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

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СКАЧАТЬ to purchase their repose by the basest adulation. Dostoyevsky, condemned to Uve for years in prison, in the midst of a redoubtable band of criminals, who, having nothing to lose, feared nothing and were capable of anything, chose a very different attitude; he adopted a tone of Christian fraternity. This was no new part to him; he had already essayed it when, as a child, he had approached the iron gate in his father's private garden and, risking a punishment, had entered into conversation with the poor patients of the hospital; again, when he had talked with the peasant-serfs of Darovoye, and tried to gain their affection by helping the poor women in their field-work. He adopted the same fraternal tone later when he studied the poor of Petersburg in the small cafis and drink-shops of the capital, playing billiards with them, and offering them their choice of refreshments the while he tried to surprise the secrets of their hearts. Dostoyevsky realised that he would never become a great writer by frequenting elegant drawing-rooms, full of polite people in -well-cut coats, with fashionable cravats, empty heads, anaemic hearts and colourless souls. Every writer depends on the people, on the simple souls who have never been taught the art of hiding their sufferings under a veil of trivial words. The moujiks of Yasnaia Poliana taught Tolstoy more than his Moscow friends could teach him. The peasants who accompanied Turgenev on his sporting expeditions gave him more original ideas than his European friends. Dostoyevsky in his turn depended on poor people, and from his childhood, instinctively sought a means of approaching them. This science, which he had already acquired to some extent, was to prove of the greatest service to him in Siberia.

      Dostoyevsky has not concealed from us his method of making himself beloved by his fellow-convicts. In his novel. The Idiot, he describes his first steps in detail. Prince Mishkin, the descendant of a long line of ancestors of European culture, is travelling on a cold winter's day. He is a Russian, but having spent all his youth in Switzerland, he knows little of his fatherland. Russia interests and attracts him greatly; he longs to enter into her soul and discover her secrets. As the Prince is poor, he travels third class. He is no snob; his coarse, common fellow-travellers inspire no disgust in him. They are the first real Russians he has seen; in Switzerland he met only our intellectuals, who aped Europeans, and political refugees, who, speaking a horrible jargon they called Russian, posed as the representatives of the sacred dreams of our nation. Prince Mishkin realises that hitherto he had seen only copies and caricatures, he longs to know the originals at last. Looking sympathetically at his third-class companions, he waits only for the first sentence to enter into conversation with them. His fellow-travellers observe him with curiosity; they had never seen such a bird at close quarters before. The Prince's polite manners and European dress seemed ridiculous to them. They entered into conversation with him to make a fool of him, that they might have some fun at his expense. They laughed rudely, nudging each other, at the Prince's first words; but gradually, as he went on speaking, they ceased to laugh. His charming courtesy, his freedom from snobbishness, his ingenuous manner of treating them as his equals, as people of his own world, made them realise that they were in the presence of an extremely rare and curious creature—a true Christian. The youthful Rogogin feels the attraction of this Christian kindness, and hastens to pour out the secret of his heart to this distinguished unknown, who listens to him with so much interest. Though illiterate, Rogogin is very intelligent; he understands that Prince Mishkin is morally his superior. He admires and reverences him, but he sees clearly that the poor Prince is but a big child, an artless dreamer, who has no knowledge of life. He knows how malicious and relentless the world is. The idea of protecting this charming Prince enters Rogogin's noble heart. " Dear Prince," he says, when he takes leave of him in the station at Petersburg, " Come and see me. I will have a good pelisse made for you, and I will give you money and magnificent clothes, suitable to your rank."

