Dostoevsky
home from Vyborg to Liteinyi.
“To-morrow the father will be back at his workshop, and the youngster
left once more with the old woman.”[65]
In another passage of the same book,[66] we read an account of his
meeting with a woman a hundred years old. As he passed along the
street, he noticed her sitting on a bench. He spoke to her, then went
on his way. But in the evening, after the day’s work was done, the
old woman came back to his mind. He imagined her home-coming and what
her family said to her. He describes her death: “I take a delight in
inventing the end of the story. Of course I am a novelist and love a
tale.”
Besides, Dostoevsky never invents by chance. In one of the articles in
this same _Journal_, à propos of the Kornilov trial, he reconstitutes
and rebuilds the story in his own way, and after the process of the
law has thrown light on every aspect of the crime, he writes: “I
divined almost everything,” and adds: “Chance enabled me to go and
see Madame Kornilova. I was astonished to see that my suppositions
were almost identical with the true facts. I had, I admit, made a few
errors of detail: for instance, Kornilov, though from the country,
wore the townsman’s dress, etc.,” and Dostoevsky concludes: “All in
all, my errors have been slight; the basis of my suppositions remains
accurate.”[67]
With such gifts as an observer, such powers as a narrator and
reconstructor of actual events, and an added degree of sensitiveness,
you can make a Gogol or a Dickens. Perhaps you remember the beginning
of the _Old Curiosity Shop_ where Dickens, too, is busy following up
the passers-by, and after he has left them, goes on to imagine their
lives? But such gifts, remarkable as they are, do not wholly account
for a Balzac, a Thomas Hardy, a Dostoevsky. They would certainly not
suffice to make Nietzsche write: “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.”[68]
Long ago I copied from Nietzsche a page I should like to read to
you. When he wrote it, had Nietzsche not in view what constitutes
the essential value of the great Russian novelist, what opposes him
diametrically to many of our modern novelists, to the Goncourts, for
example, whom Nietzsche seems to indicate in these lines? “_A Moral
for Psychologists._--Do not go in for any notebook psychology! Never
observe for the sake of observing! Such things lead to a false point of
view, to a squint, to something forced and exaggerated! To experience
things on purpose--this is not a bit of good. In the midst of an
experience a man should not turn his eyes upon himself; in such cases
any eye becomes the ‘evil eye.’ A born psychologist instinctively
avoids seeing for the sake of seeing. And the same holds good of the
born painter. Such a man never works ‘from Nature’--he leaves it
to his instinct, to his _camera obscura_ to sift and to define the
‘fact,’ ‘nature,’ the ‘experience.’ The general idea, the conclusion,
the result is the only thing that reaches his consciousness. He knows
nothing of that wilful process of deducing from particular cases. What
is the result when a man sets about the matter differently?--When,
for instance, after the manner of Parisian novelists, he goes in
for notebook psychology on a large and small scale? Such a man is
constantly spying on reality, and every evening he bears home a handful
of fresh curios.... But look at the result!”[69]
Dostoevsky never observes for observation’s sake. His work is not the
result of observations of the real; or at least, not of that alone. Nor
is it the fruit of a preconceived idea, and that is why it is never
mere theorizing, but remains steeped in reality. It is the fruit of
intercourse between fact and idea, a blending, in the proper English
sense of the word, of the one with the other, so perfect that it can
never be said that one element outweighs the other. Hence the most
realistic scenes in his novels are the most pregnant with psychological
and moral import. To be precise, each work of Dostoevsky’s is produced
by the crossing of fact and idea. “The germ of the novel has been
in me for the last three years,” he wrote in 1870,[70] referring to
_The Brothers Karamazov_, not written until nine years later. In
another letter he says: “The chief problem dealt with throughout
this particular work is the very one which has, my whole life long,
tormented my conscious or subconscious being: the question of the
existence of God.”[71]
But the idea is present only cloudily in his mind until it comes
into contact with some fact from real life (in this instance, a
criminal court case, a _cause célèbre_) which will make it fructify.
Then--and not till then--can we speak of the work as conceived. “I
am writing with a purpose,” he says in the same letter, speaking of
_The Possessed_ which reached fruition about the same period as _The
Karamazovs_, another novel with a purpose. Nothing less gratuitous, in
the modern acceptation of the term, than Dostoevsky’s work. Each of his
novels is in its way a demonstration, I might even say a speech for
the defence, or better still, a sermon. And if I dared find in this
wonderful artist any grounds for reproach, I might suggest that he
sought to _prove_ only too well.
Let there be no disagreement on this score: Dostoevsky never tries to
influence our opinion unduly. He seeks to bring light into dark places,
to make plain certain hidden truths, which to him appear already
dazzlingly clear and of paramount importance, the most important, no
doubt, to which the mind of man can attain: not truths of an abstract
nature, beyond human grasp, but truths secret and intimately personal.
