Part 12

From knowledge of his own case, Dostoevsky supposes a pathological condition which, for a space, imposes and suggests to one or other of his characters a new formula of existence. To take a concrete instance, let us consider Kirillov, who carries on his shoulders the entire plot of _The Possessed_. We are aware he intends to take his life, but not that his suicide is imminent: self-destruction is, however, certainly in his mind. Why? The motive is withheld almost till the very end of the book.

“I don’t understand what fancy possesses you to put yourself to death,” says Pyotr Stepanovitch to him. “It wasn’t my idea; you thought of it yourself before I appeared, and talked of your intention to the committee abroad before you said anything to me. And you know, no one has forced it on you; no one of them knew you, but you came to confide in them yourself, from sentimentalism. And what’s to be done if a plan of action here, which can’t be altered now, was founded upon that with your consent and upon your suggestion?--_your_ suggestion, mind that!”[125]

Kirillov’s suicide is absolutely gratuitous. I mean to say there is an absence of outward motivation. We shall presently see what absurdities are introduced into this world under cover of a _gratuitous act_.

After Kirillov resolves to take his life, everything becomes a matter of profound indifference to him. His peculiar state of mind which sanctions and accounts for his suicide (gratuitous, but _not_ without a motive) will leave him unmoved by the imputation of a crime others will commit and which he will calmly suffer to be laid at his own door. Such at least is Pyotr Stepanovitch’s belief.

Pyotr Stepanovitch imagines the crime he is planning will strengthen the bonds between the conspirators he heads and over whom he feels his control weakening. He reckons that each individual party to the plot, having shared in the crime, will feel his complicity and be unable, indeed will not dare, to break away. Who is to be sacrificed?

Pyotr Stepanovitch is still undecided. It is necessary that the victim should present himself spontaneously.

The conspirators are met together in a large room; in the course of conversation, the question is asked, “Can there be, even now, an informer in our midst?” An extraordinary commotion follows this remark: everybody begins to talk at once.

“‘Gentlemen, if that is so,’ Verhovensky went on, ‘I have compromised myself more than anyone, and so I will ask you to answer one question, if you care to, of course. You are all perfectly free.’

“‘What question? What question?’ every one clamoured.

“‘A question that will make it clear whether we are to remain together, or take up our hats and go our several ways without speaking.’

“‘The question! The question!’

“‘If any one of us knew of a proposed political murder, would he, in view of the consequences, go to give information, or would he stay at home and await events? Opinions may differ on this point. The answer to the question will tell us clearly whether we are to separate, or to remain together, and for far longer than this one evening.’

“After which Pyotr Stepanovitch begins to interrogate apart several members of this secret society. He is interrupted.

“‘It’s an unnecessary question. Every one will make the same answer. There are no informers here.’

“‘What’s that gentleman getting up for?’ cried the girl student.

“‘That’s Shatov. What are you getting up for?’ cried the lady of the house.

“Shatov did, in fact, stand up. He was holding his cap in his hand and looking at Verhovensky. Apparently he wanted to say something to him, but was hesitating. His face was pale and wrathful, but he controlled himself. He did not say one word, but in silence walked towards the door.

“‘Shatov, this won’t make things better for you!’ Verhovensky called after him enigmatically.

“‘But it will for you, since you are a spy and a scoundrel!’ Shatov shouted to him from the door as he went out.

“Shouts and exclamations again.

“‘That’s what comes of a test,’ cried a voice.”[126]

Thus the victim is marked, and by his own hand. Haste is imperative: Shatov’s murder must anticipate his denunciation.

We must admire Dostoevsky’s art in this, because constantly carried away in my enthusiasm to discuss his ideas, I am afraid I have neglected all too much his wonderful skill in exposition.

At this juncture in the narrative, an astounding thing comes to pass which raises a particular artistic problem. It is a commonplace that, passed a certain point in the evolution of the plot, there must be nothing to deflect attention: events must move more quickly and lead straight to the ultimate issue. Well, this is the moment, when the action has entered on its phase of maximum rapidity, that Dostoevsky contrives to introduce the most startling interruptions. He is conscious that so tense is his reader’s attention everything will assume an importance out of all proportion. With this knowledge, he does not hesitate to distract attention from the main course of events by brusque modulations which develop his most cherished ideas. The very night Shatov is destined to turn informer or be murdered, his wife, whom he has not seen for years, suddenly reappears at his house. Her time is at hand, but at first Kirillov does not realize her condition.

