Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  * * * * *

  Those cursed creditors will kill me to a certainty. It was stupid of me to run away to foreign lands; assuredly ‘twere better to have stayed at home and let myself be put in the debtor’s prison. If I could only treat with them from here! But that can’t be, for my personal presence is indispensable. I speak of this, because at the moment I am meditating two and even three publishing ventures which will demand the labour of an ox to carry out, but must-inevitably bring in money. I have often had luck with similar projects.

  Now here’s what I propose:

  I. A long novel entitled “Atheism” (but for God’s sake, let this be entirely between ourselves); before I attack it, I shall have to read a whole library of atheistic works by Catholic and Orthodox-Greek writers. Even in the most favourable circumstances it can’t be ready for two years. I have my principal figure ready in my mind. A Russian of our class, getting on in years, not particularly cultured, though not uncultured either, and of a certain degree of social importance, loses quite suddenly, in ripe age, his belief in God. His whole life long he has been wholly taken up by his work, has never dreamed of escaping from the rut, and up to his forty-fifth year, has distinguished himself in no wise. (The working-out will be pure psychology: profound in feeling, human, and thoroughly Russian.) The loss of faith has a colossal effect on him (the treatment of the story, and the environment, are both largely conceived). He tries to attach himself to the younger generation — the atheists, Slavs, Occidentalists, the Russian Sectarians and Anchorites, the mystics: amongst others he comes across a Polish Jesuit; thence he descends to the abysses of the Chlysty-sect; and finds at last salvation in Russian soil, the Russian Saviour, and the Russian God. (For heaven’s sake, don’t speak of this to anyone; when I have written this last novel, I shall be ready to die, for I shall have uttered therein my whole heart’s burden.) My dear friend, I have a totally different conception of truth and realism from that of our “realists” and critics. My God! If one could but tell categorically all that we Russians have gone through during the last ten years in the way of spiritual development, all the realists would shriek that it was pure fantasy! And yet it would be pure realism! It is the one true, deep realism; theirs is altogether too superficial. Is not the figure of Lyubim Torzov, for instance, at bottom hideously unmeaning? Yet it’s the boldest thing they’ve produced. And they call that profound realism! With such realism, one couldn’t show so much as the hundredth part of the true facts. But our idealists have actually predicted many of the actual facts — really, that has been done. My dear fellow, don’t laugh at my conceit; for I’m like Paul: “Nobody praises me, so I’ll praise myself.”

  In the meantime I’ve got to live somehow. I don’t mean to hurry my “Atheism” on to the market (I have such lots to say therein about Catholicism and Jesuitry, as compared with Orthodoxy). Moreover, I have an idea for a tolerably lengthy novel of about twelve sheets; it strikes me as most attractive. And I’ve another plan besides. Which shall I decide on, and to whom shall I offer my work? To the Sarya? But I always demand payment in advance; and perhaps on the Sarya they won’t agree to that?

  [Here follow some purely business details.]

  XLVI. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna

  FLORENCE,

  January 25 [February 6], 1869.

  MY DEAR, GOOD, AND VALUED FRIEND SONETCHKA, I did not at once answer your last letter (undated), and nearly died of conscience pangs therefor, because I love you very much. But it was not my fault, and it shall be different in future.

  Regularity in our correspondence henceforth depends wholly on you; I shall from now onward answer each of your letters the same day I receive it; but as every letter from Russia is now an event to me, and deeply moves me (yours always in the most delightful sense), do write, if you love me, as often as you possibly can. I have not answered you for so long, because I put off all business and even the most important letters until I had finished the novel. Now it is done at last. I worked at the concluding chapters by day and by night, in the deepest anxiety and amid great torment of mind. A month ago I wrote to the Roussky Viestnik, asking them to postpone the appearance of the December number for a little while, and so make it possible for me to bring out the conclusion of my book this year. I swore that I would deliver the last lines by the 15th of January (by our Style). But what happened? I had two attacks, and therefore was obliged to overstep by ten days the term which I had myself fixed. They can only to-day (January 25) have received the two last chapters. You can easily imagine how much perturbed I have been by the thought that they might lose patience, and, as they had not received the end by the 15th, might let the number appear without the novel! That would be terrible for me. In any case, they must be infuriated; I was in dire need and had to write to Katkov for money.

