Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (840 page)

It was already morning; that is to say, day had not yet dawned, but it was six o’clock. I awoke in the same easy-ehair, my eandle was burnt out. They were asleep at the captain’s, and all about was a stillness such as was seldom in our house. First, I jumped up in surprised astonishment. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before, it was strange even to the smallest details. For instanee, I had never fallen asleep in my easy-chair. Then suddenly, while I stood regaining my senses, my loaded revolver suddenly appeared before me. But instantly I put it away from me. Oh, now — life, life!   I lifted my hands and called upon the eternal truth, not called, but wept. Rapture, ineffable rapture exalted all my being. Yes, to live and — to preach! Oh, that very minute I decided to preach, yes, to preach all my life long. I would preach, I longed to preach — what? Truth, for I had seen her, seen her with my eyes, seen her in all her glory.

Since then I have preached. More than that, I love all men, above all those who laugh at mc. Why is it so? I do not know, I cannot explain, but so let it be. They say already that I’m wandering: if he wanders now what will the end be! It’s true. I wander, and perhaps it will be worse in the future. And of course I shall wander many times before I find out how to preach, with what words and deeds, for these are hard to find. Even now I see all this as clear as day; but listen. Who does not go astray? Yet all are tending to one and the same goal, at least all aspire to the same goal, from the wise man to the lowest murderer, but only by different ways. It is an old truth, but there is this new in it: I cannot go far astray. I saw the truth. I saw and know that men could be beautiful and happy, without losing the capacity to live upon the earth. I will not, I cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of men. Yet all of them only laugh at my belief. But how could I not believe? I saw the truth, I did not invent it with my mind. I saw, saw, and her living image filled my soul for ever. I saw her in such consummate perfection that I cannot possibly believe that she was not among men. How can I then go astray? I shall wander, of course, more than once even, and I will perhaps even speak with another’s words, but not for long. The living image of what I saw will be with me always, and will correct and guide me always. Oh, I am strong and fresh, I can go on, go on, even for a thousand years. You know at first I even wanted to eonceal that I had corrupted them all, but it was a mistake — the first mistake, you see! But truth whispered to me that I was lying; she guarded and guided me. But how to make a paradise I do not know, because I cannot express it in words. After my dream I lost all my words, at least, all the important words, those I need most. But so let it be; I will go on and preach untiringly, because I saw plainly, although I cannot relate what I saw. But the mockers do not understand: ‘ He saw a dream, a delirious vision, a hallucination.’ Ah, but is this really wise? A dream? What is a dream? Is not our life a dream? I’ll say more! Let it be that this will never come to pass and there will be no paradise — that at least I understand — well, still I will preach. And it is so simple: in one day, in one hour, everything would be settled at once. The one thing is — love thy neighbour as thyself — that is the one thing. That is all, nothing else is needed. You will instantly find how to live. Though it is an old truth, repeated and read ten million times, yet it is discovered. ‘ The knowledge of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness — is higher than happiness ‘ — that is what must be fought. And I will fight. If only every one wanted it, then everything would be right in an instant.

And the little girl I found. . . . I’ll go to her, I’ll go.

PUSHKIN

CHAPTER I

A word of explanation concerning the speech on pushkin published below

My speech upon Pushkin and his significance, printed below, which forms the chief matter of this number of The Journal of an Author (the only number published in 1880), was delivered on the 8th of June of this year in the presence of a numerous audience at the grand meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, and made a considerable impression. Ivan Scrgueyevich Aksakov, who there said of himself that all people considered him the leader of the Slavophiles, declared from the chair that my speech was ‘ an event.’ I do not refer to this now to boast, but to say just this: if my speech is an event, then it is an event from one and only one point of view, which I will proceed to expound. That is the reason of this foreword. In my speech I endeavoured to emphasise only these four aspects of the value of Pushkin to Russia.

