Part 9

Almost the theme of _The Eternal Husband_! _The Idiot_ dates from 1868, _The Eternal Husband_ from 1870. Some men of letters--and as clever a critic as Marcel Schwob was amongst them--consider the latter novel Dostoevsky’s masterpiece. His masterpiece! Perhaps that is excessive. But, at any rate, it is _a masterpiece_, and it is interesting to hear what Dostoevsky himself had to say about the book.

“I have a story,” he wrote to his friend Strakhov on March 18, 1869, “not a very long one. I had already thought of writing it three or four years ago, the year my brother died, encouraged by some words of Apollon Gregoriev who, praising my _Notes from Underground_, said to me, ‘Just write something in this style.’ But it will be something quite different, as far as form goes: the foundation, however, will still be the same. My everlasting theme.... I can write the story very quickly, because there is not a word or line of it but what is clear to me. It is already written in my head, although nothing is down on paper so far.”[84]

And in a letter dated October 27, 1869, he continues:

“Two-thirds of the story are almost completely written and recopied. I’ve done my best to cut it down, but that was impossible. It is not a question, though, of quantity, but of quality. Of its quality I cannot speak, for I have no notion myself: others will decide that point.”[85]

And here is what the others have to say:

“Your short story,” writes Strakhov, “is making a very lively impression here, and will, in my opinion, have an unchallenged success. It is one of the best worked-out of your novels, and by reason of its subject, one of the most interesting you have ever written. I am speaking of Trusotsky: the majority will have difficulty in understanding this character, but the book is being read and will be read eagerly.”

_Notes from Underground_ appeared a short time before this volume. I believe that with these _Notes_ we reach the height of Dostoevsky’s career. I consider this book (and I am not alone in my belief) as the keystone of his entire works. But with it we return to the intellectual region, so I shall not speak further of it to-day. Let us linger with _The Eternal Husband_ in the realm of passion. In this short tale there are but two characters, the husband and the lover. Concentration could be carried no further. The whole book responds to an ideal we should nowadays call classical: the action itself, or at least the initial fact that provokes the drama, had already taken place, like in one of Ibsen’s plays.

Velchaninov is come to that time of life when the past begins to look different to his eyes:

“Now that he was verging on the forties, the brightness and good humour were almost extinguished. These eyes, which were already surrounded by tiny wrinkles, had begun to betray the cynicism of a worn-out man of doubtful morals, a duplicity, an ever-increasing irony, and another shade of feeling, which was new: a shade of sadness and of pain--a sort of absent-minded sadness as though about nothing in particular, and yet acute. This sadness was specially marked when he was alone.”[86]

What is happening with Velchaninov? What _does_ happen at this age, at this turning point in life? So far, we have had the joy out of life; but suddenly we realize that our actions, the happenings we have brought about, once separated from us and launched out into the world, like a skiff on the sea, continue a separate existence often unknown to us. George Eliot speaks admirably of this in _Adam Bede_. Yes, the events in his own past no longer appear to Velchaninov in quite the same light, because he suddenly realizes his _responsibility_. At this period he meets one whom he knew in bygone days, the husband of a woman who had been his mistress. This husband appears in rather whimsical fashion. It is impossible to decide whether he is avoiding Velchaninov or pursuing him. He seems to spring up without warning from between the very paving stones in the street. He wanders around mysteriously, haunting the vicinity of Velchaninov’s house, unrecognized at first.

I shall not attempt to recount the gist of the book, nor how after a late night visit from Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky, the husband, Velchaninov decides to call upon him. Their standpoints, obscure at first, become clearer:

“‘Tell me, Pavel Pavlovitch, you are not alone here, then? Whose little girl is that I found with you just now?’

“Pavel Pavlovitch was positively amazed and raised his eyebrows, but he looked frankly and pleasantly at Velchaninov.

“‘Whose little girl? Why, it’s Liza!’ he said, with an affable smile.

