Lev Shestov Dostoevsky Tolstoy and Nietzsche ToC 2 PDF

Lev Shestov - Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche - ToC 11/16/15
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DOSTOEVSKY, TOLSTOY and

NIETZSCHE
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(c) "Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche", edited by Bernard Martin, Ohio University Press,
1969.
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THE GOOD IN THE TEACHING OF TOLSTOY AND
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Philosophy and Preaching
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Chapters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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DOSTOEVSKY AND NIETZSCHE

The Philosophy of Tragedy
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
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Lev Shestov - Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy - 1 11/16/15
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LEV SHESTOV
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Dostoevsky and Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Tragedy
Aimes-tu les damns? Dis-moi, connais-tu lirrmissible?

Do yo u lo ve the damned? Tell me, do yo u kno w the irrevo cable?
- CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1
"It would be exceedingly difficult for me to tell the story of the
regeneration of my convictions, especially as it may not be so interesting,"
Dostoevsky says in his Diary of a Writer for 1873. [F.M. Dostoevsky, Polnoe
sobranie sochinenij, St. Petersburg, 1895, IX, 342]. Difficult, probably so. But
hardly anyone would agree that it would not be interesting. The story of a
regeneration of convictions - can any story in the entire field of literature be
more filled with thrilling and all-absorbing interest? The story of a
regeneration of convictions - why, that is first and foremost the story of their
birth. Convictions are born for a second time in a man, before his very eyes, at
an age when he has enough experience and keenness of observation to follow
consciously this great and profound mystery of his soul. Dostoevsky would
have been no psychologist if such a process had gone unnoticed by him. And
he would have been no writer if he had failed to share his observations with
other people. Evidently, the second half of the sentence quoted above was
said for no particular reason, for propriety, which demands that a writer disdain,
at least outwardly, his own person. As a matter of fact, Dostoevsky knew all
too well how crucially important the question of the birth of convictions can be
for us; he also knew that there is but one way to clear up this question, if only
slightly: by telling one's own story. Do you remember the words of the hero
o f Notes from the Underground: "What can a decent man talk about with the
greatest of pleasure? Answer: himself. So I shall speak about myself." [Ibid.,
III (2), 74].
To a considerable extent, Dostoevsky's works realize this program. With

the years, as his talent developed and matured, he spoke of himself with ever
greater daring and truth. But at the same time, he always continued to the end of
his life more or less to conceal himself behind the fictitious names of the
heroes of his novels. True, this was no longer a matter of literary or social
decorum. Towards the end of his career, Dostoevsky would not have been
afraid to violate even more serious demands of social relations. But he always
felt obliged to say through his leading characters things that even in his
consciousness would perhaps not have been cast in such a sharp and definite
form, had they not appeared to him in the deceptive shape of judgments and
desires, not of his own ego, but of a nonexistent hero of a novel. One is
particularly aware of this in his footnote to Notes from the Underground.
There, Dostoevsky insists that "the author of the notes and the notes
themselves are, of course, invented," and that he merely set himself the task of
portraying "one of the representatives of a generation still alive." Methods of
this kind, of course, achieve directly opposite results. From the very first
pages, the reader is convinced that not the notes and their author have been
invented, but the annotation of them. And if Dostoevsky had always adhered to
this same system of annotation in his subsequent writings, his work would not
have given rise to the most diverse interpretations. But annotation was not a
mere formality for him. He himself dreaded to think that the "underground,"
which he had depicted so vividly, was not something completely alien to him,
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but something kindred, his very own. He himself was frightened by the horrors
that had been revealed to him, and he harnessed all the powers of his soul to
protect himself from them, with anything at all, with even the first ideals he
came across. Thus were created the characters Prince Myshkin and Alyosha
Karamazov. Thence also the frenzied sermons that fill his Diary of a Writer to
overflowing. All this is merely to remind us that the Raskolnikovs, Ivan
Karamazovs, Kirillovs, and other characters of Dostoevsky's novels speak for
themselves and have nothing in common with their author. All this is merely a
new method of annotation of Notes from the Underground.
Unfortunately, the annotation this time is so closely interwoven with the text
that there is no longer any possibility of separating in a purely mechanical way
Dostoevsky's actual experiences from the "ideas" that he invented. True, it is to
a certain extent possible to indicate the direction in which the separation should
be made. Thus, for example, none of the banalities or commonplaces tell us
anything about Dostoevsky himself. They have all been borrowed. it is not
even hard to guess the sources from which Dostoevsky took them - with, to
tell the truth, a fairly unstinting hand. A second sign is the method of
presentation. As soon as you detect hysteria, unusually high notes, and an
unnatural cry in Dostoevsky's speech, you can conclude that an "annotation" is
beginning. Dostoevsky does not believe his own words, and he is trying to
replace a lack of faith with "feeling" and eloquence. Such desperate,
breathless eloquence does perhaps have an irresistible effect on an untrained
ear, but to a more experienced one, it suggests something totally different.
It goes without saying that the signs just pointed out by no means provide a
mathematically correct way of solving the problem concerning us here. Even
with them, there remains sufficient room for doubt and obscurity. Mistakes are,
of course, possible in the interpretation of individual passages of
Dostoevsky's works, even of whole novels. In that case, what are we to rely
on? On critical instinct? But the reader will not be satisfied with such an
answer. It reeks of mythology, antiquity, mustiness, falsehood - even of
deliberate falsehood. Well, then, on what? One thing then remains: arbitrary
action. Perhaps this word with its explicit candor will be more likely to win the
favor of inordinately exacting people who distrust the rights of critical instinct,
particularly if they suspect that, aprs tout, this arbitrary action will not be
entirely arbitrary.
At any rate, our task is set. We must do the job that Dostoevsky himself
planned, but failed to carry out: tell the story of the regeneration of his
convictions. I shall merely note here that the regeneration was indeed an
unusual one. Not a trace remained of Dostoevsky's earlier convictions, of what
he believed as a youth when he first joined Belinskys Circle [Vissarion
Belinsky (1811-1848), the father of Russian criticism, a leader of the
Westerners. - S.R.]. Usually, people continue to regard dethroned idols as
gods and abandoned temples as temples. But Dostoevsky not only burned all
that he had formerly worshipped, he trampled it in the dirt. He not only hated
his earlier faith, he despised it. There are few such instances in the history of
literature. Modern times can name in addition to Dostoevsky, only Nietzsche.
It was the very same thing with Nietzsche. His break with the ideals and
teachers of his youth was no less sharp and tempestuous, and at the same time it
was painfully agonizing. Dostoevsky speaks of the regeneration of his
convictions; with Nietzsche, it is a question of a revaluation of all values. In
effect, both expressions are but different words to denote one and the same
process. If we take this circumstance into account, it will probably not seem
strange that Nietzsche held such a high opinion of Dostoevsky. Here are his
actual words: "Dostoevsky is the only psychologist from whom I was able to
learn anything. I rank my acquaintance with him among the most splendid
achievements of my life." [F.Nietzsche, Nietzsche's Werke, VIII (Leipzig,
1901), 158]. Nietzsche recognized Dostoevsky as a kindred spirit.
Indeed, if it is a similarity of inner experience rather than a common origin, a

