Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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at the convicts who were walking by his side, and entered into conversation with them at the first opportunity. The convicts, for their part, glanced at him enquiringly, but not with friendliness. Was he not a noble, did he not come of that accursed class of hereditary tyrants, who treated their serfs like dogs, and looked upon them as slaves, condemned to toil all their lives that their masters might live riotously? They entered into conversation with Dostoyevsky, hoping to laugh at him, and to amuse themselves at his expense. They nudged each other and mocked at my father, when they heard his first words; but gradually, as he went on speaking, the jeers and laughter ceased. The moujiks saw before them their ideal—a true Christian, a wise and modest man, who placed God above all, who sincerely believed that neither rank nor education could open any real gulf between men, that all were equal before God, and that he who is so fortunate as to possess culture should seek to spread it round him, instead of priding himself upon it. This was the moujiks' idea of true nobles, true hari; but alas! they very seldom encountered any of this type. At each word Dostoyevsky spoke, the eyes of his companions opened more widely.
When Dostoyevsky wishes to draw his own portrait in the person of one of his heroes, and to relate an epoch of his own life, he gives that hero all the ideas and sensations he himself had at the period. It seems somewhat strange that Prince Mishkin (in The Idiot), who was not a criminal and had never been tried and sentenced should, on his arrival at Petersburg, talk of nothing but the last moments of a man condemned to death. We feel that he is entirely possessed by the idea. Dostoyevsky explains this eccentric behaviour by telling us that the director of the sanatorium to which the poor Prince had been sent by his family, had taken him to Geneva to see an execution. These Swiss seem to have had a strange idea of the treatment suitable for a nervous patient; it is not surprising that they were not able to cure the Prince. My father made use of this somewhat far-fetched explanation in order to hide from the general public that Prince Mishkin was, in reality, no other than that unhappy convict, the political conspirator, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,37 who, throughout the first year of his prison life, was hypnotised by his recollection of the scaffold, and could think of nothing else. In The Idiot, Prince Mishkin describes all the impressions of the condemned man to the servant of the Epantchin family. When they question him later about the execution, the Prince rephes: "I have already told your servant my impressions; I cannot talk about it any more." The Epantchin have great difficulty in making Mishkin speak on the subject. This was precisely Dostoyevsky's attitude; he described his sufferings to the convicts and refused to discuss them subsequently with the intellectuals of Petersburg. In vain they would question him eagerly; Dostoyevsky would frown and change the subject.
37 It is hardly necessary to say that in identifying himself with a prince, Dostoyevsky had no snobbish intention. He wanted to show what an immense moral influence a man of lofty hereditary culture might have upon the masses if he behaved to the people as a brother and a Christian, and not as a snob.
It is remarkable that Prince Mishkin, who falls in love with Nastasia Philipovna, does not become her suitor, and says to a young girl who loves him and is willing to marry him : "I am ill, I can never marry." This was probably Dostoyevsky's conviction in early manhood; he did not change his opinion until after his imprisonment. The resemblance between Dostoyevsky and his hero extends to the smallest details. Thus Prince Mishkin arrives at Petersburg without a portmanteau, carrying a small parcel containing a little clean linen. He has not a kopeck, and General Epantchin gives him twenty-five roubles. Dostoyevsky arrived in Siberia with a little parcel of linen which the police had allowed him to bring away; he had not a kopeck, and the wives of Dekabrists brought him twenty-five roubles, concealed between the pages of a Bible.
