Chapter V: The Religion of Endurance.―dostoyevski (1)

With Dostoyevski, that true Scythian, who will revolutionize all our previous habits of thought, we now enter into the heart of Moscow, with its giant cathedral of St. Basil, like a Chinese pagoda as to form and decoration, and built by Tartar architects; but dedicated to the worship of the Christian’s God.

Turgenef and Dostoyevski, although contemporaries, belonging to the same school, and borne on by the same current of ideas, present in their respective works many sharply defined contrasts; still, they possess one quality in common, the outgrowth of the period in which they lived―sympathy for humanity. In Dostoyevski, this sympathy has developed into an intense pity for the humbler class, which regards him and believes in him as its master.

All contemporary forms of art have secret bonds in common. The same causes and sentiments which inclined these Russian authors to the study of real life attracted the great French landscape-painters of the same epoch to a closer observation of nature. The works of Corot, Rousseau, and Millet present to me a perfect idea of the common tendencies and personal peculiarities of the three types of talent I am attempting to analyze. Whichever of these painters we prefer, we shall be likely to be attracted by the corresponding writer. I would not force such a comparison; but to me Turgenef has the grace and poetry of Corot; Tolstoï, the simple grandeur of Rousseau; Dostoyevski, the tragic severity of Millet.

Dostoyevski’s romances have been translated into French, and, to my astonishment, they are greatly enjoyed by the French. This places me at ease in discussing him. I should never have been believed, in attempting to present an analysis of this strange character, if these books, which reflect and typify their author, had not been well known among us. At the same time, the books can scarcely be understood without some knowledge of the life of him who created them. I had almost said, whose life and sufferings were portrayed in them; but the one expression partly implies the other.

On entering into an examination of the life and works of this man, I must present to the reader scenes invariably sad, sometimes terrible, sometimes funereal. Those persons should not attempt to read them who object to visiting hospitals, courts of justice, or prisons; or who have a horror of visiting graveyards at night. I cannot conscientiously throw a cheerful glamour upon what both destiny and character have made sombre throughout. Some will, at least, follow me with confidence. At all events, the Russia of the past twenty years will remain an inexplicable enigma to those who ignore the work which has made the most lasting impression upon this country, and shaken it to its foundations. We must, then, examine the books which have performed such a work, and, first of all, and more dramatic than all, the life of him who conceived them.

I.

He was born at Moscow, in 1821, in the charity hospital. Destiny decreed that his eyes should first open upon the sad spectacle which was to be ever before them, and upon the most terrible forms of misery. His father, a retired military surgeon, was attached to this establishment. His family belonged to one of those lower orders of the nobility from which minor functionaries are generally chosen, and possessed a small estate and a few serfs in the province of Tula. The child was sometimes taken out to this country place; and these first visions of country life occasionally reappear in his works, but very rarely. Contrary to the habit of the other Russian authors, who adore nature, and especially love the place where they were reared, Dostoyevski is not attracted in this direction. He is a psychologist; the human soul absorbs his entire vision; the scenes of his choice are the suburbs of large cities, and miserable alleys. In his childish recollections, which almost invariably give their coloring to an author’s mind, you never feel the influence of peaceful woods and broad, open skies. The source from whence his imagination draws its supplies will give you glimpses of hospital courts, pallid faces under the regulation white cap, and forms clothed in brown robes; and you will encounter the timid gaze of the “Degraded” and “Insulted.”

Dostoyevski was one of a numerous family of children, and his life as a child was not one of luxury. After leaving a Moscow school, his father procured admission for the two elder sons, Alexis and Feodor, to the military engineering school at St. Petersburg. The two brothers, bound together by a common aptitude for literature, were always deeply attached to each other, and greatly depended, in all the crises of life, upon each other’s mutual support. We gain much knowledge of the interior life of Feodor Mikhailovitch, (Dostoyevski) through his letters to his brother Alexis in his “Correspondence.” Both felt themselves out of place in this school, which, for them, took the place of a University training. A classical education was just what Dostoyevski needed; it would have given him that refinement and balance which is gained by an early training in the best literature. He made up for the want of it as best he could, by reading Pushkin and Gogol, and the French romance-writers, Balzac, Eugene Sue, and George Sand, who seems to have had a strong influence upon his imagination. But Gogol was his favorite master. The humble world which attracted him most was revealed to him in “Dead Souls.”

Leaving the school in 1843 with the grade of sub-lieutenant, he did not long wear his engineer’s uniform. A year later he sent in his resignation, to devote himself exclusively to literary occupations. From this day, the fierce struggle of our author with poverty began which was to last forty years. After the father’s death the meagre patrimony was divided among the children, and it quickly vanished. The young Feodor undertook translations for journals and publishers. For forty years his correspondence, which recalls that of Balzac, was one long agonizing lament; a recapitulation of debts accumulating and weighing upon him, a complaint of the slavish life he led. For years he is never sure of his daily bread, except in the convict prison.

