Dostoevsky
their diversity, and that his _Comédie Humaine_ is the more varied.
Dostoevsky certainly goes deeper and touches more important points than
any other author, but we can admit that his characters are one and all
cut from the same cloth. Pride and humility! these hidden reagents
never change, although by graduating the doses of them, we obtain
reactions that are infinitely rich and minutely varied in colour.
With Balzac (as invariably in Western society, in French especially,
to which his novels hold a mirror) two factors are active which in
Dostoevsky’s work practically do not exist: first, the intellect,
second, the will. I do not pretend that in Balzac will-power always
urges a man towards what is good, and that his strong-willed
characters are never but virtuous. But at least consider how many of
his characters attain to what is of good repute by effort of will and
open up a glorious career by dint of perseverance, cleverness, and
determination. Think of his David Séchards, his Bianchons, Joseph
Brideaus, and Daniel d’Arthez--and there are twenty such I could name!
In all Dostoevsky we have not a single great man. “But what about
that splendid Father Zossima in _The Karamazovs_?” you may say. Yes,
he is certainly the noblest figure the Russian novelist had drawn;
he far and away dominates the whole tragedy, and once we have entered
into possession of the promised complete version of _The Karamazovs_,
we shall understand still better his importance. At the same time we
shall realize what in Dostoevsky’s eyes constitutes his real greatness.
Father Zossima is not of the great as the world reckons them. He is a
saint--no hero! And he has reached saintliness by surrender of will and
abdication of intellect.
If I examine along with Balzac’s the resolute characters that
Dostoevsky presents, I suddenly realize what terrible creatures they
are, one and all. Look at Raskolnikov, heading the list; in his
beginnings, a miserable worm--with ambitions, who would like to be a
Napoleon, and only attains to being the murderer of an old broker-woman
and of an innocent girl. Look at Stavrogin, Pyotr Stepanovitch, Ivan
Karamazov, the hero of _A Raw Youth_ (the only one of Dostoevsky’s
characters who, from his earliest days, at least since consciousness
dawned, lived with a fixed determination, to wit, in this case, of
becoming a Rothschild, and, by mockery as it were, in all the books
of Dostoevsky nowhere is there a more pithless creature, at the mercy
of his fellow-beings, individually and collectively). His heroes’
determination, every particle of cleverness and will-power they
possess, seem but to hurry them onward to perdition, and if I seek to
know what part mind plays in Dostoevsky’s novels, I realize that its
power is demonic.
His most dangerous characters are the strongest intellectually, and
not only do I maintain that the mind and the will of Dostoevsky’s
characters are active solely for evil, but that, when urged and guided
towards good, the virtue to which they attain is rotten with pride and
leads to destruction. Dostoevsky’s heroes inherit the Kingdom of God
only by the denial of mind and will and the surrender of personality.
We can without hesitation affirm that Balzac, too, is, to a certain
degree, a Christian author. But only by confronting the two ethical
points of view, the French author’s and the Russian’s, can we realize
the chasm between the former’s Catholicism and the latter’s purely
evangelical doctrine, and how widely the Catholic spirit can differ
from the purely Christian. Or, to offend none, let me express myself
thus: Balzac’s _Comédie Humaine_ sprang from the contact between the
Gospels and the Latin mind: Dostoevsky’s from the contact between the
Gospels and Buddhism, the Asiatic mind.
These are merely preliminary considerations which will help us at our
next meeting to probe deeper into the souls of these strange creations.
III
What we have accomplished so far has been a mere clearing of the
ground. Before attacking the problem of Dostoevsky’s philosophy, I
should like to warn you against a grave misconception. During the last
fifteen years of his life, Dostoevsky busied himself considerably with
the editing of a review. The articles he wrote for this periodical
have been collected in what is known as the _Journal of an Author_.
In these articles Dostoevsky sets forth his ideas. It would seem the
simplest and most natural thing in the world to make constant reference
to this book; but I may as well admit at once that it is profoundly
disappointing. In it we find an exposé of his social theories, which,
however, never emerge from the nebulous state and are most awkwardly
expressed. We find, too, political prophecies not one of which has come
true. Dostoevsky tries to foretell the future state of Europe and goes
far astray in practically every instance.