  The climate of Florence is perhaps even more unfavourable to my health than that of Milan or Vevey; the epileptic attacks return more frequently. Two, with an interval of six days, have brought about this delay of ten days. Besides, it rains too much in Florence; though in fine weather it is real Paradise here. One can imagine nothing lovelier than this sky, this air, and this light. For a fortnight it was somewhat cool, and as the houses here are poorly equipped, we froze during that fortnight like mice in a cellar. But now I have my work behind me, and am free; this work, which took a year, carried me away so completely that I have not yet been able to collect my thoughts. The future is to me an enigma; I don’t even yet know what I shall decide to do. However, I shall have to make up my mind to something. In three months, we shall have been exactly two years abroad. In my opinion, it is worse than deportation to Siberia. I mean that quite seriously; I’m not exaggerating. I cannot understand the Russians abroad. Even though there is a wonderful sky here, and though there are — as, for example, in Florence — literally unimaginable and incredible marvels of art, there are lacking many advantages which even in Siberia, as soon as I left the prison, made themselves evident to me: I mean, especially, home and the Russians, without which and whom I cannot live. Perhaps you may experience this yourself one day, and then you’ll see that I don’t exaggerate in the least. And yet my immediate future is still hidden from me. My original positive plan has for the moment broken down. (I say positive, but naturally all my plans, like those of any man who possesses no capital and lives only by his own toil, are associated with risks, and dependent on many attendant circumstances.) I hope that I shall succeed in bettering my finances by the second edition of the novel, and then returning to Russia; but I’m dissatisfied with the book, for I haven’t said a tenth part of what I wanted to say. Nevertheless, I don’t repudiate it, and to this day I love the plan that miscarried.

  But in fact the book is not showy enough for the public taste; the second edition will therefore, even if it comes off at all, bring in so little that I can’t reckon on it for any new arrangements. While I’m here in this foreign land, besides, I know nothing of what reception the book had in Russia. Just at first I was sent some cuttings, full of ecstatic praise. But lately — never a word. The worst of it is that I don’t know anything, either, about the views of the Roussky Viestnik people. Whenever I’ve asked them for money, they’ve sent it by return of post, from which I am inclined to draw a favourable conclusion. But I may be mistaken. Now Maikov and Strachov write from Petersburg that a new journal, Sarya, has been started, with Strachov as editor; they sent me the first number, and begged for my collaboration. I promised it, but am hindered by my long connection with the Roussky Viestnik (it is always better to stay with the same paper), and by the fact that Katkov gave me an advance of 3,000 roubles before I came abroad. And I owe the editorial staff a good deal besides, for (together with the first three thousand) I have gradually borrowed in all about seven thousand roubles; so that on that ground alone I can at present work for no other paper but the Roussky Viestnik.

  On their answer to my request for more money all now depends. But even if they answer favourably, my position will re
main most uncertain. I must at all costs get back to Russia; for here I am losing all power to write, not having the, to me, essential material at hand — that is to say, Russian actualities (from which I draw my ideas) and Russian people. Every moment I am obliged to look up something, or make inquiries about something, and know not where to turn for it. I am now dallying with the idea of a gigantic novel, which in any event, even should it miscarry with me, must be very effective by reason of its theme alone. That theme is — Atheism (it is not an indictment of the now prevalent convictions, but something quite different: a real story). What it has to do is to take the reader captive even against his will. Of course I shall have to study hard for it. Two or three important characters I have already got into extraordinary perspective, among others a Catholic enthusiast and priest (something like St. François Xavier). But I can’t possibly write it here. I should most assuredly be able to sell the « second edition of this work, and make much money thereby; but when? Not before two years. (Don’t tell anyone about this idea.) In the meantime I must write something else, for daily bread. All this is most depressing. Some change must absolutely, take place in my situation; but from what quarter is it to arrive?

