Dostoevsky
and he too was distinguished for various qualities. He had a quarrel
with Gobulenko, a colonel, and considered himself insulted, but he
swallowed the affront and concealed it, and meanwhile Gobulenko cut
him out with the lady of his heart and made her an offer. And what do
you think? This Livtsov formed a genuine friendship with Gobulenko, he
quite made it up with him, and, what’s more, insisted on being his best
man: he held the wedding crown and when they came out from under it, he
went up to kiss and congratulate Gobulenko. And in the presence of the
Governor and all the honourable company, with his swallow-tail coat,
and his hair in curl, he sticks the bridegroom in the stomach with a
knife--so that he rolled over! His own best man! What a disgrace! And,
what’s more, when he’d stabbed him like that, he rushed about crying:
“Alas, what have I done! Oh, what is it that I’ve done!” with floods
of tears, trembling all over, flinging himself on people’s necks, even
ladies. “Ah, what have I done!” he kept saying, “what have I done now!”
He--he--he! he was killing. Though one feels sorry for Gobulenko,
perhaps, but after all, he recovered.’
“‘I don’t see why you told me this story,’ observed Velchaninov,
frowning sternly.
“‘Why, all because he stuck the knife in him, you know,’ Pavel
Pavlovitch tittered....”[90]
And in similar fashion, Pavel Pavlovitch’s real spontaneous feeling
expresses itself, when he is unexpectedly obliged to nurse Velchaninov,
down with a liver complaint.
“The sick man fell asleep suddenly, a minute after lying down. The
unnatural strain upon him that day, in the shattered state of his
health, had brought on a sudden crisis, and he was as weak as a child.
But the pain asserted itself again and weariness; and an hour later he
woke up and painfully got up from the sofa. The storm had subsided, the
room was full of tobacco smoke, on the table stood an empty bottle, and
Pavel Pavlovitch was asleep on another sofa. He was lying on his back,
with his head on the sofa cushion, fully dressed and with his boots
on. His lorgnette had slipped out of his pocket, and was hanging down
almost to the floor.”[91]
Strange how Dostoevsky, when leading us through the strangest by-paths
of psychology, ever must needs add the most precise and infinitesimal
of realistic details, in order to make more secure an edifice which
otherwise would appear the extreme expression of phantasy and
imagination.
Velchaninov is in great pain, and immediately Trusotsky applies every
possible means of alleviating it.
“But Pavel Pavlovitch, goodness knows why, seemed beside himself as
though it were a question of saving his own son. Without heeding
Velchaninov’s protests, he insisted on the necessity of compresses
and also of two or three cups of weak tea to be drunk on the spot,
‘and not simply hot, but boiling.’ He ran to Mavra, without waiting
for permission, with her laid a fire in the kitchen, which always
stood empty, and blew up the samovar; at the same time he succeeded in
getting the sick man to bed, took off his clothes, wrapped him up in a
quilt, and within twenty minutes had prepared tea and compresses.
“‘This is a hot plate, scalding hot!’ he said, almost ecstatically,
applying the heated plate, wrapped up in a napkin, on Velchaninov’s
aching chest. ‘There are no other compresses, and plates, I swear on my
honour, will be even better; they were laid on Pyotr Kuzmitch, I saw it
with my own eyes, and did it with my own hands. One may die of it, you
know. Drink your tea, swallow it; never mind about scalding yourself!
Life is too precious for one to be squeamish.’
“He quite flustered Mavra, who was half asleep; the plates were changed
every two or three minutes. After the third plate, and the second cup
of tea, swallowed at a gulp, Velchaninov felt a sudden relief.
“‘If once they’ve shifted the pain, thank God, it’s a good sign!’ said
Pavel Pavlovitch, and he ran joyfully to fetch a fresh plate and a
fresh cup of tea.
“‘If only we can ease the pain, if only we can keep it under!’ he kept
repeating.
“Half an hour later the pain was much less, but the sick man was so
exhausted that, in spite of Pavel Pavlovitch’s entreaties, he refused
to put up with ‘just one more nice little plate.’ He was so weak that
everything was dark before his eyes.
“‘Sleep, sleep!’ he repeated in a faint voice.
“‘To be sure,’ Pavel Pavlovitch assented.
“‘You’ll stay the night--what time is it?’
“‘It’s nearly two o’clock, it’s quarter to.’
“‘You’ll stay the night?’
“‘I will, I will.’
“A minute later the sick man called Pavel Pavlovitch again. ‘You, you,’
he muttered, when the latter had run up and was bending over him: ‘You
are much better than I am! I understand it all--all.... Thank you.’
“‘Sleep, sleep,’ whispered Pavel Pavlovitch, and he hastened on tiptoe
to his sofa.
“As he fell asleep, the invalid heard Pavel Pavlovitch noiselessly
making a bed for himself, and taking off his clothes. Finally, putting
out the candle, and almost holding his breath for fear of waking the
patient, he stretched himself on his sofa.”[92]
And yet, a quarter of an hour later, Velchaninov catches Trusotsky, who
believes him sound asleep, bending over him with intent to murder him.
“Pavel Pavlovitch wanted to kill him, but didn’t know he wanted to kill
him! ‘It’s senseless, but that’s the truth,’ thought Velchaninov.”[93]
And yet he is not satisfied!
