Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (863 page)

I can’t possibly tell you
all
my thoughts. I collected many impressions. I read Russian newspapers and solaced myself thus. I felt eventually that so many new ideas had been garnered up that I could write a long article on Russia’s relations to Western Europe, and on the upper classes of Russian society. I should, indeed, have had plenty to say! The Germans got on my nerves; and our Russian way of living, the life of the upper classes, the faith in Europe and
civilization
in which those upper classes are steeped — all that got on my nerves also. The incident in Paris upset me frightfully. Impressive, weren’t they? the Paris lawyers who cried “Vive la Pologne!” Faugh, how nauseous, how stupid, how insipid! I felt more than ever confirmed in my view that it is rather advantageous for us that Europe does not know us in the least, and has such a disgusting idea of us.

And then the details of the proceedings against Beresovsky! How ugly, how empty; I can’t imagine how they can ever recover from such twaddle, and get on to the next point!

Russia, seen from here, looks to a Russian much more plastic. On the one hand is the rare fact that our people have shown such unexpected independence and maturity in the initiation of reforms (as, for example, the judicial ones); on the other there is that news of the flogging of a merchant of the first guild in the Orenburg Government by the Chief of Police. One thing is clear: that the Russian people, thanks to its benefactor and his reforms, is at last in such a situation that it must of necessity accustom itself to affairs and self-criticism; and that’s the principal thing. By God, our age, in regard to reforms and changes, is almost as important as that of Peter the Great. How goes it with the railways? We must get down as quickly as possible to the south; this is tremendously important. Before then, we must have
equitable tribunals everywhere
; how great will be the transformation! (I, over here, keep thinking of all these things, and my heart beats fast). I see hardly anyone here; it is quite impossible, though, not to come across somebody or other. In Germany I met a Russian who always lives abroad; he goes to Russia for about three weeks each year, and then returns to Germany, where he has a wife and family; they have all become German through and through. Among other things I asked him: “Why actually did you leave home?” He answered me hotly and curtly: “Because here is civilization, and with us is barbarism.” This gentleman belongs to the Young Progressives, but seems to keep himself aloof from them all to some extent. What snarling, peevish curs all these absentees do become!

At last, Anna Grigorovna and I could no longer bear our home-sickness in Dresden.... We decided to spend the winter somewhere in Switzerland or Italy. But we had no money at all. What we had brought with us was all spent. I wrote to Katkov, described my situation, and begged him for a further
advance
of 500 roubles. And what do you think: he sent me the money! What an excellent fellow he is! So we came to Switzerland. Now I am going to confess to you my baseness and my shame.

My dear Apollon Nikolayevitch, I feel that I may regard you as my judge. You have heart and feeling, as I have always, and of late freshly, been convinced; and therefore I have ever prized your judgment highly. I don’t suffer in confessing my sins to you. What I write you to-day is meant for you alone. Deliver me not to the judgment of the mob.

When I was travelling in the neighbourhood of Baden-Baden, I decided to turn aside and visit the place. I was tortured by a seductive thought: 10 louis-d’or to risk, and perhaps 2,000 francs to win; such a sum would suffice me for four months, even with the expenses that I have in Petersburg. The vile part of it is that in earlier years I
had
occasionally won. But the
worst
is that I have an evil and exaggeratedly passionate nature. In all things I go to the uttermost extreme; my life long I have never been acquainted with moderation.

