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

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СКАЧАТЬ heroes of his novels that he had had no time to study real life. The convicts said to themselves that if life was hard to them, inured as they were from childhood to fatigue and privation, how much harder it must be to Dostoyevsky, bred in comfort, and above all, thanks to his social position, accustomed to be treated with respect by every one. They tried to console him, telling him that life is long, that he was still young, that there was happiness in store for him after his release. They showed a delicacy of feeling peculiar to the Russian peasants. In The House of the Dead my father has described how when he was wandering sadly about the prison, the convicts would come and ask him questions about politics, foreign countries, the Court, the life in large cities. " They did not seem to take much interest in my replies," says my father; " I could never understand why they asked for such information." The explanation was, however, a very simple one; a kind-hearted convict noticed Dostoyevsky walking alone, in a kind of dream, staring into space. He was anxious to distract his thoughts. It seemed to his rustic mind impossible that a gentleman should be interested in vulgar things, and the ingenuous diplomatist accordingly spoke to my father of lofty subjects : politics, government, Europe. The answers did not interest him, but he attained his end. Dostoyevsky was roused, he talked with animation, his melancholy was exorcised. But the convicts saw more in my father than a sad and suffering young man. They divined his genius. These illiterate moujiks did not know exactly what a novel was, but with the infallible instinct of a great race they perceived that God had sent this dreamer on earth to accomplish great things. They realised his moral greatness and did what they could to tend him. Dostoyevsky has told in his Memoirs how one day, when the convicts were sent to bathe, one of them asked to be allowed to wash my father. This he did most carefully, supporting him like a child, lest he should slip on the wet boards. " He washed me as if I had been made of china," says Dostoyevsky, much astonished at all this care. My father was right. He was, in fact, a precious object to his humble comrades. They felt that he would render great services to the Russian community, and they all protected him. One day, exasperated by the bad food they were given, they made a demonstration, and demanded to see the Governor of the Fortress of Omsk. My father thought it his duty to take part in the manifestation, but the convicts would not allow him to join them.38 " Your place is not here," they cried, and they insisted on his returning to the prison. The convicts knew that they risked incurring a severe punishment for their protest, and they wished to spare Dostoyevsky. These humble moujiks had chivalrous souls. They were more generous to my father than his Petersburg friends, the mean and jealous writers who did all in their power to poison his youthful success.

      38 I have mentioned above that Dostoyevsky took no part in any demonstrations at the Castle of the Engineers. In associating himself with that of the convicts, he showed that he had more respect for them than for the Russian nobles and intellectuals.

      If the convicts protected my father, he, for his part, must have exercised a great moral influence over them. He is too modest to speak of this himself, but Nekrassov has proclaimed it. The poet was a man of great discrimination. In Poor Folks, which Nekrassov published so readily in his Review, he recognised Dostoyevsky's genius. When he made the young novelist's acquaintance he was struck by his purity of heart and nobility of mind-The narrow, jealous, intriguing circle in which the Russian writers of the period lived prevented Nekrassov from becoming my father's friend, but he never forgot him. When Dostoyevsky was sent to Siberia, Nekrassov often thought of him. This poet was distinguished from others by his profound knowledge of the souls of the peasants. He spent all his childhood on his father's small estate, and in later life went there every summer. Knowing the Russian people and knowing Dostoyevsky, he asked himself what the relations between the convicts and the young novelist would be. Poets think in song, and Nekrassov has left us an excellent poem. The Wretched, in which he depicts Dostoyevsky's life among the criminals. He does not mention him by name—the Censorship, which was very strict at this period, would not have permitted this—but he told his literary friends, and later Dostoyevsky himself, who his hero was.

      The story is put into the mouth of a convict, formerly a man in good society, who had killed a woman in a fit of jealousy. In prison he associates with the vilest of the criminals, drinks and gambles with them in spite of his contempt for them. His attention is attracted by a prisoner who is unlike the rest. He is very weak, and has the voice of a child; his hair is light and fine as down.39 He is very silent, lives isolated from the others, and fraternises with no one. The convicts dislike him, because he has " white hands," that is to say, he cannot do heavy work. Seeing him toiling all day, but achieving little on account of his weakness, they jeer at him and call him " the Mole." They amuse themselves by hustling him, and laugh when they see him turn pale and bite his lips at the brutal orders of the warders. One evening in prison the convicts are playing cards and getting drunk. A prisoner who has been ill a long time, is dying; the convicts deride him and sing blasphemous requiems to him. " Wretches! Do you not fear God ? " cries a terrible voice. The convicts look round in amazement. It is " the Mole" who spoke, and who now looks like an eagle. He orders them to be silent, to respect the last moments of the dying man, speaks to them of God, and shows them the abyss into which they are slipping. From this day forth he becomes the master of those whose conscience is not quite dead. They surround him in a respectful crowd, drinking in his words eagerly. This prisoner is a man of learning; he talks to the convicts of poetry, of science, of God, and, above all, of Russia. He is a patriot who admires his country, and foresees a great future for her. His speeches are not eloquent and are not distinguished by beauty of style; but he has the secret of speaking to the soul and touching the hearts of his pupils. In the poem the prisoner dies, surrounded by the respect and admiration of the convicts. They nurse him devotedly during his illness; they make a sort of litter, and carry him out daily into the prison yard that he may breathe the fresh air and see the sun he loves. After his death his grave becomes a place of pilgrimage for all the inhabitants of the district.

      39 In the description of Prince Mishkin, Dostoyevsky says he was very thin and looked ill, and that his hair was so fair that it was almost white.

      When my father came back from Siberia Nekrassov showed the poem to him and said : " You are the hero of it." Dostoyevsky was greatly touched by these words; he admired the poem very much, but when his literary friends asked him if Nekrassov had described him faithfully he answered smilingly : " Oh, no! he exaggerated my importance. It weis I, on the contrary^ who was the disciple of the convicts."

      It is difficult to say which was right, Nekrassov or Dostoyevsky. The poem may have been only a poetic dream, but it shows what Nekrassov's opinion of my father was. When he spoke of Dostoyevsky as he did in The Wretched, Nekrassov avenged him for all the base caliunnies of his literary rivals. It is strange that none of Dostoyevsky's Russian biographers, save Nicolai Strahoff, have mentioned Nekrassov's poem, although they have faithfully reported all the ignoble slanders invented by young writers after the success of Poor Folks. Yet they cannot have been unaware that he was the hero of the poem, for Dostoyevsky himself recorded his conversation with Nekrassov on the subject in his Journal of the Writer. It is almost as if they had wished to conceal the Russian poet's conception of the novelist from the public.

       VII

      WHAT THE CONVICTS TAUGHT DOSTOYEVSKY

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       DOSTOYEVSKY had some reason to declare that the convicts had been his teachers. As a fact, they taught him what it was above all things important for him to learn; they taught him to know and to love our beautiful and generous Russia. When he foimd himself for the first time in his life in a truly national centre, he felt his mother's blood speaking more and more loudly in his heart. My father began to recognise that Russian charm which is indeed the strength of om* country. It is not by fire and sword that Russia has conquered her enemies; it is the heart of Russia that has formed the vast Russian Empire. Our army is weak, our poor soldiers are often beaten, but wherever they pass they leave imperishable memories. They fraternise with the vanquished instead of oppressing them; open their hearts СКАЧАТЬ