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.