Dostoevsky
novels, _The Possessed_ in particular. Personally, I judge this work
to be most extraordinarily powerful and wonderful. In it we are
vouchsafed to witness a rare literary phenomenon. The book Dostoevsky
planned to write was very different from that we actually have. While
he was putting it into shape a new character, of which at first he
had scarcely dreamed, asserted itself, gradually took front rank, and
ousted the intended hero!
“None of my works has given me so much trouble as this one,” he
wrote from Dresden to his friend Strakhov in October, 1870. “At the
beginning, that is, at the end of last year, I thought the novel _made_
and artificial, and rather scorned it. But later I was overtaken by
real enthusiasm. I fell in love with my work of a sudden and made a big
effort to get all that I had written into good trim. Then in the summer
came a transformation, up started a new, vital character, who insisted
on being the hero of the book, the original hero (a most interesting
figure, but not worthy to be called a hero) fell into the background.
The new one so inspired me that I once more began to go over the whole
book afresh.”[110]
The new character, to which all his attention is now devoted,
is Stavrogin, the strangest perhaps and the most terrifying of
Dostoevsky’s creations. Stavrogin reads his own riddle towards the end
of the book. It is seldom that a character of Dostoevsky’s fails to
give, sooner or later, the key, as it were, to his nature, often in
most unexpected fashion, by some words he lets slip all of a sudden.
Listen, for instance, to Stavrogin’s account of himself:
“I have no ties in Russia--everything is as alien to me there as
everywhere. It’s true that I dislike living there more than anywhere,
but I can’t hate anything even there! I’ve tried my strength
everywhere. You advised me to do this, ‘that I might learn to know
myself.’ As long as I was experimenting for myself and for others, it
seemed infinite, as it has all my life. Before your eyes I endured a
blow from your brother; I acknowledged my marriage in public. But to
what to apply my strength, that is what I’ve never seen, and do not see
now in spite of all your praises in Switzerland, which I believed in.
I am still capable, as I always was, of desiring to do something good,
and of feeling pleasure from it; at the same time I desire evil, and
feel pleasure from that too.”[111]
At our last meeting we shall come back to the first item in this
declaration--a very important one in Dostoevsky’s estimation. Stavrogin
had no ties in his native land. To-day let us consider only this
double-headed hydra of desire that is gnawing Stavrogin. Man ever
entreats, says Baudelaire, God and the Devil at one and the same time.
At the bottom, what Stavrogin worships is energy. William Blake
will give us the key to this baffling character: “_Energy is the
only Life--Energy is Eternal Delight._” Aye, hearken further to his
proverbs: “_The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom_,” or “_If
the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise_.”--“_You
never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough._”
Blake’s glorification of energy expresses itself in divers forms. “_The
roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea,
and the destructive sword are portions of eternity too great for the
eye of man._”
We further read: “_The cistern contains: the fountain overflows_,” and
“_The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction_.” And
the formula which introduces his _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ seems
to have been appropriated all unconsciously by Dostoevsky: “_Without
Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and
Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to human existence._” “_These
two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies:
whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence._”
Allow me to add to Blake’s proverbs two of my own invention: “_Fine
feelings are the stuff that bad literature is made on_,” and “_The
Fiend is a party to every work of art_.” Yes, of a truth, every work
of art is a _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, and William Blake tells us:
“_The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God,
and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet,
and of the Devil’s party without knowing it._”
Dostoevsky was tormented his life long by his horror of evil and by
his sense of its inevitability. By evil I mean suffering also. I think
of him when I read the parable of the man which sowed good seed in his
field, but while men slept his enemy came and sowed tares among the
wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought
forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.... And the servants said
unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said,
Nay: lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with
them. Let them both grow together until the harvest.
Two years ago, in neutral territory, I met Walther Rathenau. He spent
two days with me, I remember, and I questioned him on the events of the
time, seeking in particular his opinion of Bolshevism and the Russian
Revolution. His answer was that naturally he suffered at the horrible
abominations practised by the revolutionaries. “But, believe me,” he
added, “a nation learns to know itself, as a man his own soul, only by
passing through the depths of suffering and the abyss of sin.... And
America has not yet gained a soul because she refuses to accept sin and
suffering.”
Now you know my grounds for saying, when we saw Father Zossima kneel
before Dmitri and Raskolnikov before Sonia, that they were humbling
themselves, not merely before suffering, but before sin.