Although Dostoyevski became hardened to material privations, he was not proof against the moral wounds which poverty inflicts; the pitiable pride which formed the foundation of his character suffered terribly from everything which betrayed his poverty. You feel the existence of this open wound in his letters; and all his heroes, the real incarnations of his own soul, suffer the same torture. Moreover, he was really ill, a victim of shattered nerves; and he became so visionary that he believed himself threatened with every imaginable disease. He left on his table sometimes, before retiring for the night, a paper upon which he wrote: “I may to-night fall into a lethargic sleep; be careful not to bury me before a certain number of days.” This was no trick of the imagination, but a presentiment of the fatal malady, of which he then felt the first symptoms. It has been stated that he contracted it in Siberia later than this; but a friend of his youth assures me that at this very time he was in the habit of falling down in the street foaming at the mouth. He always was, what he seemed to us to be in his latter years, but a frail bundle of irritable nerves; a feminine soul in the frame of a Russian peasant; reserved, savage, full of hallucinations; while the deepest tenderness filled his heart when he looked upon the sufferings of the lower classes.

His work was his sole consolation and delight. He narrates in his letters projected plots for his romances with the most genuine enthusiasm; and the recollection of these first transports makes him put into the mouth of one of his characters, drawn from himself, the novelist who figures in “The Degraded and Insulted,”[J] the following expressions:―

“If I ever was happy, it was not during the first intoxicating moments of success, but at the time when I had never read nor shown my manuscript to any one; during those long nights, passed in enthusiastic dreams and hopes, when I passionately loved my work; when I lived with my fancies, with the characters created by me, as with real relatives, living beings. I loved them; I rejoiced or mourned with them, and I have actually shed bitter tears over the misfortunes of my poor hero.”

His first tale, “Poor People,” contained the germ of all the rest. He wrote it at the age of twenty-three. During the latter years of his life, he used to relate the story of this first venture. The poor little engineer knew not a single soul in the literary world, or what to do with his manuscript. One of his comrades, Grigorovitch, who became a man of considerable literary reputation, has confirmed this anecdote. He carried the manuscript to Nekrasof, the poet, and friend of poor authors.

At three o’clock in the morning, Dostoyevski heard a knock at his door. It was Grigorovitch, who brought Nekrasof in with him. The poet threw himself upon the young stranger’s neck, showing strong emotion. He had been up the whole night, reading the tale, and was perfectly carried away with it. He too lived the cautious and hidden life which at that time was the lot of every Russian writer. These two repressed hearts, mutually and irresistibly attracted to each other, now overflowed with all the generous enthusiasm of youth. The dawn of day found the three enthusiasts still absorbed in an exalted conversation and an interchange of thoughts, hopes, and artistic and poetical dreams.

On leaving his protégé, Nekrasof went directly to Bielinski, the oracle of Russian literature, the only critic formidable to young beginners. “A new Gogol is born to us!” cried the poet, as he entered his friend’s house. “Gogols sprout up nowadays like mushrooms,” replied the critic, with his most forbidding air, as he took up the manuscript, handling it as if it were something poisonous, in the same way that all great critics of every country treat new manuscripts. But when Bielinski had read the manuscript through, its effect upon him was magical; so that when the trembling young man presented himself before his judge, the latter cried out excitedly:―

“Do you comprehend, young man, all the truth that you have described? No! at your age, that is quite impossible. This is a revelation of art, an inspiration, a gift from on high. Reverence, preserve this gift! and you will become a great writer!”

A few months later “Poor People” appeared in periodical review, and Russia ratified the verdict of its great critic. Bielinski’s astonishment was justifiable; for it seems incredible that any person of twenty could have produced a tragedy at once so simple and so heart-rending. In youth, happiness is our science, learned without a master, and we invent grand, heroic, showy misfortunes, and anguish which blazons its own sublimity. But how had this unhappy genius learned the meaning of that hidden, dumb, wearing misery before his time?

It is but an ordinary story, told in a correspondence between two persons. An inferior clerk in a court of chancery, worn with years and toil, is passing on toward the decline of life, in a continual struggle with poverty and the accompanying tortures of wounded self-love. This ignorant and honest clerk, the butt of his comrades’ ridicule, ordinary in conversation, of only medium intelligence, whose whole ambition is to be a good copyist, possesses, under an almost grotesque exterior, a heart as fresh, open, and affectionate as that of a little child; and I might almost say, sublimely stupid, indifferent to his own interests, in his noble generosity. This is the chosen type of all the best Russian authors, the one which exemplifies what is noblest in the Russian character; as, for example, Turgenef’s Lukeria in the “Living Relics,” and the Karatayef of Tolstoï in “War and Peace.” But these are of the peasant class, whereas the character of Dievushkin, in “Poor People,” is raised some degrees higher in the intellectual and social scale.