“‘And can it be that it was all true?’ he exclaimed again, suddenly
raising his head from the pillow and opening his eyes. ‘All that madman
told me yesterday about his love for me, when his chin quivered and he
thumped himself on the breast with his fist?’
“‘It was the absolute truth,’ he decided, still pondering and
analysing. ‘That quasimodo from T---- was quite sufficiently stupid and
noble to fall in love with the lover of his wife, about whom he noticed
nothing suspicious in twenty years! He had been thinking of me with
respect, cherishing my memory and brooding over my “utterances” for
nine years. Good Heavens! And I had no notion of it! He could not have
been lying yesterday. But did he love me yesterday when he declared his
feeling and said, “Let us settle our account!” Yes, it was from hatred
that he loved me; that’s the strongest of all loves....
“‘... Only he didn’t know then whether he would end by embracing me or
murdering me. Of course, it’s turned out that the best thing was to do
both. A most natural solution’.”[94]
If I have lingered so long over this slender book, it is because it is
more accessible than the rest of Dostoevsky’s novels, and helps us to
win, beyond love and hate, to that wider region I spoke about not long
since: a region where love is not, nor passion, so easily and so simply
reached: the region Schopenhauer spoke of, the meeting-place of human
brotherhood, where the limits of existence fade away, where the notion
of the individual and of time is lost, the place wherein Dostoevsky
sought--and found--the secret of happiness.
V
At our last meeting I spoke of the three strata or regions Dostoevsky
seems to discern in the human personality: first, the province of
intellectual speculation, then the domain of the passions, midway
between the former and the third region, a vast realm remote from the
play of passion.
It is plain that these three strata are not isolated or even strictly
limited, but interpenetrate.
The intermediate region, the domain of passion, I have already
discussed. Here, and on this plane, the play is staged, not merely the
play Dostoevsky presents in each of his works, but the drama of entire
mankind. We observed, too, what at first wore the air of a paradox: no
matter how restless and powerful, the passions after all are of but
slender importance, or at least do not stir the soul’s utmost depths.
Events have no hold on the soul--they are simply outwith its province.
To support my assertion, what instance could I more aptly adduce than
war? Investigations have been carried out in regard to the terrible
struggle through which we have but lately passed. Literary men were
asked to estimate its real or apparent moment, its moral after-effects,
its influence on literature. The answer is simple: to all intents and
purposes its influence has been nil.
Consider for a moment the Napoleonic wars: endeavour to trace their
repercussion in literature and determine in what way they have modified
the soul of humanity. I admit there exist poems inspired by the
imperial epic as there exist only all too many with the Great War for
theme. But where is there a deeper note, a spiritual transformation?
No exterior event, whatever its tragedy or magnitude, can effect such
a change. On the other hand, the French Revolution is different, but
here we are concerned with a disturbance that is more than physical, a
traumatism, if I may use the word. This time the convulsion proceeds
from the very soul of the nation. The influence of the French
Revolution on the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau is
enormous, although their works date from before the event for which
they prepared the way. And we shall observe the same order of things
in Dostoevsky’s novels: the idea is not consecutive to the event, but
precedes it. In most cases passion has to serve as intermediary between
thought and action.
At any rate, in Dostoevsky’s novels we shall see the intellectual
element comes at times into touch with that deeper region, which is not
the soul’s hell, but its heaven.
In Dostoevsky we find the mysterious inversion of values already
noticed in William Blake, the great mystic amongst English poets. Hell,
according to Dostoevsky, is the first region, the realm of mind and
reason. Throughout his works, if our attention be at all alert, we
shall become conscious of a depreciation of mental powers which is not
so much systematic as involuntary and inspired by the spirit of the
Gospel.
Dostoevsky never deliberately states, although he often insinuates,
that the antithesis of love is less hate than the steady activity of
the mind. In his eyes it is intellect which individualizes, which is
the enemy of the Kingdom of Heaven, life eternal, and that bliss where
time is not, reached only by renouncing the individual self and sinking
deep in a solidarity that knows no distinctions.
This passage from Schopenhauer will prove illuminating: “He sees
that the difference between him who inflicts suffering and him who
must bear it is only the phenomenon; and does not concern the thing
in itself, for this is the will living in both, which here deceived
by the knowledge which is bound to its service, does not recognize
itself, and seeking an increased happiness in _one_ of its phenomena,
produces great suffering in _another_, and thus, in the presence
of excitement, buries its teeth in its own flesh, not knowing that
it always injures only itself, revealing in this form, through the
medium of individuality, the conflict with itself, which it bears in
its inner nature. The inflicter of suffering and the sufferer are
one. The former errs in believing that he is not a partaker in the
guilt. If the eyes of both were opened, the inflicter of suffering
would see that he lives in all that suffers pain in the wide world,
and which if endowed with reason, in vain asks why it was called into
existence for such great suffering, its desert of which it does not
understand, and the sufferer would see that all the wickedness which
is, or ever was, committed in this world, proceeds from that will which
constitutes _his_ nature also, appears also in _him_, and that through
this phenomenon and its assertion he has taken upon himself all the
sufferings which proceed from such a will, and bears them as his due,