  You are right, my dear, when you say that I should be able to make money much more easily and quickly in Russia. And as a matter of fact I am now meditating two ideas for publications: one would demand much work and would entirely preclude all idea of simultaneous occupation with a novel, but might bring in much money (of that I have no doubt). The other is pure compilation and almost mechanical; it is an idea for an annually-appearing large and universally useful volume of about sixty sheets of small print, which would be widely bought and would come out every January; this idea I won’t as yet disclose, for it is too “safe” and too valuable; the profits are beyond doubt; my work would be purely editorial. All the same it would require some ideas, and much special knowledge. And this work would not prevent me from doing a novel at the same time. I shall need collaborators therein, and shall think of you first of all (I shall need translators too), and of course on the understanding that profits shall be shared in proportion to the work done; you will earn ten times as much as you now get for your work.

  I can say without boasting that I’ve already in the course of my life had many a good literary idea.

  I have suggested them to different editors, and to Krayevsky also and my dead brother; each one that has been carried out has proved highly lucrative. So I am building on these latest notions. But the chief thing is this next big novel. If I don’t write it, it will torment me to death. But I can’t write it here. And neither can I return to Russia until I have paid at least 4,000 roubles of my debts, and have besides in my possession 3,000 roubles (so as to be able to exist through the first year) — thus, seven thousand altogether.

  But enough of me and my tiresome affairs! One way or another, some sort of an end must come, else I shall die of it all....

  Your ever loving

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.

  P.S. — My address is Florence, poste restante. I hear that an enormous lot of letters get lost.

  XLVII. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov

  FLORENCE,

  February 26 [March 10], 1869.

  ... And have you observed the following peculiarity of our Russian criticism? Every outstanding critic (such as Bielinsky, Grigoryev) first presented himself to the public under the protection, so to speak, of some outstanding writer — and thenceforward devoted himself wholly to the interpretation of that writer, nor ever expressed his ideas save in the form of a commentary upon that writer’s works. The critics made no concealment of this, and indeed it appeared to be taken as a matter-of-course. I mean to say that our critics can only express their own ideas when they step forth arm-in-arm with some writer who attracts them. Thus, Bielinsky, when he passed our whole literature under review, and even when he wrote his articles on Pushkin, could only do so by leaning on Gogol, to whom he had paid honour in his youth. Grigoryev has relied on his interpretations of Ostrovsky, in championing whom he made his débût. And you have, as long as I’ve known you, had a boundless and instant sympathy for Leo Tolstoy. When I read your article in the Sarya, I felt, to be sure, an impression of its being wholly necessary, of your being obliged to begin with Leo Tolstoy, and an analysis of his last work, before you could utter your own idea. In the Golos, a feuilletonist declares that you share Tolstoy’s historical fatalism. That idiotic phrase leaves things precisely where they were; do tell me how people manage to come upon such amazing notions and expressions! What may historical fatalism mean? Why this eternal jargon, and why do simple-minded men who can only see as far as the end of their noses, so deepen and darken counsel that no one can make out what they’re driving at? It was evident that that feuilletonist had something that he wanted to say; he had read your article, beyond doubt. What you say in the passage referring to the battle of Borodino, expresses the profoundest essence of the Tolstoyan idea, and of your own reflections thereon. I don’t think you could possibly have spoken with more lucidity. The national Russian idea stands almost nakedly forth in that passage. Precisely it is what people have failed to comprehend, and therefore have designated as fatalism. As regards other details of the article, I must await the sequel (which I haven’t yet received). At any rate your thoughts are lucid, logical, definitely conceived, and most admirably expressed. Certain details, though, I don’t entirely agree in. We could treat these questions quite otherwise, were we talking to one another, instead of writing. In any case, I regard you as the only representative of our criticism with whom the future will reckon....

