It would be 50 years before, in accordance with her will, her body was laid to rest in the monastery, alongside her husband’s.
The memory of a man is limited to a hundred years. For a hundred years after his death his children or his grandchildren, who have seen his face, can still remember him, but after that, though his memory may still remain, it is only by hearsay, in thought, for all who have seen his living face have gone. His grave is overgrown with grass, the stone crumbles away, and everyone forgets him; afterwards they forget even his name, for only a few are kept in the memory of men – and so be it! You may forget me, dear ones, but I love you from the tomb.451
Notes
1 In 1797 it had become one of only three monastery complexes in the Russian Orthodox Church to be given the highest rank, becoming a lavra (Ла́вра). The other two are in Kiev and in Sergiev Posad, 70 kilometres outside Moscow.
2 This is the cinematic version; other accounts say that the first bomb had cut the Tsar’s face and he had asked to borrow a handkerchief from one of the Cossacks, who was still worrying about whether it was too dirty to give to a tsar when the second bomb exploded.
3 His theories were spectacularly wrong, of course, but they undoubtedly provoked new avenues of thought. As the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann has memorably put it, ‘Freud’s theories were like a flashlight in a candle factory’ (‘Why Freud Survives’, New Yorker, 28 August 2017).
4 There is a melancholy joke about the many names the city went through in this era. In the joke, a KGB officer is interrogating an old refusenik. Where were you born? The old man answers, ‘St Petersburg.’ Where did you grow up? ‘Petrograd.’ So where do you live now? ‘Leningrad.’ And where would you like to die? The old man fixes his interlocutor with a stare. ‘St Petersburg.’
5 By coincidence, Polina was also on the Crimean Peninsula that winter, in Sevastopol. The two women would die within months of one another.
6 She and Fyodor had argued about wolfing bread before, in May 1867. Feeling sick, Anna had been eating bread with salt to try and calm her stomach. Fyodor told her that would only make her sicker; Anna said she didn’t think so. Fyodor started shrieking that she was a wicked woman, which Anna found hilarious. (Fyodor did eventually concede that his reaction was comical.) Anna Dostoevsky, Diary (1928) pp. 135–6.
Notes
1 See The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia, p. xvii, Grossman, p. ix, Sekirin, p. 288.
2 Letter to Katkov, 8 July 1866.
3 Kjetsaa, pp. 309–10; Catteau, p. 118.
4 Orest Miller, from Sekirin, p. 48. More recently, the scholar Kenneth Lantz has noted that Dostoevsky ‘exploited his biography for considerable literary power . . . Dostoevsky took considerable pains to let the aura of his life lend vibrancy to his art. The reader becomes aware of a region beyond the novel’s story where the work seems to extend into a penumbra of textuality.’ (A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, pp. 21–2)
5 ‘The Meek One’, from A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, November 1876, p. 677.
6 ‘The Meek One’, from A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, November 1876, p. 678.
7 Crime and Punishment, trans. Oliver Ready, p. 164.
8 The Karamazov Brothers, trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky, p. 4.
9 Letter to Mikhail, 22 December 1849.
10 ‘About F. M. Dostoevsky’ by Orest Miller, in The Dostoevsky Archive by Peter Sekirin (McFarland & Co., 1997), p. 94.
11 Lectures on Dostoevsky, p. 52.
12 Letter to Mikhail, 22 December 1849.
13 The Idiot, p. 53.
14 Letter to Mikhail, 22 December 1849.
15 The Idiot, p. 54.
16 The Idiot, p. 57.
17 The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Garnett, p. 806.
18 The Idiot, p. 57.
19 Letter to Mikhail, 22 December 1849.
20 The Insulted and Injured, p. 11.
21 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 30.
22 The Adolescent, p. 71.
23 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 130.
24 Similarly, in Devils, Stepan Trofimovich remembers of his son: ‘When he said his prayers going to bed he used to bow down to the ground, and make the sign of the cross on his pillow that he might not die in the night.’ (Devils, p. 90)
25 Poor Folk, p. 125.
26 ‘The Peasant Marey’, quoted in Notes from the Underground and Other Stories, trans. Garnett, pp. 638–40.
27 ‘The Peasant Marey’, p. 640.
28 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, April 1876, p. 438.
29 The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Garnett, p. 569.
30 Poor Folk, p. 29.
31 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 34.
32 Poor Folk, p. 29.
33 Poor Folk, p. 29.
34 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 158.