Inadequately handled, this scene could become grotesque. It ranks amongst the finest in the book. In theatrical jargon it would be described as a _utility_, in literature as a _cheville_, but it is precisely one of the rarest manifestations of Dostoevsky’s artistry. Like Pushkin he could say, “I have never treated anything lightly,” which is the hallmark of a great artist, utilizing everything, transforming disadvantage into opportunity. At this stage the pace needs must slacken, and every detail that can arrest events in their precipitancy becomes of supreme importance. The passages where Dostoevsky describes the arrival, unannounced, of Shatov’s wife, the conversation between husband and wife, Kirillov’s interposition, and the prompt establishment of an intimacy between the two men, constitute perhaps the most moving chapter in the book. We marvel anew at the utter absence of jealousy I discussed with you on a previous occasion. Shatov knows that his wife is going to have a child, but the father of this child she expects is not even mentioned. Shatov is consumed with love for this suffering creature who can find none but words that wound.

“It was only that fact [i.e. his wife’s reappearance] that saved the scoundrels from Shatov’s carrying out his intention, and at the same time helped them to get rid of him. To begin with, it agitated Shatov, threw him out of his regular routine, and deprived him of his usual clear-sightedness and caution. Any idea of his own danger would be the last thing to enter his head at this moment when he was absorbed with such different considerations.”[127]

But to come back to Kirillov: the time is at hand when Pyotr Stepanovitch calculates personal advantage from the other man’s suicide. What grounds has Kirillov for taking his own life? Pyotr Stepanovitch questions him: he has no clear idea, and is seeking clumsily to get at the truth. Up till the last minute, he is in terror lest Kirillov change his mind and thus escape him. But no!

“I won’t put it off. I want to kill myself now,”[128] says Kirillov.

The conversation between Verhovensky and Kirillov is especially obscure, obscure even in Dostoevsky’s own mind. As we have earlier observed, Dostoevsky never expresses his ideas as ideas pure and simple, but always through the medium of his characters who become their interpreters. Kirillov is in a highly unusual pathological state, for in a moment or two he is going to take his own life, and his talk is agitated and incoherent. We are left to unravel in it the clue to Dostoevsky’s own thought.

The idea which prompts Kirillov’s suicide is of a mystic nature and closed to Pyotr Stepanovitch’s comprehension.

“If God exists, all is His will, and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will, and I am bound to show self-will.... I am bound to show myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands....”

“‘God is necessary and so must exist,’ said Kirillov.

“‘Well, that’s all right then,’ encouraged Pyotr Stepanovitch.

“‘But I know He doesn’t and can’t.’

“‘That’s more likely.’

“‘Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?’

“‘Must shoot himself, you mean?’

“‘Surely you understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone?’

“‘But you won’t be the only one to kill yourself: there are lots of suicides.’

“‘With good cause! But to do it without any cause at all, simply for self-will, I am the only one.’

“‘He won’t shoot himself,’ flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch’s mind again.

“‘Do you know,’ he observed irritably, ‘if I were in your place, I should kill someone else to show my self-will, not myself. You might be of use. I’ll tell you whom, if you are not afraid. Then you needn’t shoot yourself to-day, perhaps. We may come to terms.’”[129]

For a moment Pyotr Stepanovitch dreams, in the event of Kirillov’s refusing to carry out his plan of self-destruction, of using him as the instrument to murder Shatov, instead of merely imputing the crime to him.

“‘To kill someone else would be the lowest point of self-will, and you should show your whole soul in that. I am not you; I want the highest point, and I’ll kill myself.... I am bound to show my unbelief,’ said Kirillov, walking about the room. ‘I have no higher idea than disbelief in God. I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself: that’s the whole of universal history up till now. I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God.’”[130]

Do not forget Dostoevsky’s Christianity is real. What he reveals in Kirillov’s declaration is again a case of moral bankruptcy. Dostoevsky, I repeat, has visions of salvation only through renunciation. But a fresh idea has crept in to complicate his theory: to illuminate it, I must have recourse once more to William Blake’s _Proverbs of Hell_.

“_If others had not been foolish, we should be so._” In order that we might be spared foolishness, others consented to foolishness before us.

Into Kirillov’s half-mad brain enters the idea of sacrifice: “I will begin and open the door and save--mankind.”

If it is necessary that Kirillov be abnormal in order to entertain such ideas--ideas moreover which Dostoevsky does not unreservedly sanction since they betoken insubordination--there is none the less a particle of truth in his conception, and if it is necessary that Kirillov be abnormal in order to entertain such ideas, it is that we also may have them in our day, yet be in our right mind.

