Читать книгу The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Страница 8

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When his elder sons had finished their term at Tchernack's preparatory school, my father took them to Petersburg. He did not intend to make doctors of them; he wished them to embark on a military career, which at this period had briliant possibilities for the intelligent. In Russia every official had a right to ask or free education for his sons at one of the State schools, My grandfather, a practical man, chose the School of Military Engineers, with a double end in view: on saving, a pupil might become an officer in a regiment f the Imperial Guard, and have a splendid career, or he might become a civil engineer and amass a considerable fortune. My grandfather Mihail was very ambitious for his sons, and perpetually reminded them that they must work incessantly. " You are poor," he would say; "I cannot leave you a fortune; you have only your own powers on which to rely; you must work hard, be strict in your conduct, and prudent in your words and deeds."

At this time my father was sixteen, and my uncle Mihail seventeen. Brought up as they had been always under the paternal eye, knowing nothing of life, and possessing no friends of their own age, they were nothing but two big children, artless and romantic. There was a passionate affection between the two brothers. They lived in a world of dreams, reading a great deal, exchanging their literary impressions, and rdently admiring the works of Pushkin, their common ideal. When they started for Petersburg they did not realise that their childhood was over, that they were entering a new world.19

19 My uncle Andrey tells us in his remimscences that my grandfather never allowed his sons to go out alone and never gave them any money. He watched over their conduct most jealously; flirtation, even of the most innocent kind, was tolerated. The young Puritans never dared to speak of women save in ven Of course, their modesty must have been a source of great amusement to their comrades in the School of Engineers, for the amorous adventures of the young Russian begin early. Dostoyevsky, for his part, must have suffered a good deal from the cynicism of his young comrades. When in The Brothers Karamazov my father described Aliosha stopping his ears in ordeer not to hear the obscene talk of his schoolfellows, he was probaly drawing on his own experiences.

During the journey from Moscow to Petersburg which lasted several days,20 the young Dostoyevsky continued to dream. " My brother and I," says father, " dreamed of the great and the beautiful. The words sounded magnificent to us. We used them without irony. How many fine words of the same order we repeated in those days ! We had a passionate belief in I know not what, and, although we knew all the difficulties of mathematical examinations, we could only think of poetry and poets. My brother wrote poems, and I was writing a Venetian romance."

20 There were no railways in those days. Travellers went the stage-coach, or in a troika, which often took nearly a we to get from Moscow to Petersburg.

A great misfortune awaited the young dreamers in Petersburg. Though he had obtained two nominations for his sons at the School of Engineers, my grandfather was only able to place his son Fyodor there. Mihail was pronounced too delicate to study in the capital and the authorities sent him with some other yout to Reval, where the School of Engineers had a kind of annexe. My father's despair at this separation from his adored brother was immeasurable. He suffered the more because, when his father had returned to Moscow he was left utterly alone, without friends relations. He was a boarder, and, as he knew no one in the city, he had to spend all his holidays at school.21 The School of Engineers was in the ancient palace of lul, where the unhappy Emperor had been murdered, is in the best quarter of the town, opposite the Summer arden, on the banks of the Fontanka river. The rooms are large and light, full of air and sunshine. One could have wished no better domicile for one's children; as a doctor my grandfather realised the important part played by space and light in the physical education of young people. Nevertheless, my father was not happy at the Engineers' Castle.22 He disliked the life in common with the other pupils, and the mathematical sciences he had to study were repellent to his poetic soul. Obedient to his father's wishes, he did his work conscientiously, but his heart was not in it. He spent his spare time seated in the embrasure of a window, watching the flowing river, admiring the trees of the ark, dreaming and reading. . . . Scarcely had he suitted his father's house, when the Lithuanian unciablity took possession of him; he felt himself ttracted by solitude. His new companions did not attract him. They were for the most part the sons of colonels23 and generals, who were commanding the garrisons in the various provincial towns.