common place of residence, and a similarity of character that binds people
together and makes them kindred, then Nietzsche and Dostoevsky can without
exaggeration be called brothers, even twins. I think that if they had lived
together, they would have hated each other with the peculiar hatred that Kirby
and Shatov (The Possessed) felt for one another after their American trip, during
which time they had to spend four months together, half-starving in a shed. But
Nietzsche's acquaintance with Dostoevsky was only through the latter's books,
and at a time when Dostoevsky was no longer alive. A dead man can be
forgiven all - even the fact that he knows the secret that had been revealed to
Kirillov and Shatov in the shed. He will betray nothing.
Nietzsche, however, was mistaken. No one can betray him to such an extent
as Dostoevsky. And the reverse is also true: much that is obscure in
Dostoevsky is clarified in Nietzsche's works. First of all, let us note one
striking circumstance. As is well known, Dostoevsky liked to prophesy. And
most of all, he liked to prophesy that Russia was destined to restore the idea
of universal brotherhood to Europe, where it had been forgotten. One of the
first Russians to gain an influence over the Europeans was Dostoevsky
himself. But did his preaching attract many followers? People spoke of it a bit,
they were even astonished by it - but they forgot it. The first gift that Europe
gratefully accepted from Russia was Dostoevsky's "psychology," i.e., the
underground man, with his various subspecies, the Raskolnikovs, Karamazovs,
and Kirillovs. What a great irony of fate - don't you agree? But fate likes most
of all to laugh at the ideals and prophecies of mortals - and this must be
regarded as its way of revealing its great wisdom.
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Dostoevsky and Nietzsche : The Philosophy of Tragedy
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2
Dostoevsky's literary work can be divided into two periods. The first
begins with Poor Folk [1845] and ends with The House of the Dead [1861-
1862]. The second begins with Notes from the Underground [1864] and ends
with the Pushkin Speech [1880], that somber apotheosis of all Dostoevsky's
creative work. From Notes from the Underground, which thus falls on the
border between the two periods, the reader suddenly and quite unexpectedly
learns that while the other novels and articles were being written, there was
taking place in Dostoevsky one of the most horrible crises, that only the human
soul is capable of preparing for itself and bearing. What was the cause of it?
Penal servitude? Evidently not; at least, not directly. After his penal servitude,
Dostoevsky wrote quite a number of articles in which he not only did not
renounce his earlier convictions, but continued to proclaim them with a power
of talent and genius such as he dared not even dream of in his younger years.
After all, upon completing his penal servitude, he wrote The House of the
Dead, a novel that everyone, even enemies of his new tendency, unanimously
praises to this day as a "particularly" worthy work, or more precisely, as one
that stands apart from all his subsequent novels. Here we still have in toto the
very same Dostoevsky whose first novella had been read with such fervor in
Belinskys Circle. In "idea" and "conviction," The House of the Dead
unquestionably belongs to a loyal disciple of the "furious" Vissarion, of
George Sand, and of the French idealists of the first half of the nineteenth
century.
Here we have almost the same thing as in Poor Folk. True, there is also a
thing or two that is new here: there is a sense of reality, a readiness to see life
as it really is. But who would think that a sense of reality could even partially
threaten a man's convictions and ideals? Everyone, Dostoevsky himself
included, would have considered such a hypothesis beast likely. Reality is, of
course, dismal and ugly, particularly the reality of penal servitude, whereas
ideals are bright and clear. But, after all, this antithesis was the very soil on
which his ideals had sprung up: not only did it not refute them, it vindicated
them. All that remained was to urge and spur reality on until the distance
between it and the ideals had become infinitely small or nonexistent.
Accordingly, even the depiction of dismal reality was aimed at one thing only
- to struggle against it and destroy it in the distant, but seemingly near, future.
In this sense, Poor Folk and The House of the Dead are of the same school
and have one and the same purpose; the only difference is in the craftsmanship
of the author, who in the course of fifteen years had managed to improve
himself considerably in the art of writing. In Poor Folk, just as in The Double
and "The Landlady," we are dealing with a still awkward, although talented,
disciple, who is enthusiastically popularizing the great master Gogol as
interpreted to him by Belinsky. In reading the stories just mentioned, you are,
of course, reminded of "The Memoirs of a Madman," and "The Terrible
Vengeance," and probably think that popularization was unnecessary. Very
likely, the reader would lose little if Dostoevsky's early stories had forever
remained in their author's head. But the writer needed them. From early youth
on, as if foreseeing his future task, Dostoevsky practiced the depiction of
scenes that were somber and painful. For the present, he was imitating, but his
time would come, and he would abandon his teacher and write on his own. It is,
of course, strange to see youth showing a partiality for gray and for dark
colors, but, after all, Dostoevsky never knew any others. Was it possible, you
ask yourself, that he dared not face the light, not face joy? Was it possible that
already in early youth he instinctively felt the need to sacrifice himself
completely to his talent? But it is true: talent is a privilegium odiosum; rarely
does it give its possessor earthly joys.
Until the age of forty, Dostoevsky patiently bore the burden of his talent. It
seemed to him that this burden was light, that such a yoke was a blessing. With
what delight he recalls his first literary attempts in The Humiliated and Insulted.
According to him, he experienced his greatest happiness not when his work
was published, and not even when he first heard the unusually flattering
comments on it from the mouths of the best writers and literary connoisseurs of
the time. No, he considered the happiest hours of his life those when, as a still
unknown writer, he worked in silence over his manuscript, shedding tears over
his invention - over the fate of the downtrodden and oppressed government
clerk Makar Devushkin. I do not know if Dostoevsky was being completely
frank here, and if he actually did experience his greatest happiness while
shedding tears over his invention. Perhaps there is a certain amount of
exaggeration here. But even if this is so, if Dostoevsky, in making such an
admission, was merely paying tribute to the viewpoint that prevailed in his time
- one that he himself shared-even so, the strangeness of his words can and must
arouse a feeling of alarm and suspicion in us. What sort of man is it, what sort
of people are they, who make it their duty to rejoice so madly over the mishaps
invented by them for the unfortunate Makar Devushkin? And how is it possible
to combine "happiness" with the tears that they themselves admit to shedding
over their horrible invention? Note that The Humiliated and Insulted is written in
the same style as Poor Folk. The fifteen-year interval had not in the least
"reformed" Dostoevsky in this respect. Earlier he had shed tears over
Devushkin; now they are over Natasha. As for the delights of creative activity,
they, as is well known, never abandon a writer.
At first glance, it would seem that nothing could be more unnatural and,
forgive me the word, more repulsive than all these combinations of tears and
delight. Whence the delight? And why? The man had to tell that Makar
Devushkin or Natasha had been insulted, tormented, and crushed; apparently,
there is nothing to rejoice at. But he spent whole months and years over his
stories, and then declared publicly, frankly, and unashamedly - more than that,
with obvious pride - that these were the best moments of his life. The same
frame of mind is expected of the public reading works of this sort. It is
expected to burst into tears and at the same time not to forget to rejoice. True,
there are grounds for these demands. It is assumed that in this way, good
feelings are aroused: "It deeply moves your heart to realize that the most
downtrodden man, the lowest of the low, is also a human being and is called
your brother." [Dostoevsky, op. cit., IV, 29]. And so in order to spread this
idea among readers, a special class of people is needed, who spend their
entire life mainly contemplating in their imagination all possible horrors and
monstrosities that exist in such great variety on earth and then depicting them in
their books. The pictures must be vivid, lively, gripping, and startling; they
must strike the heart with a mysterious force. Otherwise, they will be
condemned; otherwise, they will not produce the desired effect.
Let us put aside the readers with their hearts and good feelings. But what
must be the situation of a writer who has assumed the dismal responsibility of
arousing someone else's conscience by the depiction of various kinds of
horrors? It is good if he manages, at least for a time, to bewitch his own
conscience so that the scenes intended to have an effect on others pass without
leaving a trace on it.
This would, of course, be unnatural, but, as we saw, it is psychologically

possible. Even if Dostoevsky did exaggerate in reporting his first talks with
his Muse, there is, at any rate, also undeniable truth in his story. Most likely,
poor Makar Devushkin did give him many delightful hours. Youth,
inexperience, the example of older and patently superior people - from such
elements, almost any absurdity can result. Just recall the deeds that men have
made up their minds to do when up ahead, even far off in the distance, an "idea"
with its brilliant aureole would flash before them. Everything would be
forgotten, everything would be sacrificed to it. Not only the fictitious Makar
Devushkin, with whom it was necessary merely "to accustom himself as to an
actual living relative," but real, living people, even relatives, were forsaken as
soon as the question of serving the idea arose. Is it surprising then that he was
able to feel happy while having before him the imaginary face of a humiliated
government clerk? However that may be, and whatever may have been
involved here, the role of the inventor of dismal reality is all the more
dangerous and terrible the more sincerely and completely people surrender
themselves to it and the more talented the person who has taken it upon himself.
Talent is, I repeat, a privilegium odiosum, and Dostoevsky, like Gogol, had
sooner or later to realize how heavy was its burden.
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"It deeply moves your heart to realize that the most downtrodden man, the
lowest of the low, is also a human being, and is called your brother." These
words fully express the idea for the sake of which Dostoevsky first embarked
on his literary career. As you see, it is not striking for its originality. It was not
striking for that quality even at the time when Dostoevsky began to write. He
was not the first to proclaim it. In the fifties and for a long time afterward, it
dominated the minds of all the better Russian people. At that time, its most
outstanding spokesman was Belinsky, to whom it in turn had come from the
West under the then fascinating name "humanity." Although Belinsky was a
critic as far as his literary responsibilities were concerned, he can more readily
be called a great preacher by mentality. Indeed, he viewed all the greatest
works of literature in the light of a single moral idea. Three-fourths of his
articles on Pushkin, Gogol, and Lermontov are an unbroken hymn to humanity.
Belinsky aspired, at least in literature if it was impossible to do so in other
spheres that were broader but inaccessible to his influence, to proclaim that
solemn declaration of the rights of man, which in its time had caused such a
vast upheaval in France, from where, as is well known, our new ideas mainly
came. Along with the declaration of the rights of man before society, there
was brought to us as its complement and, as was thought at the time, its
necessary presupposition the idea of the natural interpretability of the world
order.
Natural interpretability had indeed played its emancipatory role in the West.
In order to unbind their hands, reformers had to declare that the entire social
order of the past was the result of a blind play of forces. Of course, we, too,
had reckoned on this. But at the time, we were unable to ascribe an auxiliary
meaning to truth. Truth is first and foremost truth. And natural necessity had
been established as dogma right along with "humanity." The tragedy of uniting
these two ideas was not obvious to anyone at the time (with the partial
exception of Belinsky himself - but about that, below). No one yet sensed that
along with the declaration of the rights of man before society (humanity), we
had also been brought the declaration of his lack of rights - before nature. And
Dostoevsky least of all suspected this. With all the ardor of a young and
enthused man, he pounced upon these new ideas. He had known Belinsky
earlier from the latter's magazine articles. But personal acquaintance with him
fortified Dostoevsky's faith even more. Many years later, in The Diary of a
Writer, he said: "Belinsky never took a liking to me; but at the time, I fervently
accepted his entire doctrine." [Ibid., IX, 175]. Dostoevsky does not explain in
detail why Belinsky did not take a liking to him. He limits himself to just a few
words of a general, but significant nature: "We separated for various reasons -
which, by the way, were most unimportant in every respect." [Ibid., IX, 172].
As far as we know, there had indeed been no serious misunderstandings
between them. But on the other hand, it has been attested that Dostoevsky never
felt at ease in Belinskys Circle. Every one in it, Belinsky included, insulted
him. And it must be assumed that those insults had an unusually powerful effect
on this already morbidly impressionable youth. They embedded themselves so
deeply in his soul that later on, twenty-five years after Belinskys death, he
seized the first possible opportunity to get even for them. In the same issue of
The Citizen from which we quoted Dostoevsky's words above, you find quite a
number of unusually venomous remarks about Belinsky which Dostoevsky had
long borne in his soul. Evidently the old wounds were exceedingly painful and
the unavenged insults grievous to recall if it was necessary to pour out so
much venom on his long-deceased teacher.
But Dostoevsky was right. There are things a person cannot forgive, and
consequently, there are insults that cannot be forgotten. It is impossible to
reconcile yourself to the fact that the teacher from whom you so joyfully, so
wholeheartedly, and so impetuously received your faith has rebuffed and
ridiculed you. But that is exactly what happened in the case of Dostoevsky and
Belinsky. When the young and ardent disciple would visit his master to hear
what he had to say on the subject of "the most downtrodden man, the lowest of
the low," the master would be playing cards and talking about irrelevant
matters. That was painful to bear for a person so gentle and trusting as
Dostoevsky was at the time. But Belinskys disciple was also irksome to him.
Do you know that for some teachers there is no greater torment on earth than to
have students who are too trusting and consistent? Belinsky was already
approaching the end of his literary career when Dostoevsky was just beginning
his. As a man enlightened by experience, he sensed all too deeply how much
danger is concealed in every inordinately fervent enthusiasm for an idea. He
already knew that an unsolvable contradiction lies concealed deep in the idea,
and therefore he tried to confine himself to its surface. He understood that the
natural order of things laughs at humanity, which in turn can merely bow its
head submissively before the invincible foe. You, of course, recall Belinskys
celebrated letter, in which he demands that an account be rendered for "every
blood brother." This means that the contradiction had already become crystal
clear to him and that humanity no longer satisfied him. But Dostoevsky did not
understand this, he could not understand it, and with all the ardor of a neophyte,
he constantly returned in his conversation and writing to "the humblest man."
You can imagine how distressing it was for Belinsky to listen to his young
friend, especially as he himself could not openly confess his own thoughts
and feelings!
As a result, the disciple, for "unimportant reasons," abandoned his master,