1. Pushkin with his profound insight, his genius, and his purely Russian heart, was the first to detect and exhibit the chief symptom of the sickness of our intellectual society, uprooted from the soil and raised above the people. He exhibited and set in relief before us our negative type, thec disturbed and unsatisfied man, who can believe neither in his own country nor in its powers, who finally denies Russia and himself (that is, his own society, his own intellectual stratum, raised from our native soil), who does not want to work with others, and who suffers sincerely. Aleko and Onyegin were the fathers of a host of their similars in our literature. After them came the Pechorins, Tchichikovs, Rudins, and Lavrezkys, Bolkonskys (in Tolstoi’s War and Peace) and many others who by the mere fact of their appearance bore witness to the truth of the idea originally enunciated by Pushkin. All honour and glory to him, to his mighty mind and genius, who discovered the most sore disease of the society which had grown up amongst us after Peter’s great reform. To his skilful diagnosis we owe our knowledge and realisation of our disease, and it was he who first gave us consolation, for he gave us also the great hope that the disease is not mortal, but that Russian society could be cured, regenerated, and revived if it were bathed in the truth of the people, because2. He was the first — the first indeed: none was before him — to give us artistic types of Russian moral beauty, which had sprung directly out of the Russian soul, which had its home in the truth of the people, in our very soil — these types did Pushkin trace out. To which bear witness Tatiana, a perfectly Russian woman, who guarded herself from the monstrous lie; historical types, for instance the Monk and others in Boris Godunov; realistic types, as in The Captain’s Daughter, and many other figures which appear in his poems, his stories, his memories, and even in his account of the riot at Pougachov. But what must be chiefly emphasised is that all these types of the positive beauty of the Russian and the Russian soul are wholly drawn from the spirit of the people. Now the whole truth must be said: not in our present civilisation, not in the so-called European culture (which, by the way, never existed with us), not in the monstrosities of European ideas and forms only outwardly assimilated, did Pushkin discover this beauty, but he found it in the spirit of the people alone. Thus, I repeat, having revealed the disease, he gave us also a great hope. ‘ Believe-in the spirit of the people, expect salvation from it alone, and you will be saved.’ It is impossible not to come to this conclusion, when one has really gone deep into Pushkin.

