Dostoevsky
quickly, because there is not a word or line of it but what is clear to
me. It is already written in my head, although nothing is down on paper
so far.”[84]
And in a letter dated October 27, 1869, he continues:
“Two-thirds of the story are almost completely written and recopied.
I’ve done my best to cut it down, but that was impossible. It is not a
question, though, of quantity, but of quality. Of its quality I cannot
speak, for I have no notion myself: others will decide that point.”[85]
And here is what the others have to say:
“Your short story,” writes Strakhov, “is making a very lively
impression here, and will, in my opinion, have an unchallenged success.
It is one of the best worked-out of your novels, and by reason of
its subject, one of the most interesting you have ever written.
I am speaking of Trusotsky: the majority will have difficulty in
understanding this character, but the book is being read and will be
read eagerly.”
_Notes from Underground_ appeared a short time before this volume. I
believe that with these _Notes_ we reach the height of Dostoevsky’s
career. I consider this book (and I am not alone in my belief) as the
keystone of his entire works. But with it we return to the intellectual
region, so I shall not speak further of it to-day. Let us linger with
_The Eternal Husband_ in the realm of passion. In this short tale there
are but two characters, the husband and the lover. Concentration could
be carried no further. The whole book responds to an ideal we should
nowadays call classical: the action itself, or at least the initial
fact that provokes the drama, had already taken place, like in one of
Ibsen’s plays.
Velchaninov is come to that time of life when the past begins to look
different to his eyes:
“Now that he was verging on the forties, the brightness and good humour
were almost extinguished. These eyes, which were already surrounded by
tiny wrinkles, had begun to betray the cynicism of a worn-out man of
doubtful morals, a duplicity, an ever-increasing irony, and another
shade of feeling, which was new: a shade of sadness and of pain--a sort
of absent-minded sadness as though about nothing in particular, and yet
acute. This sadness was specially marked when he was alone.”[86]
What is happening with Velchaninov? What _does_ happen at this age,
at this turning point in life? So far, we have had the joy out of
life; but suddenly we realize that our actions, the happenings we have
brought about, once separated from us and launched out into the world,
like a skiff on the sea, continue a separate existence often unknown
to us. George Eliot speaks admirably of this in _Adam Bede_. Yes, the
events in his own past no longer appear to Velchaninov in quite the
same light, because he suddenly realizes his _responsibility_. At this
period he meets one whom he knew in bygone days, the husband of a woman
who had been his mistress. This husband appears in rather whimsical
fashion. It is impossible to decide whether he is avoiding Velchaninov
or pursuing him. He seems to spring up without warning from between
the very paving stones in the street. He wanders around mysteriously,
haunting the vicinity of Velchaninov’s house, unrecognized at first.
I shall not attempt to recount the gist of the book, nor how after
a late night visit from Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky, the husband,
Velchaninov decides to call upon him. Their standpoints, obscure at
first, become clearer:
“‘Tell me, Pavel Pavlovitch, you are not alone here, then? Whose little
girl is that I found with you just now?’
“Pavel Pavlovitch was positively amazed and raised his eyebrows, but he
looked frankly and pleasantly at Velchaninov.
“‘Whose little girl? Why, it’s Liza!’ he said, with an affable smile.
“‘What Liza?’ muttered Velchaninov, with a sort of inward tremor. The
shock was too sudden. When he came in and saw Liza, just before, he was
surprised, but had absolutely no presentiment of the truth, and thought
nothing particular about her.
“‘Yes, our Liza, our daughter Liza!’ Pavel Pavlovitch smiled.
“‘Your daughter? Do you mean that you and Natalya Vassilyevna had
children?’ Velchaninov asked timidly and mistrustfully in a very low
voice.
“‘Why, of course! But there, upon my word, how should you have heard of
it? What am I thinking about! It was after you went away God blessed us
with her!’
“Pavel Pavlovitch positively jumped up from his chair, in some
agitation, though it seemed agreeable too.
“‘I heard nothing about it,’ said Velchaninov, and he turned pale.
“‘To be sure, to be sure, from whom could you have heard it?’ said
Pavel Pavlovitch, in a voice weak with emotion, ‘My poor wife and I
had lost all hope, as no doubt you remember, and suddenly God sent us
this blessing, and what it meant to me He only knows! Just a year after
you went away, I believe. No, not a year, not nearly a year. Wait a
bit--why, you left us, if my memory does not deceive me, in October or
November, I believe.’
“‘I left T---- at the beginning of September, the twelfth of September,
I remember it very well.’
“‘In September, was it? H’m! what was I thinking
about?’ cried Pavel Pavlovitch, much surprised. ‘Well,
if that’s so, let me see, you went away on the twelfth
of September, and Liza was born on the eighth of May,
so--September--October--November--December--January--February--March--April--a
little over eight months! And if you only knew how my poor wife ...’
“‘Show me--call her,’ Velchaninov faltered in a breaking voice.”[87]
And thus Velchaninov learns that his passing whim, by which he had
set so little store, has left its mark. At once the question presents
itself--does the husband know? Almost to the very end of the book the
reader is left in doubt. Dostoevsky keeps us undecided, and this very
indecision tortures Velchaninov. He does not know where he is. Or
rather, it seems to us early in the day that Pavel Pavlovitch knows,
but feigns ignorance, precisely in order to torture the lover by the
indecision he skilfully maintains in his mind.