who by now was bored even with Poor Folk, and who called Dostoevsky's
next work "nervous twaddle." The story, as you see, is not a cheerful one. But
the ball comes to the player. Both friends took with them painful memories of
their short-lived acquaintance. Belinsky soon died, but Dostoevsky had for
more than thirty years to bear within himself the memories of a teacher who had
repudiated him and to contend with the agonizing contradiction that he had
inherited along with humanity from the "furious Vissarion." I might note here
that in his late works, Dostoevsky used the word "humanity" in an ionic sense
only, and he always wrote it in quotation marks. Consequently, it had cost him
dearly! Could he have believed this when he was rejoicing over his Devushkin
and embracing Belinsky, Nekrassov, and Grigorovich? [N.A. Nekrassov
(1821-1877), a Russian poet whose main theme was the Russian people,
particularly the peasants and their suffering; D. V. Grigorovich (1822-1899), a
sentimental realist whose novels describe the hard life of the peasant. - S.R.]
The break with Belinsky was the first test that Dostoevsky had to stand. And
he stood it with flying colors. He not only did not betray his faith, on the
contrary, he seemed to give himself up to it even more passionately than
before, although he was filled with so much fervor from the very beginning
that the comparative degree is perhaps inappropriate here. The second test was
his arrest in connection with the Petrashevsky affair. Dostoevsky was
sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to hard labor. But
here, too, he remained firm and unshaken - not only outwardly, but, as is evident
from his own reminiscences, even in the depths of his soul. His testimony
relates to 1873, i.e., to the time when he recalled his past with disgust and
indignation, when he was even ready to slander it. Therefore, it is of particular
value, and we shall quote it here in toto: "The sentence of death by shooting,
which was read to each of us beforehand, had been read in all seriousness;
almost all the condemned were certain that it would be carried out, and they
suffered at least ten terrible, inordinately horrible, minutes awaiting death. In
those last minutes, some of us (I know this for certain) instinctively withdrew
into ourselves and, while hastily examining the whole of our still very young
lives, we perhaps even repented of some of our serious deeds (the kind that
secretly remain on everyone's conscience throughout his life); but the deed for
which we had been condemned, the thoughts, the ideas that had possessed our
minds, seemed to us not only something that did not demand repentance, but
even something that purified us, a martyrdom for which much would be
forgiven! And thus it continued for a long time. Not the years of exile, not the
suffering broke us. On the contrary, nothing broke us, and our convictions
merely bolstered our spirits with an awareness of an obligation fulfilled."
[Ibid., IX, 342].
Thus the man recalls his past after a quarter of a century. Consequently, the
"humblest man" was dear to his heart; consequently, his bond with Belinskys
ideas was strong, and the recently disseminated opinion that Dostoevsky had
been reckoned as a member of Belinskys Circle only through a
misunderstanding, when in fact his heart belonged to a different world even in
early youth, is completely unfounded. And why, one might ask, was such a
fabrication necessary? To uphold Dostoevsky's honor? But where is the honor
in it? Is it really so necessary for a person still in diapers to have his
"convictions" completely formulated for the rest of his life? In my opinion, it
is not. A person lives and learns from life. And he who has lived to old age
without having seen anything new is more likely to astonish us for his lack of
perceptiveness than to command our respect. However, I want least of all here
to praise Dostoevsky for his perceptiveness. Generally speaking, this is no
place to appraise his mental attributes. There is no question that this writer was
an extraordinary man - at least in the eyes of someone who decides to study
and speak about him so many years after his death. But precisely for this
reason is it least of all necessary to ascribe to or invent for him special mental
attributes. Here, more than anywhere else, one must bridle one's personal
sympathies and antipathies and avoid overwhelming the reader with one's own
convictions, however noble and lofty they may be.
For us, Dostoevsky is a psychological enigma. The key to it can be found

in one way only - by adhering as strictly as possible to truth and reality. And if
he himself openly attested to a "regeneration of his convictions," then all
efforts to pass silently over this exceedingly important event in his life for
fear that it will impose unexpected and unusual conclusions on us deserve the
severest possible censure. "Fear" is inappropriate here. Or, in other words, we
must find the strength in ourselves to overcome it. A new truth, when first
discovered, is always as disgusting and hideous as a newborn child. But in that
case, we must turn our backs on Dostoevsky's entire life, on all his work, for
his life was an involuntary and unbroken quest for that "ugliness" which is in
question here. After all, the man had reason to spend dozens of years in the
underground and at penal servitude; after all, he had reason from early youth on
to associate solely with the Devushkins, Golyadkins, Natashas, Raskolnikovs,
and Karamazovs, and not to see God's world. Evidently, there was no other
path to the truth except through penal servitude, the dungeon, and the
underground. But do all paths to the truth lie underground? And is every depth
an underground? But about what else, if not about this, do Dostoevsky's works
tell us?
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4
Upon his release from penal servitude, Dostoevsky immediately began to
write feverishly. The first significant fruit of his new creative activity was the
story The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants. In this work, the sharpest
eye will not find even a hint that its author had been a convict. On the contrary,
you sense in the narrator a good-natured, kind, and witty man. He is so good-
natured that he allows the happiest possible outcome for the involved
circumstances. The uncle, who has suffered a good deal of torment from Foma
Opiskin and the General's wife, at the critical moment displays unprecedented
energy and, by the way, even more unprecedented physical strength. From one
blow by the uncle, Foma Opiskin is sent flying through the closed door, out to
the porch, and from the porch into the yard, and the "tyrant" who had tormented
everyone for so long is then and there deposed. But even this is too little for
Dostoevsky. He does not even want to punish this tyrant too severely. Foma
soon returns to the hospitable Stepanchikovo, but, of course, he does not
behave so disgracefully as before; however, he is allowed somewhat to nag
the people around him so that he will not feel too offended. Everyone is
exceedingly pleased, and the uncle marries Nastenka. Dostoevsky had never
before displayed such good humor in a single one of his works - either before
or after his penal servitude. His heroes meet almost any fate imaginable; they
kill or are killed, go mad, hang themselves, suffer delirium tremens, die from
tuberculosis, are sentenced to hard labor - but what happened in The Village of
Stepanchikovo, where there is even a chapter at the end entitled: "Foma Fomich
Makes Everyone Happy," was never again to be repeated in his novels. And
the ending - well, it is simply a pastoral idyll. You involuntarily ask yourself in
amazement: can penal servitude have left no scars on this man? Can there be
such incorrigible idealists that, no matter what one does to them, they continue
to cherish their ideals and are able to turn every hell into a heaven? Just what
didn't Dostoevsky see during penal servitude! But in his writing, he is so nave
that, exactly like a twenty-year-old youth, he arranges for the triumph of good
over evil. How much longer must the man be beaten?
However strange that may be, Dostoevsky had but one feeling and one
desire upon being released from penal servitude: a feeling of freedom and a
desire to forget all the horrors he had suffered. What does it matter if someone
else is now where he was? The burden has been removed from him, and he
celebrates, rejoices, and again throws himself into the arms of the life that had
once pushed him so sternly aside. You see that "invention" and "reality" are not
one and the same thing. It was possible to shed tears over invention and make
Makar Devushkin the subject of poetry; but it was necessary to flee penal
servitude. It was possible to spend nights on end with the sad images of his
imagination, in that blissful state called artistic inspiration. There, the greater
the insult depicted, the more hopeless the grief described, the more dismal the
past, the more hopeless the future - the greater the honor for the writer. After
all, the highest praise an artist can be given is in the words: he captured and
conveyed a genuinely tragic moment. But the conveyers of tragic moments
fear real tragedy, tragedy in real life, no less than everyone else.
I am not saying this to reproach Dostoevsky. And, in general, I would be

