Seven of his works must here be dismissed in as many paragraphs as they deserve chapters.
“Poor Folk,” strongly influenced by Gogol’s “The Cloak,” was written when Dostoevski was twenty-five. Though told in the handicapping form of letters, it made an immediate impression. Simplicity, human understanding, and compression—and the last was not one of his usual virtues—mark this spiritual history of two lives. It is an effective book, though not a great.
The years of Siberian torment yielded fruit in that remarkable example of criminal psychology, “Memories of a House of the Dead,” 1861-62. Not Dickens, and certainly not Oscar Wilde, approached this dispassionate record of a tremendously passionate and passion-inspiring theme, the inside of a terrible prison, which stirred Europe just when Hugo was issuing “Les Miserables.” “His calm account of their unblushing knavery is entirely free from either vindictive malice or superior contempt. He loved them because they were buried alive, he loved them because of their wretchedness, with a love as far removed from condescension as it was from secret admiration of their bold wickedness.” These words of Professor Phelps are singularly illuminating.
“Crime and Punishment,” the best known to English readers of the author’s works, is by many considered his masterpiece. Notwithstanding many waste places of digression, this book is a lofty peak. No one could picture in a few words the tremendous story of that other Eugene Aram—Raskolnikov—the philosophical student of crime, his double murder, his confession to the courtesan Sonia, her great-hearted reception of the news, her counsel that he confess his crime, their life in Siberia, and the gradual regeneration of both souls through the ministry of service.
Then, there are “The Gambler,” in which Dostoevski’s own passion for the green table is evidently recorded; and “The Idiot,” a prince whose unworldly sweetness is notable, even under the stress of epilepsy, and whose influence over the lives of all about him is a genuine creation; and “Possessed by Demons,” a portrayal of Nihilism, largely written as a fling at Turgenev, whom Dostoevski never loved; and finally that gigantic conception, “The Karamazov Brothers,” which he did not live to complete—a terrible yet sublime work that promised to be as soul-shaking as interminable.
The business of grown-up life is too serious to allow much space in Russian literature for that most really serious subject, child-life. Dostoevski is an exception. Though he has very few strong and beautiful women characters, his tender heart felt for every child, as witness the penetrating anecdotal sketch which here follows. Note its characteristic humor, tinged with satire; see the pity of it—a pity of situation, not of overwrought description; feel the essential right-mindedness of it, written at a period when the modern view of girlhood’s right to her own self was yet unpreached. This one powerful plea—without a word of homily, as it is—forms big enough foundation for the building of this man’s name for great-heartedness and ranks him in this respect with Charles Dickens, whom he loved.
THE TREE AND THE WEDDING
By Féodor Dostoevski
A few days ago I saw a wedding.... But no! I had better tell you about a Christmas tree. The wedding was fine in its way, and it pleased me immensely; but the other episode was more interesting. It is difficult to say why, at the sight of the wedding, I recalled the tree. This is how it happened.
Exactly five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I had been invited to a children’s party. The personage who invited me was a well-known man of affairs, with many connections, a wide acquaintance, involved in intrigue; so it was quite natural to suppose that this children’s party served as a mere pretext for the parents to crowd together and to discuss other interesting matters in what seemed like an innocent, accidental, and unpremeditated manner.