The devil played his games with me at the beginning; in three days I won, unusually easily, 4,000 francs. Now I’ll show you how I worked matters out: on the one hand, this easy gain — from 100 francs I had in three days made 4,000 — ; on the other, my debts, my summonses, my heartfelt anxiety and the impossibility of getting back to Russia; in the third place, and this is the principal point, the play itself. If you only knew how it draws one on! No — I swear to you it was not the love of winning alone, though I actually needed the money for the money’s sake. Anna Grigorovna implored me to be contented with the 4,000 francs, and depart at once. But that easy and probable possibility of bettering my situation at one blow! And the many examples! Apart from my own gains, I saw every day how the other gamblers won from 20,000 to 30,00 francs (one never sees anyone lose). Why should those others do better than I? I need the money more than they do. I risked again, and lost. I lost not only what I had won, but also my own money down to the last farthing; I got feverishly excited, and lost all the time. Then I began to pawn my garments. Anna Grigorovna pawned her last, her very last, possession. (That angel! How she consoled me, how she suffered in that cursed Baden, in our two tiny rooms above the blacksmith’s forge, the only place we could afford!) At last I had had enough; everything was gone. (How base are these Germans! They are all usurers, rascals, and cheats! When our landlady saw that we could not leave, having no money, she raised our prices!) At last we had to save ourselves somehow and flee from Baden. I wrote again to Katkov and begged him for 500 roubles (I wrote nothing of the circumstances, but as the letter came from Baden, he probably guessed the state of affairs). And he sent me the money! He did really! So now I have had altogether from the
Roussky Viestnik
4,000 roubles in advance.

Now to end my Baden adventures: we agonized in that hell for seven weeks. Directly after my arrival there, I met Gontscharov at the railway-station. At first Ivan Alexandrovitch was cautious before me. That State-Councillor — or State-Councillor that ought-to-be — was also occupied in gambling. But when he realized that it could not be kept a secret, and as I myself was playing with gross publicity, he soon ceased to pretend to me. He played with feverish excitement (though only for small stakes). He played during the whole fortnight that he spent in Baden, and lost, I think, quite a good deal. But God give this good fellow health; when I had lost everything (he had, however, seen me with large sums in my hands), he gave me, at my request, 60 francs. Certainly he lectured me terribly at the same time, because I had lost all, and not only half, like him!

Gontscharov talked incessantly about Turgenev; I kept putting off my visit to him — still, eventually I had to call. I went about noon, and found him at breakfast. I’ll tell you frankly — I never really liked that man. The worst of it is that since 1857, at Wiesbaden, I’ve owed him 50 dollars (which even to-day I haven’t yet paid back!). I can’t stand the aristocratic and Pharisaical sort of way he embraces one, and offers his cheek to be kissed. He puts on monstrous airs; but my bitterest complaint against him is his book “Smoke.” He told me himself that the leading idea, the point at issue, in that book, is this: “If Russia were destroyed by an earthquake and vanished from the globe, it would mean no loss to humanity — it would not even be noticed.” He declared to me that that was his fundamental view of Russia. I found him in irritable mood; it was on account of the failure of “Smoke.” I must tell you that at the time the full details of that failure were unknown to me. I
had
heard by letter of Strachov’s article in the
O. Z.,
but I didn’t know that they had torn him to pieces in all the other papers as well, and that in Moscow, at a club, I believe, people had collected signatures to a protest against “Smoke.” He told me that himself. Frankly, I never could have imagined that anyone could so naïvely and clumsily display all the wounds in his vanity, as Turgenev did that day; and these people go about boasting that they are atheists. He told me that he was an uncompromising atheist. My God! It is to Deism that we owe the Saviour — that is to say, the conception of a man so noble that one cannot grasp it without a sense of awe — a conception of which one cannot doubt that it represents the undying ideal of mankind. And what do we owe to these gentry — Turgenev, Herzen, Utin, Tchernychevsky? In place of that loftiest divine beauty on which they spit, we behold in them such ugly vanity, such unashamed susceptibility, such ludicrous arrogance, that it is simply impossible to guess what it is that they hope for, and who shall take them as guides. He frightfully abused Russia and the Russians. But I have noticed this: all those Liberals and Progressives who derive chiefly from Bielinsky’s school, find their pleasure and satisfaction in abusing Russia. The difference is that the adherents of Tchernychevsky merely abuse, and in so many words desire that Russia should disappear from the face of the earth
(that,
first of all!). But the others declare, in the same breath, that
they love Russia.
And yet they hate everything that is native to the soil, they delight in caricaturing it, and were one to oppose them with some fact that they could not explain away or caricature — any fact with which they were obliged to reckon — they would, I believe, be profoundly unhappy, annoyed, even distraught. And I’ve noticed that Turgenev — and for that matter all who live long abroad — have no conception of the true facts (though they do read the newspapers), and have so utterly lost all affection and understanding for Russia that even those quite ordinary matters which in Russia the very Nihilists no longer deny, but only as it were caricature after their manner
— these
fellows cannot so much as grasp. Amongst other things he told me that we are bound to crawl in„the dust before the Germans, that there is but one universal and irrefutable way — that of civilization, and that all attempts to create an independent Russian culture are but folly and pigheadedness. He said that he was writing a long article against the Russophils and Slavophils. I advised him to order a telescope from Paris for his better convenience. “What do you mean?” he asked. “The distance is somewhat great,” I replied; “direct the telescope on Russia, and then you will be able to observe us; otherwise you can’t really see anything at all.” He flew into a rage. When I saw him so angry, I said with well-simulated naïveté: “Really I should never have supposed that all the articles derogatory to your new novel could have discomposed you to this extent; by God, the thing’s not worth getting so angry about. Come, spit upon it all!”

