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.