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

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СКАЧАТЬ not like to speak of them; he tried to forget. Strange to say. The Little Hero, the novel he wrote in prison, is the most poetic, the most graceful, the youngest and freshest of all his works. As we read it we might suppose that Dostoyevsky was trying to evoke in his dark prison the scent of flowers, the poetic shade of the great parks with their centenarian trees, the joyous laughter of children, the beauty and grace of young women. Summer was reigning in Petersburg, but the sun barely glanced on the damp walls of the old fortress.

      The Petrachevsky trial dragged on as was usual in Russia. Autumn had already come when the Governor at last made up his mind to deal seriously with the conspirators. Our political cases were nearly always tried by the mihtary courts; the chief among the generals who had to enquire into the Petrachevsky affair was General Rostovzov. Later, he was appointed President of the Commission for the emancipation of the serfs, and conducted a vigorous struggle with the great landowners who wished to emancipate the serfs, but to keep all the land for themselves. Rostovzov, supported by Alexander II, who had a great regard for him, gained the victory, and the peasants received their portions of land. General Rostovzov was an ardent patriot, and looked upon all political conspiracies as crimes. He carefully studied all the documents the police had seized in the dwellings of Petrachevsky and of the young men who belonged to his party, and was probably surprised at the weakness of the evidence against them. Knowing something of Dostoyevsky's intellect and talent, he suspected him of being one of the leaders of the movement, and resolved to make him speak. On the day of the trial he was amiable and charming to my father. He talked to Dostoyevsky as to a young author of great gifts, a man of lofty European culture, who had unfortunately been drawn into a political plot without very well knowing the gravity of what he was doing. The General was obviously indicating to Dostoyevsky the part he ought to play to avoid severe punishment. My father was always very ingenuous and very confiding. He did not understand all this, was much attracted by the General, who treated him not as a criminal, but as a man of the world, and answered all his questions readily. Rostovzov must have let slip some unguarded word, for my father suddenly realised that he was being invited to buy his own liberty by selling his comrades. He was deeply indignant that such a proposal should have been made to him. His sympathy for Rostovzov changed to hatred. He became stubborn and cautious, fencing with each question put to him. The young man, though nervous and hysterical, and exhausted by long months of imprisonment, was stronger than the General. Seeing that his stratagem was detected, Rostovzov lost his temper; he quitted the court, leaving the interrogatory to the other members of the tribimal. Occasionally he opened the door of an adjoining room where he had taken refuge and asked: " Have they finished examining Dostoyevsky ? I won't come back into the court until that hardened sinner has left it." My father could never forgive Rostovzov's hostile attitude. He called him a mountebank, and spoke of him with contempt all his life. He despised him the more, because at the time of the trial, Dostoyevsky believed himself to be in the right, and considered himself as a hero eager to save his country. The anguish my father endured during his examination made a deep impression on his mind. Lat'er it found expression in Raskolnikov's duel with Porflry, and Dmitri Kara-mazov's duel with the magistrates who came to interrogate him at Mokroe.

      The Generals, headed by Rostovzov, presented the death-sentence to Nicholas I. He refused to sign it. The Emperor was not cruel, but he was narrow-minded, and had no idea of psychology. This science was, indeed, very little known in Russia at this period. The Emperor did not desire the death of the conspirators, but he wished " to give the young men a good lesson." His advisers proposed a lugubrious comedy. The prisoners were told to prepare for death. They were taken to a public place, where the scaffold had been erected. They were made to mount it. One of the conspirators was bound to a post with his eyes bandaged. The soldiers made as if they were about to shoot the unhappy prisoners. ... At this moment a messenger arrived and announced that the Emperor had changed the death-sentence into that of hard labour. Memoirs of the time state that for fear of accidents the soldiers rifles were not even loaded, and that the messenger who was supposed to have come from the Palace was actually on the spot before the arrival of the conspirators. All this was, no doubt, true; but the unfortunate young men knew nothing of it, and were making ready to die. If Nicholas I had been more subtly constituted, he would have realised that it would have been more generous to shoot the conspirators than to make them undergo such anguish. However, the Emperor acted in accordance with the manners of his time; our grandfathers had a great Uking for scenes of false sentiment. Nicholas no doubt thought he would confer a great joy on the young men by giving them back their lives on the scaffold itself. Few among them were able to bear this joy; some lost their reason, others died young. It i^ possible that my father's epilepsy would never have taken such a terrible form but for this grim jest.

      Ill and enfeebled as he was, Dostoyevsky had mounted the scaffold boldly and had looked death bravely in the face. He has told us that all he felt at this moment was a mystic fear at the thought of presenting himself immediately before God, in his unprepared state. His friends who were gathered round the scaffold say he was calm and dignified. My father has described his emotions at this moment in The Idiot. Though he paints the anguish of one condemned to death, he tells us nothing of the joy he felt on learning his reprieve. It is probable that when the first rush of animal joy was over he felt a great bitterness, a deep indignation at the thought that he had been played with and tortured so cruelly. His pure soul, which was already aspiring heavenwards, perhaps regretted that it had to sink to earth again, and plunge once more into the mud in which we are all struggling.

      My father returned to the fortress. A few days later he left for Siberia in company of a police officer. He quitted Petersburg on Christmas Eve. As he passed in a sleigh through the streets of the capital, he looked at the lighted windows of the houses and said to himself: " At this moment they are lighting up the Christmas tree in my brother Mihail's house. My nephews are admiring it, laughing and dancing round it, and I am not with them. God knows if I shall ever see them again I " Dostoyevsky regretted only his little nephews as he turned his back on that cold-hearted city.

      On arriving in Siberia my father had a visit at one of the first halts from two ladies. They were the wives of " Dekabrists," 36 whose self-appointed mission it was to meet newly arrived political prisoners, in order to say a few words of comfort to them, and give them some advice about the life that awaited them as convicts. They handed my father a Bible, the only book allowed in prison. Taking advantage of a moment when the police officer's back was turned, one of the ladies told my father in French to examine the book carefully when he was alone. He found a note for 25 roubles stuck between two leaves of the Bible. With this money he was able to buy a little linen, soap and tobacco, to improve his coarse fare, and get white bread. He had no other money all the time he was in exile. His brothers, his sisters, his aunt and his friends had all basely deserted him, terrified by his crime and its punishment.

      36 Persons implicated in a political plot against Nicholas I at the beginning of his reign. They made their attempt to overthrow autocratic rule in the month of December, whence their name of " Dekabrists." They were sent to a convict station; their wives followed them. They enjoyed more liberty than their husbands, who at the time of the Petrachevsky conspiracy, had already served their sentence, but had still to remain in Siberia under police siuveiUance. The " Dekabrists " had wished to introduce an aristocratic repubUc in Russia, and apportion power among those who belonged to the union of hereditary nobles. The nobles always had a great respect for the " Dekabrists " and considered them martyrs.

       VI

      PRISON LIFE

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       When a man is suddenly uprooted and finds himself obliged to spend years in a strange world, with people whose coarseness and lack of education are bound to distress him, he thinks out a plan by means of which he may avoid the worst blows to his susceptibilities, adopts an attitude, and resolves on a certain course of conduct. Some entrench themselves in silence and disdain, hoping to be left in peace; others become flatterers, and СКАЧАТЬ