most grateful if the reader would remember once and for all that my objectives
lie beyond the spheres of accusation and vindication. It would spare me
unnecessary reservations, which are always annoying. Although the matter in
question here is apropos Dostoevsky, it is not about him, at least not only
about him. It is important for me merely to establish the following obvious
principle: Dostoevsky, like everyone else, did not want tragedy in his own
life, and he avoided it in every possible way; and if he did not escape it, it was
through no fault of his, but because of outside circumstances over which he had
no control. He did everything possible to forget his penal servitude, but his
penal servitude did not forget him. With all his heart, he wanted to reconcile
himself with life, but life did not want to reconcile itself with him. This is not
only evident from the story in question above - it is revealed in everything else
he wrote in the first years after his release from penal servitude. From his new
experience, he brought only an awareness that there are die horrors and
monstrous tragedies on this earth, and - for a writer this is not much - that
everyone who can, must flee these horrors. Just as in the case of a sinking ship:
sauve qui peut. What was it in his solitary meditations, about which he speaks
so eloquently in The House of the Dead, that inspired him, that gave him faith,
strength, and courage? An awareness that he was not doomed to share the fate
of his fellow prisoners, that a new life awaited him. He accepted what was
happening to him, he submitted to fate, for he was expecting something else.
Here is what he said: "What hopes made my heart thump in those days! I
believed, I resolved, I swore to myself that in my future life, there would be
none of the mistakes or lapses as before. I mapped out a program for my entire
future and firmly resolved to follow it. There was revived in me a blind faith
that I could and would carry all this out. I looked forward to freedom, I prayed
for it to come as soon as possible, I wanted to test myself again in a new
struggle. At times, I was seized with feverish impatience." [Ibid., III (1), 288-
289]
That is how Dostoevsky spoke of his penal servitude. He wanted and was
able to see it as merely a temporary ordeal, and he valued it only in so far as it
was connected with great and new hope. And in the light of this new hope, he
sees the whole of his penal life. That is what gives The House of the Dead a
mellow tone, thanks to which it is held in particular esteem by critics and is
liked even by those readers who see nothing in Dostoevsky's later works but
intemperate, needless cruelty. There is cruelty in The House of the Dead, but it
is within reasonable bounds, just as much as is necessary - necessary, of
course, for the readers. Here, too, of course, there are ghastly, staggering
descriptions of both the unbridled behavior of the prisoners and the
callousness of the prison authorities. But they are all of "moral significance."
On the one hand, people are reminded that the prisoner is "also a human being
and is called your brother." For this purpose, stories of the convicts brutality
are placed side by side with stirring scenes depicting the kind of feelings of
the inmates of the House of the Dead. The Christmas Play, the purchase of the
bay horse, the prison animals - the goat and the young eagle-all those idyllic
moments, which Dostoevsky reproduced with such skill and sincerity, won him
the well-deserved fame of an outstanding artist and a man of great heart. If his
heart did not grow callous in prison, if in the midst of unbearable physical and
moral torment he was able to preserve such sympathy in himself for all
mankind, it meant that he had great strength concealed within him! And hence,
people also came to the philosophical conclusion that no amount of penal
servitude can prevail over genuine, deep-seated conviction. In all these
raptures and conclusions, the "humblest man" was forgotten; he was left to live
out his days in the "House of the Dead" or somewhere in another prison, in
shackles, in chains, under the perpetual surveillance of soldiers - that "lifer,"
whom Dostoevsky had compared to a man buried alive. (A clever comparison,
isn't it?) At the same time, people even forgot to ask exactly what it was that
protected Dostoevsky's heart from rust. Was it really made of pure gold - or
was some other reason involved here? The question is, of course, an
interesting one. It never hurts to verify the legend of golden hearts, if only to
have extra proof of its plausibility.
The passage quoted above arouses some doubt in the reader: the golden
heart expects too much for itself! But the expectation of a new life always
attended and consoled Dostoevsky during his period of penal servitude. In The
House of the Dead, "a new life" is recalled each time the person in whose name
the story is being told is, for some reason or other, overcome by a particularly
strong awareness of his difficult situation. Thus, for example, Goryanchikov
happens to awake in the night after the first theatrical performance. "In terror,"
he says, "I raise my head and look about at my comrades sleeping in the
flickering light of the cheap prison candle. I look at their pale faces, at their
poor beds, at their utter poverty and misery, and it is as if I want to convince
myself that all this is really true, and not the continuation of a hideous dream."
[Ibid., III, 168] And how does Dostoevsky cope with this horrible sight? After
all, it is an excellent opportunity to shed tears: no amount of invention can
compare with what lie saw. But in prison, one does not cry. We shall hear
more about this in still greater detail from Dostoevsky. But for the time being,
here is his ingenuous answer: "I won't be here forever, only for a few years,
I thought, and lay my head back on the pillow." [Ibid., III, 168] Do you hear?
Only an answer like that fits the question just asked. I hope you noted the
question. There is no reference to the theater, the goat, or the bay horse. There
is no recollection of even the humane arguments that one meets elsewhere in
the book. He can be reconciled by a single thought - that his penal servitude is
not forever, but for a limited time only. Dostoevsky did not for a single minute
forget this while he was a prisoner. He said: "I wanted to go on living after my
release from prison." [Ibid., 232]
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The Preface greatly hindered a correct understanding of The House of the
Dead. Why was it necessary? Why did Dostoevsky have to tell an invented
story according to which the notes belong to Alexander Petrovich
Goryanchikov, who had been exiled to hard labor for the murder of his wife?
Because of the censor? But, as you know, he makes no effort in The House of
the Dead to conceal the fact that Goryanchikov was sentenced to penal
servitude for political reasons. Thus, when the latter takes it into his head to
support the prisoners grievances, the other political exiles remind him that his
participation can only ruin the whole affair: "Remember," they tell him, "why
we came here." And furthermore, there are very clear hints in other connections
that the author of the notes has been jailed, not for criminal reasons, but
political ones. In brief, the Preface could not deceive the censor. If it
deceived anyone, it was the reader, by presenting Goryanchikov, the narrator
of the story, in a false light. Judging by the Preface, we are dealing with a man
who is irrevocably lost to life. He speaks with no one, reads nothing, and lives
out his last days in a remote corner of Siberia, leaving his cubbyhole only to
earn a few meager kopecks from lessons. And he dies alone, having forgotten
everyone, and being forgotten by them as well.
Of course, there are such people who are buried alive - not only in prison,
but on the outside as well. But such people do not write their memoirs, and if
they do, it is most certainly not in the tone of The House of the Dead. Where
would they get the eyes to see convicts fun and relaxation? Where would
they get the vitality to be moved by the various manifestations of "good" that
Dostoevsky found in prison. Goryanchikov could have described (if he had
tried to describe - I repeat, such people seldom write) a hopeless, eternal hell.
He has no hope. Doesn't that mean that there is no longer any hope for the
whole world? I do not want to establish this as a principle - there is no need as
yet for the reader to protest; for the time being, I am only speaking
"psychologically." While Dostoevsky was compiling these notes and during
his entire period of hard labor, he was the complete opposite of
Goryanchikov. He was, above all, a man of hope - of great hope even; and
therefore his way of understanding the world, his philosophy, was also a
philosophy of hope. And this protected his heart from rust; this was also the
reason why he brought back intact from penal servitude all the "humanity" he
had taken there with him. Would humanity have helped him if there had been an
everlasting curse on his soul as there was on Goryanchikovs? Would his spirit
have been sustained by "convictions" as he himself tells it, or, on the contrary,
would the "convictions" themselves, despite all their loftiness, have needed
support? This question is appropriate, precisely at this point.
Goryanchikov would not have written The House of the Dead, but
Dostoevsky did. And if a harsh note of dissonance can be heard from time to
time in this novel, if at times one finds individual scenes and observations that
unexpectedly destroy the general harmony of the "humane" mood, then this
must be put down to the fickleness and inconstancy of hope. After all, she is a
most capricious creature: she comes and goes at her own sweet will. Most
likely, during Dostoevsky's stay in prison, she often forsook him, and for long
periods at a time. And in those moments, when he felt himself doomed, indeed
forever and ever, to comparison with the "humblest man," there appeared to him
those new and terrible spiritual elements which were later on destined to
develop into an entirely different philosophy, into a true philosophy of penal
servitude, of hopelessness, into the philosophy of the underground man. We
shall more than once, later on, have to deal with all this. But for the time being,
it is still concealed; for the time being, "humanity" stands firm; for the time
being, Dostoevsky wants but one thing: to return to his former life, to do his
former work, only better, more carefully, without retreat, weakness, or
concession. For the time being, there can be no question of a "regeneration" of
convictions. The natural order of things has not yet raised its voice, and
humanity triumphs.
In this respect, Dostoevsky's journalistic articles relating to the period in

question are exceedingly important and interesting. There are only a few of
them. They were published in the magazine Time in 1861. Despite their
predominantly polemical nature, their quiet tone, their respectful attitude toward
the adversary, together with a feeling of self-respect and a vigor of language
and thought appropriate to it, they are truly unprecedented. Not that they were
unprecedented for Dostoevsky, whose polemics (for example, his sharp
remarks to Professor Gradovsky) were sometimes simply disgraceful, but
unprecedented for literature as a whole.[On the occasion of Dostoevsky's
speech at the Pushkin Celebration in 1880 - S.R.]. Usually, as soon as
polemics begin, even the very subject of the argument is immediately
forgotten. The adversaries merely try to outdo one another in wit,
resourcefulness, dialectics, and erudition. But in Dostoevsky's articles, there is
none of this. He wants peace, not the sword. Peace, even with Dobrolyubov
[N.A. Dobrolyubov (1836-1861), an ultra radical literary critic - S.R.], whom
he values as a talented writer despite the extremity of his views; peace, even
with the Slavophiles, whom he reproaches for their fanatic contempt for the
merits of all non-Slavophile literature. Significant here also is the fact that
Dostoevsky is seeking reconciliation - that same Dostoevsky, who many years
later, after his Pushkin Speech, in which he called so fervently for the uniting
of all parties, could not bear even the first objection and immediately threw off
his "artfully donned" mask of universal humanity. But at the same time, his sharp
remarks to the Slavophiles about the newspaper Day, which had just begun
publication, must not be forgotten, especially by people who value his
prophetic gift. Or perhaps it is just the reverse: such people should completely
forget his polemic against Day, for it decidedly compromises Dostoevsky's
prophetic abilities. What sort of prophet is he, if he cannot foresee his own
almost immediate future - if in 1861, he so seriously and sincerely reproached
the Slavophiles for their inability to appreciate the merits of the Westerners and
so passionately defended the Westerners, in whom he himself was
subsequently to see nothing but tittering liberals? It is permissible for a man,
even a remarkable one, even a genius, to err; but, after all, a prophet is a
prophet only because he always infallibly knows the future.
The article in question here is little known. Therefore, it will not be