21 When he placed his son at school in Petersburg, my grand-ither had counted on the kindness of his relative, General Mvopichin, who held an important administrative post. But iivopichin disliked his Moscow kinsman, and would do nothing )r his son. However, after the death of my grandfather, the ieneral remembered his obligations; he went to see my father t the School of Engineers, and invited him to his house. Dos-)yevsky, who was eighteen by this time, soon became a favourite ith all the Krivopichin family, of whom he speaks affectionately I his letters to his brother MUiail.

22 This was the name by which the School of Engineers was nown in Petersburg. The Palace of Paul does, in fact, look like ti ancient castle.

23 My grandfather's position at Moscow was equivalent to that of a lonel.

At this period there was little reading in the provinces, and even less thinking. It was difficult to find a serious book there, though one could always reckon on a bottle of champagne of a good brand. People drank a great deal, played very high, flirted, and, above all, danced with passion. The parents paid very little attention to their children, and left them to the care of servants. My father's new companions were like young animals, full of gaiety, loving to laugh, and run, and play. They made fun of the serious airs of their Moscow schoolfellow, and his passion for reading. Dostoyevsky, for his part, despised them for their ignorance; they seemed to him to belong to another world. This was not surprising. My father was several centuries ahead of his Russian companions. " I was struck by the foolishness of their reflections, their games, their conversation and their occupations," he wrote later. " They respected nothing but success. All that was righteous, but humiliated and persecuted, called forth their cruel mockery. At the age of sixteen, they talked of nice little lucrative situations. Their vice amounted to monstrosity." As he observed his schoolfellows, Dostoyevsky felt his father's Lithuanian disdain for the Russians awaking in his heart, the contempt of a civilised individual for brutes and ignoramuses.24

24 Although he despised them, my father never cast off his companions. Former pupils at the School of Engineers remember that he was always ready to protect new pupOs when they arrived, helping them with their lessons, and defending them against the tyranny of the elder boys. General Sav61ieff, who at this period was a yoimg officer acting as superintendent of the classrooms, states in his recollections that the school authorities considered Dostoyevsky a young man of high culture, with great strength of character and a deep sense of personal dignity. He obeyed the orders of his superiors readily enough, but declined to bow to the decrees of his elder comrades, and held aloof from all their demonstrations. This was a very characteristic trait, for in Russian schools boys as a rule show more deference to their elders than to their masters.

My father, however, found a friend at last. This was the young Grigorovitch, who, hke himself, was only half a Russian; his maternal grandmother was a Frenchwoman. She took a great interest in her grandson's education, and made him a well-informed young man. Gay and sociable as the French generally are, Grigorovitch was ready enough to play with his schoolfellows, but he preferred the society of my father. There was a bond of union between them : both were writing in secret, and dreaming of becoming novelists.25

25 My father had another friend at this period, the young Schidlovsky, his former schoolfellow at Tchermack's. For some reason unknown to me, Schidlovsky travelled a great deal, going sometimes to Reval, sometimes to Petersburg. He acted as bearer of dispatches to the young Dostoyevsky. Schidlovsky was a poet, an idealist and a mystic. He had a great influence on my father. He was probably of Lithuanian origin.

His friendship with young Grigorovitch did not make my father forget his brother Mihail. They corresponded constantly; some of their letters have been published. In these they speak of Racine, Corneille, Schiller and Balzac, recommend interesting books to each other, and exchange their literary impressions. My uncle took advantage of his term at Reval to study the German language thoroughly. Later he translated several of the works of Goethe and Schiller, and his translations were much appreciated by the Russian public.

