Dostoevsky
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DOSTOEVSKY
DOSTOEVSKY
By André Gide
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
With an Introduction by
ARNOLD BENNETT
“Dostoevsky
was the only psychologist
from whom I had anything to learn:
he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life,
happier even than the discovery of Stendhal.”
NIETZSCHE
ALFRED A. KNOPF
1926
D O S T O E V S K Y
By André Gide, was first
published in Paris by
PLON-NOURRIT et CIE.
in 1923
Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and
London
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
André Gide is now one of the leaders of French literature. The
first book of his to attract wide attention among the lettered was
_L’Immoraliste_. Since then, in some twenty years of productiveness, he
has gradually consolidated his position until at the present day his
admirers are entitled to say that no other living French author stands
so firm and so passionately acknowledged as an influence. His authority
over the schools of young writers who contribute to or are published
by _La Nouvelle Revue Française_ (with which he has been intimately
connected from its foundation) is quite unrivalled. And it must be
stated, as a final proof of mastership, that he has powerful and not
despicable opponents.
To my mind his outstanding characteristic is that he is equally
interested in the æsthetic and in the moral aspect of literature.
Few imaginative writers have his broad and vivacious curiosity about
moral problems, and scarcely any moralists exhibit even half his
preoccupation with the æsthetic. He is a distinguished, if somewhat
fragmentary, literary critic--not merely of French but of Russian,
English and classical literatures. I shall not forget his excitement
when he first read _Tom Jones_. “Ce livre m’attendait,” said he, with
grave delight. His practical interest in the technique of fiction never
fades; indeed it grows. So much so that his latest novel, now appearing
serially in _La Nouvelle Revue Française_, really amounts to an essay
in a new form; and with startling modesty he has labelled it, in the
dedication, “my first novel.”
Of course no novelist can achieve anything permanent without a moral
basis or background. Balzac had it. De Maupassant had it to the point
of savagery. Zola had it, in his degree. Paul Bourget--a writer whom
highbrows French and English have still to reckon with--has it. But
André Gide writes in the very midst of morals. They are not only his
background, but frequently his foreground. Scarcely one of his books
(the exception may be _Les Caves du Vatican_) but poses and attempts to
resolve a moral problem.
It was natural and even necessary that such a writer as Gide should
deal with such a writer as Dostoevsky. They were made for each
other--or rather Dostoevsky was made for Gide. I first met Gide in the
immense field of Dostoevsky. He said, and I agreed, that _The Brothers
Karamazov_ was the greatest novel ever written. This was ages ago, and
years have only confirmed us in the opinion.
“But,” said Gide, “everything that Dostoevsky ever wrote is worth
reading and must be read. Nothing can safely be omitted.”
At that period there was none but a mutilated French translation of
_The Brothers Karamazov_, and Gide had to read Dostoevsky in German. A
complete translation, I fear, still lacks in French, but André Gide can
now read him in full in English: which is to our credit and his. Let
us, however, not be too much uplifted. Dostoevsky’s important _Journal
d’un Ecrivain_ exists in French but not in English.
Those who read Gide’s _Dostoevsky_ will receive light, some of it
dazzling, on both Dostoevsky and Gide. I can recall no other critical
work which more cogently justifies and more securely establishes its
subject. If anyone wants to appreciate the progress made by Western
Europe in the appreciation of Russian psychology, let him compare the
late Count Melchior de Voguë’s _Le Roman Russe_ with the present work.
It is impossible to read this _Dostoevsky_ without enlarging one’s idea
of Dostoevsky and of the functions of the novel. All the conventional
charges against the greatest of the Russians--morbidity, etc., etc.,
fall to pieces during perusal. They are not killed; they merely
expire. And Dostoevsky in the end stands out not simply as a supreme
psychologist and narrator, but also as a publicist of genius endowed
with a prophetic view over the future of the nations as astounding as
his insight into the individual. “There never was,” says Gide, “an
author more Russian in the strictest sense of the word and withal so
universally European.”
Dostoevsky had various and distressing personal defects, but his
humanity and his wisdom, doubtless derived from the man Jesus who
delivered the Sermon on the Mount, are unique; and André Gide’s
demonstration of their worth is his invaluable contribution to
Dostoevsky literature.
ARNOLD BENNETT.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
In the early months of 1922, M. André Gide delivered before M. Jacques
Copeau’s School of Dramatic Art at the _Vieux-Colombier_ a series of
six addresses on DOSTOEVSKY, first published from shorthand notes--with
but slender emendation, lest the style should lose in spontaneity--in
the _Revue Hebdomâdaire_, Nos. 2-8, 1923, then later in the same year
in book form, together with selected essays. These addresses form the
basis of the present translation from which two short chapters, _Les
Frères Karamazov_ and an _Allocution lue au Vieux-Colombier pour la
Célébration du Centenaire de Dostoïevsky_, have been omitted by desire
of the Author, who adapted his original preface specially for this
English edition.