“‘So at last you understand!’ cried Kirillov rapturously. ‘So it can be understood if even a fellow like you understands. Do you understand now that salvation for all consists in proving this idea to every one? Who will prove it? I! I can’t understand how an atheist could know that there is no God and not kill himself on the spot. To recognize that there is no God, and not to recognize at the same instant that one is God oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself. If you recognize it, you are sovereign, and then you won’t kill yourself, but live in the greatest glory. But one, the first, must kill himself, for else who will begin and prove it? So I must certainly kill myself, to begin and prove it. Now I am only a God against my will, and I am unhappy, because I am bound to assert my will. All are unhappy because all are afraid to express their will. Man has hitherto been so unhappy and so poor because he has been afraid to assert his will up to the highest point, and has shown his self-will only in little things, like a schoolboy.... But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that I don’t believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open the door, and save--mankind. For three years I’ve been seeking the attribute of my Godhead and I’ve found it; the attribute of my Godhead is self-will. That’s all I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible, and I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom.’”[131]

Blasphemous as Kirillov’s words may appear, rest assured that Dostoevsky, in drawing his figure, was possessed by the idea of Christ, by the necessity of the Crucifixion as a sacrifice to redeem mankind. If Christ had to be offered up, was it not that we, Christians, might be such without dying His death? “_If Thou be Christ, save Thyself!_” If Christ had saved Himself, mankind would have been lost: to save it, He surrendered His own life.

These few lines of Dostoevsky’s, taken from his _Essay on the Bourgeoisie_, throw fresh light on Kirillov’s figure.

“Be clear as to my meaning! Voluntary sacrifice, offered consciously and without constraint, the sacrifice of the individual for the good of mankind, is to my mind the mark of personality in its noblest and highest development, of perfect self-control--the absolute expression of free will. To offer one’s life for others, to suffer for others on the cross or at the stake, is possible only when there is a powerful development of the personality. A strongly-developed personality, conscious of its right to be such, having cast out fear, cannot use itself, cannot be used except in sacrifice for others, that these become like unto itself, self-determinate and happy. It is Nature’s law, and mankind tends to reach it.”[132]

At last you see why behind Kirillov’s talk, which seemed at first hearing somewhat incoherent, we succeed in discerning what was the philosophy of Dostoevsky himself.

I am conscious how far I am from having exhausted the teaching that can be found in his books. I insist once more on the fact that I have sought, consciously or unconsciously, what had most intimate connection with my own ideas. Others no doubt will be able to discern different things. And now that I am come to the end of my last paper, you are awaiting, I am sure, a conclusion of some kind from me. Whither does Dostoevsky lead us? What precisely is his teaching?

Some will say that he leads us straight to Bolshevism, although they know the horror Dostoevsky professed for anarchy. The whole of _The Possessed_ prophesies the revolution of which Russia is at present in the throes. But every man who, in defiance of existing systems, contributes new _tables of values_ is bound to seem, in the eyes of the conservative, an anarchist. Conservative and nationalist, deigning to see no more than what is chaotic in Dostoevsky, conclude he can be of no service whatsoever to us. To which my reply is that their opposition seems to do great hurt to the genius of France. By our unwillingness to accept anything foreign unless it reflects our system and logic, our whole likeness, in short, we err most grievously. His conception of beauty happens to differ from our Mediterranean standards, and were the divergence even greater, of what use would our national genius be, how could we apply our logic practically, unless in instances which clamour for regulation? In meditating none but her own likeness, the reflection of her past, France is exposed to a mortal danger. Let me explain my meaning as accurately and temperately as possible. It is well that France should have conservative elements reacting and taking a stand against what savours of foreign invasion. But what justifies the existence of these elements if not this fresh contribution without which French culture would ere long be nothing but a hollow form, a hardened shell? What do they know of France’s genius? What _do_ we know, except its past? It is the same with national feeling as with the Church. I mean the conservative elements often mete out to genius the same treatment as the Church to her saints at times. Many who were rejected, repulsed, denied in the name of tradition, are become its very corner-stones.

My opinion of intellectual protectionism I have often voiced: I believe it presents a great peril; on the other hand, any essay in intellectual denationalization involves a risk no less considerable. I am merely expressing what was Dostoevsky’s finding likewise. There never was an author more Russian in the strictest sense of the word and withal so universally European. Because it is essentially Russian, his humanity is all-embracing and touches each one of us personally.

“Veteran European Russian” he chose to describe himself. I shall let Versilov of _A Raw Youth_ develop Dostoevsky’s idea this time!