In this life, dark and cold as the long December night in Russia, there is one solitary ray of light, one single joy. In another poor lodging, just opposite the loft where the clerk copies his papers, lives a young girl, a distant relative, a solitary waif like himself, who can claim nothing in the world but the feeble protection of this friend. Both isolated, crushed by the brutal pressure of circumstances, these two unfortunates depend upon each other for mutual affection, as well as aid to keep them from starving. In the man’s affection there is a tender self-sacrifice, a delicacy, so much the more charming in that it accords not at all with the habitual bungling awkwardness of his ways and ideas; like a flower growing in sterile soil, among brambles, and betrayed only by its perfume. He imposes upon himself privations truly heroic, for the sake of comforting and gladdening the existence of his dear friend. These are, moreover, so well concealed that they are only discovered through some awkwardness on his part; as for him, they seem to him a matter of course. His sentiments are by turns those of a father, a brother, a good faithful dog. He would define them thus himself if called upon to analyze them. But although we well know a name for this feeling, let us not even whisper it to him; he would be overcome with shame at the mere mention of it.

The woman’s character is drawn with marvellous art. She is very superior to her friend in mind and education; she guides him in all intellectual things, which are quite new to him. She is weak by nature, and tender-hearted, but less faithful and resigned than he. She has not wholly given up a desire for the good things of life. She continually protests against the sacrifices which Dievushkin imposes upon himself, she begs him not to trouble himself for her; but sometimes a longing cry for something she feels the deprivation of escapes her, or perhaps a childish desire for some trifle or finery. The two neighbors can only see each other occasionally, that they may give no occasion for malicious gossip, and an almost daily correspondence has been established between them. In these letters we read of their past, the hard lives they have lived, the little incidents of their every-day life, their disappointments; the terrors of the young girl, pursued by the vicious, who try to entrap her; the agonies of the poor clerk, working for his daily bread, trying so pitifully to preserve the dignity of his manhood through the cruel treatment of those who would strip him of it.

Finally, the crisis comes; Dievushkin loses his only joy in life. You think, perhaps, that a young lover comes to steal her from him, that love will usurp in her heart the place of sisterly affection. Oh, no! the tale is much more human, far sadder.

A man who had once before sought out this young girl, with possibly doubtful intentions, offers her his hand. He is middle-aged, rich, of rather questionable character; but his proposition is an honorable one. Weary of wrestling against fate, persuaded perhaps also that she may thereby lighten some of the burdens of her friend, the unfortunate girl accepts the offer. Here the study of character is absolutely true to nature. The young girl, going suddenly from extreme poverty to luxury, is intoxicated for a moment by this new atmosphere, fine dresses, and jewels! In her cruel ingenuousness, she fills the last letters with details upon these grave subjects. From force of habit, she asks this kind Dievushkin, who always made all her purchases, to do an errand at the jeweller’s for her. Can her soul be really base, unworthy of the pure sentiment she had inspired? Not for a moment does the reader have such an impression, the writer knows so well how to maintain true harmony in his delineation of character. No, it is only that a little of youth and human nature have come to the surface in the experience of this long repressed soul. How can we grudge her such a trifling pleasure?

Then this cruelty is explained by the complete misapprehension of their reciprocal feelings. With her it is only a friendship, which will ever be faithful, grateful, if perhaps a little less single; how can she possibly understand that for him it is nothing short of despair?

It had been arranged that the wedded pair should start immediately after the marriage for a distant province. Up to the very last hour, Dievushkin replies to her letters, giving her the most minute details of the shopping that he has done for her, making great efforts to become versed in the subject of laces and ribbons. He only occasionally betrays a hint of the terror which seizes him at the thought of the near separation; but finally, in the last letter, his wounded heart breaks; the unhappy man sees before him the blank desolation of his future life, solitary, empty; he is no longer conscious of what he writes; but, in spite of all, his utter distress is kept back; he himself seems hardly yet to realize the secret of his own agony. The drama ends with an agonizing wail of despair, when he is left standing alone, behind the departing train.

I should like to quote many passages; I hesitate, and find none. This is the highest eulogium that can be bestowed upon a romance. The structure is so solid, the materials so simple, and so completely sacrificed to the impression of the whole, that a detached fragment quite loses its effect; it means no more than a single stone torn from a Greek temple, whose beauty consists in its general lines. This is the peculiar attribute of all the great Russian authors.

Another trait is also common to them, in which Turgenef excelled, and in which perhaps Dostoyevski even surpassed him: the art of awaking with a single line, sometimes with a word, infinite harmonies, a whole series of sentiments and ideas. “Poor People” is a perfect specimen of this art. The words you read upon the paper seem to produce reverberations, as, when touching the key-board of an organ, the sounds produced awake, through invisible tubes, the great interior heart of harmony within the instrument, whence come its deepest tones of thunder.

When you have read the last page you feel that you know the two characters as perfectly as if you had lived with them for years; moreover, the author has not told us a thousandth part of what we know of them, his mere indications are such revelations; for it seems he is especially effective in what he leaves unsaid, but merely suggests, and we are grateful to him for what he leaves us to imagine.

Into this tender production Dostoyevski has poured his own nature, all his sensibility, his longing for sympathy and devotion, his bitter conception of life, his savage, pitiable pride. His own letters of this period are like Dievushkin’s, where he speaks of his inconceivable mortification on account of his “wretched overcoat.”

