Landmarks in Russian literature

by Maurice Baring

In the chapter on Tolstoy and Tourgeniev, I pointed out that the Russian character could roughly be divided into two types, which dominate the whole of Russian fiction, the two types being Lucifer, the embodiment of invincible pride, and Ivan Durak, the wise fool. This is especially true with regard to Dostoievsky’s novels. Nearly all the most important characters in his books represent one or other of these two types. Raskolnikov, the hero of Crime and Punishment, is the embodiment of the Lucifer type, and the whole motive and mainspring of his character is pride.

Raskolnikov is a Nihilist in the true sense of the word, not a political Nihilist nor an intellectual Nihilist like Tourgeniev’s Bazarov, but a moral Nihilist; that is to say, a man who strives to act without principle and to be unscrupulous, who desires to put himself beyond and above human moral conventions. His idea is that if he can trample on human conventions, he will be a sort of Napoleon. He goes to pawn a jewel at an old woman pawnbroker’s, and the idea which is to affect his whole future vaguely takes root in his mind, namely, that an intelligent man, possessed of the fortune of this pawnbroker, could do anything, and that the only necessary step is to suppress this useless and positively harmful old woman. He thus expresses the idea later:

“I used to put myself this question: If Napoleon had found himself in my position and had not wherewith to begin his career, and there was neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor the passage of the Alps, and if there were, instead of these splendid and monumental episodes, simply some ridiculous old woman, a usurer whom he would have to kill in order to get her money, would he shrink from doing this if there were no other alternative, merely because it would not be a fine deed and because it would be sinful? Now I tell you that I was possessed by this problem for a long time, and that I felt deeply ashamed when I at last guessed, suddenly as it were, that not only would he not be frightened at the idea, but that the thought that the thing was not important and grandiose enough would not even enter into his head: he would not even understand where the need for hesitation lay; and if there were no other way open to him, he would kill the woman without further reflection. Well, I ceased reflecting, and I killed her, following the example of my authority.”

Raskolnikov is obsessed by the idea, just as Macbeth is obsessed by the prophecy of the three witches, and circumstances seem to play the part of Fate in a Greek tragedy, and to lead him against his will to commit a horrible crime. “He is mechanically forced,” says Professor Brückner in his History of Russian Literature, “into performing the act, as if he had gone too near machinery in motion, had been caught by a bit of his clothing, and cut to pieces.” As soon as he has killed the old woman, he is fatally led into committing another crime immediately after the first crime is committed. He thinks that by committing this crime he will have trampled on human conventions, that he will be above and beyond morality, a Napoleon, a Superman. The tragedy of the book consists in his failure, and in his realising that he has failed. Instead of becoming stronger than mankind, he becomes weaker than mankind; instead of having conquered convention and morality, he is himself vanquished by them. He finds that as soon as the crime is committed the whole of his relation towards the world is changed, and his life becomes a long struggle with himself, a revolt against the moral consequences of his act. His instinct of self-preservation is in conflict with the horror of what he has done and the need for confession. Raskolnikov, as I have said, is the embodiment of pride; pride is the mainspring of his character. He is proud enough to build gigantic conceptions, to foster the ambition of placing himself above and beyond humanity, but his character is not strong enough to bear the load of his ideas. He thinks he has the makings of a great man in him, and in order to prove this to himself he commits a crime that would put an ordinary man beyond the pale of humanity, because he thinks that being an extraordinary man he will remain within the pale of humanity and not suffer. His pride suffers a mortal blow when he finds that he is weak, and that the moral consequences of his act face him at every turn. He fights against this, he strives not to recognise it; he deliberately seeks the company of detectives; he discusses murder and murderers with them minutely, and with a recklessness which leads him to the very brink of the precipice, when it would need but a word more for him to betray himself. The examining magistrate, indeed, guesses that he has committed the crime, and plays with him as a cat plays with a mouse, being perfectly certain that in the long-run he will confess of his own accord. The chapters which consist of the duel between these two men are the most poignant in anguish which I have ever read. I have seen two of these scenes acted on the stage, and several people in the audience had hysterics before they were over. At last the moment of expiation comes, though that of regeneration is still far distant. Raskolnikov loves a poor prostitute named Sonia. His act, his murder, has affected his love for Sonia, as it has affected the rest of his life, and has charged it with a sullen despair. Sonia, who loves him as the only man who has never treated her with contempt, sees that he has some great load on his mind, that he is tortured by some hidden secret. She tries in vain to get him to tell her what it is, but at last he comes to her with the intention of telling her, and she reads the speaking secret in his eyes. As soon as she knows, she tells him that he must kiss the earth which he has stained, and confess to the whole world that he has committed murder. Then, she says, God will send him a new life. At first he refuses: he says that society is worse than he, that greater crimes than his are committed every day; that those who commit them are highly honoured. Sonia speaks of his suffering, and of the torture he will undergo by keeping his dread secret, but he will not yet give in, nor admit that he is not a strong man, that he is really a louse—which is the name he gives to all human beings who are not “Supermen.” Sonia says that they must go to exile together, and that by suffering together they will expiate his deed. This is one of Dostoievsky’s principal ideas, or rather it is the interpretation and conception of Christianity which you will most frequently meet with among the Russian people,—that suffering is good in itself, and especially suffering in common with some one else.