redundant to quote two or three passages from it. They will convince the
reader once and for all that Dostoevsky did not forget his faith while he was at
penal servitude. Here is the first one (I have chosen it almost at random - the
entire article is written in such a vein): "Let's come right out and say it: the
Slavophile leaders are known to be honorable men. And if this is so, then how
can they say that this entire body of literature [i.e., the literature of the
Westerners] is indifferent to the misery of the common man? How dare they
say: The lie is in their censuring our nationality, not because of indignant
ardent love, but because of an inner dishonesty [Dostoevsky's italics] that is
instinctively hostile to all that honor and duty hold sacred? What fanatic
hostility! Who but a person in the last stages of raving madness could say a
thing like that? Why, it reeks of the stake and the rack." [Dostoevsky, Op. cit.,
IX, 154]. Dostoevsky had taken the underlined phrase from an article in Day. It
filled him with indignation, and he could not forget it; later, when citing it again,
he exclaimed: "How could you bring your hand to write it?" Subsequently,
Dostoevsky was to bring his own hand to write sentences a good deal
stronger than that. Who, in speaking of the Westerners and their fight against the
pre-Reform system, doubted that behind their visible laughter lay invisible
tears?! And perhaps the Slavophiles meant something else by "inner
dishonesty?"
But for the time being, Dostoevsky has no idea of the things he would end
up saying. For the time being, he staunchly sides with the Westerners: "As if the
Westerners did not have the same feeling for the Russian spirit and nationality as
the Slavophiles did. [My italics.] They did, but the Westerners did not want to
shut their eyes and ears like a fakir to certain phenomena that were
incomprehensible to them; they did not want to leave them without an
explanation or to regard them at all costs with hostility, as the Slavophiles did;
they did not shut their eyes to the world, but wanted to reach the truth through
intellect, analysis, and understanding. The Westerners turned to realism,
whereas the Slavophiles are still clinging to their vague and undefined ideal."
[Ibid., 155-156] And also: "The Westerners were following the path of
relentless analysis, and after them went everything in our society that could
possibly do so. The realists do not fear the results of their analysis. Suppose
there is a lie in this mass, suppose it does contain a mishmash of all those lies
that you read over and over again with such pleasure. We do not fear this
gloating enumeration of our diseases. They may be lies, but we are guided by
truth. We believe in this." [Ibid., 155-156]
The entire article is written in such a vein. It is not particularly remarkable

for its content. The magazines of the sixties were filled with such articles.
Important here only is the fact that, at the time, Dostoevsky evidently did not
yet suspect how far he would be obliged to deviate from all these ideas,
despite the fact that he was already forty years old and had already
experienced a good deal of unpleasantness - his quarrel with Belinsky, his
penal servitude, and his soldiering. He dared not even think that his faith would
soon abandon him. He fervently extolled realism, analysis, and Westernism.
Yet, he was already on the eve of a great spiritual upheaval. This was the last
tribute he would pay to humanity. A little while longer, and the old ideal would
collapse, felled by an invisible foe. The period of the underground would
begin.
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And when exactly did it begin? The fact is a remarkable one: at the very
time when, apparently, the most cherished hopes of the generation of the fifties
began to come true. Serfdom fell. Quite a number of reforms - some proposed,
some already under way - promised to realize the dream to which Belinsky had
devoted himself and over which Natasha (The Humiliated and Insulted) had
wept when Ivan Petrovich read her his first story. Up to this point, the
"humblest man" had been mentioned only in books; now his rights were
recognized by everyone. Up to this point, "humanity" had been a mere
abstraction; now it was called upon to exercise its sway over life. The most
extreme idealists at the beginning of the sixties had to admit that reality, usually
so slow or even motionless, was not this time lagging far behind their dreams.
In literature, there was a great celebration. Dostoevsky alone did not share in
the general rejoicing. He stood to the side, just as if nothing unusual had
happened. More than that, he hid in the underground: Russia's hopes were not
his hopes. They were of no concern to him.
How are we to explain such indifference on the part of the greatest Russian
writer to events which were regarded in our literature as marking the dawn of a
new era in Russian history? The stock explanation is simple: Dostoevsky was
a great artist, but a poor thinker. The value of stock explanations is well known.
This one is worth no more than the rest, but like every platitude, it deserves
attention. Not without reason did it come into this world. People needed it, not
to discover the way to truth, but on the contrary, to block all paths to it, to
stifle it, to curb it. Incidentally, there is nothing surprising here if we recall
what sort of "truth" is in question here! How could it help but be stifled when
Dostoevsky himself was horrified by it? I shall quote just one short passage
here from the notes of the underground man. This is what he says to the
prostitute who has come to him for "moral support": "Do you know what I
really want? That you all go to the devil, that's what. I need peace. Why, I'd
sell the whole world right now for a kopeck. Is the world to go to pot, or am I
to go without my tea? I say that the world can go to pot, so long as I can
always get my tea." [Ibid., III (2), 171] Who is speaking in this way? Who took
it into his bead to put such monstrously cynical words into his hero's mouth?
That same Dostoevsky, who a short time earlier had so fervently and sincerely
said the words about the "humblest man," which I quoted several times already.
Now do you understand what an incredibly powerful blow was needed to
drive him to such great extremes? Now do you understand which truth it was
that must have been revealed to him? Oh, our publicists were right a thousand
times over when they sought a platitude to replace such a truth!
Notes from the Underground is a heart-rending cry of terror that has escaped
from a man suddenly convinced that all his life he had been lying and
pretending when he assured himself and others that the loftiest purpose in life
is to serve the "humblest man." Up to this point, he had considered himself
marked by fate to do a great work. But now he suddenly felt that he was not a
bit better than anyone else, that he cared as little for all ideas as the most
common mortal. Let ideas triumph a thousand times over: let the peasants be
freed, let just and merciful courts be set up, let military conscription be
abolished - his heart would be no lighter, no happier because of it. He was
obliged to tell himself that if, instead of all those great and fortunate events,
misfortune were to befall Russia, he would feel no worse-perhaps even better.
What in the world is a man to do who has discovered in himself such a hideous
and disgusting idea? And particularly a writer accustomed to thinking that he is
duty-bound to share with his readers all that goes on in his soul? Is he to tell
the truth? To go out to the city square and openly admit to the public that his
entire past life, that all of his past words, had been nothing but lies, pretense,
and hypocrisy, that while he was crying over Makar Devushkin he was not in
the least thinking of the poor wretch, but merely drawing pictures to console
himself and the public? And this at the age of forty, when it is impossible to
begin a new life, when a break with the past is tantamount to burying oneself
alive! Dostoevsky tried to go on speaking in the old way; almost
simultaneously with Notes from the Underground, he was writing The
Humiliated and Insulted, in which he forced himself to champion the idea of
self-renunciation, despite the fact that he staggered beneath its weight.
But where was he to get the strength for such systematic fraud and self-
deception? He was already having difficulty sustaining the tone in The
Humiliated and Insulted. Even it has pages in which the ominous light of the
new revelation breaks through. True, they are few. The underground man is
evident here only in the Prince's talk with Ivan Petrovich (at night in the
restaurant), but it is enough for us to realize what a storm was gathering in
Dostoevsky's soul. The Prince all the time ridicules "ideals" and "Schiller" in a
most brazen way, while poor Ivan Petrovich sits there downcast, unable not
only to defend himself, but even to behave with a semblance of dignity. When
you let anyone, even in a novel, deride your holy of holies so caustically, it
means you have taken the first step toward its denial. True, Dostoevsky lets the
Prince triumph just once, and even then only for a moment. Later, in the pages
that follow, all the characters seem to flaunt their nobility and selflessness
before one another. But one rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel.
Dostoevsky's pathos had dried up. Goodness and service to the idea no longer
inspired him.
Notes from the Underground is a public, albeit a veiled, renunciation of his

past. "I can't, I simply can't go on pretending. I can't go on living the lie of
ideas, and yet I have no other truth. Come what may." That is what these notes
say, however much Dostoevsky disclaims them in his comment. Never before
had the "word" of a single Russian writer resounded with such hopelessness,
with such despair. This accounts for the unprecedented boldness (Count
Tolstoy would call it "effrontery" - after all, he spoke that way about
Nietzsche) with which Dostoevsky let himself deride the dearest and most
sacred human feelings. I have already pointed out that Dostoevsky tells his
own story in Notes from the Underground . These words should not, however,
be taken to mean that he himself had actually treated a chance female
acquaintance so disgracefully; no, the story with Liza is, of course, fictitious.
But the horrible thing about the Notes is that Dostoevsky felt the need - even in
thought, even in his imagination - to do such a disgraceful thing. It was not Liza
he drove away from himself at this point. I am certain there was always enough
spontaneous pity in his soul for him to refrain from excessively harsh fits of
anger and exasperation. He needed the character Liza merely to deride the
"idea" and trample it in the dirt - that same idea that he had served throughout his
life. The epigraph to the chapter in which this dreadful story is told is taken
from the beginning of Nekrassovs celebrated poem: "When from the Darkness
of Error." It was this poem and the holy of holies of those people from whom
he had once "fervently accepted" his new doctrine that Dostoevsky was now
so madly and blasphemously cursing. But this was the only way out for him.
He could no longer remain silent. Something spontaneous, ugly, and horrible
had awakened in his soul - and it was something beyond his power to control.
As we saw, he did everything possible to preserve his old faith. He