In order to understand the high estimation of this work held by Bielinski and Nekrasof, and to realize its remarkable originality, we must remember its time and place in Russian literature. The “Annals of a Sportsman” did not appear until five years later. True, Gogol had furnished the theme in “Le Manteau,” but Dostoyevski substituted a suggestive emotion in place of his master’s fancy.

He continued to write essays in the same vein, but they were less remarkable, and he even tried his hand at writing a farce; but destiny rudely led him back into his true path, and gave the man his peculiarly tragic physiognomy among writers.

II.

About the year 1847 the students’ clubs already mentioned, which assembled to discuss the doctrines of Fourier and others, opened to receive political writers and army officers, and were at this time under the direction of a former student, the political agitator Petrachevski. The conspiracy headed by this man is still imperfectly understood, as well as the general history of that time. It is, however, certain that two different currents of ideas divided these circles. One embraced those of their predecessors, the revolutionists of December, 1825, who went no farther than to indulge in dreams of the emancipation and of a liberal government. The other set went far beyond their successors, the present nihilists, for they desired the total ruin of the entire social edifice.

Dostoyevski’s character, as we have seen, made him an easy prey to radical ideas through his generosity as well as his hardships and his rebellious spirit. He has related how he was attracted toward socialism by the influence of his learned protector, Bielinski, who tried also to convert him to atheism.

Our author soon became an enthusiastic member of the reunions inspired by Petrachevski. He was, undoubtedly, among the more moderate, or rather one of the independent dreamers. Mysticism, sympathy for the unfortunate, these must have been what attracted him in any political doctrine; and his incapacity for action made this metaphysician altogether harmless. The sentence pronounced upon him charged him with very pardonable errors: participation in the reunions; also in the discussions on the severity of the press censure; the reading or listening to the reading of seditious pamphlets, etc. These crimes seem very slight when compared with the severe punishment they provoked. The police force was then so inefficient that it for two years remained ignorant of what was going on in these circles; but finally they were betrayed by an unfaithful member.

Petrachevski and his friends also betrayed themselves at a banquet in honor of Fourier, where they were discussing the destruction of family ties, property, kings, and deities. Dostoyevski took no part in these social banquets, that occurred just after those days of June in France which spread terror throughout all Europe, and only one year after other banquets which had overturned a throne. The Emperor Nicholas, although naturally humane, now forced himself to be implacable, entertaining the firm conviction that he was the chosen servant of God to save a sinking world. He was already meditating the emancipation of the serfs; by a fatal misunderstanding he was now going to strike down men, some of whom had committed no crime but that of desiring the same reform. History is only just when she seeks the motives of all consciences and the springs of their actions. But this was not a favorable time for explanations or cool judgments.

On the 23d of April, 1849, at five o’clock in the morning, thirty-three persons looked upon as suspicious characters were arrested, the Dostoyevski brothers being among the number. The prisoners were carried to the citadel, and placed in solitary confinement in the gloomy casemates, which were haunted by the most terrible associations. They remained there eight months, with no distractions except the visits of the examining commissioners; finally, they were allowed the use of a few religious books. Feodor Mikhailovitch wrote once to his brother, who had been soon released through the want of sufficient evidence against him: “For five months I have lived upon my own substance; that is, upon my own brain alone…. To think constantly, and receive no outside impression to renew and sustain thought, is wearing…. I was as if placed under a receiver from which all the pure air was extracted….”

On the 22d of December the prisoners were led out, without being informed of the sentence which had been pronounced upon them. There were now only 21, the others having been discharged. They were conducted to a square where a scaffold had been erected. The cold was intense; the criminals were ordered to remove all their clothing, except their shirts, and listen to the reading of the sentence, which would last for a half-hour. When the sheriff began to read, Dostoyevski said to the prisoner next him: “Is it possible that we are going to be executed?” The idea seemed to have occurred to him for the first time. His companion pointed to a cart, loaded with what appeared to be coffins covered over with a cloth. The last words of the sentence were: “They are condemned to death, and are to be shot.”

The sheriff left the scaffold, and a priest mounted upon it with a cross in his hand, and exhorted the prisoners to confess. Only one responded to this exhortation; all the others kissed the cross. Petrachevski and two of the principal conspirators were bound to the pillar. The officer ordered the company of soldiers drawn up for the purpose to charge their weapons. As they were taking aim, a white flag was hoisted in front of them, when the twenty-one prisoners heard that the Emperor had commuted their penalty to exile in Siberia. The leaders were unbound; one of them, Grigoref, was struck with sudden insanity, and never recovered.

Dostoyevski, on the contrary, has often assured me, as if he were really convinced of it, that he should inevitably have gone mad if he had not been removed by this and following disasters from the life he was leading. Before his imprisonment he was beset by imaginary maladies, nervous depression, and “mystic terrors,” which condition would certainly have brought about mental derangement, from which he was only saved by this sudden change in his way of life, and by the necessity of steeling himself against his overwhelming trials,―which may have been true, for it is said that imaginary evils are best cured by real ones; still, I cannot but think that there was some degree of pride in this affirmation.

