The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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СКАЧАТЬ Baron Wrangel, with whom my father lived in Siberia, had been brought up in the German manner, that is to say in the Schillerian tone, which he retained till the end of his life.

      But when the unexpected success of his first novel excited the jealousy of the younger writers, they avenged themselves by calumnies and insults. My father could not defend himself effectually, for he could not be insolent. He was nervous and excitable, as the children of drunkards generally are. Losing his self-control, Dostoyevsky said absurd things, and excited the laughter of his unfeeling companions. Turgenev in particular delighted in tormenting him. He was of Tatar origin, and showed himself to be even more cruel and malicious than the others. Belinsky, who was a compassionate soul, sought in vain to defend my father, reproved his rivals, and tried to make them listen to reason. Turgenev seemed to find a special pleasure in inflicting suffering on his sensitive and nervous confrere. One evening in Panaev's house, Turgenev began to tell my father that he had just made the acquaintance of a conceited provincial, who considered himself a genius, and elaborated a caricature of Dostoyevsky. Those present listened with amusement; they expected one of those cock-fights which, as I have said, were so much in favour at the time. They applauded Turgenev and awaited Dostoyevsky's counter-attack with curiosity. My father was not a game-cock, but a gentleman; his sense of honour was more highly developed than that of the Russians who surrounded him. Finding himself thus grossly insulted, he turned pale, roscj and left the house without saying good-bye to any one.87 The young writers were much astonished. They sought out my father, sent him invitations, wrote to him—but all in vain. Dostoyevsky refused to frequent the hterary salons. The young writers were alarmed. They were only starting on their Uterary career and had as yet no position. Dostoyevsky was the favourite of the public, and his young confreres feared that the public would take his part and would accuse them of jealousy and malice. They had recourse to calumny— a favourite device of the Russians, or rather of all societies still in their infancy. They went about clamouring against Dostoyevsky as a pretentious upstart, who thought himself superior to every one, and was a mass of selfishness and ill-humour. My father allowed them to say what they would. He was indifferent to public opinion, and all his life he scorned to refute calumnies. When he cut himself off from BeUnsky's advice and the literary conversation of other writers, which was so necessary to him, he consoled himself with the thought that honour and dignity are a man's best friends, and can take the place of all others. But it is very difficult for a young man to turn hermit; the youthful mind requires the interchange of ideas for its development. Having renounced literary society, Dostoyevsky sought that of other intellectuals, and unfortunately became involved with Petrachevsky.

      87 " The Lithuanian is very reticent, one may indeed say modest. But when he encounters insolence, he becomes extremely haughty," says Vidunas.

      The aggressive tone of the conversational cock-fights I have described have disappeared now, at least in good society. My compatriots travelled much in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, observed the politeness that reigned there, and introduced it into Russia. Yet in 1878, in the Journal of the Writer, my father confessed to his readers that when he was going on a journey he always took plenty of books and newspapers, in order to avoid conversation with his travelling companions. He declared that such conversations always ended in gratuitous insults, uttered merely to wound the interlocutor.

      My father's uncompromising attitude made a great impression on the Russian writers. They realised that his sense of honour was more highly developed than that of his contemporaries, and that consequently they could not talk to him in the disrespectful manner usually adopted by writers to each other at that period. When he returned from Siberia, his new friends, the collaborators of the Vremya, treated him with consideration. My father, who asked nothing better than to live on friendly terms with his colleagues, but who would not sacrifice his dignity on the altar of friendship, became their sincere friend, and remained faithful to them until his death. Turgenev imitated the other writers, and was polite, and even amiable with my father. 88 They met very rarely. While my father was undergoing his sentence in Siberia, Turgenev had the misfortune to fall in love with a celebrated European singer. He followed her abroad and was at her feet all his life. He settled in Paris, and only came to Russia for the sporting season. His unhappy passion prevented him from marrying and having a family. In his novels he is fond of depicting the type of the weak-minded Slav, who becomes the slave of an evil woman and suffers, but is unable to throw off her yoke. Turgenev's character became embittered; misfortune developed his faults instead of correcting them. Seeing that the Russian aristocracy would not recognise him as the great noble he imagined himself to be, Turgenev changed his pose, and adopted the role of the European. He exaggerated the Paris fashions, took up all the manias of the French old beaus, and became more ridiculous than ever. He spoke disdainfully of Russia, and declared that if she were to disappear altogether, civilisation would not suffer in any appreciable degree. This new pose disgusted my father; he thought that if the first was ridiculous, the second was dangerous. Turgenev had, by adopting these opinions, become the leader of the Zapadniki (Occidentals), who had hitherto only had mediocrities in their ranks, and his incontestable talents gave them a certain prestige. Every time my father met Turgenev abroad, he tried to make him realise the wrong he was doing to Russia by his unjust contempt. Turgenev would not listen to reason, and their discussions generally ended in quarrels. When Dostoyevsky returned to Russia, after spending four years in Europe, he became one of the leaders of the Slavophils, the party opposed to the Occidentals. Seeing the disastrous influence the Occidentals were exercising upon the infant society of Russia, Dostoyevsky began to wage war upon them in his novel. The Possessed. In order to discredit them in the eyes of the Russian public, he caricatured their chief in his description of the celebrated writer Karmazinov, and his stay In a little Russian town. The Occidentals were indignant, and made a great outcry. They thought it quite legitimate for Turgenev to ridicule my father and caricature the heroes of his novels, but they declared it to be odious when Dostoyevsky adopted the same attitude to Turgenev. Such is justice, as understood by the Russian intellectuals.

      88 Turgenev was particularly agreeable to my father at the time when the brothers Dostoyevsky were pubUshing their paper. During one of his sojourns in Petersburg he gave a grand dinner to all the staff of the Vremya. Turgenev always managed his money affairs well, made friends with the rich pubhshers and insisted on good terms for himself, whereas Dostoyevsky, who was obliged to ask his publishers for sums in advance, had all his life to take what they chose to give him.

      Although he opposed Turgenev and his political ideas, my father was all his life a passionate admirer of his contemporary's works. When he speaks of them in the Journal of the Writer, it is in terms of the warmest appreciation. Turgenev, on the other hand, would never admit that Dostoyevsky had any talent, and all his life ridiculed him and his works. He acted like a true Mongol, maliciously and vindictively.

       XXV

      DOSTOYEVSKY AND TOLSTOY

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       Dostoyevsky's relations with Tolstoy were very different. These two great Russian writers had a real sympathy and a real admiration for each other. They had a common friend, the philosopher Nicolas Strahoff, who lived at Petersburg in the winter and in the sxmmier spent some months in the Crimea with his comrade Damlevsky, stopping at Moscow or at Yasnaia Poliana 89 to see Tolstoy. My father was very fond of Strahoff, and attached great importance to his criticism. Tolstoy also liked him and corresponded with him. " I have just read the Memoirs of the House of the Dead again," he wrote. " What a magnificent book ! When you see Dostoyevsky tell him that I love him." Strahoff gave my father great pleasure by showing him this letter. Later, when a new book by Tolstoy appeared, Dostoyevsky in his turn said to Strahoff: " Tell Tolstoy I am delighted with his novel." These two great writers complimented each other through Strahoff, and their compliments were sincere. Tolstoy admired Dostoyevsky's works as much as my father admired his. And yet they never met, and never even expressed any desire to meet. Why was this? I believe they were СКАЧАТЬ