The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Название: The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Автор: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 9788027218103

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СКАЧАТЬ interest in the affairs of the Vatican. The Pope is hardly known in Russia, no one ever thinks or speaks of him, hardly any writer has mentioned him. But Dostoyevsky has something to say about the Vatican in almost every number of The Writer's Journal, and discusses the future of the Catholic Church with fervour. He calls it a dead Church, declares that Catholicism has long ceased to be anything but idolatry, and yet we see plainly that this Church is still living in his heart. His Catholic ancestors must have been fervid believers; Rome must have played an immense part in their lives. Dostoyevsky's fidelity to the Orthodox Church is merely the logical sequence of the fidelity of his ancestors to the Catholic Church. " I could never understand why your father took such an interest in that old fool the Pope," said a Russian writer and friend of my father's to me one day. Now to Dostoyevsky " that old fool" was the most interesting figure in Europe.

      The spiritual and moral isolation in which my father lived all his life was no unique phenomenon in our country. Nearly all our great writers have been of foreign descent, and have felt ill at ease in Russia. Pushkin was of African origin, the poet Lermontov was the descendant of a Scotch bard, Lermont, who came to Russia for some reason unknown to me; the poet Yukovsky was the son of a Turk, Nekrassov's mother was a Pole; Dostoyevsky was a Lithuanian, Alexis Tolstoy an Ukrainian, Leo Tolstoy of German blood. Only Turgenev and Gontsharov were true Russians. It is probable that young Russia is still incapable of producing great talents unaided. She can kindle them with the spark of her genius, but the pyre must be prepared by older or more highly civilised peoples. All these semi-Russians were never at home in Russia. Their lives were a series of struggles against the Mongolian society which surrounded and suffocated them. " The devil caused me to be born in Russia ! " cried Pushkin. "It is a dirty country of slaves and tjTants," said the Scottish Lermontov. " I am thinking of expatriating myself, of escaping from the ocean of odious baseness, of depraved indolence which threatens on all sides to engulf the little island of honest and laborious life I have created," wrote the German colonist Leo Tolstoy. In fact, the more prudent of the great Russian writers left the country : the poet Yukovsky preferred to live in Germany; Alexis Tolstoy was attracted by the artistic treasures of Italy. Those who remained waged war on Russian ignorance and brutality and died young, vanquished by them, like Pushkin and Lermontov, who were killed in duels. Nekrassov lived among the Russians and died a most unhappy man; Dostoyevsky himself records this in his obituary notice of Nekrassov. Tolstoy isolated himself as much as he could in his Yasnaia Poliana, but it is difficult to isolate oneself in Russia. His disciples, stupid Mongols, ended by taking advantage of the old man's enfeebled will and estranging him from his wife, the one person who really loved and understood him; they dragged him from his home to die by the wayside. . . . Poor great men, sacrificed by God for the civilisation of our country!

      All these writers of foreign origin shared my father's ideas about Russia. They loathed our so-called cultivated society, and were only at their ease among the people. Their best types are drawn from the peasants, who in their eyes represented the future of our country. Dostoyevsky acts as interpreter to all these great men when he says to the Russian intellectuals : "You think yourselves true Europeans, and at bottom you have no culture. The people, whom you propose to civilise by means of your European Utopias, is much more civilised than you, through Christ, before whom it kneels and Who has saved it from despair."

       XXIX

      THE LAST YEAR OF DOSTOYEVSKY'S LIFE

       Table of Contents

       DOSTOYEVSKY Came back in the guise of a conqueror to Staraja Russa, where we were settled for the summer. " What a pity you were not at the Assembly ! " he said to my mother. " How I regret that you did not see my success ! " Faithful to her rule of economy, my mother had decided not to accompany my father to Moscow; she now urged him to go to Ems as soon as possible for his usual cure, but Dostoyevsky had no idea of doing so. He was busy writing the single number of The Writer's Journal which appeared in 1880; it had an immense success. Dostoyevsky wished to consolidate the theory he had just enunciated at the Pushkin festival and reply to his opponents, who, after the first intoxication was over, tried to smother the new-born idea. He hoped to go to Ems in September; then, exhausted by all the emotions of his triumph and his political struggle, he abandoned his foreign journey, thinking he should be able to do without Ems for once. Unhappily, he did not realise how worn out he was. His iron will, the ideal which was burning in his heart and filled him with enthusiasm deceived him concerning his physical strength, which was never great.

      He proposed to start again with the publication of The Writer's Journal, for which the single nvunber of 1880 was to serve as programme. Now that The Brothers Karamazov was finished, he became a publicist again and threw himself once more into the political arena. The first, and, alas ! the only number of 1881, which appeared in January, contained a detailed programme. This testament of Dostoyevsky's proclaims truths which no one would believe in his Ufetime, but which are being realised by degrees, and will be completely reaUsed in the course of the twentieth century. This man of genius foresaw events from afar. " Do not despise the people," he said to the Russian intellectuals; " forget that they were once your slaves; respect their ideas, love what they love, admire what they admire; for if you persist in scorning their beliefs, and in trying to inoculate them with European institutions which they cannot understand and will never accept, the time will come when the people will repudiate you in their anger, will turn against you and seek other guides. You demand a European parliament, and you hope to sit in this and to pass laws without consulting the people. This parliament will be nothing but a debating society. You cannot direct Russia, for you do not understand it. The only possible parliament in our country is a popular assembly. Let the people meet and proclaim their will. As to you intellectuals, your task will be to listen respectfully to the humble words of the peasant delegates and try to understand them, in order to give juridical form to their plain pronouncements. If you direct Russia in accordance with the desires expressed by the people you will not blunder, and your country will prosper. But if you isolate yom-selves in your European debating society you will sit in darkness, knocking one against the other; instead of enlightening Russia, you will only be getting bruises on your foreheads. Increase the number of your elementary schools, extend the network of your railways, and, above all, try to have a good army, for Europe hates you and would fain seize your possessions. The Europeans know that the Russian people will always be hostile to their greedy capitalist dreams. They feel that Russia bears within her the new word of Christian fraternity which will put an end to their Philistine regime. Not with the Europeans but with the Asiatics should we work, for we Russians are as much Asiatics as Europeans. The mistake of our policy for the past two centuries has been to make the people of Europe believe that we are true Europeans. We have served Europe too well, we have taken too great a part in her domestic quarrels. At the first cry for help we have sent ovu- armies, and our poor soldiers have died for causes that meant nothing to them, and have been immediately forgotten by those they had served. We have bowed ourselves hke slaves before the Europeans and have only gained their hatred and contempt. It is time to turn away from ungrateful Europe. Our future is in Asia. True, Europe is our mother, but instead of mixing in her affairs we shall serve her better by working at our new orthodox idea, which will eventually bring happiness to the whole world. Meanwhile it will be better for us to seek alliances with the Asiatics. In Europe we have been merely intruders; in Asia we shall be masters. In Europe we have been Tatars; in Asia we shall be men of culture. Consciousness of our civilising mission will give us that dignity we lack as caricatures of Europeans. Let us go to Asia, to that ' land of holy miracles,' as one of our greatest Slavophils has called her, and let us try to make the name of the White Tsar greater and more venerated there than the name of the Queen of England, or the name of the Caliph." 103

      103 The above is only a resumi of the last number of The Writer's Journal, which deserves careful study as a whole. It makes manifest Dostoyevsky's Norman spirit, eager to fly to imknown regions, and to carry civilisation to the wildest places. This spirit is the more remarkable in him, because it is found in no other great Russian writer. Tolstoy, Turgenev and СКАЧАТЬ