“The highest Russian thought is the reconciliation of ideas, and who in the whole world could understand such a thought at that time? I was a solitary wanderer: I am not speaking of myself personally--it’s the Russian idea I’m speaking of. There all was strife and logic; there the Frenchman was nothing but a Frenchman, the German nothing but a German, and this more intensely so than at any time in their history. Consequently never had the Frenchman done so much harm to France, or the German to Germany, as just at that time! In these days in all Europe there was not one European! I alone of all the vitriol-throwers could have told them to their face that their Tuileries was a mistake. And I alone among the avenging reactionists could have told them that the Tuileries, although a crime, was none the less logical. And that, my boy, was because I, as a Russian, was the only European in Russia. I am not talking of the whole Russian idea....

“Europe has created a noble type of Frenchman, of Englishman, and of German, but of the man of the future she scarcely knows at present. And, I fancy, so far she does not want to know. And that one can well imagine; they are not free, and we are free. I, with my Russian melancholy, was the only one free in Europe.... Take note, my dear, of a strange fact: every Frenchman can serve not only his France, but humanity, only on condition that he remains French to the utmost possible degree, and it’s the same for the Englishman and the German. Only to the Russian, even in our day, has been vouchsafed the capacity to become most of all Russian only when he is most European, and this is true even in our day, that is, long before the millennium has been reached.”[133]

But, to offset this declaration and show how acutely conscious Dostoevsky was of the danger to any country in too marked europeanization, I must read you this remarkable passage from _The Possessed_:

“‘Science and reason have, from the beginning of time, played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it will be till the end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another force which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable; that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. It is the force of persistent assertion of one’s own existence, and a denial of death. It’s the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it, the river of living water, the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It’s the æsthetic principle, as the philosophers call it, the ethical principle with which they identify it, “the seeking for God,” as I call it more simply. The object of every national movement, in every people and at every period of its existence, is only the seeking for its God, who must be its own God, and the faith in Him as the only true one. God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never happened that all, or even many, peoples have had one common god, but each has always had its own. It’s a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods in common. When gods are common to several nations the gods are dying and the faith in them, together with the nations themselves. The stronger a people, the more individual their God. There never has been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every people has its own conception of good and evil, and its own good and evil. When the same conception of good and evil become prevalent in several nations, then these nations are dying, and then the very distinction between good and evil is beginning to disappear.[134]... These are your own words, Stavrogin.... I haven’t altered anything of your ideas, or even of your words, not a syllable.’

“‘I don’t agree that you’ve not altered anything,’ Stavrogin observed cautiously. ‘You accepted them with ardour, and in your ardour have transformed them unconsciously. The very fact that you reduce God to a simple attribute of nationality....’

“He suddenly began watching Shatov with intense and peculiar attention, not so much his words as himself.

“‘I reduce God to an attribute of nationality?’ cried Shatov. ‘On the contrary, I raise the people to God. And has it ever been otherwise? The people is the body of God. Every people is only a people so long as it has its own God and excludes all other gods on earth irreconcilably, so long as it believes that by its God it will conquer and drive out of the world all other gods. Such, from the beginning of time, has been the belief of all great nations, all, anyway, who have been specially remarkable, all who have been leaders of humanity. There is no going against facts. The Jews lived only to await the coming of the true God and left the world the true God. The Greeks deified nature and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the people in the State, and bequeathed the idea of the State to the nations. France throughout her long history was only the incarnation and development of the Roman God....

“‘If a great people does not believe that the truth is only to be found in itself (in itself alone and in it exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is fit and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it would at once sink into being ethnographical material, and not a great people. A really great people can never accept a secondary part in the history of humanity, nor even one of the first, but will have the first. A nation which loses this belief ceases to be a nation.’”[135]

And by the way of corollary, we have Stavrogin’s reflection which might be a fitting conclusion: “An individual out of touch with his country has lost God.”

What would Dostoevsky think of Russia to-day and of her people? It is a painful speculation.... Did he apprehend, was he able to foresee her ghastly torments?

In _The Possessed_ we find all the seeds of Bolshevism. You need only listen to Shigalev’s exposition of his theory and the admission he makes at its close:

“I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction to the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.”[136] And that loathsome Pyotr Stepanovitch Verhovensky exults: “There’s going to be such an upset as the world has never seen before.... Russia will be overwhelmed with darkness, the earth will weep for its old gods.”[137]

Imprudent, dishonest even, I admit, to impute to the author himself the thoughts expressed by the characters in his novels or tales. But we know this was Dostoevsky’s medium of expression, often utilizing a colourless individual to formulate one of his cherished truths. We seem to hear him speak from the lips of a secondary character in _The Eternal Husband_ when the “malady of the age” is mentioned.