      Dostoyevsky arrived in Siberia on a cold winter's day. He travelled third-class, in company with thieves and murderers, whom the mother-country was sending away from her to the different convict-stations of Siberia. He observed his new companions with curiosity. Here it was at last, the real Russia which he had vainly sought in Petersburg I Here they were, those Russians, a curious mixture of Slavs and Mongolians, who had conquered a sixth part of the world ! Dostoyevsky studied the gloomy faces of his fellow-travellers, and that second sight which all serious writers have more or less, enabled him to decipher their thoughts and read their child-like hearts. He looked sympathetically at the convicts who were walking by his side, and entered into conversation with them at the first opportunity. The convicts, for their part, glanced at him enquiringly, but not with friendliness. Was he not a noble, did he not come of that accursed class of hereditary tyrants, who treated their serfs like dogs, and looked upon them as slaves, condemned to toil all their lives that their masters might live riotously? They entered into conversation with Dostoyevsky, hoping to laugh at him, and to amuse themselves at his expense. They nudged each other and mocked at my father, when they heard his first words; but gradually, as he went on speaking, the jeers and laughter ceased. The moujiks saw before them their ideal—a true Christian, a wise and modest man, who placed God above all, who sincerely believed that neither rank nor education could open any real gulf between men, that all were equal before God, and that he who is so fortunate as to possess culture should seek to spread it round him, instead of priding himself upon it. This was the moujiks' idea of true nobles, true hari; but alas! they very seldom encountered any of this type. At each word Dostoyevsky spoke, the eyes of his companions opened more widely.

      When Dostoyevsky wishes to draw his own portrait in the person of one of his heroes, and to relate an epoch of his own life, he gives that hero all the ideas and sensations he himself had at the period. It seems somewhat strange that Prince Mishkin (in The Idiot), who was not a criminal and had never been tried and sentenced should, on his arrival at Petersburg, talk of nothing but the last moments of a man condemned to death. We feel that he is entirely possessed by the idea. Dostoyevsky explains this eccentric behaviour by telling us that the director of the sanatorium to which the poor Prince had been sent by his family, had taken him to Geneva to see an execution. These Swiss seem to have had a strange idea of the treatment suitable for a nervous patient; it is not surprising that they were not able to cure the Prince. My father made use of this somewhat far-fetched explanation in order to hide from the general public that Prince Mishkin was, in reality, no other than that unhappy convict, the political conspirator, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,37 who, throughout the first year of his prison life, was hypnotised by his recollection of the scaffold, and could think of nothing else. In The Idiot, Prince Mishkin describes all the impressions of the condemned man to the servant of the Epantchin family. When they question him later about the execution, the Prince rephes: "I have already told your servant my impressions; I cannot talk about it any more." The Epantchin have great difficulty in making Mishkin speak on the subject. This was precisely Dostoyevsky's attitude; he described his sufferings to the convicts and refused to discuss them subsequently with the intellectuals of Petersburg. In vain they would question him eagerly; Dostoyevsky would frown and change the subject.

      37 It is hardly necessary to say that in identifying himself with a prince, Dostoyevsky had no snobbish intention. He wanted to show what an immense moral influence a man of lofty hereditary culture might have upon the masses if he behaved to the people as a brother and a Christian, and not as a snob.

      It is remarkable that Prince Mishkin, who falls in love with Nastasia Philipovna, does not become her suitor, and says to a young girl who loves him and is willing to marry him : "I am ill, I can never marry." This was probably Dostoyevsky's conviction in early manhood; he did not change his opinion until after his imprisonment. The resemblance between Dostoyevsky and his hero extends to the smallest details. Thus Prince Mishkin arrives at Petersburg without a portmanteau, carrying a small parcel containing a little clean linen. He has not a kopeck, and General Epantchin gives him twenty-five roubles. Dostoyevsky arrived in Siberia with a little parcel of linen which the police had allowed him to bring away; he had not a kopeck, and the wives of Dekabrists brought him twenty-five roubles, concealed between the pages of a Bible.

      His good reputation followed him to prison; those of his travelling companions who were imprisoned with him at Omsk spoke to their new companions of this strange man, Dostoyevsky, who was to serve his sentence among them. Certain good-natured convicts were already considering how they could protect this young, sickly fellow, this dreamer, who had been so busy thinking of СКАЧАТЬ