In each of his books he depicts a scene similar to what he himself experienced, and he has labored to make a perfect psychological study of the condemned prisoner who is about to die. You feel that these pages are the result of a nightmare, proceeding from some hidden recess of the author’s own brain.

The imperial decree, which was less severe for him than for any of the rest, reduced his punishment to four years of hard labor, after which he was to serve as a common soldier, losing his rank among the nobles as well as all civil rights.

The exiled prisoners started immediately in sledges for Siberia. At Tobolsk, after one night passed together, when they bade each other farewell, they were put in irons, their heads shaved, and they were then sent to their several destinations. It was at that temporary prison that they were visited by the wives of the revolutionists of December. These brave women had set a noble example. Belonging to the upper class, and accustomed to a life of luxury, they had renounced everything to follow their exiled husbands into Siberia, and for twenty-five years had haunted the prison gates. Learning now of the arrival of another set of refugees, they came to visit them, warned these young men of what was in store for them, and counselled them how best to support their hardships, offering to each of them all that they had to give, the Gospel.

Dostoyevski accepted his, and throughout the four years always kept it under his pillow. He read it every evening under the lamp in the dormitory, and taught others to read in it. After the hard day’s work, while his companions in chains were restoring their wasted energies in sleep, he obtained from his book a consolation more necessary still for a thinking man, a renewal of moral strength, and a support in bearing his trials. How can we imagine this intellectual man, with his delicate nervous organization, his overweening pride, his sensitive imagination, prone to exaggeration of every dreaded evil, condemned to the companionship of these low wretches in such a monotonous existence, forced to daily labor; and for the slightest negligence, or at the caprice of his keepers, threatened with a flogging by the soldiers! He was inscribed among the worst set of malefactors and political criminals, who were kept under military surveillance.

They were employed in turning a grindstone for marble works, in demolishing old boats on the ice in winter, and other rough and useless labor.

How well he has described the weariness of being forced to labor merely for the sake of being employed, feeling that his task is nothing but a gymnastic exercise. He has also said the severest trial of all, was never being allowed to be alone for a single moment for years. But the greatest torture of all for this writer, now at the height of his powers, incessantly haunted by images and ideas, was the impossibility of writing, of alleviating his lot by absorbing himself in some literary work. But he survived, and was strengthened and purified, and the personal history of this martyr can be read in his “Recollections of a Dead House,”[K] which he wrote after he left the prison. How unjust is literary fame, and what a thing of chance it is! The name and work of Silvio Pellico are known throughout the civilized world. In France the book is one of the classics; and yet there, on the great highway of all fame and of all great thoughts, even the title of this tragic work of Dostoyevski’s was but yesterday quite unknown,―a book as superior to that of the Lombard prisoner, as the tales exceed his in horror.

No work was ever more difficult to accomplish. Siberia, that mysterious land which was then only mentioned with extreme caution, must be freely described. It was, too, a former political prisoner who now undertook to walk over these burning coals and brave this cruel press-censure. He was successful; and he made us realize what exquisite refinement of suffering a man of the upper class, thrown amid such surroundings, was capable of enduring.

He gives us the biography of such a man, who had been through many years of hard labor, the penalty of some small crime. This man, who is, in reality, no other than Dostoyevski himself, occupies himself in psychological studies of these unfortunates, aiming constantly to show the divine spark always existing even in the most degraded. Many of them relate the story of their lives to him; with some he seeks to know nothing of their past, but contents himself with describing their moral natures in his broad, vague manner, which is also common to all the great Russian writers. These portraits, with their indistinct outlines, melting as into the grayness of the early dawn, recall Henner’s portraits when compared with those of Ingres. The language, too, which Dostoyevski purposely employs, of a popular type, is marvellously well fitted for his purpose.

The greater part of these natures belong to a type of character which Dostoyevski seems peculiarly to enjoy analyzing; those natures which are subject to attacks of caprice, almost amounting to sudden or temporary insanity. In a romance of his, called “The Idiot,” he quotes an example of this kind, which he declares to be strictly true:―“Two peasants, of middle age and friends of long standing, arrived at an inn. Neither of them was at all intoxicated. They took their tea and ordered a bedroom, which they shared together. One of them had noticed that within the last few days his companion had worn a silver watch, which he never had seen him wear before. The man was no thief; he was an honest man, and, moreover, in very comfortable circumstances for a peasant. But this watch so struck his fancy that he conceived a most inordinate desire to possess it, which he could not repress. He seized a knife, and, as soon as his friend’s back was turned, he approached him noiselessly, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself, and devoutly murmured this prayer: ‘Lord, forgive me, through Jesus Christ!’ He then killed his friend with as much ease as he would a sheep, and took the watch.”

