As I am now purposing to write a very big novel, I must devote myself most especially to the study of actuality: I don’t mean actuality in the literal sense, for I am fairly well versed in that, but certain peculiarities of the present moment. And in this present moment the younger generation particularly interests me, and, as akin to it, the question of Russian family-life, which, to my thinking, is to-day quite a different thing from what it was twenty years ago. Also many other questions of the moment interest me.
At fifty-three, I might easily, were I to slacken at all in this respect, fail to keep pace with the growing generation. Lately I had a chance encounter with Gontscharov, and I asked him whether all the phenomena of the present moment were comprehensible to him; he answered quite frankly that there was much he could not understand at all. (N.B. — This between ourselves.) Of course, I know that Gontscharov, with his remarkable intelligence, not only understands it all, but is competent to instruct the instructors of the day; but in the peculiar sense in which I put the question (and which he at once understood) he does not even desire to grasp these phenomena.
“My ideals, and all that I have prized in life, are far too dear to me,” he added; “and for the few years that I have yet to live, I mean to abide by them; it would go too hard with me to study these gentry” (he pointed to the crowd that was flowing past us), “for I should be obliged to use up in so doing the time which is so precious to me….”
I don’t know if you’ll understand me, revered Christina Danilovna: I greatly desire to write something more, and to do so with complete knowledge of my subject; for that reason I shall study a while longer and put down my impressions in the Diary of a Writer, so that nothing may be wasted. Of course it’s merely an ideal to which I aspire! You won’t believe me at all, I daresay, when I declare that I haven’t yet discovered the right form for the Diary, and don’t know in the least if I shall ever really succeed in discovering it; the Diary might perfectly well run for two years longer, and yet be a complete failure as a piece of work.
For example, imagine this: when I set to work, I always have from ten to fifteen themes available; but those themes which strike me as particularly interesting, I always save up for another time; if I make use of them at once, they take up too much of my space, they demand my whole energy (as, for example, in the case of Kroneberg), and the number turns out a bad one — and so forth. Therefore I write of things that are not at all so near to me.
On the other hand, the idea of making it a genuine Diary was really naïve in me. A genuine Diary is almost impossible; it can only be a work cut about to suit the public taste. Every minute I come upon facts, receive impressions, that often carry me away — but there are some things about which one can’t possibly write….
The day before yesterday, early, there come to me quite unexpectedly two young girls, both about twenty years old. They come and say: “We have long wanted to make your acquaintance. Everyone laughed at us, and declared that you would not receive us, and that even if you did, you would not care to talk with us. But we determined to make the attempt, and so here we are. Our names are so-and-so.” They were first received by my wife. I came out later.
They told me that they were students at the Academy of Medicine, that there were at that Academy as many as five hundred women-students, and that they had entered there “to obtain higher education, so as later to be able to do useful work.” I had never before seen girls of that sort (of the earlier Nihilists I know a number, and have studied them thoroughly). Believe me, I have seldom passed my time so agreeably as in the company of those two girls, who remained with me a couple of hours.
Such wonderful spontaneity, such freshness of feeling, such purity of heart and mind, such grave sincerity, and such sincere mirth! Through them I came, later, to know many such girls, and must confess that the impression they made on me was powerful and pleasant. But how am I to describe all that? Despite my sincerity, and the delight with which I regard these young people, I cannot possibly do it. The impression was of almost too personal a nature. But then, what impressions am I to put down in my Diary?
Or another instance: yesterday I heard the following story: A young man, a student at an institution which I do not wish to name (I happened to make his acquaintance), is visiting friends, goes accidentally into the tutor’s room, and sees a forbidden book lying on the table; he instantly tells the master of the house, and the tutor is instantly dismissed. When, in another household, someone told this young man that he had been guilty of a base action, he could not in the least see it. There you have the reverse of the medal. But how am I to write about that? The thing is in one way of a purely personal nature; and yet the processes of reflection, and the temper, of that young man who cannot at all perceive the baseness of his action, about which I should have much of interest to say, are typical wholly, and not personal at all.
But I have written too much about all this. The truth is, I find it terribly difficult to write letters; I have no talent for it. Forgive me, also, for the bad handwriting; I have a headache, it is la grippe — my eyes have been paining me all day, and I write this almost without seeing my characters.
LXVII. To Vsevolod Solovyov
EMS,
July, 1876.
On my departure I left several quite personal and even pressing affairs unattended to. But here, at this tedious spa, your letter has literally refreshed me and gone straight to my heart; I was already feeling much troubled — I don’t myself know why it should be so, but every time I come to Ems, I undergo a mood of tormenting, wholly groundless, more or less hypochondriacal, depression. Whether it arises from my isolation in the crowd of 8,000 “patients,” or from the climate of this place, I can’t decide; but I am always in a worse state here than almost anybody else is. You write that you must speak with me, and how dearly I should like to see you!
The June number of the Diary pleased you, then.
I am glad of that, and for a special reason. I had never yet permitted myself to follow my profoundest convictions to their ultimate consequences in my public writing — had never said my very last word. A very intelligent correspondent in the provinces once, indeed, reproached me for opening up so many important questions in my Diary, yet never thoroughly discussing them; he encouraged me, and urged me to be more daring. So I decided that I would for once say the last word on one of my convictions — that of Russia’s part and destiny among the nations — and I proclaimed that my various anticipations would not only be fulfilled in the immediate future, but were already partly realized.
And then there happened precisely what I had expected: even those newspapers and magazines which are friendly to me raised an outcry, saying that my whole article was hopelessly paradoxical; while the others bestowed not the smallest attention on it — and here am I, who believe that I have opened up the most important of all questions! That’s what happens when one attempts to carry an idea to its issue!
One may set up any paradox one likes, and so long as one doesn’t carry it to its ultimate conclusion, everyone will think it most subtle, witty, comme il faut; but once blurt out the last word, and quite frankly (not by implication) declare: “This is the Messiah!” why, nobody will believe in you any more — for it was so silly of you to push your idea to its ultimate conclusion! If many a famous wit, such as Voltaire, had resolved for once to rout all hints, allusions, and esotericisms by force of his genuine beliefs, to show the real Himself, he would quite certainly not have had a tithe of the success he enjoyed. He would merely have been laughed at. For man instinctively avoids saying his last word; he has a prejudice against “thoughts said.”
“Once said, the thought turns lie!”
Now you can judge for yourself how precious to me are your friendly expressions about the June number. For you have understood my words and taken them exactly as I thought them myself. I thank you for that; for I was already a little disillusioned, and was reproving myself for my precipitancy. If there are but a few members of the public who understand me as you do, I have done what I aimed at doing, and am content — my words have not been in vain…. But the rest at once proclaimed with cries
