Dostoevsky in Love

by Alex Christofi

  Everything would change once the baby was born, little Sonya or Misha. Everything would be better then.9 The birth was due in January or February 1868. They stopped off in Basel to see Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. This was Christ as Fyodor had never seen him before: so frail, so unutterably human, with his lumpy navel, the protrusion of his hip bone, the scuffs of blood on his hand and rib. His face vacated of sense and already turning blue. Christ in the world, brought down to our level. A perfectly beautiful man thrust into a world of compromise and vanity.

  And then they reached Geneva, where Fyodor would get to work on the most ambitious story he had yet conceived: a second coming, the arrival of a Christ-like figure in modern-day St Petersburg. Whether Fyodor could realise such an audacious theme was doubtful, but despite his illness, his poverty, his moral inadequacy, he would try. I have ideas, very great ideas, of which I ought not to speak, as I would be sure to make everyone laugh. I am certain that I am more loved than I deserve. But I know for certain that twenty years’ illness must leave traces, so that it’s impossible not to laugh at me sometimes.316

  I have six months of ceaseless work ahead. But by then it will be time for my wife to give birth.317 When they arrived in Geneva in mid-August 1867, they took a quiet, furnished room that might allow him the peace to write. Their two elderly landladies were always boasting about Geneva, but other than the lake, Fyodor couldn’t see what was so great about the place. For one thing, it was expensive, and for another, everyone was always drunk. The drunkenness was worse even than in London, if such a thing were possible. One doesn’t live here; one serves a sentence here.318 The couple rarely socialised with the other Russians in the city, except to see Herzen’s cousin Nikolai Platonovich Ogarov, who was no less a revolutionary than Herzen himself.

  Having scrounged a little money from Maikov, Katkov and Fyodor’s old doctor, Stepan Yanovsky, they decided to stay in Geneva at least until the baby was born, since Fyodor could communicate better with the doctors in French. On money matters, Anna was also plotting against Pasha whom she now acknowledged as a nemesis, concocting a story about him going directly to Katkov in Moscow to beg for money. Fyodor was angry while the ruse lasted, but he insisted on supporting Pasha financially come what may. He had more than once called in a favour to get Pasha a job, but his stepson had found office work to be beneath him and tended to quit the moment he was asked to do anything.

  Having escaped the terrible orbit of the roulette wheel, Fyodor re-established a proper work routine. Get up late, light a fire, have coffee. Sit at desk, contemplating this good soul, this Prince Christ, and what might await him in St Petersburg, the city to which Fyodor would dearly have longed to return. I need Russia, need it for my writing and my work.319 At 4 p.m., Fyodor would go out for dinner, while Anna stayed at home. He’d sit in a café to read the Moscow News or The Voice, all the while gathering material to write about Russia and its unfounded faith in European civilisation. Then, before going home to bank the fire, drink more tea, set down a few ideas, Fyodor would permit himself a little wander around for half an hour to clear his head.

  While he was plotting his new novel, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Mikhail Bakunin came to Geneva to attend a meeting of thousands of European revolutionaries somewhat optimistically called the League of Peace and Freedom.10 At the conference, they were all talking about getting rid of large states and their large armies, to be replaced by small republics. Religion was to be abolished, world peace achieved (by fire and sword, of course). It was precisely this sort of utopianism that Fyodor wanted to demolish. And the book had to be good, because by now Katkov had advanced him 4,000 roubles.

  Fyodor sat at his desk, probing at ideas, but the plot wouldn’t come together, and he wouldn’t receive any more money until he had at least sent off a completed section. Worst of all I fear mediocrity; I think it’s better a thing be either very good or quite bad.320 He tried taking a short trip to Saxon-les-Bains for a little flutter at roulette – and then another – but he lost his money without gaining any inspiration. He wrote quite a lot, threw it away and started again, scouring the newspapers every day for the flash of lightning that would briefly illuminate the whole silhouette of the novel to him. He read the headlines as if they were one long prophecy filled with lacunae. The murders, the obsession with money, the way that Western ideas like Nihilism were corrupting the young generation. The visible connection between all matters, general and private, is becoming stronger and stronger and more obvious. I definitely want to publish something like a newspaper when I get back.321