Those persons who conceive a desire, when on the top of a high tower, to throw themselves into the abyss below, he says are often of a mild, peaceable, and quite ordinary type. Some natures apparently enjoy the anticipation of the horror they can inspire in others, and, in a fit of desperation, seem to court punishment as a solution of their condition of mind. Sometimes in these attacks of madness is mingled a vein of asceticism. Dostoyevski introduces an instance of this kind in “Crime and Punishment,” which illustrates the strange sense which the Russian peasant attaches to the idea of punishment, sought for itself, for its propitiatory virtue:―

“This prisoner was quite different from all the rest. He was a little pale thin man, about 60 years of age. I was struck with his appearance the first time I saw him, there was so much calmness and repose about him. I particularly liked his eyes, which were clear and intelligent. I often talked with him, and have seldom met with so kindly a nature, so upright a soul. He was expiating in Siberia an unpardonable crime. In consequence of several conversions in his parish, a movement towards the old orthodoxy, the government, wishing to encourage these good tendencies, had an orthodox church built. This man, together with a few other fanatics, determined to ‘resist for his faith’s sake,’ and set fire to the church. The instigators of the crime were all condemned to hard labor in Siberia. He had been a very successful tradesman at the head of a flourishing business. Leaving his wife and children at home, he accepted his sentence with firmness, in his blindness considering his punishment as a ‘witness to his faith.’ He was mild and gentle as a child, and one could not but wonder how he could have committed such a deed. I often conversed with him on matters of faith. He yielded up none of his convictions, but never in argument betrayed the least hatred or resentment; nor did I ever discover in him the least indication of pride or braggadocio. In the prison he was universally respected, and did not show a trace of vanity on this account. The prisoners called him ‘our little uncle,’ and never disturbed him in any way. I could realize what sway he must have had over his companions in the faith.

“In spite of the apparent courage with which he bore his fate, a secret constant pain, which he tried to hide from all eyes, seemed at times to consume him. We slept in the same dormitory. I waked one morning at four o’clock, and heard what sounded like stifled sobbing. The old man was sitting on the porcelain stove reading in a manuscript prayer-book. He was weeping bitterly, and I heard him murmur from time to time: ‘O Lord! do not forsake me! Lord, give me strength! My little children, my dearest little ones, we shall never see each other again!’ I felt such inexpressible pity for him!”

I must also translate a terrible piece of realism, the death of Mikhailof: “I knew him but slightly; he was a young man about twenty-five years of age, tall, slender, and had a remarkably fine form. He belonged to the section in which the worst criminals were placed, and was always extremely reticent and seemed very sad and depressed. He had literally wasted away in prison. I remember that his eyes were very fine, and I know not why his image so often comes before me. He died in the afternoon of a fine, clear, frosty day. I remember how the sun shone obliquely through our greenish window-panes, thickly covered with frost. The bright shaft of sunlight shone directly upon this poor unfortunate, as he lay dying. Though he might have been unconscious, he had a hard struggle, the death agony lasting many hours. He had recognized no one since morning. We tried to relieve his suffering, which evidently was intense; he breathed with great difficulty, with a rattling sound, and his chest labored heavily. He threw off all his coverings and tore his shirt, as if the weight of it was insupportable. We went to his aid and took the shirt off. That emaciated body was a terrible sight, the legs and arms wasted to the bone, every rib visible like those of a skeleton. Only his chains and a little wooden cross remained upon him. His wasted feet might almost have escaped through the rings of the fetters.

“For a half-hour before his death all sounds ceased in our dormitory, and no one spoke above a whisper, and all moved as noiselessly as possible. Finally his hand, wavering and uncertain, sought the little cross, and tried to tear it off, as if even that was too heavy a weight and was stifling him. They took it away, and ten minutes after he expired. They went to inform the guard, who came and looked indifferently upon the corpse, then went to call the health officer, who came immediately, approached the dead man with a rapid step which resounded in the silent chamber, and with a professional air of indifference, assumed for the occasion, felt his pulse, made a significant gesture as if to say that all was over, and went out. One of the prisoners suggested that the eyes should be closed, which was done by one of the others, who also, seeing the cross lying on the pillow, took it up, looked at it, and put it around Mikhailof’s neck; then he crossed himself. The face was already growing rigid, the mouth was half open, showing the handsome white teeth under the thin lips, which closely adhered to the gums. Finally, the second officer of the guard appeared in full uniform and helmet, followed by two soldiers. He slowly advanced, looking hesitatingly at the solemn circle of prisoners standing about him. When he drew near the body, he stopped short as if nailed to the spot. The spectacle of this wasted, naked form in irons evidently shocked him. He unfastened his helmet, took it off, which no one expected of him, and crossed himself reverentially. He was a gray-haired veteran officer, and a severe disciplinarian. One of the soldiers with him seemed much affected, and, pointing to the corpse, murmured as he left: ‘He, too, once had a mother!’ These words, I remember, shot through me like an arrow…. They carried away the corpse, with the camp bed it lay upon; the straw rustled, the chains dragged clanking against the floor, breaking the general silence. We heard the second officer in the corridor sending some one for the blacksmith. The corpse must be unfettered….”

This gives an example of Dostoyevski’s method, showing his persistence in giving all the minutiæ of every action. He shows us, how, sometimes, among these tragic scenes, kind souls come to bring consolation to the exiles, as in the case of a widow who came daily to bring little gifts or a bit of news, or at least to smile upon the wretched creatures. “She could give but little, for she was very poor; but we prisoners felt that we had at least, close by the walls of our prison, one being wholly devoted to us,―and that was something.”

