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 remain 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;