Let us make no mistake as regards what was in Dostoevsky’s mind. I
repeat that even though he clearly formulates the problem of the
_superman_ which insidiously reappears in each of his works, we
witness the glorious vindication of none but Gospel truths. Dostoevsky
perceives and imagines salvation only in the individual’s renunciation
of self; but, on the other hand, he gives us to understand that man is
never nearer God than in his extremity of anguish. Then and not till
then does he cry: “_Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life._”
He knows this imploring cry cannot proceed from the lips of the
righteous man who has ever been sure of his course and confident he has
acquitted his obligations to God and to himself alike, but from those
of the unhappy creature “who has nowhere left to turn.”... “Do you
understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No,
that you don’t understand yet!”[112] Only through anguish and crime,
after his expiation even, cut off from the society of his fellow-men,
did Raskolnikov come face to face with the Gospel.
There has no doubt been a measure of desultoriness in the ideas I have
submitted to you to-day--but maybe responsibility for the confusion
falls in part to Dostoevsky’s share as well. “_Improvement makes
straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of
Genius._”
At all events, Dostoevsky was convinced, as I too am convinced, that in
the Gospel truths is no confusion--the one consideration of moment!
VI
I am overwhelmed by the number and importance of the things I have
still left to say to you. You have grasped, have you not, what I meant
in my introduction when I said that Dostoevsky was often an excuse
for expressing my own ideas? I should crave your pardon did I think
that thereby I had presented Dostoevsky’s in a false light. No, like
the bees Montaigne tells of, I have but gathered from his works what
I needed to make my own honey. However life-like a portrait, there
is always much of the artist in it, as much of him almost as of the
sitter. The most precious model is undoubtedly that which warrants the
widest diversity of likeness and lends itself to the greatest number of
portraits. I have attempted Dostoevsky’s likeness; I know I have not
exhausted his semblance.
Overwhelming, too, the number of touches I should like to add to my
preceding papers. After each one I have felt there was something I had
forgotten to tell you. At our last meeting, for example, I wanted to
make plain the meaning of my two “proverbs”: “_Fine feelings are the
stuff bad literature is made on_,” and “_The Fiend is party to every
work of art._” What to me seems transparent may appear a paradox to
you, and as such to call for elucidation. I loathe paradoxes and never
seek effect in surprises, but had I nothing new to suggest I should
not attempt these papers; and remember, a new idea wears invariably
the guise of a paradox. To help you acknowledge the truth of what
I am saying, I proposed to call your attention to two figures, St.
Francis of Assisi and Fra Angelico. If it was vouchsafed the latter
to be a great artist (the better to prove my contention I choose as
my example the most shiningly pure figure in the whole history of
art), it was because, in spite of his purity, his art permitted of
demonic collaboration. There is no work of art to which the Demon is
not a co-signatory. The true saint is not Fra Angelico, but Francis of
Assisi. There are no artists amongst the saints, no saints amongst the
artists.
Creative art may be likened to the box of sweet spices which Mary
Magdalene brake not. I have already quoted that strange dictum of
Blake’s: “_The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels
and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a
true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it._”
There are three threads in the loom on which every work of art is
woven, the three lusts pointed out by the apostle: “... _the lust of
the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life_.”
Remember Lacordaire’s remark when congratulated upon an admirable
sermon he had just delivered: “The Devil has forestalled you.” The
Devil would not have told him his sermon was fine, indeed, he would
have been there to speak, had he not been party to it.
After citing lines from Schiller’s _Hymn to Joy_, Dmitri Karamazov
exclaims: “And the awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as
terrible. God and the Devil are fighting there and the battlefield is
the heart of man.”[113]
No artist, I am sure, has given the demonic so large a share in his
work as Dostoevsky, unless Blake himself, who concluded his admirable
little book, _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, with these words:
“_This Angel who is now become a Devil is my particular friend. We
often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense,
which the world shall have if they behave well._”
After leaving you, I realized that in quoting the strangest of
William Blake’s _Proverbs of Hell_, I had omitted to read to you the
entire passage from _The Possessed_ which had called forth these very
quotations. May I atone for my omission? In this one page from _The
Possessed_ you will marvel at the fusion--not to say confusion--of the
divers elements I sought to point out in my previous papers: optimism
first and foremost, the wild love of life we come across again and
again in Dostoevsky’s works, love of life and all the world, Blake’s
vast delectable world wherein dwells the tiger as well as the lamb.
“Are you fond of children?”
“I am,” answered Kirillov, though rather indifferently.
“Then you’re fond of life?”
“Yes, I’m fond of life! What of it?”
“Though you’ve made up your mind to shoot yourself?”
“What of it? Why connect it? Life’s one thing, and that’s another. Life
exists, but death doesn’t at all....”[114]
We saw too Dmitri Karamazov ready to take his life in a fit of
optimism, beside himself with enthusiasm.