Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Читать онлайн книгу.
century the Russians still called their hereditary nobiUty Schliahetstvo. This word is no longer current, and the majority of the Russian nobles are imaware that their institution of hereditary nobility is of Lithuanian origin.
As a Moscovite noble my grandfather remained morally a Lithuanian Schliahtiich —proud, ambitious, and very European in many of his ideas. He was economical almost to the verge of niggardliness; but in the matter of the education of his sons he did not grudge expense. He began by placing his two boys in the French school of Suchard. As Latin was not taught in this establishment, my grandfather undertook the Latin lessons himself. When they came home, his sons prepared their French lessons, and in the evening did Latin exercises with their father. They never ventured to sit down in his presence, and conjugated their verbs standing, trying not to make mistakes, and greatly in awe of their teacher. My grandfather was very severe; but his children never received corporal punishment. This is the more remarkable, as the little Moscovites of the period were very vigorously chastised. Tolstoy has told us in his recollections of childhood how he was beaten at the age of twelve. It is evident that my grandfather Mihail had European ideas of education. Thanks to their proximity to Poland and Austria, Lithuania and Ukrainia were much more civilised than Russia. In later years, when Dostoyevsky recalled his childhood, he would say to his younger brothers, Audrey and Nicolai, that their parents were remarkable people, more advanced in their ideas than the majority of their contemporaries.
Like many Lithuanians whose ancestors were latinised by the Catholic clergy, my grandfather had an affection for the French tongue. He talked French with his wife, and encouraged his children to express themselves in that language. To please him, my grandmother made his sons and daughters write their good wishes on their father's birthday in French. She corrected their mistakes on the rough drafts, and the children then made fair copies on ornamental sheets of paper. On the day of the anniversary, they marched up to their father in turns, and blushingly presented the rolls of paper, tied up with a coloured ribbon. My grandfather unfolded them, read the artless congratulations aloud with emotion, and kissed the little writers. Later, his elder sons were not content with good wishes; to please their father they learned French poems by heart and recited them to their parents in the presence of their brothers and sisters. My father once recited a fragment of the Henriade at a family festivity.
Dostoyevsky inherited his father's liking for French; French phrases occur frequently in his novels and newspaper articles.14 He read a great deal of French, and very little German, although he knew the language well. At that period, German was not fashionable in Russia. But my father did not forget it; German must have been retained intact in some cell of his brain, for as soon as he passed the Prussian frontier he at once began to speak German, and, according to my mother, he spoke it fluently.
14 The writer Strahoff, a great friend of my father's, says in his reminiscences that he preferred talking of serious things to Dostoyevsky, and did not Mke to hear his jests, for, according to him, Dostoyevsky always jested d la francaise. The play of words and images which is the essence of French wit is not appreciated by my compatriots, who like more sohd pleasantries. Strahoff considered that Dostoyevsky jested d, la frangaise not only in conversation, but in his writings. This was, no doubt, the result of a certain hereditary latinisation of the mind in Dostoyevsky.
When his elder sons had finished their course at the Suchard school, my grandfather placed them at the preparatory school of Tchermack, the best private school in Moscow, an expensive establishment frequented by the sons of the intellectuals of the city. In order that they might prepare their lessons under the superintendence of their teachers, my grandfather sent them as boarders, and they came home only on Sundays and festivals. The Moscovite nobles of this period preferred to send their children to private schools, for in the Crown institutions the most severe corporal punishment was inflicted. The school of Tchermack was of a patriarchal character, and the arrangements were modelled on those of family life. M. Tchermack dined with his pupils, and treated them kindly, as if they were his sons. He got the best masters in Moscow to give lessons in his school, and the work done there was of a high order.
My grandfather dreaded the brutality of the Mos-covite lower orders, and never allowed his children to walk in the streets. " We were sent to school in our father's carriage, and fetched home in the same way," my uncle Andrey once told me. My father knew so little of his native city that there is not a single description of Moscow in any of his novels. Like many Poles and Lithuanians, my grandfather despised the Russians, and was prejudiced enough to look upon them as barbarians. The only Moscovites he received in his house were his wife's relations. Later, when my father went from' Petersburg to Moscow, he met only his relatives. There were no friends of childhood, no old comrades of his father's to visit.
If my grandfather distrusted Russian civilisation, he was careful not to say so before his children. He brought them up after the European fashion; that is to say, he strove to awaken and foster patriotism in their hearts. In his Journal of the Writer, Dostoyevsky relates that when he was a child his father was fond of reading episodes of Karamzin's Russian history aloud in the evenings, and explaining them to his young sons.15 Sometimes he would take his children to visit the historic palaces of the Kremlin and the cathedrals of Moscow. These excursions had all the importance of great patriotic solemnities in the eyes of his sons.
15 Karamzin's History of Russia was my father's favourite book. He read and re-read it in his childhood till he flnaUy knew it by heart. This was very remarkable, for in Russia not only the children but the grown-up persons know very Uttle of the history of their country.
It is also possible that in thus holding aloof from the Moscovites, my grandfather gave way to that segregating instinct so characteristic of the Lithuanians. " The Lithuanian is attracted by solitude," wrote Vidunas; "he likes to live to himself. Solitude is a refuge to him." This curious shyness of the Lithuanians is probably a growth of their soil. The Russians and Ukrainians, inhabitants of vast plains, have been able to found large villages, to go to market in the neighbouring towns, to meet other villagers, to enter into relations with them and so to become sociable and hospitable. The great forests and wide marshes of Lithuania have prevented the development of large villages. The few houses it was possible to build on an oasis of firm ground formed but a single family, which, owing to the impracticable roads, was unable to visit the inhabitants of the adjacent oases. Living thus in isolation, the Lithuanians became unsociable. These temperamental defects, the growth of centuries, take centuries to correct, even in those who have long lived in a different country and under different conditions.16
16 The Lithuanians never forget their forests; they continue to adore them even when they have quitted them for generations. In his Journal of the Writer Dostoyevsky says : " All my Ufe I have loved the forest, with its mushrooms, its fruits, its insects, its birds and its squirrels; I revelled in the scent of its damp leaves. Even at this moment as I write I can smell the aroma of theibirches."
The Lithuanians are as a rule excellent husbands and fathers. They are only happy in their homes; but loving it so dearly, they are apt to become jealous of their wives and children, and to wish to withdraw them from outside influences. My grandfather, when he shut up his sons in a kind of artificial Lithuania in the heart of Moscow, did not reahse how difficult such an education would make life for the boys, who, after all, were Russians, and had to work among, their compatriots. Happily, my grandfather at least provided good companions for his children in their domestic prison; in the evenings of the festivals, all the family assembled in the drawing-room and read the works of the great Russian writers aloud in turns. At the age of fifteen my father was famihar with the majority of our masterpieces. The children were accustomed to recite the poems they had learnt. Sometimes competitions in recitation were arranged between the boys. My father and his brother Mihail learned Russian poems by heart, and the parents decided which of them had recited best. My grandmother took a great interest in her children's reading. She was a pretty, gentle creature, devoted to her family, and absolutely submissive to her husband. She was dehcate; her numerous confinements had greatly exhausted her.17 She had to lie in bed for days together, and loved then to hear her sons recite her favourite poems. The two elder boys, Mihail and Fyodor, worshipped her. When she died, while still a young woman, they mourned most bitterly, and composed her epitaph in verse. My grandfather had her effigy carved on the marble monument he erected to her memory.
17