“I’m not in the least discomposed. What are you thinking of?” he answered, getting red.

I interrupted him, and turned the talk to personal and domestic matters. Before going away, I brought forth, as if quite casually and without any particular object, all the hatred that these three months have accumulated in me against the Germans. “Do you know what swindlers and rogues they are here? Verily, the common people are much more evil and dishonest here than they are with us; and that they are stupider there can be no doubt. You are always talking of civilization; with what has your ‘civilization’ endowed the Germans, and wherein do they surpass us?” He turned pale (it is no exaggeration), and said: “In speaking thus, you insult me personally. You know quite well that I have definitely settled here, that I consider myself a German and not a Russian, and am proud of it.” I answered: “Although I have read your ‘Smoke,’ and have just talked with you for a whole hour, I could never have imagined that you would say such a thing. Forgive me, therefore, if I
have
insulted you.”

Then we took leave of one another very politely, and I promised myself that I would never again cross Turgenev’s threshold. The next day, Turgenev came at exactly ten o’clock in the morning to my abode, and left his card with the landlady. But as I had told him the day before that I never saw anyone till noon, and that we usually slept till eleven, I naturally took his ten-o’clock call as a hint that he doesn’t wish to see any more of me. During the whole seven weeks, I saw him only once more, at the railway-station. We looked at one anothér, but no greeting passed. The animosity with which I speak of Turgenev, and the insults we offered one another, will perhaps strike you unpleasantly. But, by God, I can no other; he offended me too deeply with his amazing views. Personally, I really feel little affected, though his uppish manners are quite disagreeable enough in themselves;-but I simply can’t stand by and listen when a traitor who, if he chose, could be of service to his country, abuses Russia in the way he does. His tail-wagging to the Germans, and his hatred for the Russians, I had noticed already — four years ago. But his present rage and fury against Russia arises solely,
solely,
from the failure of “Smoke,” and from the fact that Russia has dared refuse to hail him as a genius. It is nothing but vanity, and therefore all the more repulsive.

Hear now, my friend, what I have in view. Of course it was vile in me to gamble away so much. But I have lost a relatively small sum of my own actual money. Still, it would have lasted us for two months — in our present mode of living, even for four.

I have already told you that I can’t resist winning. If, right at the beginning, I had lost the ten louis-d’or that I chose to stake, I should certainly have played no more, and gone away at once. But the gain of 4,000 francs destroyed me. The temptation of winning more (which appeared so easy) and in that way paying all my debts, and being able to provide for myself and mine — Emilie Fyodorovna, Pasha, and the others... it was too much for me, I could not resist it. But even this is no excuse, for I was not alone. I had with me a young, warmhearted, pretty creature who trusted me, whom I should have protected and sheltered, and whom consequently I ought not to have dragged down with myself to destitution,.by setting my entire, though certainly not very great, possessions upon the turn of a game. My future appears to me very dark; above all, I cannot, for the reasons I have mentioned, return to Russia; and most heavily am I oppressed by the question: What is to become of those who depend on my help? All these thoughts murder me....