Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (868 page)

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; he had read your article, beyond doubt. What you say in the passage referring to the battle of Borodino, expresses the profoundest essence of the Tolstoyan idea, and of your own reflections thereon. I don’t think you could possibly have spoken with more lucidity. The national Russian idea stands almost nakedly forth in that passage. Precisely
it
is what people have failed to comprehend, and therefore have designated as fatalism. As regards other details of the article, I must await the sequel (which I haven’t yet received). At any rate your thoughts are lucid, logical, definitely conceived, and most admirably expressed. Certain details, though, I don’t entirely agree in. We could treat these questions quite otherwise, were we talking to one another, instead of writing. In any case, I regard you as the only representative of our criticism with whom the future will reckon....

I thank you, my kind and much-esteemed Nikolay Nikolayevitch, for the great interest that you show in me. My health is as satisfactory as hitherto, and the attacks are even less violent than in Petersburg. Lately (that is, till about six weeks ago), I have been much occupied with the end of my “Idiot.” Do write and give me the opinion you promised on the book; I await it eagerly. I have my own idea about art, and it is this: What most people regard as fantastic and lacking in universality,
I
hold to be the inmost essence of truth. Arid observation of everyday trivialities I have long ceased to regard as realism — it is quite the reverse. In any newspaper one takes up, one comes across reports of wholly authentic facts, which nevertheless strike one as extraordinary. Our writers regard them as fantastic, and take no account of them; and yet they are the truth, for they are facts. But who troubles to observe, record, describe, them? They happen every day and every moment, therefore they are not “exceptional.”...

The Russians are often unjustly reproached with beginning all sorts of things, making great plans — but never carrying out even the most trivial of them.

This view is obsolete and shallow, and false besides. It is a slander on the Russian national character; and even in Bielinsky’s time it was prevalent. How paltry and petty is such a way of driving home actualities! Always the same old story! In this way, we shall let all true actuality slip through our fingers. And who will really delineate the facts, will steep himself in them? Of Turgenev’s novel I don’t wish even to speak; the devil knows what it may mean! But is not my fantastic “Idiot” the very dailiest truth? Precisely such characters
must
exist in those strata of our society which have divorced themselves from the soil — which actually are becoming fantastic. But I’ll talk of it no more! In my book much was written in haste, much is too drawn-out, much has miscarried; but much, too, is extremely good. I am not defending the novel, but the idea. Do tell me your view of it; and, of course, quite frankly. The more you find fault with me, the higher shall I rate your honest....

XLVIII. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna

FLORENCE,
March
8 [20], 1869.

You have, as I begged you, answered all my letters regularly by return, my dear and precious friend Sonetchka. But I have broken my word, and made you wait more than a fortnight for my answers. This time I can’t even excuse myself by pressure of work, for all my jobs have long been ready and delivered. I can explain my silence only by the depressed state of mind in which I have been.

The
Roussky Viestnik
did not answer my request for money for
seven weeks
(so that I had to wait through all Lent); only to-day have I received the money, though I had depicted my desperate situation to the people there more than two months ago. They write with
many
apologies, that they have not been able to send me the money any sooner, because as always at the beginning of the year, they were confronted with a terrible lot of work that could not be postponed, and with the accounts. And it is a fact that about New Year one never can get anything out of them; it was wont to be so in earlier days, and I can still remember how in the years 1866 and 1867 they made me wait whole months for an answer, just as now. So we’ve had anything but an easy time of it — we were even in actual distress. If we had not been able to borrow two hundred francs from an acquaintance, and to get a further hundred from other sources, we might easily have died of hunger in this foreign town. But what worried us most was the constant suspense and uncertainty. In such circumstances, I could not possibly write to anyone, not even you, my dear. Evidently the staff, as I gather from their letter, wish to retain me as a contributor; otherwise they would not have granted me a further advance. Indeed I can’t complain of Katkov, and am even grateful to him for the many advances he has made me. Journals are impoverished nowadays, and don’t usually give any advances; but in the very beginning, before I even began to write the novel, I had 4,0 — roubles from these people. For that reason I must not be either angry or disloyal.... I must strive even harder than hitherto to make myself useful to them. You write that people declare the magazine has lost ground. Is that really possible? I can’t at all believe it; of course not because
I
am a contributor, but because the paper is, in my opinion, the best in Russia, and strikes a really consistent note. To be sure, it is a little dry; and the literary side is not always up to the mark (but not oftener than in the other magazines; all the best works of modern literature have appeared therein: “War and Peace,”

“Fathers and Sons,” etc., to say nothing of more distant years; and the public knows that well); critical articles are rare (but often very remarkable, particularly when it is not a question of so-called fine literature); but then there appear annually, as every subscriber knows, three or four strikingly able, apt, individual, and in these days most necessary articles, such as one finds nowhere else. The public knows that, too. Therefore I believe that the paper, even if it
is
dry and addressed to a particular section of the public, cannot possibly lose ground.