  I thank you, my kind and much-esteemed Nikolay Nikolayevitch, for the great interest that you show in me. My health is as satisfactory as hitherto, and the attacks are even less violent than in Petersburg. Lately (that is, till about six weeks ago), I have been much occupied with the end of my “Idiot.” Do write and give me the opinion you promised on the book; I await it eagerly. I have my own idea about art, and it is this: What most people regard as fantastic and lacking in universality, I hold to be the inmost essence of truth. Arid observation of everyday trivialities I have long ceased to regard as realism — it is quite the reverse. In any newspaper one takes up, one comes across reports of wholly authentic facts, which nevertheless strike one as extraordinary. Our writers regard them as fantastic, and take no account of them; and yet they are the truth, for they are facts. But who troubles to observe, record, describe, them? They happen every day and every moment, therefore they are not “exceptional.”...

  The Russians are often unjustly reproached with beginning all sorts of things, making great plans — but never carrying out even the most trivial of them.

  This view is obsolete and shallow, and false besides. It is a slander on the Russian national character; and even in Bielinsky’s time it was prevalent. How paltry and petty is such a way of driving home actualities! Always the same old story! In this way, we shall let all true actuality slip through our fingers. And who will really delineate the facts, will steep himself in them? Of Turgenev’s novel I don’t wish even to speak; the devil knows what it may mean! But is not my fantastic “Idiot” the very dailiest truth? Precisely such characters must exist in those strata of our society which have divorced themselves from the soil — which actually are becoming fantastic. But I’ll talk of it no more! In my book much was written in haste, much is too drawn-out, much has miscarried; but much, too, is extremely good. I am not defending the novel, but the idea. Do tell me your view of it; and, of course, quite frankly. The more you find fault with me, the higher shall I rate your honest....

  XLVIII. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna

  FLORENCE, March 8 [20], 1869.

  You have, as I begged you, answered all my letters regularly by return, my dear and precious friend Sonetchka. But I have broken my word, and made you wait more than a fortnight for my answers. This time I can’t even excuse myself by pressure of work, for all my jobs have long been r
eady and delivered. I can explain my silence only by the depressed state of mind in which I have been.

  The Roussky Viestnik did not answer my request for money for seven weeks (so that I had to wait through all Lent); only to-day have I received the money, though I had depicted my desperate situation to the people there more than two months ago. They write with many apologies, that they have not been able to send me the money any sooner, because as always at the beginning of the year, they were confronted with a terrible lot of work that could not be postponed, and with the accounts. And it is a fact that about New Year one never can get anything out of them; it was wont to be so in earlier days, and I can still remember how in the years 1866 and 1867 they made me wait whole months for an answer, just as now. So we’ve had anything but an easy time of it — we were even in actual distress. If we had not been able to borrow two hundred francs from an acquaintance, and to get a further hundred from other sources, we might easily have died of hunger in this foreign town. But what worried us most was the constant suspense and uncertainty. In such circumstances, I could not possibly write to anyone, not even you, my dear. Evidently the staff, as I gather from their letter, wish to retain me as a contributor; otherwise they would not have granted me a further advance. Indeed I can’t complain of Katkov, and am even grateful to him for the many advances he has made me. Journals are impoverished nowadays, and don’t usually give any advances; but in the very beginning, before I even began to write the novel, I had 4,0 — roubles from these people. For that reason I must not be either angry or disloyal.... I must strive even harder than hitherto to make myself useful to them. You write that people declare the magazine has lost ground. Is that really possible? I can’t at all believe it; of course not because I am a contributor, but because the paper is, in my opinion, the best in Russia, and strikes a really consistent note. To be sure, it is a little dry; and the literary side is not always up to the mark (but not oftener than in the other magazines; all the best works of modern literature have appeared therein: “War and Peace,”