  The air was frigid, particularly when the icy northeasterly bise would blow in all of a sudden, rushing down from the mountains across Lake Geneva. It would grow more common in the spring – another reason to leave as soon as the baby was born. As winter approached, it was impossible to heat the houses sufficiently for Fyodor’s comfort, let alone for poor Anna. Even with the fire blazing, it was 6°C.10 On top of which, he was having fits every ten days here. It took him days to recover, and although he trusted his imagination, his memory sometimes failed him in the aftermath. He had given his word of honour that he would send Katkov a chunk of the novel for the January issue, and it had to be done.

  There were so many ideas he wanted to express in The Idiot. He had been writing six different plans a day for how it would go. Now he had to start writing it even though he hadn’t really worked out the plot. I’ve been tormented by one idea for a long time, but I was afraid to make a novel out of it, because the idea is too difficult and I’m not prepared for it, although the idea is quite enticing and I love it.322 It all centred around his beautiful man, Prince Myshkin, a naive and kind and generous soul. He had something of Don Quixote in him, a good person who was nevertheless sympathetic because his behaviour was out of place and he couldn’t see it. Prince Myshkin would be a sort of holy fool, regarded by some as a common idiot, but piercing through his simplicity to the heart of matters. The idealist in Fyodor wanted a redeemer, but the realist in him demanded an unhappy man. For me the whole comes out in the form of a hero. That’s how it’s worked out for me. But will he develop under my pen? And it has turned out that in addition to the hero there is a heroine, too, and that means TWO HEROES!! And besides those there are two other characters as well – absolutely major ones, that is, almost protagonists.323 The heroine around which the plot revolved was Nastasia Filippovna, a fierce, beautiful woman whose pure character was ignored by a high society that regarded her as ‘fallen’. Her suitor, Rogozhin, was a wealthy but coarse merchant driven to distraction by his passions; and there was also Myshkin’s own love interest, Aglaya, whom Fyodor had not sketched out properly yet, but who was modelled somewhat on Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya. As ever, the plot would descend into a love triangle, or perhaps a square. Myshkin would be torn in two, his Christian love for Nastasya in an intractable conflict with his all too human love for Aglaya. And how can one love two at once? With two different kinds of love? That’s interesting . . . Poor idiot.324

  A Messianic tenor ran through the whole. The whole world shall be renewed through Russian thought, and this will come to pass in some future generation – that’s my passionate belief.325 First Rome had fallen, then Byzantium; Russia was to take up its destiny as the third Rome come the Millennium, with a Russian Christ to lead the world. We are living in the age of the Third Horse, the black one, and the rider who has the balance in his hand, seeing that everything in the present age is weighed in the scales and by agreement, and people are seeking for nothing but their rights. But by rights alone they won’t keep their hearts pure, and afterwards will follow the pale horse.326

  By this time, there were perhaps more atheists in Russia than anywhere else, because, as Fyodor saw it, Russia had gone further than Europe in spiritual matters. Russian Liberals like Turgenev or Herzen were useless now – the shitheads!327 They were not even Russian, but citizens of the world, and they only took intellectual positions on socialism as a way of passing
the time. In any case, they had been surpassed entirely by the new generation.

  The problem was not that material progress had not been made. Famines used to be frequent. Looking up at the feudal castles perched precariously in the Swiss mountains, some of them half a mile up, one could not help but think of the poor people who had been forced to haul up the stone. And yet, for all the prosperity of the modern era, the infrequency of famine and the rapidity of communication, there was no idea binding humanity together with anything like the power it had in centuries past. There is more wealth, but there is less strength. There is no uniting idea; everything has grown limp, and everyone is limp!328 The whole edifice of materialism was founded on a house of cards, without recognising any moral basis except for the satisfaction of individual egoism.329

  The fallacy of rational egoism was to believe that the human heart naturally desired what was good, when really it was a battleground between good and evil. The law of destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in humanity!330 The answer was faith – deep, instinctual, unbidden faith – and for that, you had to look to the Russian people, the peasantry. The simple love of one’s fellow creatures, rather than the love of lofty abstractions. In abstract love for humanity one almost always loves no one but oneself.331 All this he wanted to express through his characters, but Fyodor knew he must make the approach obliquely or risk being called a madman. His most outlandish ideas he could put in the mouths of characters he had already disowned, so that he might speak without seeming to endorse their views. But first he had to set up the conflict between the lovers.