By courtesy of Messrs. William Heinemann, we are permitted to quote
extensively from Mrs. Constance Garnett’s translations of _Dostoevsky’s
Novels_ (12 vols., 1912-1920). We have utilized as far as possible Miss
Ethel Colburn Mayne’s _Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to
his Family and Friends_ (Messrs. Chatto and Windus, 1917): elsewhere we
have cited J. W. Bienstock’s _Correspondance et Voyage à l’Étranger_
(Paris, 1908). Quotations are further made from Bienstock and Nau’s
version of the _Journal_ (Paris, 1904), and from _Th. M. Dostoevsky:
eine biographische Studie_, by N. Hoffmann (Berlin, 1899).
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE v
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ix
AUTHOR’S PREFACE 1
DOSTOEVSKY IN HIS CORRESPONDENCE (1908) 8
ADDRESSES ON DOSTOEVSKY (1922)
I 45
II 76
III 99
IV 118
V 144
VI 170
APPENDIX 199
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
Tolstoy in his immensity still overshadows our horizon; but as a
traveller in a land of mountains sees, with each receding step, appear
above the nearest peak one loftier yet, screened hitherto by the
surrounding heights, some eager spirits herald perchance the rise of
Dostoevsky behind Tolstoy’s giant figure. This cloud-capped summit is
the secret heart of the chain and source of many a generous stream in
whose waters the Europe of to-day may slake her strange new thirsts.
Dostoevsky, not Tolstoy, merits rank beside Ibsen and Nietzsche: great
as they, mayhap the mightiest of the three.
In Germany translations of Dostoevsky are multiplying, each an
advance on its predecessor as regards vigour and scrupulous accuracy.
England, stubborn and slow to move, yet makes it her concern not to be
outstripped. When he introduced Mrs. Constance Garnett’s translation in
the _New Age_, Arnold Bennett wished all English novelists and short
story writers could come under the influence of these “most powerful
works of the imagination ever produced.” Speaking more particularly
of _The Brothers Karamazov_, he declared this book, in which human
passion reaches its maximum intensity, contains about a dozen figures
that are simply colossal. Who can tell if these colossal figures have
ever made, even in Russia, so direct appeal as to us, whether their
call sounded ever before so pressing?
Dostoevsky’s admirers were recently rare enough, but as invariably
happens when the earliest enthusiasts are recruited from the élite,
their number goes on increasing steadily. First of all, I should like
to inquire how it is that certain minds are still obdurately prejudiced
against his work, admirable though it be. Because the best way to
overcome a lack of comprehension is to accept it as sincere and try to
understand it.
The principal charge brought against Dostoevsky in the name of our
Western-European logic has been, I think, the irrational, irresolute,
and often irresponsible nature of his characters, everything in their
appearance that could seem grotesque and wild. It is not, so people
aver, real life that he unfolds, but nightmares. In my belief this
is utterly mistaken; but let us grant the truth of it for argument’s
sake, and refrain from answering after the manner of Freud that there
is more sincerity in our dream-life than in the actions of our real
existence. Hear rather what Dostoevsky has to say for himself on the
subject of dreams: “These obvious absurdities and impossibilities with
which your dream was overflowing ... you accepted all at once, almost
without the slightest surprise, at the very time when, on another
side, your reason was at its highest tension and showed extraordinary
power, cunning, sagacity, and logic. And why, too, on waking and fully
returning to reality, do you feel almost every time, and sometimes
with extraordinary intensity, that you have left something unexplained
behind with the dream, and at the same time you feel that interwoven
with these absurdities some thought lies hidden, and a thought that is
real, something belonging to your actual life, something that exists
and always has existed in your heart. It’s as though something new,
prophetic, that you were awaiting, has been told you in your dream.”[1]
What Dostoevsky says here about dreams we shall apply to his own books,
not for a moment that I would consider assimilating these stories to
the absurdities of certain dreams, because we feel when we leave one of
his books, even should our reason refuse complete agreement with it,
that he has laid his finger on some obscure spot “which is part of our
actual life.” In this, I think, we shall find explained the refusal of
certain minds, in the name of Western-European civilization, to admit
Dostoevsky’s genius, because I readily observe that in all our Western
literature (and I do not limit myself to French alone) the novel, with
but rare exceptions, concerns itself solely with relations between
man and man, passion and intellect, with family, social, and class
relations, but never, practically never with the relations between
the individual and his self or his God, which are to Dostoevsky all
important. I fancy nothing could better illustrate my idea than the