Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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СКАЧАТЬ and brutalised by poverty, they endowed their new heroes with chivalrous sentiments, and made them write letters worthy of Madame de S^vigne. It was false and absurd, nevertheless, these novels were the origin of that magnificent nineteenth-century literature which is the glory of our country. Writers gradually perceived that before describing a new world, one must study it. They set to work to observe the peasants, the clergy, the merchants, the townsfolk; they gave excellent descriptions of Russian life, which was very little known. But this was much later. At the period of which I am writing, Russian novelists drew on their imagination, and have left us works full of absurdities.

      My father no doubt realised how false these novels were, for he tried to break away from this new Uterary genre in his second work. The Double is a book of far higher quality than Poor Folks. It is original, it is already " Dostoyevsky." Our alienists admire this little masterpiece greatly, and are surprised that a young novelist should have been able to describe the last days of a madman so graphically, without having previously studied medicine.31

      31 Dostoyevsky thought very highly of The Double. In a letter to his brother Mihail, written after his return from Siberia, my father said : " It was a magnificent idea; a type of great social importance which I was the first to create and present."

      Yet this second novel was not so successful as the first. It was too new; people did not understand that minute analysis of the human heart, which was so much appreciated later. Madmen were not fashionable; this novel without hero or heroine was considered uninteresting. The critics did not conceal their disappointment. " We were mistaken," they wrote; " Dostoyevsky's talent is. not so great as we thought." If my father had been older, he would have disregarded the critics, he would have persisted in his new genre, would have imposed it on the public, and would have produced very fine psychological studies even then. But he was too young; criticism distressed him. He was afraid of losing the success he had achieved with his first novel, and he went back to the false Gogol manner.

      But this time he was not content to draw on his imagination. He studied the new heroes of Russian literature, went to observe the inhabitants of garrets in the little caf&s and drinking shops of the capital. He entered into conversation with them, watched them, and noted their manners and customs carefully. Feeling shy and uncertain how to approach them, Dostoyevsky invited them to play billiards with him. He was unfamiliar with the game, and not at all interested in it, and he naturally lost a good deal of money. He did not regret this, for he was able to make curious observations as he played, and to note many original expressions.32

      32 My father's friends relate in tlieir reminiscences that he often invited strangers to visit him among those he met in the cafds, and that he would spend whole days listening to their conversation and stories. My father's friends could not imderstand what pleasure he could take in talking to such uneducated people; later, when they read his novels, they recognised the types they had encoimtered. It is evident that, like all young men of talent, he could only paint from nature at this period. Later he did not need models, and created his types himself.

      After studying this curious society, of which he had known nothing, for some months, Dostoyevsky began to describe the lower orders as they really were, thinking this would interest the public. Alas ! he was even less successful than before. The Russian pubUc was ready to take an interest in the wretched, if they were served up d la Jean Valjean. Their real life, in all its sordid meanness, interested no one.

      Dostoyevsky began to lose confidence in his powers. His health gave way, he became nervous and hysterical. Epilepsy was latent in him, and before declaring itself in epileptic seizures, it oppressed him terribly.33 He now avoided society, would spend long hours shut up in his own room, or wandering about in the darkest and most deserted streets of Petersburg. He talked to himself as he walked, gesticulating, and causing passers-by to turn and look at him. Friends who met him thought he had gone mad. The colourless, stupid city quenched his talent. The upper classes were mere caricatures of Europeans; the populace belonged to the Finno-Turkisk tribe, an inferior race, who could not give Dostoyevsky any idea of the great Russian people. He had not enough money to go to Europe, the Caucasus or the Crimea; travelling was very costly at this period. My father languished in Petersburg and was only happy with his brother Mihail, who had resigned his commission and settled in the capital, meaning to devote himself to literature. He had married a German of Reval, Emihe Dibmar, and had several children. My father was fond of his nephews; their childish laughter banished his melancholy.

      33 Dr. Janovsky, whom my father liked very much, and consulted about his health, says that long before his convict-life Dostoyevsky already suffered from a nervous complaint, which was very like epilepsy. As I have mentioned above, my father's family declared that he had had his first attack when he heard of the tragic death of my grandfather. It is evident that he was already suffering from epilepsy at the age of eighteen, although it did not assmne its more violent form imtU after his imprisonment.

      It is astonishing to find no woman in the life of Dostoyevsky at this period of early youth, which is the age of love for most men. No betrothed, no mistress, not even a flirtation ! This extraordinary virtue can only be explained by the tardy development of his organism, which is not rare in Northern Russia. Russian law allows women to marry at the age of sixteen; but quite recently, a few years before the war, Russian savants had begun to protest against this barbarous custom. According to their observations the Northern Russian woman is not completely developed until the age of twenty-three. If she marries before this, child-bearing may do her great harm and ruin her health permanently. It is to this evil custom that our doctors attribute the hysteria and nervous complaints that ravage so many Russian homes. If the savants are right, we must place the complete development of the Northern Russian male organism in the twenty-fifth year, as men always come to maturity later than women. As to abnormal organisms, those of epileptics, for instance, they must mature even more slowly. It is possible that at this age, Dostoyevsky's senses were not yet awakened. He was like a schoolboy who admires women from afar, is very much afraid of them, and does not yet need them. My father's friends, as we have seen, ridiculed his timidity in the society of women.34 His romantic period began after his imprisonment, and he showed no timidity then.

      34 Dr. Riesenkampf, who loiew my father well at this period of his hfe, wrote in his reminiscences : " At the age of twenty young men generally seek a feminine ideal, and run after all young beauties. I never noticed anything of the sort with Dostoyevsky. He was indifferent to women, had even an antipathy to them." Riesenkampf adds, however, that Dostoyevsky was much interested in the love-affairs of his comrades, and was fond of singing sentimental songs. This habit of singing songs that pleased him he retained to the end of his life. He generally sang in a low voice when he was alone in his room.

      The heroines of Dostoyevsky's first novels are pale, nebulous, and lacking in vitality. He painted only two good feminine portraits at this period—those of Netotchka Nesvanova and the little Katia, children of from ten to twelve years old. This novel is, if we except The Double, his best work of this period. It has but one fault, which is common to all the novels written by Dostoyevsky before his imprisonment: the heroes are too international. They can live under any skies, speak all tongues, bear all climates. They have no fatherland, and, like all cosmopolitans, are pale, vague and ill-defined. To make them live, it was necessary to create a nationaUty for them. This Dostoyevsky was about to do in Siberia.

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      THE PETRACHEVSKY CONSPIRACY

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       It was at his unhappy period of his life that my father was involved in the Petrachevsky conspiracy. Those who were familiar with Dostoyevsky's monarchic principles in later life could never understand how he came to associate himself with revolutionaries. It is, indeed, inexplicable if my father's Lithuanian origin be ignored. He plotted against the СКАЧАТЬ