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

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       VIII

      DOSTOYEVSKY A SOLDIER

       Table of Contents

       Dostoyevsky's last year in prison was more tolerable than the first three. The brute who commanded the fortress of Omsk and poisoned the convicts was at last superseded. The new Commandant was an educated man of European culture. He took an interest in my father and tried to be of service to him. He was legally empowered to employ the literary convicts on the work of his Chancellory. He sent for my father, who passed through the town escorted by a soldier. The Commandant gave him some easy work to do, ordered good meals to be served to him, brought him books, showed him the newspapers, which my father devoured eagerly.44 He had seen no newspaper for three years, and he knew nothing of what was happening in the world. He seemed to be born anew; he was soon to leave his " House of the Dead." " What a blessed moment! " he exclaims in describing his release in his memoirs.

      44 My father never made any public reference to this Commandant, fearing to injure him in the sight of the Government, but he often talked of him to his relations. Though Dostoyevsky hated to speak of the sufferings he had endured during lus captivity, he loved to recall those who had been good to lum m his trials.

      Dostoyevsky's political comrade, Durov, was released at the same time. But alas ! the poor fellow had not the strength to rejoice in his liberty. " He went out like a candle," says my father. " He was young and handsome when he went into captivity. He came out half dead, grey-haired, bent, scarcely able to stand." And yet Durov was not an epileptic, like my father, and he was in excellent health at the time of his arrest. How, then, are we to explain the different manner in which these two conspirators faced the world after four years of prison life? We must, I think, look for this explanation in their nationality. Durov was a Russian; he belonged to a nation still young, which soon expends its strength, loses courage at the first obstacle, and cannot sustain a struggle. Dostoyevsky was a Lithuanian, a scion of a much older race, and had Norman blood in his veins. Resistance has always been a joy to the Lithuanians. Vidunas, who knew his people so thoroughly, has spoken thus on this point: " Whatever may befall a Lithuanian, he is not discouraged. This is not to say that he is indifferent to his fate. His sensibility is too lively for this, but it has an elasticity and resilience of a remarkable quality. He can bear the inevitable with courage, and face new experiences steadily. The Lithuanian aspires involuntarily to the mastery of the different elements of life. This becomes very evident when he has to grapple with a difficulty. The tension of his mind is manifested in a very characteristic fashion; the greater the difficulty, the more he is disposed to accept all with serenity, and even with gaiety and jest."

      Dostoyevsky probably began this struggle for life on the very first day of his captivity. He struggled against despair by studying with interest the characters of the convicts, their manners, habits, ideas and conversation. Seeing in them the future heroes of his novels, he carefully noted all the precious indications they were able to give him; no foreigner can form any idea of the just, penetrating and observant mind of the Russian peasant. When, on holidays, the convicts got drunk and were reduced to a state of bestiality, Dostoyevsky sought solace for his disgust in the Gospel. " I cannotsee his soul; perhaps it is nobler than mine," he would say to himself, as he looked at some drunken convict reeling about, and shouting obscene songs. He soon realised that hard labour was an excellent remedy for despair. He looked upon it as a kind of sport, and set about it with the passionate energy he brought to bear on everything that interested him. In certain chapters of The House of the Dead we see clearly what pleasure he took in outdoor work or in grinding alabaster.45

      45 Speaking of some work allotted to him in prison, he says : " I was obliged to turn the wheel; it was difficult, but it served as an excellent gymnastic." Later he describes how he had to carry bricks on his back, and declares that he liked this work, because it developed his physical strength.

      Obliged to conceal from the convicts the anger, contempt and disgust certain of their acts excited in him, Dostoyevsky learned to discipline his nervous temperament. Reality, harsh and implacable, cured him of his imaginary fears. " If you imagine that I am still nervous, irritable and obsessed by the thought of illness, as I used to be at Petersburg, you must get rid of this idea. There is not a vestige of that left," he wrote to his brother Mihaiil shortly after his release.

      Another and loftier idea sustained and consoled Dostoyevsky during his sojourn in the fortress. Deeply religious as he had always been, he must often have asked himself why God had punished him, the innocent martyr of a noble theory, so severely. At that time he considered himself a hero, and was very proud of the Petrachevsky conspiracy. The thought that this conspiracy was a crime which might have plunged Russia into anarchy, the thought that a handful of young dreamers had no right to impose their will on an immense country never entered his head till much later, some ten years perhaps after his release. Believing himself blameless, knowing himself to be free from vice and inspired only by pure and lofty thoughts, he must have asked in bewilderment how he could have deserved his terrible sufferings, by what action he could have incurred the wrath of a God he had always loved and reverenced. He then said to himself that God must have sent these miseries upon him not to punish, but to strengthen him and to make him a great writer, useful to his country and his people. The ignorant public often confounds the man of talent with his talent and cannot distinguish between them. But such men themselves do not fall into this error. They know that their talent is a gift apart which belongs to the community rather than to themselves. If he be in any degree a believer, each writer, musician, painter or sculptor feels himself a Messiah, and accepts his cross. He has a very definite sense that in giving him a talent God did not mean to place him above the crowd, but rather to sacrifice him to the good of others, and make him the servant of humanity. The greater his gift, the more illuminating is this sense of sacrifice in the eyes of its possessor. Sometimes he rebels, and thrusts aside the bitter cup which destiny prepares for him. At other moments he is exalted by the thought that he has been chosen to make known the ways of God to men. As the man of genius meditates on his mission his anger and rebellion disappear. He soars above the crowd; he feels himself nearer to God than other mortals, and his zeal for his mission increases daily. " Make me suffer, if so my talent and my influence may be increased," he prays courageously. " Spare me not! I will bear all if only the work Thou sentest me to do be well done." When the man of genius has reached this stage of resignation nothing can terrify him any more, and his devotion to the cause of humanity has no limits. Later, after his return to Petersburg, Dostoyevsky said to his friends who denounced his punishment as unjust: " No, it was just. The people would have condemned us. I realised that in prison. And then, who knows, perhaps God sent me there that I might learn the essential thing, without which there is no life, without which we should only devour each other, and that I might bring that essential thing to others, even if but to a very few, to make them better, even if but a very little better. This alone would have made it worth while to go to prison."

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       According to Russian law, Dostoyevsky's punishment was not at an end when he was released. He had to serve as a soldier in a regiment at the small Siberian town of Semipalatinsk until the time when he should have gained his commission as an officer and be restored to his status as a free man. But military service was almost liberty in comparison with what he had endured in the fortress. The officers of his regiment treated him rather as a comrade than as a subordinate. At this period the Siberians had a great respect for political prisoners. The Dekabrists, who belonged to the best families of the country, and who bore their punishment without complaint, and with much dignity, prepared the ground for the Petrachevsky conspirators. My father СКАЧАТЬ