  Fyodor sent the first part of The Idiot off to Katkov at the end of 1867, hoping it might still make the crucial first issue of the year. He was afraid it would be boring. The first part hadn’t said much – it had only introduced the mysterious figure of Myshkin – but it hadn’t compromised the rest either. The important thing was to arouse the reader’s curiosity.

  Notes

  1 Crime and Punishment, p. 577. Anna confides to her diary that ‘never has any picture before made such an impression on me . . . Fyodor thinks there is pain in her very smile’. (Anna Dostoevsky, 1928, p. 36) She also approvingly notes the golden frame and the gallery’s velvet seats, before reflecting, ‘I do not care about the Child, as it sits on its Mother’s arm. Fyodor was right in saying it was not a true child’s face . . . I did not at all like St Barbara.’

  2 True, she was a prostitute, but the important thing was that she had a pure heart. Sonya is also the diminutive of Sofia, wisdom. It was the name of his favourite niece, to whom he dedicated The Idiot.

  3 Among the exhibits, the American George Steinway presented his piano, the German manufacturer Krupp presented a fifty-ton cannon, and a newly opened Japan presented artwork that would have a tremendous influence on the French art of the period.

  4 Dostoevsky had first met Goncharov in 1846, as part of the Belinsky circle. He thought Goncharov had ‘the soul of a bureaucrat’, that he was ‘devoid of ideas’ and had ‘the eyes of a boiled fish’, but recognised that ‘God, as if for a joke, has bestowed a brilliant talent’ on him. (Letter to Wrangel, 9 November 1856)

  5 Letter to Maikov, 16 (28) August 1867. They might have fallen out, but at least not so badly that one challenged the other to a duel, as Tolstoy did when Turgenev swore at him once in an argument.

  6 The 5th Diagnostic and Statistical Manual lists nine possible signs of gambling disorder, of which Dostoevsky matched eight (the only thing he didn’t do was lie about how bad it was).

  7 Known to us as saffron milk caps.

  8 Anna relates: ‘No sooner had the door closed behind him than I was prey to such insufferable thoughts that I could no longer control myself, but began to cry bitterly. It was no ordinary weeping, but a dreadful convulsive sort of sobbing, that brought on a terrible pain in my breast, and relieved me not in the slightest . . . There are moments when I cannot help thinking it would be better if Fyodor didn’t come back for three whole days on end, and I could lie asleep all the time in a darkened room.’ (Anna Dostoevsky, 1928, pp. 265–6)

  9 Anna writes in her diary, ‘Any child would make me as happy as happy could be, and if anything went wrong I should be in despair.’ (Anna Dostoevsky, 1928, p. 413)

  10 One of Bakunin’s house guests was a young terrorist by the name of Sergei Nechaev who, for now, was lying low.

  11 Fyodor measured it five degrees according to the Réaumur scale.

  TEN

  Death for the Russian

  1868–1871

  We live on a pittance. We’ve pawned everything. Anna is now in the final hours. I wonder whether she won’t give birth in the middle of the night. I’m terribly anxious myself, but meanwhile I need to write without pause.332

  The weather was stormy on the night of 3 March 1868. Bad weather often affected Fyodor’s nerves and, true to form, he had a severe epileptic fit. The next morning he could barely stand, and the day passed in a fog of half-thoughts. He went to bed at 7 p.m., but was woken four hours later by Anna gently tapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘I think it’s started – I’m really suffering!’ she said.1

  ‘How sorry I am for you, my darling!’ Fyodor replied in the tenderest voice, before falling back asleep.

  He was woken again at 7 a.m. by Anna, who had been suffering through his sleep, praying that he would be well enough to get to the midwife in the morning.

  When he realised what was happening, Fyodor threw on his clothes and dashed off to get the midwife. He rang the doorbell a number of times before a servant came to the door to explain that the midwife was sleeping after returning from a visit. Fyodor threatened to go on ringing the bell or break the glass, at which point the sleepy midwife was roused and brought to Anna’s bedside. She looked Anna over and pronounced that she would be back in seven or eight hours.