“‘What Liza?’ muttered Velchaninov, with a sort of inward tremor. The shock was too sudden. When he came in and saw Liza, just before, he was surprised, but had absolutely no presentiment of the truth, and thought nothing particular about her.

“‘Yes, our Liza, our daughter Liza!’ Pavel Pavlovitch smiled.

“‘Your daughter? Do you mean that you and Natalya Vassilyevna had children?’ Velchaninov asked timidly and mistrustfully in a very low voice.

“‘Why, of course! But there, upon my word, how should you have heard of it? What am I thinking about! It was after you went away God blessed us with her!’

“Pavel Pavlovitch positively jumped up from his chair, in some agitation, though it seemed agreeable too.

“‘I heard nothing about it,’ said Velchaninov, and he turned pale.

“‘To be sure, to be sure, from whom could you have heard it?’ said Pavel Pavlovitch, in a voice weak with emotion, ‘My poor wife and I had lost all hope, as no doubt you remember, and suddenly God sent us this blessing, and what it meant to me He only knows! Just a year after you went away, I believe. No, not a year, not nearly a year. Wait a bit--why, you left us, if my memory does not deceive me, in October or November, I believe.’

“‘I left T---- at the beginning of September, the twelfth of September, I remember it very well.’

“‘In September, was it? H’m! what was I thinking about?’ cried Pavel Pavlovitch, much surprised. ‘Well, if that’s so, let me see, you went away on the twelfth of September, and Liza was born on the eighth of May, so--September--October--November--December--January--February--March--April--a little over eight months! And if you only knew how my poor wife ...’

“‘Show me--call her,’ Velchaninov faltered in a breaking voice.”[87]

And thus Velchaninov learns that his passing whim, by which he had set so little store, has left its mark. At once the question presents itself--does the husband know? Almost to the very end of the book the reader is left in doubt. Dostoevsky keeps us undecided, and this very indecision tortures Velchaninov. He does not know where he is. Or rather, it seems to us early in the day that Pavel Pavlovitch knows, but feigns ignorance, precisely in order to torture the lover by the indecision he skilfully maintains in his mind.

Here is one way of considering this strange book. _The Eternal Husband_ depicts the struggle between genuine and sincere feeling on one hand, and conventional feeling, accepted and current psychology on the other.

“There is but one way out--a duel,” cries Velchaninov. But you realize what a base issue that is, bringing satisfaction to no existing feeling, and simply pandering to an artificial conception of honour, one I touched on lately, a Western conception, for which we have no use here. We soon realize that, in his heart of hearts, Pavel Pavlovitch hugs his very jealousy. Yes, he positively loves and welcomes his suffering. This eagerness to suffer played already an important part in _Notes from Underground_.

In France, where the Russians are concerned, there has been much talk, in imitation of De Vogüé, of a _religion of suffering_. We French love to hear a formula, and to use one! It is one easy way of naturalizing an author and assigning him to his place in the show-case. Our mind likes precise data to hold fast by; and once satisfied, what need for thought or personal contact?--Nietzsche? Oh, yes! “The _superman_. Be ruthless. Live dangerously.”--Tolstoy? “Non-resistance to evil.”--Ibsen? “Northern mists.”--Darwin? “Man is descended from the monkey. The struggle for life.”--D’Annunzio? “The religion of beauty.” Woe betide the authors whose ideas refuse to be reduced to a formula! The bulk of the reading public simply cannot tolerate them (and Barrès realized this when to his merchandise he affixed the label: _La Terre et Les Morts_).

Yes, in France we tend to deceive ourselves with words, and believe that everything possible has been achieved and that it is time to apply the closure and pass on, once the formula has been found. In the same way we believed victory already in our grasp, thanks to Joffre and his “wearing down the enemy,” or to Russia and her “steam-roller advance.”

A _religion of suffering_ ... let us eliminate at once the possibility of misinterpretation. It is not a question, or rather not solely a question, of vicarious suffering, the world-wide suffering before which Raskolnikov humbles himself to lie at Sonia the prostitute’s feet, or Father Zossima at Dmitri Karamazov the predestined parricide’s, but a theory of personal suffering.