On the other hand, what saves his work from the disfigurements
inseparable from all writing with a purpose, is the fact that these
truths are ever subordinated to fact, and his ideas infused with
reality. Towards these realities of human experience, his attitude
is ever humble and obedient; he never applies pressure nor turns a
happening to his own advantage. It would seem that even to his very
thought he applied the Gospel precept: “_For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the
same shall save it._”
Before attempting to trace some of Dostoevsky’s ideas in his books, I
should like to speak of his method of working. Strakhov tells us that
Dostoevsky worked almost exclusively at night: “About midnight, when
everything was becoming still, there was Dostoevsky left alone with his
samovar, and he used to go on working till five or six in the morning,
sipping at intervals cold, mild-drawn tea. He rose about two or three
in the afternoon, spent the rest of the day entertaining guests,
walking, or visiting friends.” Dostoevsky was not always able to
content himself with mild-drawn tea; during the last years of his life,
he lost grip of himself, and drank, we are told, a great quantity of
spirits. One day, so the story runs, Dostoevsky came out of his study,
where he was busy writing _The Possessed_, in a state of remarkable
mental exhilaration, obtained in some degree by artificial stimulus.
It was Madame Dostoevsky’s “at home” day. Dostoevsky, wild-eyed, burst
into the drawing-room where several ladies were sitting, one of whom,
cordiality itself, hastened forward to him with a cup of tea. “Devil
take you and your dish-water,” he shouted.
You remember Abbé de Saint-Réal’s words?--and meaningless they might
well appear did not Stendhal make use of them as a cover for his own
æsthetic principles: “A novel is the mirror of one’s walks abroad.”
In France and in England the novels that can be classed under this
rubric are numerous indeed. What of Lesage, Voltaire, Fielding,
Smollett? But nothing could be more remote from this category than a
novel of Dostoevsky’s. Between his novels and those of the authors
quoted above, aye, and Tolstoy’s too, and Stendhal’s, there is all
the difference possible between a picture and a panorama. Dostoevsky
composes a picture in which the most important consideration is the
question of light. The light proceeds from but one source. In one of
Stendhal’s novels, the light is constant, steady, and well-diffused.
Every object is lit up in the same way, and is visible equally well
from all angles; there are no shadow effects. But in Dostoevsky’s
books, as in a Rembrandt portrait, the shadows are the essential.
Dostoevsky groups his characters and happenings, plays a brilliant
light upon them, illuminating one aspect only. Each of his characters
has a deep setting of shadow, reposes on its own shadow almost.
We notice in Dostoevsky a strange impulse to group, concentrate,
centralize: to create between the varied elements of a novel as many
cross-connections as possible. With him, events instead of pursuing
their calm and measured course, as with Stendhal or Tolstoy, mingle and
confuse in turmoil; the elements of the story--moral, psychological,
and material--sink and rise again in a kind of whirlpool. With him
there is no attempt to straighten or simplify lines; he is at his
happiest in the complex; he fosters it. Feelings, thoughts, and
passions are never presented in the pure state. He never isolates
them. And now I come to make an observation on Dostoevsky’s manner
of drawing his characters. But first of all let me read these very
pertinent remarks of Jacques Rivière’s: “Once the idea of a character
has taken shape in his mind, a novelist has to choose between two
ways of materializing it. He can either insist on its complexity, or
emphasize its cohesiveness; in this soul he is about to create, he can
deliberately reproduce its absolute darkness, or for the reader he can
dispel such darkness by his very description of it; he will either
respect the soul’s hidden depths, or lay them open.”
You see what Rivière’s theory is: the French school explores the
unplumbed depths, whereas certain foreign novelists, Dostoevsky in
particular, respect and cherish their gloom.
“In any case,” Rivière continues, “it is these black gulfs that
interest Dostoevsky most, and his whole effort is directed towards
suggesting how utterly unreachable they are.... We, on the other hand,
faced with a soul’s complexity and endeavouring to give a picture of
it, instinctively seek to organize our material.” Serious enough! But
there is more to come. “At need, we force things a trifle; we suppress
a few small divergencies, and interpret certain obscure details in the
sense most useful towards establishing a psychological unity. The ideal
we strive towards is the complete closing up of every gulf.”[72]
I am not so sure that we do not find some gulfs in Balzac, inexplicably
abrupt; nor am I sure either that Dostoevsky’s are as unfathomed as
at first would be imagined. Shall I give you an example of Balzac’s
gulfs? I see one in _La Recherche de l’Absolu_. Balthazar Claès
is seeking the philosopher’s stone: apparently he has completely
forgotten the religious training of his childhood. He is absorbed by
his quest. He neglects his wife, Josephine, whose religious mind is
horror-stricken at her husband’s disbelief. One day she enters the
laboratory without warning. The draught of the opening door causes
an explosion, and Madame Claès falls fainting.... What is the cry
that escapes Balthazar’s lips? One wherein suddenly reappears his
childhood’s belief, long overlaid by the dross of his atheism. “Thank
God you’re still alive! The Saints have preserved you from death!”
Balzac does not press the incident any further, and no doubt nineteen
out of every twenty readers will never even detect the fault. The abyss
of which it gives a glimpse is left unexplained: maybe no explanation