Dostoevsky (154 page)

The most crucial problem of all for him was the loss of (religious) faith; and he believed that by his attempts to grapple artistically with the moral-social aftermaths of this deprivation he had probed more deeply into the Russian psyche than the gentry-landowner writers who simply accepted the values of their long-established world, with its precepts for good behavior. Far from flinching at the charges made against him, Dostoevsky glories in the validity of his moral-artistic vision: “Underground, underground, poet of the underground, our feuilletonists have been repeating over and over again, as if this were something derogatory to me. Silly fools, it is my glory, for that’s where the truth lies” (16: 329).

Dostoevsky finally confided his self-defense to an epilogue, written by the character Nikolay Semyenovich, Arkady’s guardian during his high school years, and his observations allow Dostoevsky to guide the reader toward a broader social-cultural comprehension of his novel. Dostoevsky’s spokesman obliquely refers to Tolstoy when he affirms that a novelist aiming to leave an elegant impression “would only write historical novels, since there are no longer beautiful types in our time. . . . Such a novel . . . would provide an artistically finished picture of a Russian mirage, but one that really existed so long as no one guessed it was a mirage.” The reference to
War and Peace
is unmistakable, but for Dostoevsky the beauty of that world was only a mirage based on the slavery of serfdom. This is why, as Semyenovich adds, implicitly referring to the character of Levin in
Anna Karenina
, “the grandson of the characters depicted in a picture showing a cultured, upper-class Russian family over three generations in a Russian historical setting—such a descendant could not be portrayed otherwise than as misanthropic, isolated; and a sad sight to behold.” Levin, in other words, was trying to carry on the tradition but was now gloomily aware that it had been “a mirage” (13: 454).

If this is true for a descendant of such a noble family, how much more would this be the case for someone like Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate offspring of a peasant mother and a father belonging to the hereditary nobility! “Yes, Arkady Makarovich,” he is told, “you are
a member of an accidental family
, in complete contrast to all our recent types of legitimate hero who had boyhoods and youths quite unlike yours” (those depicted in Tolstoy’s trilogy,
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
). Versilov himself is described as embodying a chaos of opposites. “He belongs to one of the oldest families of the nobility while at the same time belonging to the Paris Commune. He is a genuine poet, loves Russia, and yet completely denies its value. He has no religion, but he is prepared to die for almost anything vague which he cannot name but in which he can passionately believe, on the example of many, many enlightened Russian Europeanizers of the St. Petersburg period of Russian history.” Torn by such contradictions, what traditions and moral-cultural heritage can Versilov transmit to his children? “I confess,” confides Semyenovich, “I would not want to be a novelist trying to describe
a hero from an accidental family! . . . Serious mistakes would be possible, and exaggerations and oversights. . . . But what choice does a writer have who has no wish to write historical novels but is possessed by a longing for the present scene? . . . He has to guess . . . and get it wrong”(13: 455).

Whether or not Dostoevsky believed he had “gotten it wrong,” he was here implicitly answering all those critics—among them, some of his closest friends—who were measuring his world against the far more reassuring one created by Tolstoy. Even by his own standard, however,
A Raw Youth
cannot be said to hold its own against the three novels that had been its predecessors. Indeed, if the defects of
A Raw Youth
prove anything, it is that Dostoevsky could do full justice to his talent only when he allowed his eschatological imagination a free rein, and he would take this artistic lesson to heart three years later in
The Brothers Karamazov
.

¹
Dostoevsky’s notebook entries regarding this peasant world range much more widely than the more limited picture in the finished work. In one, he demonstrates his acquaintance with the theology of the Old Believers. Other notes contain extensive entries about “stinking Lizaveta,” who is much more vividly developed here than she will be in
The Brothers Karamazov
. Not merely an inarticulate half-wit, she is consumed by the self-immolating fire of a passionate faith. “Stinking Lizaveta. ‘Do not send me, the stinking one, to your bright paradise, but send me into utter darkness, so that even there, in fire and in pain, I could raise my voice to Thee: “Holy, holy art Thou,” and I have no other love’ ” (16: 138).

²
PSS
, 29/Bk. 1: 216 n.21; December 2/14, 1870.

³
Cited in
PSS
, 17: 347.

With the completion of
A Raw Youth
, Dostoevsky was once again faced with the problem of what to undertake next. Although the publisher of several of his own works, he still had no regular source of income to provide for his family, recently increased to three children with the birth of a new son, Aleksey, on August 10, 1875. Now he returned to the idea of publishing a new periodical, his
Diary of a Writer
, which he had experimented with in
The Citizen
. A family decision was made to take the plunge, even though, as Anna wrote, “if the
Diary
proved to be a failure, we would be put into a hopeless position.”
¹

Dostoevsky’s decision to undertake his
Diary of a Writer
was an adventurous gamble that marked a new stage in his astonishing career. Although he had once more become a name to be reckoned with on the Russian literary-cultural scene, his fame was still largely confined to intelligentsia circles. With the
Diary of a Writer
, however, he reached out to a much larger and diversified reading public, to whom he spoke eloquently and passionately about matters that were uppermost in the minds of all literate Russians. No one had ever written about such matters so forcefully and vividly, with such directness, simplicity, and intimate personal commitment. It is little wonder that the public response was tremendous, and that Dostoevsky was deluged with correspondence, both pro and contra, the moment his publication appeared in the kiosks.