  When she did not return, Fyodor went out to hunt her down. He discovered her at dinner with friends and dragged her back to Anna, where she further pronounced that labour was progressing badly and delivery was not likely before late evening. She nipped out again for a quick parlour game with her family until, following both threats and enticements of hors d’oeuvres and wine, she was persuaded to remain at Anna’s side.

  For his part, Fyodor’s frantic attentions were not helping to set a calm and reassuring mood. At one point, his sobbing began to distress Anna more than the contractions, and he was escorted from the room by the midwife, who then latched the door from the inside to stop him coming in. In the other room, he prayed and prayed. Every now and then, Anna would send the midwife out to see how Fyodor was coping.

  From the room came no longer groans but awful animal cries, unendurable, incredible. Then suddenly I heard a cry, the cry of a baby, a weak, discordant cry.333 My child’s. That’s a strange sensation for a father, but of all human sensations it is one of the best; I now know that for myself.334 He crossed himself, broke the lock and burst in. The midwife held in her hands a little red wrinkled creature, screaming, and moving its little arms and legs, fearfully helpless, and looking as though it could be blown away by a puff of wind, but screaming and seeming to assert its full right to live. Anna was lying as though insensible, but a minute later she opened her eyes, and bent a strange, strange look on me: it was something quite new, that look. What it meant exactly I was not yet able to understand, but I had never known such a look on her face before.335

  Fyodor threw himself on his knees and kissed Anna’s hand. It was a little girl, Sonya. The mysterious coming of a new creature, a great and inexplicable mystery. There were two and now there’s a third human being, a new spirit, finished and complete, nothing like the handiwork of man. It’s positively frightening, and there’s nothing grander in the world.336 He would ask Maikov, who had been such a good friend, and was now the only one he corresponded with regularly, to be the godfather. Anna’s mother would be godmother.

  In her exhaustion (and because the baby was enormous), Anna had tr
ouble feeding her. She wouldn’t countenance a wet nurse, so she supplemented Sonya’s diet with cow’s milk and nutritional powders. Fyodor didn’t give much of a damn about his work; he’d put down his pen the moment he heard Sonya’s voice and rush to her. She is very cute – in spite of the fact that she looks impossibly, even ridiculously, like me. She lies there and looks as though she’s composing a novel!337 She was his first thought when he woke up in the morning. The best time of the day was now bath time, when he and Anna would wash little Sonya, and Fyodor would wrap her in a cotton piqué blanket, fastening it carefully with safety pins, and rock her in his arms. Sonya’s first smile was positively beatific, and the thought occurred to Fyodor: When a sinner prays to God, it is exactly like a mother seeing the first smile on her baby’s face. It is a thought in which all the essence of Christianity finds expression; God is our Father and as glad of us as a father in his own child. It’s the fundamental idea of Christ.338

  Being a father, and beginning to know this new creature who was certain only of the need for love, affected Fyodor profoundly. He had always had a sentimental streak in him, but through fatherhood it became a part of his world view.2 All these socialists with their grand conferences, debating over the ideology that would extinguish countries or abolish property, knew less than this little baby. The idea of the beautiful man, the simple goodness of the Russian people, the Nihilists and the materialists and the socialists, it was all connected, but the world would not be healed by ideology alone. Individual kindness will always remain, the living impulse of one personality to exert a direct influence upon another.339 How might anyone tell what seed they had planted in the soul of another by one smile, one small act of kindness, a seed that might only begin to bear fruit many years in the future? The most skilful chess players could look only a few moves ahead, but a person’s actions throughout their lifetime contained an incalculable number of moves. In scattering the seed, in your kind deeds, you are giving away a part of your personality, and taking into yourself part of the other; you are in mutual communion with one another. In this way, your life itself might become your greatest work. You could look on it almost as a science, this scattering of the seeds of kindness, some to be passed into other hands, others to fall and take root long after you have forgotten them, or been forgotten. How can you tell what part you may have in the future determination of the destiny of humanity?