35 The Insulted and the Injured, p. 307.
36 The Adolescent, p. 219.
37 This line from the 1792 poem ‘Epitaph’ later appears in The Idiot, and also in a macabre short story, published in A Writer’s Diary, of decaying bodies chatting to each other in a waterlogged cemetery.
38 The Adolescent, p. 219.
39 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 144.
40 A Writer’s Diary, Volume One, 1873–1876, trans. Kenneth Lantz, pp. 326–9.
41 A Writer’s Diary, Volume One, pp. 326–9.
42 22 April 1847, Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings, ed. and trans. David Magarshack, 1963, p. 11.
43 Notes from the Underground, from Notes from the Underground and Other Stories, p. 458.
10 Fyodor could not yet grow a moustache.
44 11 May 1847, Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings, ed. and trans. David Magarshack, 1963, pp. 24–5.
11 Now Tallinn.
45 Poor Folk, 28 July and 5 August.
46 Frank, p. 47.
47 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 8.
48 These scant details compare unfavourably with the unusual arrangement between Totsky and the child Nastasya in The Idiot, pp. 36–9: ‘Totsky, like all gentlemen who have lived freely in their day, felt contemptuously how cheaply he had obtained this virginal soul.’
49 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 10.
50 ‘Petersburg Visions in Verse and Prose’, trans. Michael R. Katz, New England Review, 24:4 (2003), p. 101.
51 ‘Petersburg Visions in Verse and Prose’, p. 101.
52 Notes from the Underground, pp. 483–4.
53 ‘Petersburg Visions in Verse and Prose’, p. 102.
12 Notes from the Underground, p. 487. In a letter to Mikhail (22 December 1841), Dostoevsky complains about their younger brother, Andrei, staying with him: ‘Impossible to work or to amuse oneself – you understand.’ Later, he would write to Mikhail that ‘the Minnas, Klaras, Mariannas etc. have become much more beautiful but they cost a frightful lot of money. And the other day Turgenev and Belinsky scolded me for my irregular life.’ (16 November 1845)
54 Letter to Mikhail, 30 September 1844.
55 Letter to Mikhail, 24 March 1845.
56 ‘Petersburg Visions in Verse and Prose’, p. 103.
57 Letter to Mikhail, 30 September 1844.
58 The Insulted and Injured, p. 21.
59 Letter to Mikhail, 4 May 1845.
60 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, January 1877, pp. 840ff.
61 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, January 1877.
62 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, January 1877.
63 The Adolescent, p. 53.
64 Grossman, p. 64.
13 Dostoevsky credited himself with inventing a word for this: стушева́ться or stushevatsya. It means to be wiped off the face of the earth, ‘delicately, so to say, gradually, sinking imperceptibly into nothingness. It’s like a shadow on a pen-and-ink drawing that gradually shades from black ever more lightly until it’s reduced to whiteness.’ (A Writer’s Diary, November 1877, cf. The Unpublished Dostoevsky, Volume 2, p. 28)
65 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, January 1877.
66 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, January 1877.
67 Le
tter to Mikhail, 16 November 1845.
68 The work Turgenev read from was ‘A Novel in Nine Letters’. In letter six, one slighted character writes, ‘From the very beginning of our acquaintance you captivated me by your clever manners, by the subtlety of your behaviour, your knowledge of affairs and the advantages to be gained by association with you. I imagined I had found a true friend and well-wisher. Now I recognise clearly that there are many people who under a flattering and brilliant exterior hide venom in their hearts.’ In letter seven, the indignant reply contains a passing reference to Don Quixote. For Dostoevsky, life would often follow art.
69 Letter to Mikhail, 16 November 1845.
70 22 April 1847, Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings, ed. and trans. David Magarshack, 1963, pp. 13–14.
71 The Idiot, p. 224. They seem to have been sending up Cervantes’ Don Quixote via Pushkin’s poem ‘The Poor Knight’. Dostoevsky would spend a lifetime trying to turn this comparison to his advantage.
72 My version. For an alternative, full translation, see Marullo, p. 267.
73 Netochka Nezvanova, p. 21.
74 Frank, pp. 131–2.
75 The Insulted and Injured, pp. 46–7.
76 15 June 1847, Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings, p. 33.
77 ‘White Nights’, p. 239.
