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

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       XXVIII

      THE PUSHKIN FESTIVAL

       Table of Contents

       In June 1880 the inauguration of Pushkin's monument at Moscow took place. This great national festival brought all political parties together: Slavophils and Occidentals alike laid flowers at the base of the monument and celebrated the greatest of Russian poets in their speeches. Pushkin satisfied every one. The Occidentals admired his European culture and his poems, the subjects of which were of English, German and Spanish origin; the Slavophils exalted his patriotism and his magnificent Slav poems. All the Russian writers and intellectuals hastened to do him homage. Turgenev came from Paris and was given a great reception by his admirers. He had a most brilliant success at the literary soirSes and eclipsed Dostoyevsky, but the balance was redressed on the following day at the meeting of the Society of Letters, which took place in the Assembly Room of the Moscow nobility. Here Dostoyevsky's success was so great that Pushkin's fete was transformed into a triumph for Dostoyevsky. The leader of the Slavophils, Aksakov, declared from the tribune that my father's speech was " an event." Senator Coni, who was present, gave me an account of it later. This distinguished jurist is also a writer of talent and a briUiant lecturer. His sympathies were perhaps with the Occidentals rather than with the Slavophils, so his enthusiasm for Dostoyevsky's speech is the more significant. " We were completely hypnotised as we listened to him," he said to me. "I believe that if a wall of the building had fallen away at that moment, if a huge pyre had been discovered in the square and your father had said to us, ' Now let us go and die in that fire to save Russia,' we should have followed him to a man, happy to die for our country." Extraordinary scenes took place at the close of the speech. People stormed the platform to embrace him and clasp his hand. Young men fainted with emotion at his feet. Two old men approached him, hand in hand, and said: " We have been enemies for twenty years; many attempts have been made to reconcile us, but we have always resisted. To-day, after your speech, we looked at each other and we realised that henceforth we must live as brothers." Turgenev, who had hitherto vouchsafed only a chiUy bow when he met Dostoyevsky, was deeply moved, and, going up to my father, pressed his hand warmly. This action of Tur-genev's, and the reconciliation of the two old enemies, were the two incidents of the day which impressed Dostoyevsky most. He liked to talk of them at Staraja Russa on his return from Moscow.

      What magic words were there in this famous speech, which was looked upon as a great event by the whole of literary Russia, those who had been unable to be present at the festival having read it in the newspapers ? I give a resumi of what Dostoyevsky said to the intellectuals of his country : 100

      100 The speech, which is rather long, contains a very subtle analysis of Pushkin's poetry. The reader would do well to read the complete text. I only give my father's conception of the Russian people and its future. It was this new conception which had so fired the imaginations of our intellectuals.

      " You are discontented, you suffer, and you ascribe your unhappiness to the system under which you live. You think you will become happy and contented if you introduce European institutions into Russia. You are mistaken. Your sufferings are due to another cause. Thanks to your cosmopolitan education, you are estranged from your people, you no longer understand them; you form a little clan, utterly foreign and antipathetic to the rest of the country, in the midst of a vast empire. You despise your people for their ignorance, and you forget that it is they who have paid for your European education, they who support by the sweat of their brows your universities and higher schools. Instead of despising them, try to study the sacred ideas of your people. Humble yourselves before them, work shoulder to shoulder with them at their great task; for this illiterate people from whom you turn in disgust bears within it the Christian word which it will proclaim to the old world when it is bathed in blood. Not by servile repetition of the Utopias of the Europeans, which lead them to their own destruction, will you serve humanity, but by preparing together with your people the new Orthodox idea."

      These golden words went to the hearts of my compatriots, who were tired of despising their country. They were glad to think that Russia was no mere copy, no servile caricature of Europe, but that she in her turn might have a message for the world. Alas ! their joy was short-lived I The curtain which hides the future, lifted by the hand of a man of genius, fell ag9,in, and our intellectuals returned to their fallacies. They worked obstinately for the introduction of the European republic into Russia, despising the people too much to ask their opinion, and believing ingenuously that eleven million intellectuals had a right to impose their will on a hundred and eighty million inhabitants. Taking advantage of the weariness produced by an interminable war, our intellectuals at last succeeded in introducing their long-desired republic into Russia. They soon realised how difficult it is to govern in Russia without the Tsar. The people at once showed their moral strength, which Dostoyevsky had long ago divined, and which his political adversaries persisted in ignoring. The pride of this people of great genius and of a great future was deeply wounded by the idea that a handful of dreamers and ambitious mediocrities proposed to reign over them, and impose their Utopias upon them. They struggled against them as they continue to struggle against the Bolsheviks. The people defend their ideal, their great Christian treasure which they are keeping for the future and which they will proclaim to the world later, when the old aristocratic feudal society finally disintegrates. Have our intellectuals understood the lesson the Russian people have just given them? Not in the least. They continue to take their dream for a reality; they believe the Bolsheviks have succeeded in demonstrating СКАЧАТЬ