Throughout the whole book, Velchaninov keeps asking himself whether Trusotsky is jealous or not, whether he knows all or nothing. The question is absurd: of course Trusotsky knows! Of course he is jealous, but with the jealousy he fosters and cherishes within himself. It is the torment of jealousy that Trusotsky desires and enjoys, just as we saw the attachment of the hero of the _Underground_ to his toothache.

Of the hideous torment of the jealous husband we learn practically nothing. Dostoevsky reveals it only indirectly, by virtue of the cruel suffering Trusotsky inflicts on the creatures round about him, especially on the little girl whom he adores in spite of all. The child’s anguish helps us to measure the intensity of the father’s own suffering. Pavel Pavelovitch tortures the child, whom he loves passionately; he can no more hate her than he can hate his wife’s lover:

“‘Do you know what Liza has been to me?’--he suddenly recalled the drunkard’s exclamation and felt that that exclamation was sincere, not a pose, and that there was love in it. How could that monster be so cruel to a child whom he loved so much? Is it credible? But every time he made haste to dismiss that question, and, as it were, brush it aside; there was something awful in that question, something he could not bear and could not solve.”[88]

We may rest assured that the keenest of his suffering is due to his inability to become jealous: of jealousy he has only the suffering, and he cannot hate the man who was preferred to himself. The very sufferings he inflicts on his rival, those he would fain inflict upon him, the torments he inflicts on his little daughter, are a kind of mystic counterpart that he sets to the horror and the anguish in whose depths he is struggling. None the less, he dreams of revenge: not that he has any precise desire to avenge himself, but he tells himself that he must seek revenge, as perhaps the sole means of freeing himself from such awful torments.

“Habit is everything, even in love,” says Vauvenargues,[89] and you remember La Rochefoucauld’s maxim? “_How many men would never have known love if they had never heard of love?_” Are we not justified in asking: How many would never be jealous, if they did not hear jealousy spoken about, and had not persuaded themselves that it was imperative to be jealous?

Yes, convention is the great breeder of falsehood. How many are forced to play their life long a part strangely foreign to themselves? And how difficult it is to discern in ourselves a feeling not previously described, labelled, and present before us as a model! Man finds it easier to imitate everything than to invent anything. How many are content to live their lives warped by untruth, and find, none the less, in the very falsity of convention more comfort and less need for effort than in straightforward affirmation of their personal feelings! Such affirmation would require of them an effort of invention utterly beyond them.

“‘I’ll tell you a killing little anecdote, Alexey Ivanovitch,’ said Trusotsky. ‘I thought of it this morning in the carriage. I wanted to tell you of it then. You said just now “hangs on people’s necks.” You remember perhaps Semyon Petrovitch Livstov, he used to come and see us when you were in T----: well, his younger brother, who was also a young Petersburg swell, was in attendance on the Governor at V----, and he too was distinguished for various qualities. He had a quarrel with Gobulenko, a colonel, and considered himself insulted, but he swallowed the affront and concealed it, and meanwhile Gobulenko cut him out with the lady of his heart and made her an offer. And what do you think? This Livtsov formed a genuine friendship with Gobulenko, he quite made it up with him, and, what’s more, insisted on being his best man: he held the wedding crown and when they came out from under it, he went up to kiss and congratulate Gobulenko. And in the presence of the Governor and all the honourable company, with his swallow-tail coat, and his hair in curl, he sticks the bridegroom in the stomach with a knife--so that he rolled over! His own best man! What a disgrace! And, what’s more, when he’d stabbed him like that, he rushed about crying: “Alas, what have I done! Oh, what is it that I’ve done!” with floods of tears, trembling all over, flinging himself on people’s necks, even ladies. “Ah, what have I done!” he kept saying, “what have I done now!” He--he--he! he was killing. Though one feels sorry for Gobulenko, perhaps, but after all, he recovered.’