continued to pray to his former god even when there was almost no hope in his
heart that the prayer would be heard. All the time, it seemed to him that his
doubts would pass, that this was merely temptation. In these final moments, he
continued, now with just his lips, to whisper his incantation: "It deeply moves
the heart to realize that the humblest man is also a human being and is called
your brother." But the words of this prayer not only did not console him, they
were the venom that poisoned Dostoevsky, although people saw in them and
still continue to see in them innocent and even soul-fortifying words. Lucky the
person who senses nothing but the poetry of brotherhood in that sentence! But
how is a person to cope with these works when the insignificance and
absurdity of the humblest man's existence keeps pushing its way to the
foreground? How can you tolerate it if you know from personal experience all
the horrors of such a downtrodden existence? When the poetry of brotherhood
is to be reserved for the new people just beginning life, and you must assume
the role of Makar Devushkin, the object of sympathy of lofty souls? What will
the great idea of humanity provide then? Hope for the future - very far off, of
course - dreams of a different, a felicitous organization of mankind? But for the
time being there is the unceasing, hateful, and hypocritical role of the priest of
all that is "lofty and beautiful." It was not my idea to write the lofty and
beautiful in quotation marks. I found it that way in Notes from the Underground.
There, all "ideals" are presented in such a guise. There, Schiller, humanity,
Nekrassov s poetry, the Crystal Palace, in brief, everything that had once
filled Dostoevsky's soul with sympathy and delight - everything - is showered
with sarcasms of a most venomous and personal nature. Ideals and sympathy
for them arouse in him a feeling of revulsion and horror. Not that he was
contesting the possibility of the realization of ideals. He did not even think of
that; he did not want to. If the exalted dreams of his youth were destined to
come true someday - all the worse. If the ideal of human happiness on earth
were destined someday to be realized, Dostoevsky would curse it
beforehand. I shall be frank: prior to Dostoevsky, no one dared to express
such ideas, even with proper comment. Great despair was needed for such
ideas to appear in the human mind; superhuman daring was needed for someone
to appear with them in public.
That is why Dostoevsky never acknowledged them as his own, and always
had a reserve supply of ideals for display; the more hysterically he cried out,
the more they diverged from the nature of his cherished desires, or if you will,
from the desires of his entire being. Every last one of his later works is filled
with this duality. The question arises - what are we to look for in them, what are
we to value? The demands of his soul, which break through to the surface
despite "reason and conscience," to use Tolstoy's favorite words, or the
prescriptions for an elevated life, prepared more or less according to a
common stereotype? On which side is truth? Hitherto, "reason and conscience"
were regarded as the final judges. All that we have in the way of ideals and
hopes was created by them alone. But now that a judge has been discovered
over these judges, what are we to do? Heed its voice, or remain true to
tradition and again reduce it to silence. I say "again," because people heard that
voice many times before, but they were seized with terror and always stifled it
with solemn cries in honor of the old judges. And Dostoevsky did so himself,
although, in this sense, his works remind you of the sermons of those
preachers, who, under the pretext of fighting immorality, depict enticing scenes
of carnal joy. Whatever the traditionalists may say, there can no longer be any
doubt. We must let the man speak in his own way. Forgive him all his sins
beforehand - just let him tell the truth. Perhaps - who knows - perhaps this truth,
which is so obnoxious at first sight, contains something far better than the
charm of the most ostentatious lie. Perhaps the full force of sorrow and
despair should not at all be directed toward the preparation of doctrines and
ideals suitable for man's everyday life, as the teachers of mankind have hitherto
done, while always zealously concealing their own doubts and misfortunes
from the eyes of outsiders. Perhaps we should abandon pride, the beauty of
dying, and all external embellishments and again try to catch sight of the much-
slandered truth? What if the old assumption that the tree of knowledge is not the
tree of life is false? It is worth examining this prejudice together with the
theory of natural development, which gives rise to it. The soul, insulted for all
that it holds sacred, will perhaps find the strength in itself for a new struggle.
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7
Such was the first stage in the birth of his convictions: hope for the new life
about which he had so often dreamed while at penal servitude disappeared, and
along with it went his faith in a doctrine that previously seemed stable and
eternally true. There can be no doubt: hope had not been supported by
doctrine, but vice versa, doctrine, by hope. With this acknowledgment, there
ends for man the thousand-year reign of "reason and conscience"; a new era
begins - that of "psychology," which Dostoevsky was the first in Russia to
discover. Incidentally, few people have hitherto openly dared to acknowledge
the obvious antagonism between "reason and conscience" on the one hand and
"psychology" on the other. The majority thinks it possible to retain the old
hierarchy, in which psychology is obliged to occupy a subordinate position.
Its job is merely to report what goes on in man's soul, but the supreme
legislative rights are reserved, as before, for reason and conscience, who
have the power to decide what should and what should not be. Such an
assumption is shared by even those people who have done the most to further
the progress of psychology. Thus, for example, Count Tolstoy, who for
dozens of years in his books has been undermining our faith in the legitimacy
of claims of all kinds of absolutes, at least as much as Dostoevsky has, still
continues to praise "reason and conscience" above all else. He has a special
art of saying these words in such a tone that any doubt as to their sanctity and
inviolability begins to seem outrageous blasphemy.
In this respect, Dostoevsky could never compare with Count Tolstoy.

However, neither of them succeeded in combining the uncombinable. Their
restless attempts to return to the "good old words" merely attest to the fact that
the business of destruction not only is not less difficult, but much more so than
the business of creation. Only that person decides to destroy who can no
longer live otherwise. And if Dostoevsky went further in this direction than
Count Tolstoy, it was by no means because he was more conscientious,
honest, or sincere. No, in such matters, the degree of determination is decided
by completely different laws. Man does his utmost to preserve his inherited
faith, and he renounces his rights only when it is utterly impossible to retain
them. Dostoevsky, as is evident from the epilogue to. A Raw Youth, dreamed
of writing in the manner of Count Tolstoy. "Even Pushkin," he says "selected
the subject for his future novels in "Legends of Russian Family Life," [See
Eugene Onegin, Chapter III, Verses XIII-XIV - S.R.] and, believe me,
everything that has thus far been beautiful in our life is contained therein. At
least everything that has been brought to some degree of perfection." And
later on, when discussing a novelist who would tackle a plot such as those
selected by Pushkin, he continues: "Such a work, if created by a person of
great talent, would belong not so much to Russian literature as to Russian
history. The grandson of those heroes who have been depicted in a picture
portraying three consecutive generations of a Russian family of the upper-
middle cultivated class, side by side with and in connection with Russian
history - this descendant of his ancestors could not be depicted in his present-
day type other than in a somewhat misanthropic, solitary, and distinctly
melancholy aspect. He would even have to appear as something of an
eccentric."
If we recall that, later on, Dostoevsky, in referring to Anna Karenina,

called Count Tolstoy the historian of the upper-middle class, it will be quite
clear that the quotations above refer to War and Peace and the types depicted
in that novel. The beauty and perfection of Tolstoy's characters fascinated
Dostoevsky. He, too, would have liked precision, clarity, and fullness of life;
but he had to admit that such "happiness" had been swallowed once and for all
by history, and that present-day man can only recall the past, which can never
be returned. Resigned to fate, he turned to his solitary and misanthropic
eccentrics. However, Dostoevsky is not entirely correct in these judgments of
his. He himself, of course, has no place among the heroes of War and Peace.
For him, these people are history, and only history. But their creator, Count
Tolstoy, viewed them in an entirely different way and by no means wanted to
turn them into a mirage of the past. On the contrary, he wanted to see in them
what is eternally true and unchangeable. For him, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha,
Rostov, and Princess Marya were not people who had long since passed
away, after having been compelled to yield their places to the new "solitary
and misanthropic" man, i.e., the man from the underground; he insists that all his
heroes are of the present day. True, his insistence is sometimes exaggerated
and shrill, so that to a certain extent he betrays himself by it. War and Peace is
the work of a man who needs not only to remember and tell a good deal, but
also to forget a thing or two and ignore several others.
Here we do not have that natural strength and stability that one senses in The
Captain's Daughter. Unlike Pushkin, Count Tolstoy does not limit himself to
the role of narrator and artist. He is constantly examining the sincerity and truth
of almost every word his characters say. He needs to know whether they
really believe in everything they do, whether they really know where they are
going. Like Dostoevsky, he is a psychologist, i.e., he also seeks roots. And,
as you know, all roots lie deep in the earth; consequently, Count Tolstoy, too,
is familiar with the lonely work of the underground. He does not achieve that
Homeric, patriarchal ingenuousness that is ascribed to him, although he strives
for it with all his might. In these matters, "free will" betrays the man. He wants
faith, but occupies himself with verification, and that kills every faith. It is only
to his colossal creative talent that Count Tolstoy is indebted for the reading
public's failure to sense how much art (I am almost ready to say artificiality)
this great writer of the Russian land needed to produce his remarkable works.
And not only Count Tolstoy's creative work, his whole life bears traces of an
unceasing struggle with "psychology," with the underground. But it is still
premature to judge his life. His writing, however, is one long attempt in some
way or other - by force, cunning, or deceit - to vanquish the stubborn foe that is
undermining the very foundations of a potentially happy and bright existence.
And to a considerable extent he achieves this. He pays his tribute to the
underground - proper and constant tribute - but always with a mien suggesting
that it is not tribute, but a voluntary offering permitted by "reason and
conscience." Dostoevsky's underground man, upon noting the falsehood of his
life, becomes horrified and immediately severs himself from his entire past.
But Count Tolstoy's heroes never cease to believe in "the lofty and
beautiful." Even in those moments when the incompatibility of reality with
ideals becomes crystal clear to them, they let reality come into its own; but
never for a moment do they cease to revere ideals. Thus, the defeats of the
Russian troops, the surrender of Moscow, et cetera, never have a too
depressing effect on any of the heroes of War and Peace not directly
participating in the military operations. Count Tolstoy mentions this fact
repeatedly, so that, strictly speaking, the same effect should be produced as
by the underground man's words to Liza: "I say that the world can go to pot, as
long as I always get my tea." But such an effect is not produced. For example,
Nikolai Rostov chats with Princess Marya, and, of course, their conversation
touches on the latest news. But how do they react to the great tragedy being
played out before their eyes? "The conversation was most ordinary and
insignificant [!]. They spoke of the war, automatically, as everyone else,
exaggerating their sorrow for this event." A bit later, Count Tolstoy explains
further: "It was obvious that she (Princess Marya) could speak dissemblingly
about Russia's misfortunes, but her brother was an object too close to her heart,
and she was unwilling and unable to speak lightly of him."
These remarks are unusually characteristic of War and Peace. Wherever

