Dostoevsky
Conservative, but not hide-bound by tradition: monarchist, but of
democratic opinions: Christian, but not a Roman Catholic: liberal, but
not a progressive: Dostoevsky remains ever the man of whom there is
no way to make use! He is of the stuff which displeases every party.
Why? Because he never persuaded himself that less than the whole of
his intelligence was necessary to the part he chose to play, or that
for the sake of immediate issues he would be justified in forcing
so delicate an instrument or upsetting its balance. “À propos of
all _these possible tendencies_,” he wrote (and the italics are his
own), “which were united in an expression of welcome to me (April 9,
1876),[27] I should gladly have written an article on the impression
made by the letters, but, on reflection, I realized that it would be
impossible to write it in all sincerity: now, lacking sincerity, could
it be worth while?” What does he mean? Doubtless this: to write a
reasonable article so as to please everybody and make a success of it,
he would have to strain his ideas, simplify them to excess, in short,
force his convictions beyond natural limits. And that is just what he
cannot concede.
His individualism, while not harsh, and in reality one with his
honesty of thought, does not allow him to submit his idea unless in
its integrity, complex though this may be. And there is no stronger or
subtler reason for his unpopularity amongst us.
I do not mean to insinuate that strong convictions ordinarily involve
a certain dishonesty in reasoning; but they _do_ willingly dispense
with intelligence. And yet, M. Barrès is too clever not to have quickly
grasped the fact that not by impartial illumination of all its aspects
can we ensure the speedy dissemination of an idea, but by giving it a
definite bias.
If you want ideas to succeed, you must submit them one at a time; or,
better, to succeed, submit one idea and no more. It is not enough
to invent a good medium of expression; it is a question of never
outgrowing it. The public likes to know exactly where it stands when
a great name is mentioned. And tolerates ill what would congest its
brain! At the mention of Pasteur, it likes to be able to say to itself,
without hesitation: Yes, hydrophobia. Nietzsche? the _superman_.
Curie? radium. Barrès? France and her dead. Quinton? plasma. Just as
if you were to say. Lazenby? pickles. And Parmentier, if so be it that
he did “invent” the potato, is better known, thanks to this solitary
vegetable, than if we had to thank him for the entire produce of our
kitchen gardens.
Dostoevsky all but reached success in France, when M. de Vogüé had
the bright idea of calling, and thus stereotyping in this handy
phrase--_the religion of suffering_--the doctrine he found worked into
the closing chapters of _Crime and Punishment_.
That it is there, I am willing to concede; also that the phrase was a
happy invention.... Unfortunately it did not contain the whole being
of the man: he was too great in every way to be compressed into such
small bulk. For if he was of these for whom “only one thing is needful:
to know God,” at least this knowledge of God he tried to diffuse
throughout his works in all its human and anxious complexity.
Ibsen was not easy to pin down either; like any other writer whose
work is interrogative rather than affirmative. The relative success
of the two plays, _A Doll’s House_ and _An Enemy of the People_, is
due, certainly not to their outstanding excellence, but to the shadow
of a conclusion which escaped Ibsen in them both. The public is but
ill-pacified by the author who does not come to a strikingly evident
solution. In its eyes, it is the sin of uncertainty, indolence of mind,
lukewarmness of convictions. And most often, having little liking for
intelligence, the public gauges the strength of a conviction by naught
but the violence, persistence, and uniformity of the affirmation.
Anxious not to extend a field already so vast, I shall not attempt to
define his doctrine here. I merely wanted to indicate its wealth of
contradictions to the Western mind, unused to this need of reconciling
extremes. Dostoevsky remains steadfast in the belief that between
nationalism and europeanism, individualism and self-abnegation,
the contradiction is apparent only. He holds that because each
understands but one aspect of this vital question, the opposing
parties remain uniformly remote from the truth. One more quotation:
it will, I am sure, throw more light on Dostoevsky’s position than
any commentary. “To be happy must one be impersonal? Does salvation
lie in self-effacement? Far from it, I should say. Not only must
there be no self-effacement, but one must become a personality,
even in a degree beyond what is possible in the West. Be clear as
to my meaning: voluntary sacrifice, offered consciously and without
constraint, sacrifice of the individual for the good of mankind,
is, to my mind, the mark of personality in its noblest and highest
development, of perfect self-control ... the absolute expression of the
will. A strongly developed personality, conscious of its right to be
such, having cast out fear, cannot use itself, cannot be used, except
in sacrifice for others, that these may become, like unto itself,
self-determining and happy personalities. It is Nature’s law, and
mankind tends to reach it.”[28] This solution is taught him by Christ:
“_For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall
lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it._”
Back in Petersburg in the winter of 1871-2, being then fifty years of
age, he writes to Janovsky:[29] “There is no use hiding the fact that
old age is coming near, and yet one doesn’t think of it, and makes
preparation for a new work (_The Karamazovs_), for at last publishing
something that will please; one still hopes for something out of life,
and yet it is possible that everything has already been received.
I am speaking of myself! Well, I am thoroughly happy!” This is the
happiness, the joy beyond suffering latent in all Dostoevsky’s life and
work, a joy that Nietzsche had rightly sensed, and which I charge M. de
Vogüé with having missed entirely.