M. Souday, who recently devoted one of his literary reviews in the
_Temps_ to Dostoevsky, takes a delight in pointing out his mistakes. In
these articles of Dostoevsky’s he sees nothing more than journalism
of the most everyday type, which fact I am prepared to concede. But
I do protest when he goes on to say that these same articles are a
wonderful revelation of Dostoevsky’s ideas. As a matter of fact, the
problems Dostoevsky handles in his _Journal of an Author_ are not
the problems that interest him most. Political questions are frankly
less important in his estimation than social problems, these in turn
far less important than moral and individual problems. The rarest and
deepest truths we can expect from him are psychological, and I add
that in this province the ideas he submits are most often left in the
problematic state, in the form of a question. He is seeking not so much
a solution as an exposition of these very questions which, by reason
of their complexity, confusion, and interdependence, are as a rule
left ill-defined. In a word, Dostoevsky is not, strictly speaking, a
thinker but a novelist. His favourite theories, and all that is subtle
and novel in them, must be sought in the speeches of his characters,
and not always of his most important ones even. It often happens that
his most valuable and daring ideas are attributed to subordinate
characters. Dostoevsky is awkwardness itself when speaking in his own
name. To his own case might well be applied the sentence he puts into
Versilov’s mouth. “Explain?” he said. “No, it’s better not to; besides,
I’ve a passion for talking without explanations. That’s really it. And
there’s another strange thing; if it happens that I try to explain an
idea I believe in, it almost always happens that I cease to believe
what I have explained.”[61]
We can even say that it is exceptional for Dostoevsky not to turn
against his own theory as soon as formulated. It seems as if for him it
immediately breathed an odour of decay, like that which emanated from
Father Zossima’s dead body--the body expected to work miracles--and
made the deathwatch so painful for Alyosha Karamazov, his disciple.
It is evident that for a philosopher this feature would be something
of a drawback. His ideas are practically never absolute, remaining
relative always to the characters expressing them. I shall press the
point even further and assert their relativity not merely to these
characters, but to a specific moment in the lives of these characters.
The ideas are, as it were, the product of a special and transitory
state of his _dramatis personæ_, and relative they remain, subservient
to and conditioned by the particular fact or action which determines
them or by which they are determined. As soon as Dostoevsky begins to
theorize, he disappoints us. Thus even in his article, _Of the Nature
of Lying_,[62] despite his prodigious skill in exhibiting falsehood in
all its forms and making us realize thereby what prompts the untruthful
to their falsehoods (and how differently he proceeds from Corneille!),
as soon as he begins to account for it all, as soon as he theorizes on
the strength of his examples, he becomes stale and unprofitable.
This _Journal_ is proof that Dostoevsky’s genius is essentially as a
novelist, for although in theoretical or critical articles he never
rises above mediocrity, he becomes excellent as soon as a character
appears on the scene. It is in this _Journal_ that we come across
these admirable tales of _The Peasant Marey_[63] and _Krotchkaya_,[64]
the latter outstandingly fine and powerful, in its way a novel that
is really but one long monologue, like the _Notes from Underground_,
written about the same period.
Better still, or rather, more significant, are the two instances
in this _Journal_ when Dostoevsky allows us to watch the almost
involuntary, almost subconscious activity of his mind engaged in the
construction of a narrative.
After he tells us his delight in watching people walking in the streets
and occasionally in following them, we see him suddenly attach himself
to a chance passer-by:
“I notice a workman passing; he has no wife leaning on his arm, but he
has a child with him, a little boy. Both are sad and lonely looking.
The man is about thirty years of age: his face is worn and of an
unhealthy tinge. He is wearing his Sunday best, a top-coat, rubbed at
the seams and with buttons worn almost bare of cloth. The collar of the
coat is very soiled, the trousers are cleaner, but look as if they had
come straight from the broker’s. His top-hat is very shabby. I have the
idea he is a printer. His expression is hard, gloomy, almost sullen.
He holds the boy by the hand; the youngster lags behind a little. The
child is two, or not much more, very pale and delicate looking, neatly
dressed in a tunic, little boots with red uppers, and a hat tricked out
with a peacock’s feather. He is weary. The father speaks to him, making
fun maybe of his feeble little legs. The youngster makes no reply, and
a few paces farther on, his father bends down, lifts him up in his arms
and carries him. The child seems pleased, and throws his arms round
his father’s neck. He catches sight of me, and from his perch stares
down at me in astonishment and curiosity. I give him a little nod, but
he frowns and clings closer still to his father’s neck. They must love
each other dearly, these two!
“In the streets I love to watch the passers-by, gaze into their unknown
features, guess their identity, imagine how they exist and what can be
their interest in life. To-day I have eyes for none but this father
and child. I imagine that the wife and mother had died not long since,
that the father is busy working the whole week in the shop, while
the child is left to the care of some elderly woman. They probably
live in a basement where the father rents or even only shares a room,
and to-day, being Sunday, the father is taking the boy to see some
relative, the mother’s sister probably. I’m sure this aunt of whom
they don’t see much must be married to a non-commissioned officer and
live in the basement of the barracks, but in a separate apartment. She
mourns her dead sister, but not for long. The widower does not show
much grief either, during this visit anyway. He remains preoccupied,
has little to say for himself, and replies only to personal questions.
Soon he falls silent altogether. Then the samovar is brought in and
they all take tea. The boy is left sitting on a bench in the corner,
shy and frowning, and he finally drops off to sleep. The aunt and her
husband take scant notice of him, except for passing him a cup of milk
and a piece of bread. The husband, with not a word to say for himself
at first, comes out suddenly with a coarse joke, savouring of the
barrack-room, and makes fun of the youngster whom his father begins to
scold. The child wants to leave at once, and the father fetches him