78 Grossman, p. 105.
79 Devils, p. 33.
80 Devils, p. 22.
81 Devils, pp. 41–2.
82 Crime and Punishment, p. 562.
83 Frank, p. 149.
84 Devils, p. 398.
85 Frank, p. 158.
86 Frank, p. 152.
87 Robert Payne, Dostoyevsky: A Human Portrait (Knopf, 1961), p. 63.
88 Crime and Punishment, p. 527.
89 Maikov’s recollection, quoted in Grossman, pp. 124–5.
90 Crime and Punishment, p. 456. When given a final chance to make a statement to the military court, he wrote: ‘I never acted with an evil and premeditated intention against the government – what I did was done thoughtlessly and almost accidentally’. Even after his prison term, in 1856, he writes to Maikov that it was ‘nothing but an accident’.
91 Frank, p. 183.
92 Sekirin, p. 108.
93 The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Garnett, p. 356.
94 Memoirs from the House of the Dead, trans. Jessie Coulson, 1956, p. 23, and The House of the Dead, trans. Constance Garnett, p. 22. I have used two translations for this chapter. The Russian word zapiski (записки) means notes or scribblings, the intention being that, like Notes from the Underground, these are incidental, discovered jottings by an imagined third party.
95 Frank, p. 191.
96 Frank, p. 191.
97 Garnett, p. 60, Coulson, p. 68.
98 Letter to Mikhail, 22 February 1854.
99 Garnett, p. 61, Coulson, p. 69.
100 Garnett, p. 70, Coulson, p. 78.
101 Garnett, p. 25, Coulson, p. 26.
102 Garnett, p. 14, Coulson, pp. 13–14.
103 Garnett, p. 10, Coulson, p. 9.
104 Garnett, p. 31, Coulson, p. 35.
105 Garnett, p. 34, Coulson, p. 38.
106 Garnett, p. 81, Coulson, p. 93.
107 Garnett, p. 87, Coulson, p. 99.
108 Garnett, p. 90, Coulson, p. 103.
109 Garnett, p. 92, Coulson, p. 106.
110 Garnett, pp. 94–5, Coulson, p. 109.
111 Garnett, p. 95, Coulson, p. 110.
112 Garnett, p. 23, Coulson, p. 24.
113 Garnett, p. 23, Coulson, p. 24.
114 Garnett, pp. 97–8, Coulson, pp. 112–13.
115 Garnett, p. 110, Coulson, p. 126.
116 Garnett, pp. 125–6, Coulson, p. 144.
117 Garnett, p. 126, Coulson, p. 145.
118 Garnett, p. 127, Coulson, p. 147.
119 Garnett, p. 99, Coulson, p. 113.
120 Garnett, p. 41, Coulson, p. 45.
121 Garnett, p. 45, Coulson, pp. 50–1.
122 ‘The Peasant Marey’, quoted in Notes from the Underground and Other Stories, trans. Garnett, pp. 638–40.
123 ‘The Peasant Marey’, p. 639.
124 Garnett, pp. 32–3, Coulson, p. 36, Frank, p. 192.
125 The Brothers Karamazov, p. 868.
126 Garnett, p. 171, Coulson, p. 199.
127 Garnett, p. 175, Coulson, p. 204.
128 Garnett, p. 177, Coulson, p. 207.
129 Garnett, p. 200, Coulson, p. 234.
130 Garnett, p. 201, Coulson, p. 236.
131 The Insulted and Injured, p. 249.
132 Garnett, p. 259, Coulson, p. 303.
133 Letter to Mikhail, 22 February 1854.
134 Garnett, p. 291, Coulson, p. 343.
135 Coulson, p. 266, Garnett, p. 228.
136 Garnett, p. 303, Coulson, p. 357.
137 Garnett, p. 304, Coulson, p. 357.
138 Letter to Natalia Fonvizina, 20 February 1854.
139 Garnett, p. 307, Coulson, p. 361.
140 Garnett, p. 307, Coulson, p. 361.
141 Quoted in Crime and Punishment, p. 393.
142 Letter to Mikhail, 22 February 1854.
143 Letter to Mikhail, 22 February 1854.
144 The Insulted and Injured, p. 1.
145 Letter to Natalia Fonvizina, 20 February 1854.
146 ‘Several Lost Letters of Dostoevsky’, in Sekirin, p. 115.