Here is one way of considering this strange book. _The Eternal Husband_
depicts the struggle between genuine and sincere feeling on one hand,
and conventional feeling, accepted and current psychology on the other.
“There is but one way out--a duel,” cries Velchaninov. But you realize
what a base issue that is, bringing satisfaction to no existing
feeling, and simply pandering to an artificial conception of honour,
one I touched on lately, a Western conception, for which we have no use
here. We soon realize that, in his heart of hearts, Pavel Pavlovitch
hugs his very jealousy. Yes, he positively loves and welcomes his
suffering. This eagerness to suffer played already an important part in
_Notes from Underground_.
In France, where the Russians are concerned, there has been much
talk, in imitation of De Vogüé, of a _religion of suffering_. We
French love to hear a formula, and to use one! It is one easy way of
naturalizing an author and assigning him to his place in the show-case.
Our mind likes precise data to hold fast by; and once satisfied,
what need for thought or personal contact?--Nietzsche? Oh, yes! “The
_superman_. Be ruthless. Live dangerously.”--Tolstoy? “Non-resistance
to evil.”--Ibsen? “Northern mists.”--Darwin? “Man is descended from the
monkey. The struggle for life.”--D’Annunzio? “The religion of beauty.”
Woe betide the authors whose ideas refuse to be reduced to a formula!
The bulk of the reading public simply cannot tolerate them (and Barrès
realized this when to his merchandise he affixed the label: _La Terre
et Les Morts_).
Yes, in France we tend to deceive ourselves with words, and believe
that everything possible has been achieved and that it is time to apply
the closure and pass on, once the formula has been found. In the same
way we believed victory already in our grasp, thanks to Joffre and his
“wearing down the enemy,” or to Russia and her “steam-roller advance.”
A _religion of suffering_ ... let us eliminate at once the possibility
of misinterpretation. It is not a question, or rather not solely a
question, of vicarious suffering, the world-wide suffering before which
Raskolnikov humbles himself to lie at Sonia the prostitute’s feet, or
Father Zossima at Dmitri Karamazov the predestined parricide’s, but a
theory of personal suffering.
Throughout the whole book, Velchaninov keeps asking himself whether
Trusotsky is jealous or not, whether he knows all or nothing. The
question is absurd: of course Trusotsky knows! Of course he is jealous,
but with the jealousy he fosters and cherishes within himself. It is
the torment of jealousy that Trusotsky desires and enjoys, just as we
saw the attachment of the hero of the _Underground_ to his toothache.
Of the hideous torment of the jealous husband we learn practically
nothing. Dostoevsky reveals it only indirectly, by virtue of the
cruel suffering Trusotsky inflicts on the creatures round about him,
especially on the little girl whom he adores in spite of all. The
child’s anguish helps us to measure the intensity of the father’s
own suffering. Pavel Pavelovitch tortures the child, whom he loves
passionately; he can no more hate her than he can hate his wife’s lover:
“‘Do you know what Liza has been to me?’--he suddenly recalled the
drunkard’s exclamation and felt that that exclamation was sincere,
not a pose, and that there was love in it. How could that monster be
so cruel to a child whom he loved so much? Is it credible? But every
time he made haste to dismiss that question, and, as it were, brush it
aside; there was something awful in that question, something he could
not bear and could not solve.”[88]
We may rest assured that the keenest of his suffering is due to his
inability to become jealous: of jealousy he has only the suffering,
and he cannot hate the man who was preferred to himself. The very
sufferings he inflicts on his rival, those he would fain inflict upon
him, the torments he inflicts on his little daughter, are a kind of
mystic counterpart that he sets to the horror and the anguish in whose
depths he is struggling. None the less, he dreams of revenge: not that
he has any precise desire to avenge himself, but he tells himself that
he must seek revenge, as perhaps the sole means of freeing himself
from such awful torments.
“Habit is everything, even in love,” says Vauvenargues,[89] and you
remember La Rochefoucauld’s maxim? “_How many men would never have
known love if they had never heard of love?_” Are we not justified in
asking: How many would never be jealous, if they did not hear jealousy
spoken about, and had not persuaded themselves that it was imperative
to be jealous?
Yes, convention is the great breeder of falsehood. How many are forced
to play their life long a part strangely foreign to themselves? And
how difficult it is to discern in ourselves a feeling not previously
described, labelled, and present before us as a model! Man finds it
easier to imitate everything than to invent anything. How many are
content to live their lives warped by untruth, and find, none the less,
in the very falsity of convention more comfort and less need for effort
than in straightforward affirmation of their personal feelings! Such
affirmation would require of them an effort of invention utterly beyond
them.
“‘I’ll tell you a killing little anecdote, Alexey Ivanovitch,’ said
Trusotsky. ‘I thought of it this morning in the carriage. I wanted to
tell you of it then. You said just now “hangs on people’s necks.” You
remember perhaps Semyon Petrovitch Livstov, he used to come and see
us when you were in T----: well, his younger brother, who was also a
young Petersburg swell, was in attendance on the Governor at V----,