“‘I don’t see why you told me this story,’ observed Velchaninov, frowning sternly.

“‘Why, all because he stuck the knife in him, you know,’ Pavel Pavlovitch tittered....”[90]

And in similar fashion, Pavel Pavlovitch’s real spontaneous feeling expresses itself, when he is unexpectedly obliged to nurse Velchaninov, down with a liver complaint.

“The sick man fell asleep suddenly, a minute after lying down. The unnatural strain upon him that day, in the shattered state of his health, had brought on a sudden crisis, and he was as weak as a child. But the pain asserted itself again and weariness; and an hour later he woke up and painfully got up from the sofa. The storm had subsided, the room was full of tobacco smoke, on the table stood an empty bottle, and Pavel Pavlovitch was asleep on another sofa. He was lying on his back, with his head on the sofa cushion, fully dressed and with his boots on. His lorgnette had slipped out of his pocket, and was hanging down almost to the floor.”[91]

Strange how Dostoevsky, when leading us through the strangest by-paths of psychology, ever must needs add the most precise and infinitesimal of realistic details, in order to make more secure an edifice which otherwise would appear the extreme expression of phantasy and imagination.

Velchaninov is in great pain, and immediately Trusotsky applies every possible means of alleviating it.

“But Pavel Pavlovitch, goodness knows why, seemed beside himself as though it were a question of saving his own son. Without heeding Velchaninov’s protests, he insisted on the necessity of compresses and also of two or three cups of weak tea to be drunk on the spot, ‘and not simply hot, but boiling.’ He ran to Mavra, without waiting for permission, with her laid a fire in the kitchen, which always stood empty, and blew up the samovar; at the same time he succeeded in getting the sick man to bed, took off his clothes, wrapped him up in a quilt, and within twenty minutes had prepared tea and compresses.

“‘This is a hot plate, scalding hot!’ he said, almost ecstatically, applying the heated plate, wrapped up in a napkin, on Velchaninov’s aching chest. ‘There are no other compresses, and plates, I swear on my honour, will be even better; they were laid on Pyotr Kuzmitch, I saw it with my own eyes, and did it with my own hands. One may die of it, you know. Drink your tea, swallow it; never mind about scalding yourself! Life is too precious for one to be squeamish.’

“He quite flustered Mavra, who was half asleep; the plates were changed every two or three minutes. After the third plate, and the second cup of tea, swallowed at a gulp, Velchaninov felt a sudden relief.

“‘If once they’ve shifted the pain, thank God, it’s a good sign!’ said Pavel Pavlovitch, and he ran joyfully to fetch a fresh plate and a fresh cup of tea.

“‘If only we can ease the pain, if only we can keep it under!’ he kept repeating.

“Half an hour later the pain was much less, but the sick man was so exhausted that, in spite of Pavel Pavlovitch’s entreaties, he refused to put up with ‘just one more nice little plate.’ He was so weak that everything was dark before his eyes.

“‘Sleep, sleep!’ he repeated in a faint voice.

“‘To be sure,’ Pavel Pavlovitch assented.

“‘You’ll stay the night--what time is it?’

“‘It’s nearly two o’clock, it’s quarter to.’

“‘You’ll stay the night?’

“‘I will, I will.’

“A minute later the sick man called Pavel Pavlovitch again. ‘You, you,’ he muttered, when the latter had run up and was bending over him: ‘You are much better than I am! I understand it all--all.... Thank you.’

“‘Sleep, sleep,’ whispered Pavel Pavlovitch, and he hastened on tiptoe to his sofa.

“As he fell asleep, the invalid heard Pavel Pavlovitch noiselessly making a bed for himself, and taking off his clothes. Finally, putting out the candle, and almost holding his breath for fear of waking the patient, he stretched himself on his sofa.”[92]

And yet, a quarter of an hour later, Velchaninov catches Trusotsky, who believes him sound asleep, bending over him with intent to murder him.