Letters from the young Dostoyevsky to their father have also been published. They are very respectful; but as a rule contain nothing but requests for money. My grandfather was not loved by his children. This Lithuanian, who had so many good qualities, had also one great defect: he was a hard drinker, violent and suspicious in his cups. As long as his wife was there to intervene between him and the children all was well; she had considerable influence over him, and prevented him from drinking to excess. After her death my grandfather gave way to his weakness, became incapal of working, and resigned his appointment. Having placed his younger sons, Andrey and Nicolai, at Tchemack's school, and having married his eldest daughter Barbara to a native of Moscow, he retired to Darovoy and devoted himself to agriculture. He took his two younger daughters. Vera and Alexandra, with him, and led them a terrible life. At this time it was usual to bring up girls under the superintendence of their parents. The instruction given them was not very extensive; French, German, a little piano-playing and dancing fancy needlework. Only the daughters of the poor worked. The girls of noble families were destined for marriage, and their virginity was carefully guarded. My grandfather never allowed his pretty daughters to go out alone, and accompanied them himself on the rare occasions when they went to visit their country neighbours. The jealous vigilance of their father offended the delicacy of my aunts. Later they remembered with horror how their father used to visit their bedrooms at night to make sure that they had no hidden some lover under the bed. My aunts at this time were pure and innocent children.

My grandfather's avarice increased as his drinking habits became more confirmed. He sent so little money to his sons that they were in want of everything. My father could not indulge in a cup of tea when he came in from drill, which was often carried on in a down pour of rain; he had no change of boots, and, worst of all, no money to give to the orderlies who waited or the engineer cadets. Dostoyevsky rebelled against the privations and humiliations to which his father's meanness subjected him; a meanness for which there was no excuse, for my grandfather owned land and had money put away for the dowry of his daughters. My father considered that, as my grandfather had chosen a brilliant and distinguished school for him, he ought to have given him enough money to hve in the same manner as his comrades.

This state of friction between the father and his sons did not long continue. My grandfather had always been very severe to his serfs. His drunkenness made him so savage, that they finally murdered him. One summer day he left his estate Darovoye to visit his other property, Tchermashnia, and never returned. He was found later half-way between the two, smothered under the cushions of his carriage. The coachman had disappeared with the horses; several of the peasants of the village disappeared at the same time. When interrogated by the Court, other serfs of my grandfather's admitted that the crime was one of vengeance.

My father was not at home at the time of this horrible death. He no longer went to Darovoye, for in summer the pupils of the School of Engineers had to carry out manoeuvres in the neighbourhood of Petersburg. The crime committed by the peasants of Darovoye, of whom he had been so fond as a child, made a great impression upon his adolescent imagination.26 He thought of itall his life, and pondered the causes of this dreadful end deeply. It is very remarkable that the whole of my grandfather's family looked upon his death as a disgrace, never mentioned it, and prevented Dos-toyevsky's literary friends, who knew the details of his life, from speaking of it in their reminiscences of my father. It is evident that my uncles and aunts had a more European idea of slavery than the Russians of the period. Crimes of vengeance committed by peasants were very frequent at the time, but no one blushed for them. The victims were pitied, the murderers denounced with horror. The Russians had a naive belief that masters might treat their serfs hke dogs, and that the latter had no right to revolt. The Lithuanian family of my grandfather looked at the matter from a very different point of view.

26 According to a family tradition, it was when he heard of his father's death that Dostoyevsky had his first epileptic fit. We can only conjecture what his state of mind must have been, for all the correspondence with his brother Mihall which might have thrown some light on this period of his life has been destroyed. Later, the brothers never mentioned their father in their letters; the subject was probably too painful to both of them. From certain sentences in the last letter before the murder of his father, we may infer that Dostoyevsky knew various circumstances of his life in the country. " Poor father t " he wrote to his brother Mihall, " what an extraordinary character. Ah I what mis-Portimes he has had I What a pity it is that I cannot console liim ! But do you know, our father has no idea of life. He has ived for fifty years, and has still tjie same idea of men as when le was thirty." As always, Dostoievsky's prescience made him Jivine the principal cause of his father's misfortunes. My p-andfather indeed lived all his life as a Lithuanian, and never joubled to study the Russian character. He paid dearly for lis ignorance.

