Dostoevsky
Karamazov dreams and describes it to us, is a world where there will be
no injured, neither insulted.
The strangest, most disturbing figure of these novels, the terrible
Stavrogin in _The Possessed_, whose character at first is so different
from all others, is explained, and his demoniac nature accounted for,
by certain passages in the book:
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin,” says one of the other characters,
“was leading at that time in Petersburg a life, so to say, of mockery.
I can’t find another word to describe it, because he is not a man who
falls into disillusionment, and he disdained to be occupied with work
at that time.”[50]
And Stavrogin’s mother, to whom these remarks were addressed, says a
little farther on:
“No, it was something more than eccentricity, and I assure you,
something sacred even! A proud man who has suffered humiliation early
in life and reached the stage of ‘mockery,’ as you so subtly called
it.”[51]
And later:
“And if Nikolay had always had at his side (Varvara Petrovna almost
shouted) a gentle Horatio, great in his humility--another excellent
expression of yours, Stepan Trofimovitch!--he might long ago have been
saved from the sad and sudden demon of irony, which has tormented him
all his life.”[52]
It happens that some of Dostoevsky’s characters, whose natures have
been profoundly warped by humiliation, find as it were delight and
satisfaction in the resultant degradation, loathsome though it be.
“Was there resentment in my heart?” says the hero of _A Raw Youth_ just
when his amour-propre had been cruelly wounded, “I don’t know. Perhaps
there was. Strange to say, I always had, perhaps from my earliest
childhood, one characteristic; if I were ill-treated, absolutely
wronged and insulted to the last degree, I always showed at once an
irresistible desire to submit passively to the insult, and even to
accept more than my assailant wanted to inflict on me, as though I
would say: ‘All right, you have humiliated me, so I will humiliate
myself even more; look and enjoy it.’”[53]
For if humility be a surrender of pride, humiliation, on the other
hand, but serves to strengthen it.
Listen to the tale told by the wretched hero of the _Notes from
Underground_:
“One night, as I was passing a tavern, I saw through a lighted window
some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown
out of the window. At other times, I should have felt very much
disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied
the gentleman thrown out of the window--and I envied him so much that
I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’
I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the
window.’
“I was not drunk--but what is one to do?--depression will drive a man
to such a pitch of hysteria! But nothing happened. It seemed that I
was not even equal to being thrown out of the window, and I went away
without having my fight.
“An officer put me in my place from the first moment. I was standing
by the billiard-room tables and in my ignorance blocking up the way,
and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word,
without warning or explanation, moved me from where I was standing to
another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could
have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me
without noticing me.
“Devil knows what I would have given for a real, regular quarrel--a
more decent, a more literary one, so to speak. I had been treated like
a fly. This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little
fellow. But the quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I
certainly would have been thrown out of the window. But I changed my
mind, and preferred to beat a resentful retreat.”[54]
But if we carry the story further, we shall soon see the excess of
hatred to be nothing other than love inverted.
“... I often met that officer afterwards in the street, and noticed him
very carefully. I am not quite sure whether he recognized me: I imagine
not, I judge from certain signs. But I--I stared at him with spite and
hatred, and so it went on--for several years! My resentment grew even
deeper with years. At first I began making stealthy inquiries about
this officer. It was difficult for me to do so, for I knew no one. But
one day I heard one shout his name in the street as I was following
him at a distance, as though I was tied to him,--and so I learned his
surname. Another time I followed him to his flat, and for ten kopecks
learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey, whether he
lived alone or with others, and so on--in fact, everything one could
learn from a porter. One morning, though I had never tried my hand
with the pen, it suddenly occurred to me to write a satire on this
officer in the form of a novel which would unmask his villainy; I even
exaggerated it: at first I so altered his surname that it could not
easily be recognized, but on second thoughts I changed it, and sent the
story to the _O.Z._
“But at that time such attacks were not the fashion and my story was
not printed. That was a great vexation to me. Sometimes I positively
choked with resentment. At last I determined to challenge my enemy to a
duel. I composed a splendid, charming little letter to him, imploring
him to apologize to me, and hinting rather plainly at a duel in case
of refusal. The letter was so composed that if the officer had had the
least understanding of the good and beautiful, he would certainly have
flung himself on my neck and offered his friendship. And how fine that
would have been! How we should have got on together!”[55]
So often in Dostoevsky one particular feeling is suddenly supplanted in
this way by its direct opposite! We can find example after example of
it. For instance, that unhappy child (in _The Karamazovs_) biting with
hatred into Alyosha’s finger when the latter holds out his hand to him,
just at the time when the child, though he does not recognize it, is
developing for the same Alyosha a shy, wild affection.
And what, in this young child, could have caused such a warping of
affection?
He had seen Dmitri Karamazov, Alyosha’s brother, come drunk out of an
inn, thrash his father, and pull him insolently by the beard: “Papa,
papa, how he humiliated you!” he cried later.