After Raskolnikov has confessed his crime to Sonia, he still hovers round and round the police, like a moth fatally attracted by a candle, and at last he makes open confession, and is condemned to seven years’ penal servitude. But although he has been defeated in the battle with his idea, although he has not only failed, but failed miserably, even after he has confessed his crime and is paying the penalty for it in prison, his pride still survives. When he arrives in prison, it is not the hardships of prison life, it is not the hard labour, the coarse food, the shaven head, the convict’s dress, that weigh on his spirit; nor does he feel remorse for his crime. But here once more in prison he begins to criticise and reflect on his former actions, and finds them neither foolish nor horrible as he did before. “In what,” he thinks, “was my conception stupider than many conceptions and theories which are current in the world? One need only look at the matter from an independent standpoint, and with a point-of-view unbiased by conventional ideas, and the idea will not seem so strange. And why does my deed,” he thought to himself, “appear so ugly? In what way was it an evil deed? My conscience is at rest. Naturally I committed a criminal offence, I broke the letter of the law and I shed blood. Well, take my head in return for the letter of the law and make an end of it! Of course, even many of those men who have benefited mankind and who were never satiated with power, after they had seized it for themselves, ought to have been executed as soon as they had taken their first step, but these people succeeded in taking further steps, and therefore they are justified: I did not succeed, and therefore perhaps I had not the right to take the first step.”

Raskolnikov accordingly considered that his crime consisted solely in this, that he was not strong enough to carry it through to the end, and not strong enough not to confess it. He also tortured himself with another thought: why did he not kill himself as soon as he recognised the truth? Why did he prefer the weakness of confession?

The other convicts in the prison disliked him, distrusted him, and ended by hating him. Dostoievsky’s own experience of convict life enables him in a short space to give us a striking picture of Raskolnikov’s relations with the other convicts. He gradually becomes aware of the vast gulf which there is between him and the others. The class barrier which rises between him and them, is more difficult to break down than that caused by a difference in nationality. At the same time, he noticed that in the prison there were political prisoners, Poles, for instance, and officers, who looked down on the other convicts as though they were insects, ciphers of ignorance, and despised them accordingly. But he is unable to do this, he cannot help seeing that these ‘ciphers’ are far cleverer in many cases than the men who look down on them. On the other hand, he is astonished that they all love Sonia, who has followed him to the penal settlement where his prison is, and lives in the town. The convicts rarely see her, meeting her only from time to time at their work; and yet they adore her, because she has followed Raskolnikov. The hatred of the other convicts against him grows so strong that one day at Easter, when he goes to church with them, they turn on him and say: “You have no right to go to church: you do not believe in God, you are an atheist, you ought to be killed.” He had never spoken with them of God or of religion, and yet they wished to kill him as an atheist. He only narrowly escaped being killed by the timely interference of a sentry. To the truth of this incident I can testify by personal experience, as I have heard Russian peasants and soldiers say that such and such a man was religious and that such and such a man was “godless,” although these men had never mentioned religion to them; and they were always right.

Then Raskolnikov fell ill and lay for some time in delirium in the hospital. After his recovery he learns that Sonia has fallen ill herself, and has not been near the prison, and a great sadness comes over him. At last she recovers, and he meets her one day at his work. Something melts in his heart, he knows not how or why; he falls at her feet and cries; and from that moment a new life begins for him. His despair has rolled away like a cloud: his heart has risen as though from the dead.

Crime and Punishment, the best known of all Dostoievsky’s works, is certainly the most powerful. The anguish of mind which Raskolnikov goes through tortures the reader. Dostoievsky seems to have touched the extreme limit of suffering which the human soul can experience when it descends into hell. At the same time, he never seems to be gloating over the suffering, but, on the contrary, to be revealing the agonies of the human spirit in order to pour balm upon them. There is an episode earlier in the story, when Raskolnikov kneels down before Sonia, and speaks words which might be taken as the motto of this book, and indeed of nearly all of Dostoievsky’s books: “It is not before you that I am kneeling, but before all the suffering of mankind.”

It is in this book more than in any of his other books that one has the feeling that Dostoievsky is kneeling down before the great agonies that the human soul can endure: and in doing this, he teaches us how to endure and how to hope. Apart from the astounding analysis to be found in the book, and the terrible network of details of which the conflict between Raskolnikov and his obsession consists: apart from the duel of tongues between the examining magistrate, who is determined that the criminal shall be condemned, not on account of any circumstantial evidence, but by his own confession, and who drives the criminal to confession by playing upon his obsession: apart from all this main action, there is a wealth of minor characters, episodes and scenes, all of which are indispensable to the main thread of tragedy which runs through the whole. The book, as has been pointed out, did not receive anything like its full recognition in 1866 when it appeared, and now, in 1909, it stands higher in the estimation of all those who are qualified to judge it than it did then. This can be said of very few books published in Europe in the sixties. For all the so-called psychological and analytical novels which have been published since 1866 in France and in England not only seem pale and lifeless compared with Dostoievsky’s fierce revelations, but not one of them has a drop of his large humanity, or a breath of his fragrant goodness.