Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (872 page)

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 a work of which men would still be talking in a hundred years from now! I am not boasting; ask your conscience and your memory if I have ever yet boasted. The idea is so good and so significant that I take off my own hat to it. But what will come to pass? I know very well: I shall get it done in eight or nine months, and utterly spoilt. Such a work demands at least two or three years. (It will, even so, be very extensive — as much as thirty-five sheets.) Separate details and characters will perhaps come not so badly off; but only sketchily. Much will be “half-baked,” and much a great deal too drawn-out. Innumerable beauties I shall have altogether to renounce getting in, for inspiration depends in many respects upon the time one has at disposal. And yet I am setting to work! It is terrible; it is like a determined suicide! But it’s not even the most important thing: the most important thing is that all my calculations are upset. At the beginning of the year, I was confidently hoping that I should succeed in sending a considerable portion of the novel to the
Roussky Viestnik
by the first of August, and so bettering my situation. What am I to do now? At earliest I shall be able to deliver a small portion by September 1st (I wanted to send a lot at once, so as to have an excuse for requesting an advance); now I am ashamed to ask for money; the first part (it is to be in five parts) will consist of only seven sheets — how can I ask for an advance? All my calculations having thus proved false, I don’t know at this moment what on earth I am to live on. And it is in such a state of mind that I must labour!

[He writes further of his somewhat strained relations with the
Roussky Viestnik.]

All this worries me, and deprives me of the tranquillity that I need for the work; and there are other things besides, which I do not mention at all. With this beginning of the war, all credit has very nearly ceased, so that living is much more difficult. But I shall get through it somehow or other. The most important thing, though, is health; and my state has considerably worsened.

With your views on war I can’t possibly agree. Without war, people grow torpid in riches and comfort, and lose the power of thinking and feeling nobly; they get brutal, and fall back into barbarism.

I am not speaking of individuals, but of whole races. Without pain, one comprehends not joy. Ideals are purified by suffering, as gold is by fire. Mankind must strive for his Heaven. France has of late become brutalized and degraded. A passing trial will do her no harm; France will be able to endure it, and then will awake to a new life, and new ideas. But hitherto France has been dominated on the one hand by old formulas, and on the other by cravenheartedness and pleasure-seeking.

The Napoleonic dynasty will be impossible henceforth. New life and reformation of the country are so important that even the bitterest trials are nothing by comparison. Do you not recognize God’s hand in it? —

Also our politics of the last seventy years — I mean Russian, European, and German politics — must inevitably alter. The Germans will at last show us their real faces. Everywhere in Europe great changes must inevitably come — and of their own accord.

What new life will be called forth everywhere by this mighty shock! For want of great conceptions, even science has sunk into arid materialism; what does a passing blow signify in face of that? —

You write “People kill and wound, and then nurse the wounded.” Do but think of the noblest words that ever yet were spoken: “I desire love, and not sacrifice.” At this moment, or at any rate in a few days, there will, I believe, be much decided. Who betrayed whom? Who made a strategical error? The Germans or the French? I believe, the Germans.

Or rather, ten days ago I was of that opinion. But now it appears to me that the Germans will keep the upper hand a while longer; the French are on the verge of an abyss, into which they are bound to plunge for a time — by that I mean the dynastic interests to which the fatherland is being sacrificed. I could tell you much of German opinion, which I can observe here, and which is very significant in the present political crisis; but I have no time. —

I greet you all. Remember me to everyone. I embrace you from my heart; do not forget that no one is so cordially inclined to you as I am. I am glad that I have been able to write to you. Write to me, don’t forget me; I am now setting to again at my forced labour. —

With heart and soul, your FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.

When I think of the Petersburg relatives, my heart aches. I can send them nothing before the beginning of next year, though they are in great distress. This weighs heavily on my conscience; I had promised to aid them; about Pasha I am particularly grieved.

P.S. — You don’t understand my position with the creditors; that is why you think it would not be worth their while to put me in prison. On the contrary: they will quite certainly have me arrested, for in many respects it would be of great advantage to them. I forget whether I told you that I have hopes of procuring, immediately after my arrival in Petersburg, the use of about 5,000 roubles for about three years. That would save me from imprisonment. Nor is such a hope entirely without foundation. But I must do the business personally; if I attempted it from here, I might spoil all. The plan has nothing to do with my literary activities. At the same time, if my present novel should make a success, my hopes for these 5,000 roubles would be sensibly improved. This is all between ourselves.

Till next time, my dears.

Your DOSTOEVSKY.

LX. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov

DRESDEN,

October
9 [21], 1870.

I have not written to you till now, because I have been uninterruptedly occupied with the novel for the
Roussky Viestnik.
The work was going so badly, and I had to re-write so much, that at last I vowed to myself that I would read nothing and write nothing, and hardly even raise my head from my desk, until I had accomplished what I had set myself to do. And I am only at the beginning now! It is true that many scenes belonging to the middle of the novel are ready written, and separate bits of what I have rejected I shall still be able to use. Nevertheless, I am still at work on the earliest chapters. That is a bad omen, and yet I mean to make the thing as good as may be. The truth is that the tone and style of a story must make themselves. But true as that is, one occasionally loses one’s note, and has to find it again. In a word: none of my works has given me so much trouble as this one. At the beginning, that is at the end of last year, I thought the novel very “made” and artificial, and rather scorned it. But later I was overtaken by real enthusiasm, I fell in love with my work of a sudden, and made a big effort to get all that I had written into good trim. Then, in the summer, came a transformation: up started a new, vital character, who insisted on being the real hero of the book; the original hero (a most interesting figure, but not worthy to be called a hero) fell into the background. The new one so inspired me that I once more began to go over the whole afresh. And now, when I have already sent the beginning to the office of the
Roussky Viestnik,
I am suddenly possessed with terror — I fear that I am not equal to the theme I have chosen. This dread torments me horribly. And yet I have not arbitrarily dragged in my hero. I arranged for his entire rôle in the synopsis of the book (I prepared a synopsis in several sheets, and sketched therein the entire action, though without the dialogues and comments). Therefore I hope that I may still bring off this hero, and even make him a quite new and original figure; I hope and fear simultaneously. For it is really time that I wrote something important at last. Perhaps it will all burst up like a soap-bubble. But come what come will, I must write; the many re-fashionings have lost me much time, and I have very little ready....

[The rest is concerned with journalism and the
Sarya.]

LXI. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov

DRESDEN,

December
15 [27], 1870.

I have undertaken a task to which my powers are not equal. I attacked a big novel (a novel “with a purpose “ — most unusual for me), and at first I thought I should manage it quite easily. But what has been the issue? When I had tried about ten settings, and saw what the theme demanded, I got very much out of heart with the thing. The first part I finished because I simply had to (it is very long, about ten sheets; and there are to be four parts in all), and sent it off. I believe that that first part is empty and quite ineffective. From it the reader can’t at all perceive what I’m aiming at, or how the action is to develop. The
Roussky Viestnik
people expressed themselves quite flatteringly about this beginning. The novel is called “The Possessed” (they are the same “possessed” about whom I wrote to you before), and has a motto from the Gospels. I want to speak out quite openly in this book, with no ogling of the younger generation. I can’t possibly say all I should like in a letter.

[He then speaks of his account with the publisher Stellovsky.]

LXII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov

DRESDEN,
December
30, 1870.