On opening this book, the key-note from the very beginning has a tone so melancholy, so harrowing, that you wonder how long the author can continue in this vein, and how he can ever manage the gradation into another. But he is successful in this, as those will see who have the courage to go on as far as the chapter on corporal punishments, and the description of the hospital, to which the prisoners afterwards come to recover from the effects of these chastisements. It is impossible to conceive of sufferings more horrible than these, or more graphically portrayed.

Nevertheless, Dostoyevski does not properly belong to the “natural school.” The difference is not easily explained, but there is a difference. Everything depends upon the master’s intention, which never deceives the reader. When the realistic writer only seeks to awake a morbid curiosity, we inwardly condemn him; but when it is evident that he is aiming to develop some moral idea, or impress a lesson the more strongly upon our minds, we may criticize the method, but we must sympathize with the author. His portrayals, even when disgusting to us, are ennobled, like the loathsome wound under the hands of the gentle Sister of Charity. This is the case with Dostoyevski. His object in writing was reform. With a cautious but pitiless hand, he has torn away the curtain which concealed this distant Siberian hell from the eyes of the Russians themselves. The “Recollections of a Dead House” gave the death-blow to the sentence of exile, as “Annals of a Sportsman” gave the signal for the abolition of serfdom. To-day I am thankful to say these repulsive scenes belong only to the history of the past; corporal punishment has been abolished, and the prisons in Siberia are regulated with as much humanity as with us. We can then pardon the tortures this author has inflicted upon us in his graphic recitals of these scenes of martyrdom. We must persevere and continue to the end, and we shall realize better than from a host of philosophical dissertations what things are possible in such a country, what has taken place there so recently, and how this writer could calmly relate such horrors without a single expression of revolt or astonishment. This reserved impartiality is, I know, partly his own peculiar style, and partly the result of the severe press-censure; but the fact that the writer can speak of these horrors as natural phenomena of social life, reminds us that we are looking into a different world from ours, and must be prepared for all extremes of evil and good, barbarism, courage, and sacrifice. Those men who carried the Testament into the prison with them, those extreme souls are filled with the spirit of a Gospel which has passed through Byzantium, written for the ascetic and the martyr; their errors as well as their virtues are all derived from that same source. I almost despair of making this world intelligible to ours, which is haunted by such different images, moulded by such different hands.

Dostoyevski has since said, many times, that the experience in Siberia was beneficial to him, that he had learned to love his brothers of the lower classes, and to discover nobleness even among the very worst criminals. “Destiny,” he said, “in treating me with the severity of a step-mother, became a true mother to me.”

The last chapter of this work might be entitled: “A Resurrection.” In it are described, with rare skill, the sentiments of a prisoner as he approaches the time of his liberation. During the last few weeks, his hero has the privilege of obtaining a few books, and occasionally an odd number of a review. For ten years he had read nothing but his Gospel, had heard nothing of the outside world.

In taking up the thread of life among his contemporaries, he experiences unusual sensations; he enters into a new universe; he cannot explain many simple words and events; he asks himself, almost with terror, what giant strides his generation has made without him; these feelings must resemble those of a man who has been resuscitated.

At last the solemn hour has come. He tenderly bids his companions farewell, feeling real regret at parting with them; he leaves a portion of his heart wherever he goes, even in a prison. He goes to the forge, his fetters fall, he is a free man!

III.

The freedom which Dostoyevski entered into was, however, only a relative one. He entered a Siberian regiment as a common soldier. The new reign, two years after, in 1856, brought him pardon. At first he was promoted to the rank of officer, and his civil rights restored to him, and then authorized to send in his resignation. But it was a long time before he could obtain permission to leave the country, or to publish anything. At last, in 1859, after ten years of exile, he recrossed the Ural mountains and returned to a country which he found greatly changed, and at that moment palpitating with impatience and hope, on the eve of the Emancipation. He brought a companion with him from Siberia, the widow of one of his old comrades in the conspiracy of Petrachevski, whom he there met, fell in love with, and married. But, as in every phase of his life, this romantic marriage too was destined to be crossed by misfortune and ennobled by self-sacrifice. The young wife conceived a stronger attachment for another man, whom she threatened to join. For a whole year Dostoyevski’s letters prove that he was working to secure the happiness of his wife and his rival, writing constantly to his friends at St. Petersburg to help him to remove all obstacles to their union. “As for me,” he added, at the close of one of those letters, “God knows what I shall do! I shall either drown myself or take to drinking.”