His good reputation followed him to prison; those of his travelling companions who were imprisoned with him at Omsk spoke to their new companions of this strange man, Dostoyevsky, who was to serve his sentence among them. Certain good-natured convicts were already considering how they could protect this young, sickly fellow, this dreamer, who had been so busy thinking of the heroes of his novels that he had had no time to study real life. The convicts said to themselves that if life was hard to them, inured as they were from childhood to fatigue and privation, how much harder it must be to Dostoyevsky, bred in comfort, and above all, thanks to his social position, accustomed to be treated with respect by every one. They tried to console him, telling him that life is long, that he was still young, that there was happiness in store for him after his release. They showed a delicacy of feeling peculiar to the Russian peasants. In The House of the Dead my father has described how when he was wandering sadly about the prison, the convicts would come and ask him questions about politics, foreign countries, the Court, the life in large cities. " They did not seem to take much interest in my replies," says my father; " I could never understand why they asked for such information." The explanation was, however, a very simple one; a kind-hearted convict noticed Dostoyevsky walking alone, in a kind of dream, staring into space. He was anxious to distract his thoughts. It seemed to his rustic mind impossible that a gentleman should be interested in vulgar things, and the ingenuous diplomatist accordingly spoke to my father of lofty subjects : politics, government, Europe. The answers did not interest him, but he attained his end. Dostoyevsky was roused, he talked with animation, his melancholy was exorcised. But the convicts saw more in my father than a sad and suffering young man. They divined his genius. These illiterate moujiks did not know exactly what a novel was, but with the infallible instinct of a great race they perceived that God had sent this dreamer on earth to accomplish great things. They realised his moral greatness and did what they could to tend him. Dostoyevsky has told in his Memoirs how one day, when the convicts were sent to bathe, one of them asked to be allowed to wash my father. This he did most carefully, supporting him like a child, lest he should slip on the wet boards. " He washed me as if I had been made of china," says Dostoyevsky, much astonished at all this care. My father was right. He was, in fact, a precious object to his humble comrades. They felt that he would render great services to the Russian community, and they all protected him. One day, exasperated by the bad food they were given, they made a demonstration, and demanded to see the Governor of the Fortress of Omsk. My father thought it his duty to take part in the manifestation, but the convicts would not allow him to join them.38 " Your place is not here," they cried, and they insisted on his returning to the prison. The convicts knew that they risked incurring a severe punishment for their protest, and they wished to spare Dostoyevsky. These humble moujiks had chivalrous souls. They were more generous to my father than his Petersburg friends, the mean and jealous writers who did all in their power to poison his youthful success.
38 I have mentioned above that Dostoyevsky took no part in any demonstrations at the Castle of the Engineers. In associating himself with that of the convicts, he showed that he had more respect for them than for the Russian nobles and intellectuals.
If the convicts protected my father, he, for his part, must have exercised a great moral influence over them. He is too modest to speak of this himself, but Nekrassov has proclaimed it. The poet was a man of great discrimination. In Poor Folks, which Nekrassov published so readily in his Review, he recognised Dostoyevsky's genius. When he made the young novelist's acquaintance he was struck by his purity of heart and nobility of mind-The narrow, jealous, intriguing circle in which the Russian writers of the period lived prevented Nekrassov from becoming my father's friend, but he never forgot him. When Dostoyevsky was sent to Siberia, Nekrassov often thought of him. This poet was distinguished from others by his profound knowledge of the souls of the peasants. He spent all his childhood on his father's small estate, and in later life went there every summer. Knowing the Russian people and knowing Dostoyevsky, he asked himself what the relations between the convicts and the young novelist would be. Poets think in song, and Nekrassov has left us an excellent poem. The Wretched, in which he depicts Dostoyevsky's life among the criminals. He does not mention him by name—the Censorship, which was very strict at this period, would not have permitted this—but he told his literary friends, and later Dostoyevsky himself, who his hero was.
The story is put into the mouth of a convict, formerly a man in good society, who had killed a woman in a fit of jealousy. In prison he associates with the vilest of the criminals, drinks and gambles with them in spite of his contempt for them. His attention is attracted by a prisoner who is unlike the rest. He is very weak, and has the voice of a child; his hair is light and fine as down.39 He is very silent, lives isolated from the others, and fraternises with no one. The convicts dislike him, because