The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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СКАЧАТЬ and not arranged by the intellectuals to develop the taste of the masses, as elsewhere. The Ukrainian theatre is so essentially popular that it has not even been possible to make a bourgeois theatre of it. In early days Ukrainia was in close contact with the Greek colonies on the shores of the Black Sea. Some Greek blood flows in the veins of the Ukrainians, manifesting itself in their charming sunburnt faces and their graceful movements. It may even be that the Ukrainian theatre is a distant echo of the drama so beloved of the ancient Greeks.

      Emerging from the dark forests and dank marshes of Lithuania, my ancestors must have been dazzled by the light, the flowers, the Greek poetry of Ukrainia. Their hearts warmed by the southern sunshine, they began to write verses. My grandfather Mihail carried a little of this Ukrainian poetry in his poor student's wallet when he fled from his father's house, and kept it carefully as a souvenir of his distant home. Later, he handed it on to his two elder sons, Mihail and Fyodor. These youths composed verses, epitaphs and poems; in his youth my father wrote Venetian romances and historical dramas. He began by imitating Gogol, the great Ukrainian writer, whom he greatly admired. In Dostoyevsky's first works we note a good deal of this naive sentimental and romantic poetry. It was not until after his imprisonment, when he became Russian, that we find in his novels the breadth of view and depth of thought proper to the Russian nation, the nation of great genius and a great future. And yet it is not right to say that Dostoyevsky's powerful realism is essentially Russian. The Russians are not realists; they are dreamers and mystics. They love to lose themselves in visions instead of studying life. When they try to be realists, they fall at once into Mongolian cynicism and eroticism. Dostoyevsky's realism is an inheritance from his normanised ancestors. All writers of Norman blood are distinguished by their profound realism. It was not for nothing that Dos-toyevsky admired Balzac so heartily, and took him as his model.

      The Dostoyevsky family was essentially a family of nomads. We find them now in Lithuania, now in Ukrainia, now domiciled in Moscow, now in Petersburg. This is not surprising, for Lithuania is distinguished from other countries by its curious class of " nomad intellectuals." In all other countries it is the proletariat which emigrates. In Russia, the moujiks, who cross the Ural Mountains in hordes every year and are absorbed by Asia; in Europe, the peasants and lower middle classes who go to seek their fortune in America, Africa and Australia, In Lithuania, the populace remained in the country; only the intellectuals emigrated. As long as Lithuania was a brilliant Grand Duchy attracting European poets and learned men, the Lithuanian nobility stayed at home. But when the splendour of Lithuania began to wane, the intellectuals 8 soon felt themselves circumscribed in their forests and swamps and emigrated to neighbouring nations. They entered the service of the Poles and the Ukrainians, and helped to build up their civilisation. A great number of famous Poles and Ukrainians are of Lithuanian origin.9

      8 Critics may accuse me of confomiding the words " noble" and " intellectual," which are not alway synonymous. But they must remember that in the good old times education was impossible for the proletariat and the middle classes. The Catholic and Orthodox clergy, who were the principal educationists of Lithuania, were only interested in the sons of the nobiUty, the future legislators and governors of their country.

      9 It is thought that the great Pohsh poet Mickiewioz was a Lithuanian. One of his poems begins :

      " Lithuania, my country."

      Later, when Russia annexed Lithuania, a horde of Lithuanian families descended upon our large towns. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Poles in their turn entered the service of Russia, but my compatriots very soon noted the difference between the Polish and the Lithuanian " sky." 10

      10 Sky " is the termination of the names of the Polish and Lithuanian nobility.

      Though the Poles lived and grew rich in Russia, they remained Catholics, spoke Polish among themselves, and treated the Russians as barbarians. The Lithuanians, on the other hand, forgot their mother-tongue, adopted the Orthodox faith, and thought no more of their native land.11

      11 Among the great Russian famDies of Lithuanian origin, we must note more especially the Romanoffs, the ancestors of the late reigning family, who belonged to the tribe of the Borussi; the Soltikoffs, whose Lithuanian name was Saltyk; and the GoUtzins, the descendants of Duke Guedimin. In Poland, the majority of the aristocratic families were of Lithuanian origin, as well as the royal house of Jagellon.

      This migration of the intellectuals, and their faciHty in amalgamating with the nations of their adoption, is the most characteristic feature bequeathed by the Normans to their Lithuanian posterity. The Normans alone among the nations of antiquity possessed a nomad nobihty. The young men of the highest families rallied to the banner of some Norman prince, and sailed in their light vessels to seek new homes. It is generally asserted that all the aristocracies of northern Europe were founded by the Normans. There is nothing surprising in this : when the young Norman nobles appeared among some primitive people, they naturally became the chiefs of the wild and ignorant aborigines. Their descendants, accustomed to govern, continued to do so throughout successive centuries. The Normans, as we have already seen, did not hold aloof from the nations they conquered; they married the women of the country, and adopted its ideas, its costume and its beliefs. Two centuries after their arrival in Normandy, the Normans had forgotten their native tongue, and spoke French to each other. When William the Conqueror landed in England with his warriors, the culture he brought to the English was a Latin, and not a Norman culture. When the Norman family of the Comtes d' Hauteville conquered Sicily, they adopted the Byzantine and Saracen culture they found in that country with amazing rapidity. In Lithuania there was a complete fusion of invaders with invaded; the Normans gave the Lithuanians their moral strength, and bequeathed to them the mission of civiUsing neighbouring peoples. All the nomad intellectuals of Lithuania are, in fact, but Normans in disguise. They continue the great work of their ancestors with unfaihng courage, patience and devotion.

      It is obvious that poor Lithuania, who gives the flower of her race to others, can never become a great state again. She understands and regrets this herself. " The Lithuanians must be accounted in general a most intelligent race," says Vidunas; " that in spite of this, Lithuania has exercised no influence on European civilisation, is to be explained by the fact that Lithuanian intelligence has been perpetually at the service of other nations, and has never been able to put forth all its powers in its native land." Vidunas is no doubt right when he deplores the emigration of the Lithuanian intellectuals, but he is mistaken when he says that Lithuania has had no influence on European civihsation. No country, indeed, has done so much for the civilisation of the Slav states as Lithuania. Other peoples worked for themselves alone, for their own glory; Lithuania has devoted the gifts of her intelligence to the service of her neighbours. Poland, Ukrainia and Russia do not understand this yet, and are unjust. But the day will come when they will see clearly what a huge debt they owe to modest and silent Lithuania.

      The Dostoyevsky were such wanderers, they had such a thirst for new ideas and new impressions, that they tried to forget the past, and refused to talk to their children of their forbears. But while thus renouncing the past, they had a desire to link their wandering family by a kind of Ariadne's thread. This thread, which enables us to trace them throughout the centuries, is their family name Audrey. The Catholic Dostoyevsky of Lithuania habitually gave this name to one of their sons, generally to the second or the third; and the Orthodox Dostoyevsky have kept up the custom till the present. In each generation of our family there is always an Andrey, and, as before, this name is borne by the second or the third son.

       II

      THE CHILDHOOD OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

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       After completing his medical studies at Moscow, my grandfather Mihail entered the army as a surgeon, and in this capacity served during the СКАЧАТЬ