The tone of the letters changes brusquely at this period. His usual
correspondents being, like himself, in Petersburg, he is no longer
writing to them but to strangers, chance correspondents who turn to him
for edification, comfort, guidance. I should require to quote almost
all the letters; my better plan is to refer you to the book; I am
writing this article solely to bring my reader into touch with it.
At last, freed from his horrible financial worries, he busies himself
during the closing years of his life with editing the _Journal of an
Author_, published only at irregular intervals. “I confess,” he wrote
to the well-known Aksakov in November, 1880 (that is, three months
before his death), “I confess, in all friendship, that intending to
undertake next year the publication of the _Journal_, I have besought
God often and long to make me pure in heart and pure of lips; without
sin or envy, and incapable of wounding.”[30]
In this _Journal_ wherein M. de Vogüé could see only “obscure pæans,
evading alike analysis and discussion,” the Russian people happily
discovered something different, and Dostoevsky was able to feel that
round about his work his dream of spiritual harmony was almost being
realized, without any arbitrary unification.
When his death was announced, this communion and blending of spirits
was shiningly manifested, and if, at first, “subversive elements
planned to monopolize his dead body,” very soon, “by the miracle of
one of these unexpected fusions that are Russia’s secret, when a
national conviction rouses her, all parties, all antagonists, all
scattered fragments of the empire were seen to be joined in a fresh
bond of enthusiasm by this death.” The sentence is M. de Vogüé’s, and I
rejoice after all the strictures I have made concerning his study, to
be able to quote such noble words. “As it was said of the Tsars of old,
that they gathered together the land of Russia,” he says later, “this
spiritual King had ‘gathered together’ the heart of Russia.”
The same rallying of individual energies is at work now throughout
Europe, slowly, mysteriously, almost--chiefly in Germany, where the
editions of his works are multiplying, in France, too, where the rising
generation recognizes and appreciates, better than that of M. de Vogüé,
his strength. The hidden reasons which delayed his success will be the
builders of a more enduring fame.
FOOTNOTES
[5] M. Gide refers to J. W. Bienstock’s translation, _Correspondance et
Voyage à l’Étranger_, Paris, 1908. (_Translator’s note._)
[6] Letter to his brother Michael, Semipalatinsk, May 31, 1858.
[7] Bienstock, p. 122. Letter to A. N. Maïkov, Semipalatinsk, January
18, 1856.
[8] Bienstock, p. 364. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, February 26,
1870.
[9] Bienstock, p. 387-388. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, December
2, 1870.
[10] Bienstock, p. 415. Letter to A. N. Maïkov, Dresden, March 2, 1871.
[11] Bienstock, pp. 364-365. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden,
February 26, 1870.
[12] Bienstock, p. 55. Letter to his brother Michael, March 24, 1845.
[13] Mayne, p. 198. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden, October 9, 1870.
[14] Bienstock, pp. 386-387. Letter to N. N. Strakhov, Dresden,
December 2, 1870.
[15] Bienstock, p. 267. Letter to A. N. Maïkov, Geneva, September 15,
1867.
[16] Bienstock, pp. 470-471. Letter to Mlle. N. N----, Petersburg,
April 11, 1880.
[17] Bienstock, p. 235. Letter to Baron Alexander Wrangel, Petersburg,
March 31, 1865.
[18] Bienstock, p. 239. Letter to Baron Alexander Wrangel, Petersburg,
April 9, 1865.
[19] “To defend the theories he fancies are his,” says M. de Vogüé.
[20] Bienstock, p. 159. Letter to his brother Michael, Semipalatinsk,
July 19, 1858.
[21] Mayne, p. 51.
[22] Bienstock, p. 135. Letter to Baron Alexander Wrangel,
Semipalatinsk, May 23, 1856.
[23] Bienstock, p. 438.
[24] See Bienstock, pp. 592-598: Preface to _The Epoch_, 1865.
[25] Mayne, p. 62.
[26] Bienstock, pp. 447-448. Letter to Mlle. Guérassimov, Petersburg,
March 7, 1877.
[27] Bienstock, p. 442. Letter to Mme. C. D. Altschevsky, Petersburg,
April 9, 1876.
[28] Bienstock, p. 540.
[29] Bienstock, p. 437. Letter to S. D. Janovsky, Petersburg, February
4, 1872.
[30] Bienstock, p. 479. Letter to I. S. Aksakov, Petersburg, November
4, 1880.
ADDRESSES
(1922)
I
Some time before the war I was preparing for Charles Péguy’s _Cahiers
de la Quinzaine_, a _Life of Dostoevsky_ after the manner of Romain
Rolland’s fine monographs on Beethoven and Michelangelo. War came, and
I was forced to lay aside the notes I had taken. For long other cares
and duties absorbed me and my project was to all intents and purposes
abandoned, when recently at the celebration of Dostoevsky’s Centenary,
Jacques Copeau asked me to address a meeting in his theatre, the _Vieux
Colombier_. I brought my packet of notes out into the light of day
again, and re-reading them after the lapse of time, I found the ideas
I had jotted down seemed worth our attention, but that chronological
order, though necessary for biographical purposes, was perhaps not
the most advisable on this occasion. It is often a difficult task to
separate the ideas Dostoevsky weaves, as it were, into a fine web in
each of his novels, but we never lose track of them. In my eyes these
ideas are all that is most precious in Dostoevsky and I have made them
my own. If I took up each of his works in turn, I could not possibly
avoid repeating myself. There is, however, another--and better--way: