Part 5

'... Let us talk.... Let us talk of my beautiful life.... What shall I begin with? [Musing a little.] ... There are such things as fixed ideas, when a person thinks day and night, for instance, of the moon, always of the moon. I too have my moon. Day and night I am at the mercy of one besetting idea: "I must write, I must write, I must." I have hardly finished one story than, for some reason or other, I must write a second, then a third, and after the third, a fourth. I write incessantly, post-haste. I cannot do otherwise. Where then, I ask you, is beauty and serenity? What a monstrous life it is! I am sitting with you now, I am excited, but meanwhile every second I remember that an unfinished story is waiting for me. I see a cloud, like a grand piano. It smells of heliotrope. I say to myself: a sickly smell, a half-mourning colour.... I must not forget to use these words when describing a summer evening. I catch up myself and you on every phrase, on every word, and hurry to lock all these words and phrases into my literary storehouse. Perhaps they will be useful. When I finish work I run to the theatre, or go off fishing: at last I shall rest, forget myself. But no! a heavy ball of iron is dragging on my fetters,--a new subject, which draws me to the desk, and I must make haste to write and write again. And so on for ever, for ever. I have no rest from myself, and I feel that I am eating away my own life. I feel that the honey which I give to others has been made of the pollen of my most precious flowers, that I have plucked the flowers themselves and trampled them down to the roots. Surely, I am mad. Do my neighbours and friends treat me as a sane person? "What are you writing? What have you got ready for us?" The same thing, the same thing eternally, and it seems to me that the attention, the praise, the enthusiasm of my friends is all a fraud. I am being robbed like a sick man, and sometimes I am afraid that they will creep up to me and seize me, and put me away in an asylum.'

But why these torments? Throw up the oars and begin a new life. _Impossible._ While no answer comes down from heaven, Tregovin will not throw up the oars, will not begin a new life. In Tchekhov's work, only young, very young and inexperienced people speak of a new life. They are always dreaming of happiness, regeneration, light, joy. They fly head-long into the flame, and are burned like silly butterflies. In _The Sea-Gull,_ Nina Zaryechnaya and Trepliev, in other works other heroes, men and women alike--all are seeking for something, yearning for something, but not one of them does that which he desires. Each one lives in isolation; each is wholly absorbed in his life, and is indifferent to the lives of others. And the strange fate of Tchekhov's heroes is that they strain to the last limit of their inward powers, but there are no visible results at all. They are all pitiable. The woman takes snuff, dresses slovenly, wears her hair loose, is uninteresting. The man is irritable, grumbling, takes to drink, bores every one about him. They act, they speak--always out of season. They cannot, I would even say they do not want to, adapt the outer world to themselves. Matter and energy unite according to their own laws;--people live according to their own, as though matter and energy had no existence at all. In this Tchekhov's intellectuals do not differ from illiterate peasants and the half-educated bourgeois. Life in the manor is the same as in the valley farm, the same as in the village. Not one believes that by changing his outward conditions he would change his fate as well. Everywhere reigns an unconscious but deep and ineradicable conviction that our will must be directed towards ends which have nothing in common with the organised life of mankind. Worse still, the organisation appears to be the enemy of the will and of man. One must spoil, devour, destroy, ruin. To think out things quietly, to anticipate the future--that is impossible. One must beat one's head, beat one's head eternally against the wall. And to what purpose? Is there any purpose at all? Is it a beginning or an end? Is it possible to see in it the warrant of a new and inhuman creation, a creation out of the void? 'I do not know' was the old professor's answer to Katy. 'I do not know' was Tchekhov's answer to the sobs of those tormented unto death. With these words, and only these, can an essay upon Tchekhov end. _Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute._

THE GIFT OF PROPHECY

(For the twenty-fifth anniversary of F. M. Dostoevsky's death.)

I

Vladimir Soloviev used to call Dostoevsky 'the prophet,' and even 'the prophet of God.' Immediately after Soloviev, though often in complete independence of him, very many people looked upon Dostoevsky as the man to whom the books of human destiny were opened; and this happened not only after his death, but even while he was yet alive. Apparently Dostoevsky himself too, if he did not regard himself as a prophet--he was too eagle-eyed for that--at least thought it right that all people should see a prophet in him. To this bears witness the tone of _The Journal of an Author,_ no less than the questions upon which he generally touches therein. _The Journal of an Author_ began to appear in 1873, that is on Dostoevsky's return from abroad, and therefore coincides with what his biographers call 'the highest period of his life.' Dostoevsky was then the happy father of a family, a man of secure position, a famous writer, the author of a whole series of novels known to all: _The House of the Dead, The Idiot, The Possessed._ He has everything which can be required _from_ life, or, more truly, he has taken everything which can be taken from life. You remember Tolstoi's deliberations in his _Confession_? 'Finally, I shall be as famous as Pushkin, Gogol, Goethe and Shakespeare--and what shall come after?' Indeed, it is difficult to become a more famous writer than Shakespeare; and even if one succeeded, the inevitable question, 'And what shall come after?' would by no means be removed. Sooner or later in the activity of a great writer a moment comes when further perfection seems impossible. How shall a man be greater than himself in the world of literature? If he would move, then by his own will or in spite of it he must step on to another plane. And this is plainly the beginning of prophecy in a writer. In the general view the prophet is greater than the writer; and even the possession of genius is not always a guarantee against the general view. Even men so sceptical as Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, men always ready to doubt everything, more than once were the victims of prejudices. Prophetic words were expected of them, and they went out to meet men's desires, Dostoevsky even more readily than Tolstoi. Moreover both prophesied clumsily: they promised one thing, and something wholly different happened. So Tolstoi promised long ago that men would awake to their error soon and would put away from them fratricidal war, and would begin to live as true Christians should, fulfilling the Gospel commandment of love. Tolstoi prophesied and preached; people read him, as, it seems, they read no other writer: but they have not changed their habits nor their tastes. For the last ten years Tolstoi has perforce been a witness of a whole series of horrible and most savage wars. And now there is our present revolution[1]--armed mobs rioting, the gallows set up, men shot down, bombs--the revolution which came to replace the bloody war in the Far East!

And this is in Russia, where Tolstoi was born, lived, taught and prophesied, where millions of people sincerely hold him to be the greatest genius of all! Even in his own family Tolstoi could not effect the change that he desired. One of his sons is an officer in the army; the other writes in the _Novoïe Vremya,_ as though he were Souvorin's[2] son, not Tolstoi's.... Where, then, is the gift of prophecy? Why is it that a man so great as Tolstoi can foresee nothing, and seems to peer his way through life? 'What will to-morrow bring forth?' 'To-morrow I'll work miracles,' said the magician to the Russian prince of old. For reply the prince drew his sword and struck off the magician's head; and the excited mob, which believed in the magician-prophet, became calm and departed home. History is ever striking off the heads of prophetic predictions, and yet the crowd still runs after the prophets. Of little faith, the crowd looks for a sign, because it desires a miracle. But can the ability to predict be accounted as evidence of the power to work miracles? It is possible to predict an eclipse of the sun or the appearance of a comet, but this surely means a miracle only to the ignorant. An enlightened mind is secure in the knowledge that where prediction is possible, there is no miracle, since the possibility of prediction and of foreseeing presupposes a strict uniformity. Therefore not he will appear a prophet who has great spiritual gifts, nor he who desires to dominate the world and to command the very laws, neither the magician, nor the sorcerer, nor the artist, but he who, having yielded himself beforehand to the actual and its laws, has devoted himself to the mechanical labour of record and calculation. Bismarck could foretell the greatness of Russia and Germany; and not only Bismarck, but an ordinary German politician, for whom everything is reduced to _Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,_ could read the future for many years ahead; yet Dostoevsky and Tolstoi could foresee nothing. In Dostoevsky the failure is still more remarkable than in Tolstoi, because he more often attempted prediction: more than half of his _Journal_ consists in unfulfilled prophecies. So often did he commit his prophetic genius.

[Footnote 1: This essay was written during the revolution of 1905.]

[Footnote 2: The famous editor of the _Novoïe Vremya._]

II

To some it may perhaps seem out of place that in an article devoted to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the writer's death, I call to mind his mistakes and errors. The reproach is hardly just. A certain kind of defect in a great man is at least as characteristic and important as his qualities.

Dostoevsky was not a Bismarck. But is that so terrible that we must lament it? Moreover, for writers of the type of Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, their social and political ideas are without any value. They know well that no one obeys them. Whatever they may say, history and political life will go on in the same way, since it is not their books and articles which guide events. And, probably, here is the explanation of the amazing boldness of their opinions. If Tolstoi really imagined that it would be enough for him to write an article demanding that all 'soldiers, policemen, judges, ministers' and the rest, all those guardians of the public peace, whom he detested--and, by the way, who loves them?--should be dismissed, for all prison-doors to be flung wide before the murderers and robbers--who can tell whether he would have shown himself sufficiently firm and resolute in his opinions, to take upon himself the responsibility for the effects of the measures which he proposed? But he knows beyond all doubt that he will not be obeyed, and therefore he calmly preaches anarchy. Dostoevsky's part as a preacher was quite different; but it too was, so to speak, platonic. Probably it came as a surprise even to himself, that he became the prophet, not of 'ideal' politics, but of those most realistic tasks which governments always set themselves in countries where a few men direct the destinies of peoples. Listening to Dostoevsky, one may imagine that he is discovering ideas which the government must take for its guidance and set itself to realise. But you will soon convince yourself that Dostoevsky did not discover one single original political idea. Everything of the kind that he possessed he had borrowed without examination from the Slavophiles, who in their turn appeared original only to the extent to which they were able without outside assistance to translate from the German and the French: _Russland, Russland über alles._ (Even the rhythm of the verse is not affected by the substitution of the one word.) But what is most important is, that the Slavophiles with their Russo-German glorification of nationality, and with them Dostoevsky who joined the chorus, have neither taught nor educated one single man among the ruling classes. Our government knew all that it needed to know by itself, without the Slavophiles and without Dostoevsky. From time immemorial it had gone its way by the road which the theorists so passionately praised: so that nothing was left to them but to eulogise those in power and to defend the policy of the Russian government against the public opinion which was hostile to it. Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality--all these were held so firmly in Russia that in the 'seventies when Dostoevsky began to preach they needed no support whatever. And surely every one knows that power never seriously reckons upon the help of literature. Certainly it requires that the Muses should pay tribute to it with the others, nobly formulating its demands in the words: _Blessed be the union of the sword and the lyre._ It used to happen that the Muses did not refuse the request, sometimes sincerely, sometimes because, as Heine said, it is particularly disagreeable to wear iron chains in Russia, on account of the heavy frosts. In any case the Muses were only allowed to sing the praises of the sword, but by no means to wield it. There are all kinds of unions. And here again Dostoevsky, for all his independent nature, still appeared in the rôle of a prophet of the Russian government: that is, he divined the secret devices of the powers that were, and in this connection then recalled all the 'high and beautiful' words which he had managed to hoard up in the course of his long wanderings. For instance, the government began to cast covetous glances towards the East (at that time the Near East still); Dostoevsky begins to argue that we must have Constantinople, and to prophesy that Constantinople will soon be ours. His 'argument' is, of course, of a purely 'moral character,' and, sure enough, he is a writer. Only from Constantinople, he says, can we make avail the purely Russian ideal of embracing all humanity. Of course our government, though indeed we had no Bismarcks, perfectly well understood the value of moral argument and of prophecy based upon them, and would have preferred a few well-equipped divisions and improved guns. To realist politicians one single soldier, armed not with a gun but with a blunderbuss, is of more importance than the sublimest conception of moral philosophy. But still they do not drive away the humble prophet, if the prophet knows his place. Dostoevsky accepted the rôle, since it gave him still the opportunity of displaying his refractory nature in the struggle with Liberal literature. He sang paeans, made protests, uttered absurdities--and worse than absurdities. For instance, he counselled all the Slav peoples to unite under the aegis of Russia, assuring them that only thus would full independence be guaranteed them, and the right of shaping themselves by their own culture, and so on--and that in the face of the millions of Polish Slavs living in Russia. Or again, the _Moscow Gazette_ gives its opinion that it would be well for the Crimean Tartars to emigrate to Turkey, since it would then be possible for Russians to settle in the peninsula. Dostoevsky catches up this original idea with enthusiasm. 'Indeed,' he says, 'on political and state and similar considerations'--I do not know how it is with other people, but when I hear such words as 'state' and 'political' on Dostoevsky's lips, I cannot help smiling--'it is necessary to expel the Tartars and to settle Russians on their lands.' When the _Moscow Gazette_ projects such a measure, it is intelligible. But Dostoevsky! Dostoevsky who called himself a Christian, who so passionately preaches love to one's neighbour, self-abasement, self-renunciation, who taught that Russia must 'serve the nations'--how could he be taken with an idea so rapacious? And indeed almost all his political ideas have the mark of rapacity upon them: to grab and grab, and still to grab.... As the occasion demands, he now expresses the hope that we may have Germany's friendship, and again threatens her; now he argues that we have need of England, and again he asserts that we could do without her,--just like a leader-writer in a _bien-pensant_ provincial paper. One thing alone makes itself felt among all these ludicrous and eternally contradictory assertions,--Dostoevsky understands nothing, absolutely nothing, about politics, and moreover, he has nothing at all to do with politics. He is forced to go in tow of others who, compared with him, are utter nonentities, and he goes. Even his ambition--and he had a colossal ambition, an ambition unique in its kind, as befitted a universal man--suffers not one whit: chiefly because men expected prophecy from him, because the next title to that of a great writer is that of a prophet, and because a ring of conviction and a loud voice are the signs of the prophetic gift. Dostoevsky could speak aloud: he could also speak with the tone of one who knows secrets, and of one with authority. One learns much in the underworld. All these things served him. Men took the poet-laureate of the existing order for the inspirer of thoughts and the governor of Russia's remotest destinies. It was enough for Dostoevsky. It was even necessary for Dostoevsky. He knew of course that he was no prophet; but he knew that there had never been one on earth, and that those who were prophets had no better right to the title than he.

III

I will permit myself to remind the reader of Tolstoi's letter to his son, lately published by the latter in the newspapers. It is very interesting. Once more, not from the standpoint of the practical man who has to decide the questions of the day--from this standpoint Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and their similars are quite useless--but man does not live by bread alone.

Even now in the terrible days through which we have to live, now, if you will, more than ever before, one cannot read newspapers alone, nor think only of the awful surprises which to-morrow prepares for us. To every one is left an hour of leisure between the reading of newspapers and party programmes, if it be not an hour in the day when the noise of events and the pressure of immediate work distracts, then an hour in the deep night, when everything that was possible has been already done, and everything that was required has been said. Then come flying in the old thoughts and questions, frightened away by business, and for the thousandth time one returns to the mystery of human genius and human greatness. Where and how far can genius know and accomplish more than ordinary men?

Then Tolstoi's letter, which during the day aroused only anger and indignation,--is it not outrageous and revolting, think some, that in the great collision of forces which contend with one another in Russia, Tolstoi cannot distinguish the right force from the wrong, but stigmatises all the struggling combatants by the one name of ungodly? During the day, I say, it is surely outrageous: in the daytime we would like Tolstoi to be with us and for us, because we are convinced that we and we alone are seeking the truth,--nay, that we know the truth, while our enemies are defending evil and falsehood, whether in malice or in ignorance. But this is during the day. In the night-time, things are changed. One remembers that Goethe also overlooked, simply did not notice, the great French Revolution. True, he was a German who lived far from Paris, while Tolstoi lives close to Moscow, where men, women, and children have been shot, cut down, and burnt alive. Moreover, there is no doubt that Tolstoi has overlooked not merely Moscow, but everything that went before Moscow. What is happening now does not seem to him important or extraordinary. For him only that is important to which he, Tolstoi, has set his hand: all that occurs outside and beside him, for him has no existence. This is the great prerogative of great men. And sometimes it seems to me--perhaps it is only that I would have it seem so--as though there were in that prerogative a deep and hidden meaning.

When we have no more strength in us to listen to the endless tales of horrible atrocities which have already been committed, and to anticipate in imagination all that the future holds in store for us, then we recall Tolstoi and his indifference. It is not in our human power to return the murdered fathers and mothers to the children nor the children to their fathers and mothers. Nor stands it even in our power to revenge ourselves upon the murderers, nor will vengeance reconcile every one to his loss. And we try no longer to think with logic, and to seek a justification of the horrors there where there is and can be none. What if we ask ourselves whether Tolstoi and Goethe did not sec the Revolution and did not suffer its pain, only because they saw something else, something, it may even be, more necessary and important? Maybe there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.

Now we may return to Dostoevsky and his 'ideas'; we may call them fearlessly by the names which they deserve, for though Dostoevsky is a writer of genius, this does not mean that we must forget our daily needs. The night and the day have each their rights. Dostoevsky wanted to be a prophet, he wanted people to listen to him and cry 'Hosanna!' because, I say again, he thought that if men had ever cried 'Hosanna!' to any one, then there was no reason why he, Dostoevsky, should be denied the honour. That is the reason why in the 'seventies he made his appearance in the new rôle of a preacher of Christianity, and not of Christianity merely, but of orthodoxy.