Count Tolstoy can, he reminds us that Russia's misfortunes meant less to the
upper classes of 1812 than their own personal afflictions. But while reminding
us of this, he is able to preserve a semblance of unusual serenity of soul, as if
nothing in particular had happened, indeed as if reason and conscience could
watch with composure this display of such appalling egoism. And reason and
conscience really do remain composed. Evidently they need only outward
respect. One must be able merely to speak with them in a certain tone, as with
capricious despots, and they grow quite tame. What an uproar they would have
raised if Princess Marya, for example, instead of "dissembling" grief for
Russia's misfortunes, had frankly declared in the manner of the underground
man: "Is Russia to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I tell you, let Russia
go to pot, as long as I can get my tea." Essentially, Count Tolstoy's characters
Princess Marya and Nikolai Rostov are saying this very thing. And all the
other characters in the novel (those of quality, of course - precisely those of
quality - for the common ones do not permit themselves such frankness)
scarcely surpass them in their patriotism. Ultimately, Count Tolstoy reduces
everything in a roundabout way to a display of human egoism.
Nevertheless, the lofty and beautiful do not end up in quotation marks, but
retain their former position of respect. Count Tolstoy finds it possible, without
any bitterness, to accept life as it is. Cautiously, unnoticed by the reader, he
deprives reason and conscience of their sovereign rights and makes himself, or
to put it more simply, everyman, the measure of all things. But he wants a
complete theoretical victory ("the sanction of truth," as Dostoevsky says), and
therefore does not openly overthrow all the former authorities; he merely
deprives them virtually and gradually (Count Tolstoy does everything
gradually) of all influence on life. And he knows what he is doing. In certain
instances, he must still maintain the prestige and charm of the old authorities. Of
course, he will no longer serve them, but they will still serve him. In all those
instances when he is unable to wage the struggle with his own powers, he will
turn to them for their miraculous assistance, and they will support him in
difficult moments with their imperious voices.
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8
In his analysis of Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky remarks in passing: "Anna
Karenina is by no means an innocent thing." I quite agree! One must be
exceptionally nave to see nothing but poetry in Count Tolstoy's creative
work. It is, however, curious that somewhat earlier, before the last part of
Anna Karenina was published (it came out in a separate edition), this same
Dostoevsky called Levin a man "of pure heart." Don't you agree that in certain
cases, one should treat commonly accepted words with great care? A man of
pure heart - after all, that is the same "innocence" mentioned above - yet Levin
is the hero of Anna Karenina; the whole point of the novel is in him. But
Dostoevsky, appearing in the role of literary critic, felt obliged quand mme
to support all sorts of ideals; therefore, he even applied so childishly tender an
epithet to Levin. As a matter of fact, Dostoevsky was well aware of Levin's
worth, and if at first he intended to keep his knowledge to himself, he had an
important reason to do so. The publication of the last part of Anna Karenina, in
which Count Tolstoy permits himself to ridicule the enthusiasm for the
volunteer movement, [Russian volunteers fought on the side of the Serbs in the
latter's war against Turkey in 1876 - S.R.] aroused Dostoevsky's indignation
and made him say more than his literary position and the duties of a devout
preacher would allow.
Besides, Count Tolstoy had given too much leeway in Anna Karenina to
the "underground man." Levin, for example, bluntly declares that "there is no
immediate feeling for the oppression of the Slays, nor can there be," and he
finds strong support in the old Prince (a character whom the author finds most
likeable, as becomes evident during the course of the novel). "And I, too,"
says the Prince, "was at a complete loss to understand why all the Russians
had suddenly begun to love their Slavic brothers, while I feel no love for them
whatsoever. But I calmed down when I arrived here and saw that there are
people besides myself who are interested only in Russia, and not in our Slavic
brothers. Konstantin, for instance." Such utterances from the mouths of positive
characters in Tolstoy's novel Dostoevsky finds inappropriate. All this may be
said, but with appropriate commentary, at least in the manner in which it is said
in War and Peace. There, even if people do feel indifferent to the fate of their
country, they at least pretend to be passionately interested in the war, and thus
seem to admit their "guilt." But here, Levin declares point-blank that he does
not want to know a thing about the sufferings of the Slays. He has only to add:
as long as all goes well with me. But Count Tolstoy was not that bold, and
therefore, Dostoevsky, in his own name, had to make Levin say a few words
of this nature. [Dostoevsky, op. cit., XI, 264]
This clash of the two great writers of the Russian land over the question of
sympathy for the suffering of the Slays is highly significant. How did it happen
that "reason and conscience," such infallible judges, which Count Tolstoy
praised to his dying day, prompted such diverse conclusions to these two
equally remarkable men? Dostoevsky painfully sensed all the insult contained
in the possibility of such a clash, and bitterly concluded his article: "People
such as the author of Anna Karenina are teachers of society, our teachers, and
we are but their students. What in the world are they teaching us?"
Nevertheless, the clash of these prophets was a matter of pure chance!

Were it not for the Slavic affair, Dostoevsky could have found all the elements
in Anna Karenina that had captivated him in War and Peace, and thus the readers
would not have learned that "reason and conscience" do not always speak one
and the same language. Evidently, Dostoevsky had become worked up over
nothing. What if Levin did express his indifference to the fate of the Slays
somewhat more sharply than was necessary, what if he did blurt out the "poet's
secret" - he makes up for it when the opportunity presents itself, and even when
it does not, by extolling other exceedingly lofty ideals that are by no means
alien to Dostoevsky. His renunciation of the Slays does not at all indicate that
he is ready to encroach on the sovereignty of "reason and conscience." On the
contrary, it was Tolstoy's custom to attempt the unusual only with their most
gracious consent and authorization. Recall, for example, Levin's conversation
with his wife in Part VI, Chapter 3, of the novel. Levin is "discontented with
himself"; he feels "guilty" and "inferior" in comparison with others, even with
Sergey Ivanovich Koznyshov (whom at heart he hates and tries his best to
despise); in brief, his exceedingly demanding conscience and exceedingly
strict reason must be gratified by his loyal feelings. The unusual tenderness
and mellowness of Levin's heart in this scene almost borders on the absurd.
His flirting with "good" reminds one of the way Gogol's clerk courts Solokha
[in "The Night before Christmas" - S.R.]. But Count Tolstoy is not speaking
ironically of his hero. No, he is serious, although deep in his heart, it seems
that he, too, senses the insolence in such an attitude toward ideals. The more
his Levin withdraws into the narrow sphere of his personal interests the more
"brazen" (this word was used in reference to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and
justice demands that it be applied to Levin as well) he becomes in his praise of
"good."
Oh, Anna Karenina is by no means an innocent thing! Levin despairs, Levin

sees himself on the way to the eternal underground, to penal servitude while at
liberty, to destruction - and he saves himself without even looking into the
various means of salvation. "A man of pure heart!" Dostoevsky had good
reason to praise him: the raven had smelled decay and could not conceal its
joy! Look carefully into Levin's life, and you will be convinced that he was
not only lying to "good" when he expressed his deep gratitude to it, but also
deceiving "happiness," when he assured Kitty and himself that he was happy. lit
is all untrue, from the first word to the last. Levin was never happy - neither
when he was engaged to Kitty, nor when he was married to her. He only
feigned happiness. And as a matter of fact, is such a timid soul as Kitty
(whoever wishes may omit the epithet) fit to be a lifelong companion for
Levin? Could he really fall in love with her? And, generally speaking, is
family life the proper atmosphere for Levin? The scenes in which this strange
couple is depicted, despite the fact that they are written with unusual care and
talent, show Levin as a man determined to do everything that happy and loving
people do in certain situations. On the eve of his wedding, Levin, too, cannot
sleep all night; in his confusion, as befits a bridegroom, he goes to extremes;
he plans to embrace everyone, et cetera. When Kitty is pregnant, Levin
watches over her every step, he is fidgety, he trembles. Finally, Vasenka
Veselovsky pays them a visit, and this happy husband, as if he can hardly wait
for the opportunity, makes for his wife a most absurd scene of jealousy
accompanied by flashing eyes, clenched fists, and all that usually
accompanies such occasions. The apotheosis of all this is Vasenkas
banishment. Levin, a man of Christian meekness, who is unwilling to offend the
Turks, literally throws his guest out of the house without a moment's hesitation.
And moreover, he is not only not sorry, he is glad: not, however, because of
his courage, which he does not even think of. He is glad that he, like everyone
else, is capable of jealousy, and that his jealousy knows no bounds. Count
Tolstoy, in one of his letters, says that he was filled with disgust as he worked
on Anna Karenina. I think this is credible if we keep in mind the task that Levin
had set him. What can be more disgusting than having at any cost to portray a
man as happy and "good," when he is as alien to goodness as he is far-
removed from happiness? Yet this is precisely what Count Tolstoy was trying
to do. He had at any cost to adjust Levin to everyday life, i.e., to provide him
with an occupation, a family, and so on. At the provincial elections, Levin has a
conversation with a landowner acquaintance which is seemingly insignificant
but worthy of attention:
"You're married, I hear, asked the landowner.