One of the salons he frequented in these years was that of Elena Shtakenshneider, who attracted everyone by her intelligence, sensitivity, and kindness, and by the stoic courage with which she bore her disfiguring hunchback. Noting the immense popularity of the
Diary
, she wrote in her own diary: “Dostoevsky’s fame was not caused by his prison sentence, not by
House of the Dead
, and not even by his novels—at least not primarily by them—but by the
Diary of a Writer
. It was the
Diary
that made his name known in all of Russia, made him the teacher and idol of the youth, yes, and not only the youth but all those tortured by those questions that Heine called ‘accursed.’ ”
²

His life for the next two years was intimately intertwined with the redaction of the
Diary
. Indeed, the routine necessitated by its regular appearance was so rigorous and exhausting that it left little time for anything else. The
Diary
, all of it written by Dostoevsky, appeared once a month and consisted of sixteen pages. It went on the newsstands on the last day of each month, and he was fanatic about keeping to schedule. Those close to him were aware of the exhausting pressure, both physical and mental, imposed by his
Diary
, and Mikhail Alexandrov, now employed at the printing plant, remarked that “if the expression is justified of some writers that they
write
their works
with their blood
, then this expression fits no one better than Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.” Indeed, on the evidence of working so closely with him for two years, Alexandrov believed that the
Diary
“shortened his life” and that he “squandered on it his physical health, which was affected by it much more than even by his years in
katorga
.”
³

The Dostoevskys had lived in Staraya Russa for most of 1875, but the
Diary
required their residence in St. Petersburg once more, and they returned to the capital in mid-September, where they secured five modest rooms in an aging apartment house. Alexandrov was particularly struck by the bareness of the study, which reminded him of a monastic cell. A Turkish couch covered with oilcloth also served as a bed, and there were two tables. One was covered with a pile of magazines and newspapers; the other, larger table was garnished with an inkwell, a pen, and a thick notebook “in which Feodor Mikhailovich noted down individual ideas and facts for his future works.” Above the table hung a photograph of Dostoevsky, and before it stood an armchair with a hard seat. There was no mistaking that this was the workplace of a writer, and its “strict, almost impoverished simplicity” inspired in Alexandrov “a great respect.”
⁴

Dostoevsky’s routine now varied but little. Writing late at night and into the early morning, he slept until two in the afternoon or later. Once having risen, and donning a loose and lengthy jacket of dark broadcloth, he went to the samovar awaiting him in the dining room. Returning with his glass of tea to the study, he drank several cups as he read the newspapers and rolled cigarettes out of thick yellow paper. After tea he received visitors, and at three o’clock he ate a light meal in the dining room. Dostoevsky drank a wineglass of vodka with the meal, sipping it as he chewed on a slice of black bread, once explaining to Alexandrov that this was the healthiest way to take vodka. After finishing, he went for a walk, dropping in at the printing plant on his stroll, and returning at six o’clock to dine with the family and put the children to bed before settling down to work.

Such was his normal schedule and behavior, which, if nothing unexpected occurred, went smoothly and equably. But if he was unwarily aroused before his accustomed time, he became “despondently serious and silent,” and in such a mood he could flare up suddenly in an outburst of irritability: “He easily got angry, and then spoke harshly,” appearing to be “rude and despotic even with those close to him.” But Alexandrov hastens to add that those who knew him best were aware that they represented only a momentarily unsettled state of his nerves.
⁵

Concern over the future of his young children no doubt contributed to his anxiety; and it is in this context that we find Dostoevsky keeping a vigilant eye on the legal proceedings in the Kumanina estate. In November Dostoevsky assures his youngest brother Andrey that, contrary to rumors, in filing suit to exclude some collateral relatives of his aunt from any claim to a share of the estate, he was “looking after their own interests.” After getting the money, he would “immediately divide it up among them and would take for myself only enough to cover the expenses of the proceedings and not a kopek more.” Dostoevsky adds that, “by giving up to them [his sisters] what
by law should come to me
,” he was “taking away from my children what was legally theirs.”
⁶
(His suit proved unsuccessful.) A few months later, he writes to Andrey that he wishes “to live at least another seven years” in order to establish a firm foundation for the future of his children.
⁷
He had long been haunted by the fear of death because of his epilepsy, but the dread of a sudden decease had now been replaced by the conviction that he was slowly succumbing to the undermining effects of his emphysema.

A few months into publishing the
Diary
, Dostoevsky learned from a letter of Khristina Alchevskaya, a lady active in the cause of educating the people, that some considered that he was wasting his time “with trifles, with a survey of current events, little stories and suchlike.” Apparently having heard the same reproach from others, he replied: “I have reached the irresistible conclusion that in addition to the original artistic inspiration, a writer of belles lettres must also know the reality portrayed down to the smallest detail (historical and current).” Far from viewing the
Diary
as a departure from his artistic task, he explained that it was an indispensable preliminary for his future works. “That is why, while preparing to write a very long novel, I in fact planned to immerse myself specifically into the study . . . of the details of contemporary life.” Among such details, “one of the most important . . . is the younger generation, and with it, the contemporary Russian family.”
⁸

The very first (January 1876) issue of his
Diary
was devoted to the theme of children, and as a preparation he asked his legal friend A. F. Koni to arrange a visit to a colony of juvenile criminals. The two men made the journey in late December 1875, and Koni mentions Dostoevsky’s passionate attentiveness, “asking questions and inquiring into the smallest details in the routine of the fledglings.” He was struck by Dostoevsky’s ability to engage with the boys, whom he gathered together in one of the larger rooms. “He answered their questions, some searching and some naïve, but little by little this conversation turned into a lesson on his part . . . filled with the genuine love of children that shines through every page of his creations.” When the two men left the room to visit the adjoining church, the boys flocked around and continued to speak with him about incidents from their lives. “One felt that . . . a spiritual bond had been created, and that they sensed in him not a
curiosity-seeking
visitor but a grieving
friend
.”
⁹