I shall most decidedly return, even if it is to be put in jail. I should like just to finish the work that I am doing for the Roussky Viestnik, so that I might be left in peace. And yet, as things are, I can’t, in any case, get done before Christmas. The first long half of the work I shall deliver to the office in six weeks. and get a little money. The second half I shall send at the beginning of the winter, and the third — in February.
Printing will have to begin in this coming January. I am afraid that they will simply send back my novel. I shall tell them from the very first that I don’t intend to alter or take out anything in the book. The idea of this novel seemed to me most attractive at first, but now I am sorry that I ever began it. Not that it does not still interest me, but I should prefer to write something else.
As often as I write to you, I feel what a long space of time divides us from one another. And by-the-bye, there’s another thing: I have the most fervent desire to take, before my return to Russia, a trip to the East — that is, to Constantinople, Athens, the Archipelago, Syria, Jerusalem, and Athos. This trip would cost at least 1,500 roubles. But the expenses would not signify: I could cover them all by writing a book, about the visit to Jerusalem; I know by experience that such books are very popular nowadays.
But for the moment I have neither the time nor the means; and yesterday I read, in an extra-edition, that at any moment there may be war between France and Prussia. So much combustible material has accumulated everywhere, that the war, so soon as it begins, must assume formidable dimensions. God grant that Russia may not be mixed up in any of the European entanglements; we have enough to do at home.
I love you and yours beyond all bounds, and I hope you will believe that. Love me also a little. I do not wish to die on German soil; I want before my death to return home, and there die.
My wife and Lyuba send kisses. It is very hot here with us, and yesterday, after a long respite, I had an attack again. To-day my head is quite muddled; I feel as if I were crazy.
Till the next time, my dears — forget me not.
I embrace and kiss you.
Your FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.
P.S. — If I get no answer to this letter, I shall conclude that it has not reached you. My address is: Allemagne, Saxe, Dresden, à M. Théodore Dostoevsky, Post restante.
LIX. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
Dresden,
August 17 [29], 1870.
MY DEAR FRIEND SONETCHKA, Forgive me for not having at once answered on receiving your letter of August 3 (I got your short letter of July 28 also). I have, often, so many anxieties and disagreeables that I have not the energy to begin anything, least of all a letter. Only my work has to be done in any condition of mind — and I do it; but there are times when I am not equal even to that, and then I abandon all. My life is not an easy one.
This time I want to write to you about my situation: to be sure I don’t like letter-writing, for I find it hard, after so many years of separation, to write of things that are of consequence to me, and especially to write in such a way that you will understand me. Lively letters one can write only to those with whom one has no relations of affection.
The most important thing is that now Ï must return to Russia. That idea is simple enough; but I couldn’t possibly describe to you in full detail all the torments and disadvantages that I have to endure in these foreign lands; of the moral torments (the longing for home, the necessity of being in touch with Russian life which as a writer is essential to me, etc.), I won’t at all speak. How unbearable are the anxieties about my family alone! I see clearly how Anya longs for home, and how terribly she languishes here. At home, too, I could earn much more money; here we are absolutely impoverished. We have just enough to live on, it is true; but we cannot keep a nursemaid.
A nursemaid here requires a room to herself, her washing, and high wages, three meals a day, and a certain amount of beer (of course only from foreigners). Anya is nursing the baby, and never gets a full night’s rest. She has no amusements of any kind, and usually not one moment to herself. Also her state of health leaves something to be desired. Why do I tell you all this, though? There are hundreds of similar little troubles, and together they make up a heavy burden.
How gladly, for example, would I go to Petersburg this autumn with my wife and child (as I pictured to myself early in the year); but to get away from here and travel to Russia I must have not less than 2,000 roubles; nor am I therein reckoning my debts — I need so much as that for the journey alone. Oh yes! I can see you shrugging your shoulders and asking: “Why so much? What is the good of this exaggeration?” Do, my dear, for Heaven’s sake, get out of your habit of judging other people’s affairs without knowing all the circumstances. Two thousand roubles are absolutely necessary to do the journey, and to instal ourselves in Petersburg. You may believe me when I say it.
Where am I to get hold of the money? And now we must be getting the child weaned, and vaccinated too. Only think what a fresh crop of cares for Anya, who is already run-down and feeble. I have to look on at it all, and am nearly driven out of my senses. And if I do get the money for the journey in three months, the winter will just be upon us, and one can’t drag an infant over a thousand versts in frosty weather. Consequently we shall have to wait till early spring. And shall we even then have money?
You must know that we can scarcely manage on our income here, and have to go into debt for half we need. But enough of that. I want to talk of other things now, though they’re all connected with the principal subject.
I forget whether I’ve written to you about my difficulties with the Roussky Viestnik; the fact is that at the end of last year I published a story in the Sarya, while I still had to work off an advance from the Roussky Viestnik; it was a year since I had promised them the work. Did I tell you how it came about? How my novel got unexpectedly long, and how I suddenly perceived that there was no time to get anything written by the beginning of the year for the Roussky Viestnik?
They made me no reply about the matter, but ceased to send money. At the beginning of this year I wrote to Katkov that I would deliver the novel chapter by chapter from June, so that they could print at the end of the year. Then I worked at the utmost limit of my energy and my powers; I knew that if I were to break off my literary connection with the Roussky Viestnik, I should have no means of livelihood here abroad (for it is very difficult to enter into fresh relations with another journal from a distance).
And besides I was frightfully distressed by the thought that they were calling me a rogue at the office, when they had always treated me so extraordinarily well. The novel at which I was working was very big, very original, but the idea was a little new to me. I needed great self-confidence to get equal with that idea — and as a matter of fact. I did not get equal with it, and the book went wrong.
I pushed on slowly, feeling that there was something amiss with the whole thing, but unable to discover what it was. In July, directly after my last letter to you, I had a whole succession of epileptic fits (they recurred every week). I was so reduced by them that for a whole month I dared not even think of working; work might have been actually dangerous to me. And when, a fortnight ago, I set to again, I suddenly saw quite clearly why the book had gone so ill, and where the error lay; as if possessed by sudden inspiration, I saw in an instant a quite new plan for the book. I had to alter the whole thing radically; without much hesitation I struck out all that I had written up to that time (about fifteen sheets in all), and began again at the first page. The labour of a whole year was destroyed.
If you only knew, Sonetchka, how grievous it is to be a writer — that is, to bear a writer’s lot! Do you know that I am absolutely aware that if I could have spent two or three years at that book — as Turgenev, Gontscharov, and Tolstoy can — I could have produced
