, of a purely 'moral character,' and, sure enough, he is a writer. Only from Constantinople, he says, can we make avail the purely Russian ideal of embracing all humanity. Of course our government, though indeed we had no Bismarcks, perfectly well understood the value of moral argument and of prophecy based upon them, and would have preferred a few well-equipped divisions and improved guns. To realist politicians one single soldier, armed not with a gun but with a blunderbuss, is of more importance than the sublimest conception of moral philosophy. But still they do not drive away the humble prophet, if the prophet knows his place. Dostoevsky accepted the rôle, since it gave him still the opportunity of displaying his refractory nature in the struggle with Liberal literature. He sang paeans, made protests, uttered absurdities—and worse than absurdities. For instance, he counselled all the Slav peoples to unite under the aegis of Russia, assuring them that only thus would full independence be guaranteed them, and the right of shaping themselves by their own culture, and so on—and that in the face of the millions of Polish Slavs living in Russia. Or again, the Moscow Gazette gives its opinion that it would be well for the Crimean Tartars to emigrate to Turkey, since it would then be possible for Russians to settle in the peninsula. Dostoevsky catches up this original idea with enthusiasm. 'Indeed,' he says, 'on political and state and similar considerations'—I do not know how it is with other people, but when I hear such words as 'state' and 'political' on Dostoevsky's lips, I cannot help smiling' it is necessary to expel the Tartars and to settle Russians on their lands.' When the Moscow Gazette projects such a measure, it is intelligible. But Dostoevsky! Dostoevsky who called himself a Christian, who so passionately preaches love to one's neighbour, self-abasement, self-renunciation, who taught that Russia must 'serve the nations'—how could he be taken with an idea so rapacious? And indeed almost all his political ideas have the mark of rapacity upon them: to grab and grab, and still to grab.... As the occasion demands, he now expresses the hope that we may have Germany's friendship, and again threatens her; now he argues that we have need of England, and again he asserts that we could do without her,—just like a leader-writer in a bien-pensant provincial paper. One thing alone makes itself felt among all these ludicrous and eternally contradictory assertions,—Dostoevsky understands nothing, absolutely nothing, about politics, and moreover, he has nothing at all to do with politics. He is forced to go in tow of others who, compared with him, are utter nonentities, and he goes. Even his ambition—and he had a colossal ambition, an ambition unique in its kind, as befitted a universal man—suffers not one whit: chiefly because men expected prophecy from him, because the next title to that of a great writer is that of a prophet, and because a ring of conviction and a loud voice are the signs of the prophetic gift. Dostoevsky could speak aloud: he could also speak with the tone of one who knows secrets, and of one with authority. One learns much in the underworld. All these things served him. Men took the poet-laureate of the existing order for the inspirer of thoughts and the governor of Russia's remotest destinies. It was enough for Dostoevsky. It was even necessary for Dostoevsky. He knew of course that he was no prophet; but he knew that there had never been one on earth, and that those who were prophets had no better right to the title than he.