In the meantime I embrace you, and thank you from my heart. I need you, and must therefore love you.
Your truly devoted
F. DOSTOEVSKY.
LXXVII. To Doctor A. F. Blagonravov
PETERSBURG,
December 19, 1880.
HONOURED ALEXANDER FYODOROVITCH, I thank you for your letter. You judge very rightly when you opine that I hold all evil to be grounded upon disbelief, and maintain that he who abjures nationalism, abjures faith also. That applies especially to Russia, for with us national consciousness is based on Christianity. “A Christian peasant-people “believing Russia these are our fundamental conceptions. A Russian who abjures nationalism (and there are many such) is either an atheist or indifferent to religious questions.
And the converse: an atheist or indifferentist cannot possibly understand the Russian people and Russian nationalism. The essential problem of our day is: How are we to persuade our educated classes of this principle? If one but utters a word in such a sense, one will either be devoured alive, or denounced as a traitor.
And whom shall one have betrayed? Truly, naught but a party which has lost touch with reality, and for which not even a label can be found, for they know not themselves what to call themselves. Or is it the people whom one shall have betrayed? No; for I desire with the people to abide, for only from the people is anything worth while to be looked for — not from the educated class, which abjures the people, and is not even “educated.”
But a new generation is on the way, which will desire union with the people. The first sign of true fellowship with the people is veneration and love for that which the great mass of the people loves and venerates — that is to say, for its God and its faith.
This new Russian intelligence is beginning, as it seems to me, to lift its head, and precisely now is its co-operation in the common task essential; and this it is coming, itself, to perceive.
Because I preach faith in God and in the people, the gentry here would like to sec me disappear from the face of the earth. Because of that chapter in the “Karamazovs” (of the hallucination) with which you, as a physician, are so pleased, it has already been sought to stamp me as a reactionary and fanatic, who has come to believe in the Devil.
The gentlemen here, in their simplicity, imagine that the public will cry out with one voice: “What? Dostoevsky has begun to write about the Devil now, has he? How obsolete and borne he is!” But I believe that they will find themselves mistaken. I thank you for having, as a physician, attested for me the authenticity of my description of the psychical sickness of my hero.
The opinion of one who is an expert in the matter is very valuable to me; you will, I doubt not, allow that Ivan Karamazov, in the given circumstances, could have had no different hallucination. I mean to give, in the very next number of the Diary, some of the critical pronouncements on that particular chapter.
With the assurance of my sincere respect, I remain Yours most faithfully,
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.
Recollections of Dostoevsky by his Friends
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF D. V. GRIGOROVITCH
1837 — 1846
IT is a mystery to me to this day how I, innately the most extraordinarily nervous and timid of boys, ever got through my first year in the College of Engineering, where one’s comrade were far more ruthless and cruel even than one’s teachers.
Amongst the young men who were admitted to the College after I had been there about a year, was a youth of some seventeen summers, of middle height, full figure, blond hair, and sickly, pale countenance. This youth was Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky. He had come from Moscow to Petersburg with his elder brother Michael. The latter did not enter the College, but joined the Corps of Sappers, and was later sent to Reval on his promotion to commissioned rank. Many years later Michael Dostoevsky took his discharge, and returned to Petersburg. There he started a cigarette manufactory, but at the same time busied himself in literature, translated Goethe, wrote a comedy, and, after Fyodor’s return from banishment, became editor of the Epoch.
I made friends with Fyodor Dostoevsky the very first day that he entered the College. It’s half-a-century ago now, but I can well remember how much more I cared for him than for any of the other friends of my youth. Despite his reticent nature and general lack of frankness and youthful expansion, he appeared to reciprocate my affection. Dostoevsky always held himself aloof, even then, from others, never took part in his comrades’ amusements, and usually sat in a remote corner with a book; his favourite place was a corner in Class-Room IV. by the window. Out of school-hours, he nearly always sat with a book by that window.
I had, as a boy, a pliant character, and was easily influenced; thus my relations with Dostoevsky were those of not merely attachment, but absolute subjection. His influence was extraordinarily beneficial to me. Dostoevsky was much more advanced in all knowledge than I was, and the extent of his reading amazed me. The many things he told me about the works of writers, whose very names to me were unknown, came as a revelation. Hitherto I had, like the rest of my colleagues, read nothing but textbooks and abstracts of lectures; not only because other books were forbidden in the College, but from lack of interest in literature.
The first Russian books with which I made acquaintance I got from Dostoevsky; they were a translation of Hoffmann’s “Kater Murr” and “The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” by Maturin [SIC]; the latter was especially prized by Dostoevsky. His literary influence was not confined to me alone; three of my colleagues came equally under his spell — Beketov, Vitkovsky, and Berechetzky; in this way a little circle was formed, which gathered round Dostoevsky in every leisure hour.
This reading, and the interchange of ideas which it brought about, took from me all inclination for my studies. Nor did Dostoevsky rank among the best pupils. Before the examinations he always made the most tremendous efforts, so as to get into a higher class. But he did not invariably succeed; in one examination he failed entirely, and was unpromoted. This failure worried him so much that he fell ill, and had to go to hospital for a while.
In 1844 or’45 I met him quite by chance in the street; he had then completed his studies, and had exchanged military uniform for civilian dress. I clasped him in my arms with cries of joy. Even Dostoevsky seemed glad, but behaved with some reticence. He never was, indeed, given to public displays of emotion. My delight at this unexpected meeting was so great and genuine that it never even occurred to me to feel hurt by his cool behaviour.
I told him about all my acquaintances in literary circles, about my own literary attempts, and at once invited him to come to my abode and hear my latest production. He willingly agreed.
When I had read him my story he seemed pleased with it, but gave me no very extravagant praise; with one passage he found fault. This was how it ran:
“When the organ stopped, an official threw a copper coin out of his window, which fell at the organ-grinder’s feet.”
“No, that’s not right,” said Dostoevsky, “it is much too dull: ‘The copper coin fell at the organ-grinder’s feet.’ You should say, ‘The copper coin fell clinking and hopping at the man’s feet’”… That remark struck me as a revelation.
As time went on, I saw more and more of Dostoevsky. At last we decided to set up house together. My mother sent me fifty roubles a month, Dostoevsky got nearly as much from his relatives in Moscow.
As things were then, a hundred roubles was quite enough for two young fellows; but we did not understand housekeeping, and the money usually lasted us only for the first fortnight; for the rest of the month we fared on rolls and coffee. The house we lived in was at the corner of Vladimir and Grafen Streets; it consisted of a kitchen and two rooms, whose three windows looked out on Grafen Street. We had no servants; we made our own tea, and bought all food ourselves.
When we set up house, Dostoevsky was working at the translation of Balzac’s “Eugénie Grandet.” Balzac was our favourite writer; we both considered him by far the most important of the French authors. Dostoevsky succeeded, I know not how, in publishing his translation in the Book-Lovers’ Library, I can still recollect how vexed Dostoevsky was when that number of the magazine reached him — the editor had shortened the novel by a third. But that was what Senkovsky, then the editor of the Library, always did with his collaborators’ works, and the authors were so glad to see themselves in print that they never protested.
My enthusiasm for Dostoevsky was the reason why Bielinsky, to whom Nekrassov introduced me, made quite a different impression upon me from what I had expected. Properly tutored by Nekrassov, I regarded the impending visit to Bielinsky as a great joy; long beforehand