Thus, over against humility--on the same moral plane, if I may be
permitted to say so, but at the other extreme of the scale--there
is pride, which humiliation exaggerates, exasperates, and deforms,
sometimes hideously.
Certainly, psychological axioms appear to Dostoevsky for what they
really are, special definitions of truth. As novelist (for Dostoevsky
is no mere theoretician, he is an explorer) he steers clear of
induction and realizes how imprudent (on his part, at least) any
attempts to formulate general laws.[56] It is for us, if we choose, to
discover these laws in his books, by cutting, as it were, paths through
the thicket. Here is one of the laws we can establish: the man who has
suffered humiliation seeks to inflict humiliation in his turn.[57]
Despite the extraordinarily rich diversity of his _Comédie Humaine_,
Dostoevsky’s characters group and arrange themselves always on one
plane only, that of humility and pride. This system of grouping
discomfits us; indeed, at first, it appears far from clear, for the
very simple reason that we do not usually approach the problem of
making a division at such an angle and that we distribute mankind in
hierarchies. Let me explain my idea: in Dickens’s wonderful novels, for
instance, I am often uneasy at the conventionality, childishness even,
of his _hierarchy_, or to use Nietzsche’s phrase, _scale of values_.
While reading him I have the impression that I am contemplating one
of Fra Angelico’s _Last Judgements_ where you have the redeemed, the
damned, and the indeterminate (not too numerous!) over whom angel and
demon struggle. The balance that weighs them all, like in an Egyptian
bas-relief, reckons only the positive or negative quality of their
virtue. Heaven for the just: for the wicked, Hell. Herein Dickens is
true to the opinion of his countrymen and of his time. It does happen
that the evil prosper, while the just are sacrificed--to the great
shame of this earthly existence and of society as we have organized it.
All his novels endeavour to show us and make us realize the shining
superiority of qualities of heart over qualities of head. I have
selected Dickens as a type because of all the great novelists we know
he uses this classification in its simplest form: which--if I may say
in conclusion--is the secret of his popularity.
Now, after reading in close succession practically all Dostoevsky’s
works, I have the impression that there exists in them, too, a similar
classification: less apparent, no doubt, although almost as simple,
and, in my estimation, much more significant. For it is not according
to the positive or negative quality of their virtue that one can
_hierarchize_ (forgive me this horrible word!) his characters: not
according to their goodness of heart, but by their degree of pride.
Dostoevsky presents on one side the humble (some of these are humble
to an abject degree, and seem to enjoy their abasement); on the other,
the proud (some to the point of crime). The latter are usually the more
intelligent. We shall see them, tormented by the demon of pride, ever
striving after something higher still:
“There, I’ll bet anything--that you’ve been sitting side by side in
the drawing-room all night wasting your precious time discussing
something lofty and elevated,” says Stavrogin to the abominable Pyotr
Stepanovitch in _The Possessed_.[58] Or again:
“In spite of the terror which I detected in her myself, Katerina
Nikolaevna has always from the first cherished a certain reverence and
admiration for the nobility of Andrey Petrovitch’s principles and the
loftiness of his mind.... In his letter he gave her the most solemn
and chivalrous promises that she should have nothing to fear--she
responding with the same heroic feelings. There may have been a sort of
chivalrous rivalry on both sides.”[59]
“There is nothing in it to fret your vanity,” said Elizabeth to
Stavrogin: “The day before yesterday when I ‘insulted’ you before
everyone and you answered me so chivalrously, I went home and guessed
at once that you were running away from me because you were married,
and not from contempt for me, which, as a fashionable young lady, I
dreaded more than anything,” adding by way of conclusion, “Anyhow, it
eases our vanity.”[60]
His women, even more so than his characters of the other sex, are ever
moved and determined by considerations of pride. Look at Raskolnikov’s
sister, Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaïa Epantchin in _The Idiot_,
Elizabeth Nikolaïevna in _The Possessed_, and Katerina Ivanovna in _The
Karamazovs_!
But, by an inversion which I make bold to describe as inspired by
the New Testament, the most abject characters are nearer the Kingdom
of Heaven than the noblest. To such a degree is Dostoevsky’s work
dominated by these profound truths. “_God resisteth the proud, but
giveth grace to the humble._”--“_For the Son of man is come to save
that which was lost._”
On the one hand, denial and surrender of the self; on the other,
affirmation of the personality, the _will to power_, an exaggerated
loftiness of sentiment. And take due note of this fact; in Dostoevsky’s
novels, the _will to power_ leads inevitably to ruin.
M. Souday recently accused me of sacrificing, indeed, of immolating
Balzac to Dostoevsky. Need I protest? My admiration of Dostoevsky is
certainly fervent, but I do not think I am blinded by it. I readily
agree that Balzac’s creations surpass the Russian novelist’s in