147 Letter to Mikhail, 13 January 1856.
148 Letter to Mikhail, 13 January 1856.
149 Letter to Natalia Fonvizina, 20 February 1854.
150 Letter to Mikhail, 13 January 1856.
151 Crime and Punishment, trans. Ready, p. 31.
152 Letter to Maria, 4 June 1855.
153 Grossman, p. 195, Sekirin, p. 125.
154 Crime and Punishment, p. 317.
155 Letter to Maria, 4 June 1855.
156 Letter to Maria, 4 June 1855.
157 Letter to Maikov, 18 January 1856.
158 Letter to Wrangel, 23 March 1856.
159 Letter to Wrangel, 23 March 1856.
160 Notes from the Underground, p. 459.
161 The Insulted and Injured, p. 30.
162 Letter to Wrangel, 14 July 1856.
163 Letter to Wrangel, 14 July 1856.
164 Letter to Wrangel, 14 July 1856.
165 Letter to Wrangel, 14 July 1856.
166 The Insulted and Injured, p. 39.
167 Letter to Wrangel, 14 July 1856.
168 Letter to Wrangel, 9 November 1856.
169 Crime and Punishment, trans. Ready, pp. 31–2.
170 The Idiot, pp. 203–4.
171 Devils, p. 610.
172 The Idiot, pp. 204. I have used a little poetic licence here: Strakhov describes this exact fit, with its feeling of exaltation, as occurring on Easter Eve 1863. (Catteau, p. 114)
173 Letter to Mikhail, 9 March 1857.
174 Letter to Mikhail, 9 March 1857.
175 Crime and Punishment, trans. Ready, pp. 22, 30–1.
176 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, September 1877, pp. 1,130.
177 Letter to Varvara Konstant, 30 November 1857.
178 Interestingly, in his Writer’s Diary of 1881, one of the last articles that he wrote, he repurposes his Columbus analogy to argue for Russia to turn away from Europe and towards Asia: ‘When we turn to Asia [it will be akin to] what happened to Europe when they discovered America. It’s true – Asia is our America, which we still haven’t discovered.’
179 The Insulted and Injured, p. 74.
180 The Insulted and Injured, p. 75.
181 The Insulted and Injured, p. 11.
182 Letter to Mikhail, 9 May 1859.
183 Letter to Artemy Geybovich, 23 October 1859.
184 Letter to Wrangel, 22 September 1859.
185 Sekirin, p. 143.
186 Devils, p. 106.
187 Crime and Punishment, trans. Ready, pp. 138–9.
188 Crime and Punishment, trans. Ready, pp. 139–40.
189 Letter to
Alexandra Shubert, 3 May 1860.
190 Time editorial, quoted in Grossman, p. 223.
191 The Idiot, p. 184.
192 Letter to Miliukov, 10 September 1860.
193 The Insulted and Injured, p. 284.
194 The Insulted and Injured, p. 311.
195 ‘Why was Dostoevsky not Published in the Prestigious Journals?’ by P. M. Kovalevsky, quoted in Sekirin, pp. 147–8.
196 Crime and Punishment, p. 311.
197 Devils, p. 307.
198 The Brothers Karamazov, p. 160.
199 Devils, p. 496.
200 Devils, p. 511.
201 Devils, p. 535.
202 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, p. 148.
203 A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, p. 149.
204 Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, p. 30.
205 Frank, p. 348.
206 Walter G. Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Anthem, 2002, p. 79.
207 Letter to Strakhov, 26 June (8 July) 1862.
208 Letter to Yakov Polonsky, 31 July 1861.
209 Letter to Strakhov, 26 June (8 July) 1862.
210 Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, p. 52.
211 Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, p. 54.
212 Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, p. 55.
213 Letter to Nikolai Dostoevsky, 16 (28) August 1863.
214 Polina’s diary, from The Gambler, trans. Victor Terras, pp. 205–6.
215 The Idiot, p. 386.
216 Polina’s diary, from The Gambler, p. 202.
217 Letter to Varvara Constant, 20 August (1 September) 1863.
218 Polina’s diary, from The Gambler, p. 211.
219 Grossman, pp. 285ff.
220 The Gambler, trans. Garnett, p. 8.
221 The Gambler, trans. Garnett, p. 48.
222 Polina’s diary, from The Gambler, p. 214.
223 The Gambler, trans. Terras, p. 23, trans. Garnett, p. 326.
224 Letter to Mikhail, 8 (20) September 1863.
225 Letter to Varvara Constant, 20 August (1 September) 1863.
226 The Idiot, p. 330.
227 Polina’s diary, from The Gambler, p. 217.
228 Frank, p. 394.
229 The Gambler, trans. Terras, pp. 142–3, trans. Garnett, p. 413.
Dostoevsky in Love Page 24