I have always thought that Dostoyevsky had his father in mind when he created the type of old Kara-mazov. It is not, certainly, an exact portrait. Fyodor Karamazov is a buffoon; my grandfather was always a dignified person. Karamazov was a profligate; Mihail Dostoyevsky loved his wife and was faithful to her. Old Karamazov forsook his sons, and took no interest in them; my grandfather gave his children a careful education. But certain traits are common to both. When creating the type of Fyodor Karamazov, Dostoyevsky perhaps remembered his father's avarice, which caused his young sons so much suffering and indignation at school, his drunkenness, and the physical disgust it provoked in his children. When he says that Aliosha Karamazov did not share this disgust, but pitied his unhappy father, Dostoyevsky probably recalls the moments of pity which succeeded to those of disgust in his own youthful heart. The great psychologist in embryo must have divined at times that his father was, after all, but a diseased and unhappy being. It must be understood that this likeness between my grandfather and the old Karamazov is merely a supposition on my part, for which there is no documentary evidence. Yet it may not be simply a coincidence that Dostoyevsky has given the name of Tchermashnia 27 to the village where old Karamazov sent his son Ivan just before his death. I am the more inclined to think this, because it is a tradition in our family that my father portrayed himself in the person of Ivan Karamazov. Thus did he conceive of himself at the age of twenty. It is curious to note Ivan's religious beliefs, his poem, The Grand Inquisitor, and his immense interest in the Catholic Church. It must not be forgotten that only some three or four generations intervened between Dostoyevsky and the Catholicism of his ancestors. The Catholic faith must have been still alive in his soul. It is still more curious to note that Dostoyevsky gave his own name, Fyodor, to old Karamazov, and made Smerdiakov say to Ivan : " You are the most like your father of all his sons." It is probable that Dostoyevsky was haunted all his life by the bloody spectre of his father, and that he analysed his own actions minutely, fearing that he might have inherited his father's vices. This was far from being the case; Dostoyevsky's character was totally different. He did not like wine, and it disagreed with him, as with all persons of nervous temperament. He was kind and affectionate to every one around him, and far from being suspicious, was rather simple and confiding. Dostoyevsky has often been reproached for his inability to keep money. He could never refuse those who asked him for it, and gave all he possessed to others. He was moved to do so by charity, but also, no doubt, by dread of developing the avarice of his father. He feared this the more, because he saw this vice reproduced in his sister Barbara, and gradually taking the form of a veritable mania. Dostoyevsky, no doubt, said to himself that avarice, that moral malady, was hereditary in his family, and that each of them might be attacked by it if he were not careful.

27 As we have seen above, it was on his way to his property of Tchennashnia that my grandfather was murdered.

The alcoholism of my grandfather ravaged the lives of nearly all his children. His eldest son Mihail and his youngest son Nicolai inherited his disease. My uncle Mihail, though he drank, was at least able to work; but the unhappy Nicolai, after a brilliant course of study, was never able to do anything, and remained a burden on his family all his life. My father's epilepsy, which caused him so much suffering, was probably due to the same causq. But the most miserable of the family was certainly my aunt Barbara. She married a well-to-do man, who left her considerable house-property in Moscow. The houses brought in a good income; my aunt's children were comfortably settled in life, and lacked nothing. She had therefore all that was necessary to ensure her comfort in her old age; but the unhappy woman was the victim of a sordid and diseased avarice. She opened her purse with a kind of despair; the smallest expenditure was torture to her. She finally dismissed her servants, to avoid paying their wages. She had no fires in her apartments and spent the winter wrapped in a cloak. She did no cooking; twice a week she went out and bought a httle bread and milk. There was a great deal of gossip in the district where she lived about her inexpUcable avarice. It was said that she must have a great deal of money, and that, Uke all misers, she kept it in her house. This gossip worked upon the mind of a young peasant, who acted as porter to my aunt's tenants. He came to an understanding with a vagabond who was prowhng about in the neighbourhood; one night they got into the poor mad woman's dwelhng and murdered her. The crime was committed long after my father's death.

I conclude that my grandfather's alcoholism must have been hereditary, for his personal drunkenness could not have caused such disaster in our family. The disease persisted in my uncle Mihail's family; the second and third generation were victims to it. My aunt Barbara's son was so stupid that his folly verged on idiocy. My uncle Andrey's son, a young and brilliant savant, died of creeping paralysis. The whole Dostoyevsky family suffered from neurasthenia.