3. The third aspect of Pushkin’s significance which I wished to emphasise, is that most peculiar and characteristic trait of his artistic genius, one never met before — his capacity for universal sympathy, and for the most complete reincarnation in the genius of other nations, a reincarnation almost perfect. I said in my ‘ Speech’ that there had been mighty world-geniuses in Europe: a Shakespeare, a Cervantes, a Schiller, but in none of them do we find this capacity — save in Pushkin alone. Not the sympathy only is here in point, but the astonishing completeness of the reincarnation. This capacity of course I could not help emphasising as the most characteristic peculiarity of his genius, which belongs to him alone of all the artists of the world, by which he differs from them all. I did not say it to belittle European geniuses so great as Shakespeare and Schiller: only a fool could draw a conclusion so foolish from my words. The universal comprehensibility and unfathomable depth of the types of Aryan man created by Shakespeare meet with no scepticism in me. And had Shakespeare created Othello really a Venetian Moor, and not an Englishman, he would only have added a halo of local, national peculiarity to his creation. But the universal significance of the type would have been the same, for in an Italian too he would have expressed what he wanted to say with the same power. I repeat, 1 did not want to diminish from the universal significance of a Shakespeare and a Schiller when I pointed out Pushkin’s wonderful faculty for reincarnating himself in the genius of foreign nations: I only wanted to point out the great and prophetical indication for us in this faculty and its perfection, because4. This faculty is a completely Russian faculty, a national faculty. Pushkin only shares it with the whole Russian people; but as a perfect artist, he most perfectly expresses this faculty, in his sphere at least, in the sphere of his art. Our people does truly contain within its soul this tendency to universal sympathy and reconciliation; it has already given voice to it more than once in the two centuries since Peter’s reforms. As I pointed out this capacity of our people I could not help showing that in this very fact is the great consolation of our future, our great, perhaps our greatest, hope, shining for us ahead. Above all, I showed that our aspiration after Europe, in spite of all its infatuations and extremes, was not only right and necessary in its basis, but also popular; it fully coincided with the aspirations of the national spirit itself, and was without doubt ultimately a higher purpose also. In my very short speech I naturally could not develop my idea fully, but what I said at least seems to me clear. And people should not be indignant with me for saying: ‘ Perhaps our poor country will at the end say the new word to the world.’ It is ridiculous to assert that we must complete our economic, scientific, and social development, before we can dream of saying ‘ new words’ to such perfect organisms as the states of Europe. Indeed, I emphasise it in my ‘ Speech,’ that I make no attempt to compare Russia with the western nations in the matter of economic or scientific renown. I say only that the Russian soul, the genius of the Russian people, is perhaps among all nations the most capable of upholding the ideal of a universal union of mankind, of brotherly love, of the calm conception which forgives contrasts, allows for and excuses the unlike, and softens all contradictions. This is not an economical, but a moral trait; and can any one deny that it is present in the Russian people? Can any one say that the Russian nation is only an inert mass, doomed to serve, only economically, the prosperity and development of the European intelligentsia which has lifted itself above the people; that the mass of the people in itself contains only a dead inertia, from which nothing can be expected, nor any hopes be formed? Alas, many people assert this, but I dared to proclaim something different. I repeat, I naturally could not prove ‘ this fancy of mine,’ as I myself called it, circumstantially and fully; neither could I help pointing it out.   To assert that our poor untidy country cannot harbour sueh lofty aspirations until it has become economically and socially the equal of the West, is simply absurd. In their fundamental substance at least the moral treasures of the spirit do not depend upon eeonomieal power. Our poor untidy land, save for its upper elasses, is as one single man. The eighty millions of her population represent a spiritual union whose like cannot be found anywhere in Europe, and because of this alone, it is impossible to say that the land is untidy, it is strictly impossible to say even that it is poor. On the other hand, in Europe — this Europe where so many treasures have been amassed — the whole social foundation of every European nation is undermined, and perhaps will crumble away to-morrow, leaving no trace behind, and in its place will arise something radically new and utterly unlike that which was before. And all the treasures which Europe has amassed will not save her from her fall, for ‘ in the twinkling of an eye all riches too will be destroyed.’ To this social order, infected and rotten indeed, our people is being pointed as to an ideal to which they must aspire, and only when they have reached it, should they dare to whisper their word to Europe. But we assert that it is possible to contain and cherish the power of a loving spirit of universal union even in our present economic poverty, and in poverty still greater than this. It can be preserved and cherished even in such poverty as there was after the Tartar invasion, or after the disasters of the ‘ Troublous Age ‘ when Russia was saved solely by her national spirit of unity. Finally, if it is indeed required, in order to love mankind and preserve within ourselves a soul for universal unity; in order to have within ourselves the capacity not to hate foreign nations because they are not like us; in order to have the desire not to let our national feeling grow so strong that we should aim at getting everything and the other nations be only so many lemons to be squeezed — there are nations of this spirit in Europe! — if to obtain all this, it is necessary, I repeat, that we should first become a rich nation and adapt the European social order to ourselves, then must we still slavishly imitate that European order which may crumble to pieces in Europe to-morrow? Will the Russian organism even now not be suffered to develop nationally by its own organic strength, but must it necessarily lose its individuality in a servile imitation of Europe? What is then to be done with the Russian organism? Do these gentlemen understand what an organism is? And they still talk of natural sciences. ‘ The people will not suffer that,’ said a friend of mine on an occasion two years ago to a vehement Westernist. ‘ Then the people should be destroyed!’ was the quiet and majestic answer. And he was not a person of no importance, but one of the leaders of our intellectuals.   The story is true.

In these four aspects I showed Pushkin’s significance for us, and my ‘ Speech ‘ made an impression. It did not make an impression by its merits — I emphasise this — nor by any talent in its exposition (wherein I agree with all my opponents, and do not boast), but by its sincerity, and I will even say by some irresistible power in the facts displayed, notwithstanding its brevity and incompleteness.