It was this page of his personal history which he reproduced in “The Degraded and Insulted,” the first of his romances which was translated into French, but not the best. The position of the confidant favoring a love affair which only brought despair for himself, was true to nature, for it was his own experience. Whether it was not skilfully presented, or whether we ourselves are more selfish by nature, I cannot say, but it is hard for us to accept such a situation, or not to see a ridiculous side to it. The general public cannot appreciate such subtleties. His characters are too melodramatic. On the very rare occasions when he draws his types from the upper classes, he always makes a failure, for he understands nothing of the complex and restrained passions of souls hardened by intercourse with the world. Natasha’s lover, the giddy creature for whom she has sacrificed everything, is not much better. I know that we must not expect lovers to be reasonable beings, and that it is more philosophical to admire the power of love, irrespectively of its object; but the general novel-reader is not supposed to be a philosopher; he would like the adored hero to be interesting at least, and would prefer even a rascal to an idiot. In France, at all events, we cannot endorse such a spectacle, although it is both true to nature and consoling; an exquisite type of woman devoted to a fool. Our gallantry, however, forces us to admit that a man of genius may be permitted to adore a foolish woman, but that is all we are willing to concede. Dostoyevski himself has surpassed the most severe criticisms of this work in his article on the “Degraded and Insulted”: “I realize that many of the characters in my book are puppets rather than men.”

With these exceptions, we must acknowledge that we recognize the hand of a master in the two female characters. Natasha is the very incarnation of intense, jealous passion; she speaks and acts like a victim of love in a Greek tragedy. Nelly, a charming and pathetic little creature, resembles one of Dickens’ beautiful child characters.

After his return to St. Petersburg, in 1865, Dostoyevski became absorbed in journalism. He conceived an unfortunate passion for this form of literature, and devoted to it the best years of his life. He edited two journals to defend the ideas which he had adopted. I defy any one to express these ideas in any practical language. He took a position between the liberal and the _Slavophile_ parties, inclining more toward the latter. It was a patriotic form of religion, but somewhat mysterious, with no precise dogmas, and lending itself to no rational explanation. One must either accept or reject it altogether. The great error of the _Slavophile_ party has been to have filled so many pages of paper for twenty-five years, in arguing out a mere sentiment. Whoever questions their arguments is considered incapable of understanding them; while those who do not enter into the question at all are despised, and taxed with profound ignorance.

At this time of transition, during the first years following the Emancipation, men’s ideas, too long repressed, were in a state of vertigo, of chaotic confusion. Some were buoyed up with the wildest hopes; others felt the bitterness of disenchantment, and many disappointed enthusiasts embraced Nihilism, which was taken up at this time by romance writers as well as by politicians. Dostoyevski abandoned his purely artistic ideals, withdrew from the influence of Gogol, and consecrated himself to the study of this new doctrine.

From 1865, our author experienced a series of unfortunate years. His second journal was unsuccessful, failed, and he was crushed under the burden of heavy debts incurred in the enterprise. He afterwards lost his wife, as related above, and also his brother Alexis, his associate in his literary labors. He fled to escape his creditors, and dragged out a miserable existence in Germany and Italy. Attacks of epilepsy interrupted his work, and he only returned home from time to time to solicit advance pay from his editors. All that he saw in his travels seems to have made no impression upon him, with the exception of an execution he witnessed at Lyons. This spectacle was retained in his memory, to be described in detail by characters of his future romances.

In spite of his illness and other troubles, he wrote at this time three of his longest novels,―“Crime et Châtiment,” “l’Idiot,” and “Les Possédés.” “Crime and Punishment” was written when he was at the height of his powers. It has been translated, and can therefore be criticised. Men of science who enjoy the study of the human soul, will read with interest the profoundest psychological study which has been written since Macbeth. The curious of a certain type will find in this book the entertaining mode of torture which is to their taste; but I think it will terrify the greater number of readers, and that very many will have no desire to finish it. We generally read a novel for pleasure, and not for punishment. This book has a powerful effect upon women, and upon all impressionable natures. The writer’s graphic scenes of terror are too much for a nervous organization. I have myself seen in Russia numerous examples of the infallible effect of this romance upon the mind. It can be urged that the Slav temperament is unusually susceptible, but I have seen the same impression made upon Frenchmen. Hoffmann, Edgar Poe, Baudelaire, all writers of this type, are mere mystics in comparison with Dostoyevski. In their fictions you feel that they are only pursuing a literary or artistic venture; but in “Crime and Punishment,” you are impressed with the fact that the author is as much horrified as you are yourself by the character that he has drawn from the tissue of his own brain.

The subject is very simple. A man conceives the idea of committing a crime; he matures it, commits the deed, defends himself for some time from being arrested, and finally gives himself up to the expiation of it. For once, this Russian artist has adopted the European idea of unity of action; the drama, purely psychological, is made up of the combat between the man and his own project. The accessory characters and facts are of no consequence, except in regard to their influence upon the criminal’s plans. The first part, in which are described the birth and growth of the criminal idea, is written with consummate skill and a truth and subtlety of analysis beyond all praise. The student Raskolnikof, a nihilist in the true sense of the word, intelligent, unprincipled, unscrupulous, reduced to extreme poverty, dreams of a happier condition. On returning home from going to pawn a jewel at an old pawnbroker’s shop, this vague thought crosses his brain without his attaching much importance to it:―

“An intelligent man who had that old woman’s money could accomplish anything he liked; it is only necessary to get rid of the useless, hateful old hag.”