In the year 1867, Katkov told me, in the presence of Lyubimov and the editorial secretary, that the paper had five hundred more subscribers than the year before, which was to be attributed entirely to the success of my “Raskolnikov.” I hardly think that “The Idiot” will have obtained fresh subscribers for the paper; therefore I am doubly glad that, despite the manifest failure of the story, they still depend on me. The editors beg me to excuse them for being unable to bring out the conclusion in the December number, and propose to send it to subscribers as a supplement. This is quite peculiarly painful for me. Have
you
had the conclusion? Do write and tell me. I get the
Roussky Viestnik
here, however; perhaps the supplement will come with the February number.

From Petersburg I am told quite frankly that “The Idiot” has certainly many shortcomings, and is generally regarded as a falling off; but nevertheless has been followed with great interest by those who read at all. And that is really the utmost I aimed at. As to the shortcomings, I perfectly discern them myself; I am so vexed by my errors that I should like to have written a criticism of the book. Strachov means to send me his article on “The Idiot”; I know that he is not among my partisans.

I clearly perceive that I am writing only about myself to-day; but as I am now in that vein, I’ll go on, and I beg you to hear me patiently. On all these
literary matters
depends now my whole future, and my return to Russia. My dearest wish is to embrace you all, and ever to remain with you; perhaps it will really come true some day! I needn’t emphasize the fact, dear friend (and you will be sure to understand me), that my whole literary activity has embodied for me but one definite ideal value, but one aim, but one hope — and that I do not strive for fame and money, but only and solely for the synthesis of my imaginative and literary ideals, which means that before I die I desire to speak out, in some work that shall as far as possible express the whole of what I think.

At the moment I am meditating a novel. It will be called “Atheism”; I think that I shall succeed in saying all that I wish to say. But think, my dear: I cannot possibly write here. I must absolutely be in Russia, I must see and hear everything, I must take my own part in Russian life; and besides; the work would take at least two years. I can’t do it here, and must therefore write something else in the meantime.

On this account, life abroad becomes more unbearable to me every day. You must know that I should have 6,000, or at the very least 5,000, roubles before I can think of returning to Russia. I reckoned originally on the success of “The Idiot.” If it had been equal to that of “Raskolnikov,” I should have had those 5,000 roubles. Now I must set all my hopes on the future. God knows when I shall be able to return. But return I must.

You write of Turgenev and the Germans. Turgenev, however, has lost all his talent in this foreign sojourn, as already the
Golos
has declared. Certainly no such danger threatens me as that of succumbing to Germanic influence, for I do not like the Germans. But I must contrive to live in Russia, for here I shall lose the last vestiges of my talent and my powers. I feel that, in all my being. Therefore I must talk to you still more about those literary matters upon which depend my present, my future, and my return to Russia. So I continue.

The
Sarya
sent me, through Strachov, a second letter with an official request to contribute. This invitation comes from Strachov, from the editor Kachpirev, and some other contributors whom I do not personally know (Granovsky is not among them); Danilevsky also (whom I have not seen for twenty years) is of the number — this is not the novelist Danilevsky, but another very remarkable man of the same name. I perceive that a set of new coadjutors of great distinction, and of thoroughly Russian and national tendency, have clustered round this journal. The first number impressed me deeply with its very frank and outspoken tone, but especially the two long articles by Strachov and Danilevsky. You must be sure to read Strachov’s. It is quite certain that you have never read any critical writing that can compare with it. Danilevsky’s article, “Europe and Russia,” is to be very long and run through several numbers. This Danilevsky is a most unusual phenomenon. Once upon a time he was a Socialist and Fourierist; twenty years ago, even, when he was involved in our affair, he struck me as most remarkable; from his banishment he returned a thorough Russian and Nationalist. This article (which I very particularly recommend to you) is his maiden effort. The paper seems to me, in general, to have a great future before it; but will the contributors continue to pull together? Again, Strachov, the real editor, strikes me as little fitted for a continuous task. But I may be mistaken. I answered the invitation to collaborate thus: I was most willing (I said) to contribute to the paper; but as my situation obliged me always to demand payment in advance, which, moreover, Katkov had always allowed me to do, I now begged for an advance of a thousand roubles. (It is not too much: what am I to live on while I’m doing the work? I can’t possibly ask Katkov for money, while I’m working for another paper.) I sent this letter some days ago, and am now awaiting the answer. All I know is this: if they have money, they’ll send it me at once; but I must reckon with the possibility that they have none, for I know from experience what difficulties a new journal has to encounter in its first year. Even if they do send me the thousand roubles, that will be no particular advantage to me. From Katkov I could have got quite as much, even a great deal more. The only advantage would be that I should at once have a large sum of money (which I urgently need) to dispose of; I could then lay aside 400 roubles for Pasha and Emilie Fyodorovna, and besides that pay a peculiarly worrying debt that I owe in Petersburg: it is a debt of honour without any promissory note. It’s only on account of this debt that I’ve asked for the advance. —