“Pavel Pavlovitch wanted to kill him, but didn’t know he wanted to kill him! ‘It’s senseless, but that’s the truth,’ thought Velchaninov.”[93]

And yet he is not satisfied!

“‘And can it be that it was all true?’ he exclaimed again, suddenly raising his head from the pillow and opening his eyes. ‘All that madman told me yesterday about his love for me, when his chin quivered and he thumped himself on the breast with his fist?’

“‘It was the absolute truth,’ he decided, still pondering and analysing. ‘That quasimodo from T---- was quite sufficiently stupid and noble to fall in love with the lover of his wife, about whom he noticed nothing suspicious in twenty years! He had been thinking of me with respect, cherishing my memory and brooding over my “utterances” for nine years. Good Heavens! And I had no notion of it! He could not have been lying yesterday. But did he love me yesterday when he declared his feeling and said, “Let us settle our account!” Yes, it was from hatred that he loved me; that’s the strongest of all loves....

“‘... Only he didn’t know then whether he would end by embracing me or murdering me. Of course, it’s turned out that the best thing was to do both. A most natural solution’.”[94]

If I have lingered so long over this slender book, it is because it is more accessible than the rest of Dostoevsky’s novels, and helps us to win, beyond love and hate, to that wider region I spoke about not long since: a region where love is not, nor passion, so easily and so simply reached: the region Schopenhauer spoke of, the meeting-place of human brotherhood, where the limits of existence fade away, where the notion of the individual and of time is lost, the place wherein Dostoevsky sought--and found--the secret of happiness.

V

At our last meeting I spoke of the three strata or regions Dostoevsky seems to discern in the human personality: first, the province of intellectual speculation, then the domain of the passions, midway between the former and the third region, a vast realm remote from the play of passion.

It is plain that these three strata are not isolated or even strictly limited, but interpenetrate.

The intermediate region, the domain of passion, I have already discussed. Here, and on this plane, the play is staged, not merely the play Dostoevsky presents in each of his works, but the drama of entire mankind. We observed, too, what at first wore the air of a paradox: no matter how restless and powerful, the passions after all are of but slender importance, or at least do not stir the soul’s utmost depths. Events have no hold on the soul--they are simply outwith its province. To support my assertion, what instance could I more aptly adduce than war? Investigations have been carried out in regard to the terrible struggle through which we have but lately passed. Literary men were asked to estimate its real or apparent moment, its moral after-effects, its influence on literature. The answer is simple: to all intents and purposes its influence has been nil.

Consider for a moment the Napoleonic wars: endeavour to trace their repercussion in literature and determine in what way they have modified the soul of humanity. I admit there exist poems inspired by the imperial epic as there exist only all too many with the Great War for theme. But where is there a deeper note, a spiritual transformation? No exterior event, whatever its tragedy or magnitude, can effect such a change. On the other hand, the French Revolution is different, but here we are concerned with a disturbance that is more than physical, a traumatism, if I may use the word. This time the convulsion proceeds from the very soul of the nation. The influence of the French Revolution on the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau is enormous, although their works date from before the event for which they prepared the way. And we shall observe the same order of things in Dostoevsky’s novels: the idea is not consecutive to the event, but precedes it. In most cases passion has to serve as intermediary between thought and action.

At any rate, in Dostoevsky’s novels we shall see the intellectual element comes at times into touch with that deeper region, which is not the soul’s hell, but its heaven.

In Dostoevsky we find the mysterious inversion of values already noticed in William Blake, the great mystic amongst English poets. Hell, according to Dostoevsky, is the first region, the realm of mind and reason. Throughout his works, if our attention be at all alert, we shall become conscious of a depreciation of mental powers which is not so much systematic as involuntary and inspired by the spirit of the Gospel.

Dostoevsky never deliberately states, although he often insinuates, that the antithesis of love is less hate than the steady activity of the mind. In his eyes it is intellect which individualizes, which is the enemy of the Kingdom of Heaven, life eternal, and that bliss where time is not, reached only by renouncing the individual self and sinking deep in a solidarity that knows no distinctions.