Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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it oppressed him terribly.33 He now avoided society, would spend long hours shut up in his own room, or wandering about in the darkest and most deserted streets of Petersburg. He talked to himself as he walked, gesticulating, and causing passers-by to turn and look at him. Friends who met him thought he had gone mad. The colourless, stupid city quenched his talent. The upper classes were mere caricatures of Europeans; the populace belonged to the Finno-Turkisk tribe, an inferior race, who could not give Dostoyevsky any idea of the great Russian people. He had not enough money to go to Europe, the Caucasus or the Crimea; travelling was very costly at this period. My father languished in Petersburg and was only happy with his brother Mihail, who had resigned his commission and settled in the capital, meaning to devote himself to literature. He had married a German of Reval, Emihe Dibmar, and had several children. My father was fond of his nephews; their childish laughter banished his melancholy.
33 Dr. Janovsky, whom my father liked very much, and consulted about his health, says that long before his convict-life Dostoyevsky already suffered from a nervous complaint, which was very like epilepsy. As I have mentioned above, my father's family declared that he had had his first attack when he heard of the tragic death of my grandfather. It is evident that he was already suffering from epilepsy at the age of eighteen, although it did not assmne its more violent form imtU after his imprisonment.
It is astonishing to find no woman in the life of Dostoyevsky at this period of early youth, which is the age of love for most men. No betrothed, no mistress, not even a flirtation ! This extraordinary virtue can only be explained by the tardy development of his organism, which is not rare in Northern Russia. Russian law allows women to marry at the age of sixteen; but quite recently, a few years before the war, Russian savants had begun to protest against this barbarous custom. According to their observations the Northern Russian woman is not completely developed until the age of twenty-three. If she marries before this, child-bearing may do her great harm and ruin her health permanently. It is to this evil custom that our doctors attribute the hysteria and nervous complaints that ravage so many Russian homes. If the savants are right, we must place the complete development of the Northern Russian male organism in the twenty-fifth year, as men always come to maturity later than women. As to abnormal organisms, those of epileptics, for instance, they must mature even more slowly. It is possible that at this age, Dostoyevsky's senses were not yet awakened. He was like a schoolboy who admires women from afar, is very much afraid of them, and does not yet need them. My father's friends, as we have seen, ridiculed his timidity in the society of women.34 His romantic period began after his imprisonment, and he showed no timidity then.
34 Dr. Riesenkampf, who loiew my father well at this period of his hfe, wrote in his reminiscences : " At the age of twenty young men generally seek a feminine ideal, and run after all young beauties. I never noticed anything of the sort with Dostoyevsky. He was indifferent to women, had even an antipathy to them." Riesenkampf adds, however, that Dostoyevsky was much interested in the love-affairs of his comrades, and was fond of singing sentimental songs. This habit of singing songs that pleased him he retained to the end of his life. He generally sang in a low voice when he was alone in his room.
The heroines of Dostoyevsky's first novels are pale, nebulous, and lacking in vitality. He painted only two good feminine portraits at this period—those of Netotchka Nesvanova and the little Katia, children of from ten to twelve years old. This novel is, if we except The Double, his best work of this period. It has but one fault, which is common to all the novels written by Dostoyevsky before his imprisonment: the heroes are too international. They can live under any skies, speak all tongues, bear all climates. They have no fatherland, and, like all cosmopolitans, are pale, vague and ill-defined. To make them live, it was necessary to create a nationaUty for them. This Dostoyevsky was about to do in Siberia.
V
THE PETRACHEVSKY CONSPIRACY
It was at his unhappy period of his life that my father was involved in the Petrachevsky conspiracy. Those who were familiar with Dostoyevsky's monarchic principles in later life could never understand how he came to associate himself with revolutionaries. It is, indeed, inexplicable if my father's Lithuanian origin be ignored. He plotted against the Tsar, because he did not yet understand the real meaning of the Russian monarchy. At this period of his life Dostoyevsky knew little of Russia. He had spent his childhood in a kind of artificial Lithuania created by his father in the heart of Moscow. In his adolescence at the Castle of the Engineers he held aloof as far as possible from his Russian comrades. When he became a novehst he frequented the literary society of Petersburg, the least stable in the whole country. At that time Russia was practically unknown; our geographers and historians hardly existed as yet. Travelling was difficult and expensive. There were neither railways nor steamers in the country. The peasant-serfs worked their land and kept silence; the moujik was called "a sphynx." The Russian writers lived only by the mind of Europe, read only French, EngUsh and German books, and shared all the ideas of Europeans concerning liberty. Instead of informing Europe as to Russian ideas, our writers ingenuously asked Europe to explain to them what Russia was. Now if my compatriots knew little of Russia, Europe knew nothing of it. European writers, scientists, statesmen and diplomatists did not learn the Russian language, did not travel in Russia, did not take the trouble to go and study the moujik in his home. They were content to get their information from the political refugees who inhabited their towns. All these Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Armenians, Finns and Letts could not even speak Russian, and talked the most terrible jargon. This did not prevent them from addressing Europe in the name of the Russian people. They assured Europeans that the moujiks were groaning under the yoke of the Tsars, and were waiting impatiently for the nations of Europe to come and deliver them, in order to give them that European repubhc of which (according to the refugees) the moujik was dreaming day and night. Europe took their word for it. It has only been in our own days, when Europeans have seen " Tsarism" replaced by Bolshevism and defaitisme, that they have begun to understand how they have been deceived. It will be a long time yet before they understand the true Russia. Meanwhile the Russian Colossus has many rude awakenings and unpleasant surprises in store for them.
At the time of the Petrachevsky conspiracy my father was more Lithuanian than Russian, and Europe was dearer to him than his fatherland. The novels he wrote before his imprisonment were all imitations of European works : Schiller, Balzac, Dickens, Georges Sand and Walter Scott were his masters. He believed in the European newspapers as one believes in the Gospels. He dreamed of going to live in Europe, and declared that he could only learn to write well there. He talked of this project in his letters to his friends, and lamented that lack of means prevented him from carrying it out. The thought that it might be well to go east instead of west, in order to become a great Russian writer, never entered his head. Pogtpyevsky hated the Mongohan strain in the Russians; he was a true Ivan Karamazov at this time of his life.
The emancipation of the serfs was then imminent. Every one was talking of it, and every one realised the necessity for it. Our government, true to its tradition, hesitated to make the reform. The Russians, who understood their own slow and indolent national character knew that they had only to wait patiently for a year or two and they would obtain it. The Poles, the Lithuanians and the natives of the Baltic Provinces did not understand this delay, and believed that the Tsar would never give liberty to his people. They proposed to overthrow him in order to secure it themselves for the peasants. Dostoyevsky shared their misgivings. He knew nothing of Oriental indolence; all his life he was active and energetic. When an idea seemed right to him he at once put it into practice; he could not understand the dilatoriness of the Russian bureaucracy. He could not forget his father's tragic death, and he ardently desired the abohtion of a system which made the masters cruel and incited the slaves to crime. In his then state of mind, the meeting with Petrachevsky was bound to have fatal results. Petrachevsky, as his name indicates, was of Polish or Lithuanian origin, and this was a bond of union between him and Dostoyevsky stronger than all the rest. Petrachevsky was eloquent and adroit; he drew all the young dreamers in Petersburg around him and inflamed them. The idea of sacrificing oneself to the happiness of others is very attractive to young and generous hearts, especially when their