Yes, Levin answered with proud satisfaction."
With proud satisfaction! What is there to be proud about? A man has married
- hardly a great deed. But for Levin, marriage was not simply marriage, as for
everyone else. For him, it was proof that he was no worse than anyone else.
That is why, contrary to his custom, he does not so much verify his love for
Kitty as he seeks appropriate outward ways to express it. That is why he
forgives Kitty her past and agrees to follow sur les brises (as Prince Andrey
Bolkonsky put it in War and Peace) of Vronsky. For Levin to forego a family
would mean dooming himself to capitis diminutio maxima; it would mean
losing one of the universally acknowledged stays of life, and that would have
been the most horrible thing of all for him. So he marries Kitty, as he would
have married Dolly or any other woman of his circle who was not too
disagreeable to him and who, at the same time, was sufficiently respectable to
give his life an outwardly handsome appearance. But his love, solicitude, and
jealousy - all this is merely nerves acting out a comedy for the eyes of himself
and of others.
It goes without saying that such a marriage produces a feeling of pride in a

man: "I, too," he says to himself, "have ground under my feet." And everything,
absolutely everything, that Levin does, has one purpose: to convince himself
and others that he has acquired sturdy roots so deep in the earth that no storm
will ever topple him. Levin's task is at the same time Tolstoy's task as well.
Yet, this great writer knows that there are both people who are falling and
people who have fallen, people who are never to rise again. He frequently
speaks of them; he concocts theories reconciling us to the fall. But is he
himself to end up in the category of the fallen, to assume capitis diminutio
maxima, to lose the right of protection by human and divine laws? He would
not voluntarily consent to that for anything in the world. Anything would be
better than that. Better to marry Kitty, better to farm, better to play the
hypocrite before "good," better to deceive himself, better to be like everyone
else - if only he is not cut off from other people, if only he does not end up
being "buried alive." It was exactly the same with Dostoevsky. The only
difference was that Count Tolstoy still had the purely outward possibility of
returning to people, whereas Dostoevsky had already lost it. It no longer
mattered to Dostoevsky ("The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"). He knew that he
would not escape his fate. But Count Tolstoy still had hope, and to his dying
day he struggled against the horrible phantom of hopelessness, which never
left him for long in peace.
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This struggle is characteristic of all of Count Tolstoy's creative work. In
his person, we have the unique example of a genius striving at all costs to be
compared with a mediocrity, to become a mediocrity himself. Of course, he
fails to achieve this. However much he protects himself from the demands of
his nature, it reveals its presence in him each time by stormy and impatient
outbursts. In War and Peace, it seemed that he had summed up once and for all
the conclusions and observations of his life. Everything he had seen is
definitely and firmly secured in its place. And, above all, it is arranged so that,
in general, it makes a reassuring and eye-appealing picture, despite the fact that
none of the horrors of life which undermine man's confidence in his neighbor
and Creator are forgotten in it. Prince Andrey dies an agonizing death after
living an agonizing life; Petya Rostov is shot through the head by the French;
the old Countess turns almost into an idiot before our eyes; Count Ilya
Andreyevich, having ruined his children, retires inconspicuously, into the
background; Sonya becomes a parasite, et cetera. But all this is arranged in the
picture so that instead of weakening the general bracing impression, it
strengthens it even more. Dostoevsky could never grasp the secret of this
aspect of Tolstoy's art. He imagined that a menacing cry, an imperious tone, a
decisiveness of statement, and a few righteous and pious words can always
cope with the anxiety in every human heart, his own included.
Thus, for example, in The Idiot, where Prince Myshkin plays the role of the
conciliatory spirit, we find the following highly characteristic dialogue. After
the nocturnal reading in the garden, Ippolit, who is doomed to die, meets Prince
Myshkin and asks him a "question." "Tell me frankly," he says, "what, in your
opinion, is the best way for me to die? That is, so that it turns out to be as
virtuous as possible? Well, tell me." How do you like a "question" like that?
According to the basic idea of the novel, Prince Myshkin is always supposed
to distinguish himself; he must be able to understand everything and to emerge
the victor from the most difficult situations. But in that case, it must be thought
that Dostoevsky, by arranging a meeting for him with Ippolit, had simply
decided to ridicule his hero. Can there be any other reason for asking
questions, which, however hard you try, you will never be able to answer
sensibly or even in a remotely satisfactory way? And note the form of the
question: "So that it turns out to be as virtuous as possible!" It seems as if
Dostoevsky, in accordance with the old custom of the underground man,
suddenly felt the irrepressible urge to stick out his tongue at his own wisdom.
And indeed if Ippolits question is impertinent, then Prince Myshkins answer is
shocking. Here it is: "Pass us by, and forgive us our happiness, the Prince
said in a quiet [!] voice." Ippolit bursts out laughing right in his face.
Dostoevsky did not have the courage to make the poor boy submit to the
Prince's impudent sanctimony. And the quiet voice, always particularly
efficacious in such instances, had no effect whatsoever - nor did the magical
words "forgive us." Oh, no, Dostoevsky did not know how, he did not have the
slightest idea how to use dark colors. He imagined that it was enough to think
up a pious-sounding name for the scene, and its subject would be justified. Or,
better put, he wanted to obtain the true answer to Ippolits question, and not just
give the public a work of art.
With Count Tolstoy, it was quite a different matter. He was deeply

convinced that there is no answer, and consequently that he must use artistic
invention to insulate not only the readers, but himself as well from reality. In
this respect, War and Peace is a masterpiece. Everything in it is carefully
calculated; both the insignificant and the significant have their place in it.
Daring questions are not forgotten, but they not only do not trouble the reader,
they even seem to be answered as he reads along. No one comes to the dying
Prince Andrey to report in a quiet voice that he has penetrated the mysteries of
the world. On the contrary, the people around him are silent, and they remain
silent, for they are frightened and devastated by the mystery and severity of
the event. Prince Andrey is given all the honors a dying man could possibly
wish, and no one further ventures to annoy him with his exacting demands. And,
after all, that is the only correct and proper way to give a sound burial, for all
eternity, to a man who is dying before his time. Count Tolstoy took it from the
common practice of everyday life. As much grief, humility, weeping, and
solemnity as possible - all this opens the way to the new life, all this will in
the end reconcile one to any loss whatsoever. But this is not enough for Count
Tolstoy. He dispatches his corpses to the next world in a way that they can no
longer be of any importance whatsoever to the people who go on living. For
this purpose, he is not even averse to using Schopenhauer's philosophy, after
modifying it only slightly in accordance with the demands of art. In dying,
Prince Andrey does not become "nothing" - no, he merely returns to the womb
from which he came. Only his individuality is lost; but it is lost so completely
that for some time before his death, all living things, even his own son, seem
quite alien and unimportant to him.
This purely Schopenhauerian "immortality of the soul," as depicted by

Count Tolstoy, has an unusually soothing and reassuring effect on those who
remain alive. Death is the awakening from life. "And as for the duration of life,
it did not seem to him [Prince Andrey] any slower than the awakening from a
dream as compared with its duration." These lines Count Tolstoy took almost
verbatim from The World as Will and Idea, as he did his entire theory of death.
This is strange. Generally speaking, Count Tolstoy dislikes borrowing, but this
time he makes an exception. Schopenhauer's view seemed most appropriate to
the needs of the moment. It does not, of course, promise true immortality; the
immortality is not for the dying man, but for those who go on living. But who is
going to think of the dead! Let them rest peacefully in the grave, and let the
living enjoy life. Therefore, even death must be considered not from the
standpoint of those departing, but from the standpoint of those remaining here
on earth. In this sense, Count Tolstoy's portrayal is the height of perfection. It
seems as if he has reached the limits of human knowledge; it seems that one
step more, and the great mystery of life will be revealed to us. But this is an
optical illusion. As a matter of fact, it is just the reverse: everything has been
done here to see that the mystery remains eternally unrevealed. Death is
presented as something totally different from life, and therefore completely
incomprehensible to the living. In dying, Prince Andrey loses his human
individuality, which, as it gradually dissolves and diffuses, finally disappears
into something completely different from anything we can imagine.
This different thing, this Ding an sich or "will" is in any case something that
has its origin in Kant and Schopenhauer, and it is the "immortality" awaiting man.
For the living, such a vast horizon seems an interesting spectacle. But the
dying would not give two cents for such immortality. The late poems of
Heine, who, by the way, was Count Tolstoy's favorite poet, can clarify a
good deal on this score to anyone who is curious: The great German lyricist
could be exceedingly sincere and truthful. But Count Tolstoy does not want to
become involved with people who lack earthly hopes. The matter of Prince
Andrey is not his personal matter. Prince Andrey must merely be dispatched
from life in a decorous manner. He must be buried as deeply as possible in the
earth and, in addition, must have a huge stone placed on his grave so that his
corpse cannot rise and disturb the nocturnal slumber of the living - or better
still, he must be turned into the Ding an sich.
Herein lies the task of Tolstoy's art; herein lies the meaning of Kant's
idealist philosophy: all the disturbing questions of life must in some way or
other be transferred to the realm of the unknowable. Only then will there
appear on earth that tranquillity which people who have once been frightened
by a ghost value more than anything else in life. With Kant, this is not yet so
evident; his anxiety was of a purely theoretical, abstract nature. His ghost was
nothing but Hume's skepticism, which was threatening to undermine his faith in
the apodictic nature of science. But Count Tolstoy had encountered a different
kind of skepticism: an abyss had opened before him which threatened to
swallow him; he saw the triumph of death on earth; he saw himself a living
corpse. Terror-stricken, he cursed all the higher demands of his soul and turned
for knowledge to mediocrity, averageness, to vulgarity, having correctly
sensed that only from these elements can that wall be raised which will
conceal the horrible "truth" from our eyes, if not forever at least for a long
time. And he found his Ding an sich and his synthetic a priori judgments, that is,
he learned how man rids himself of all that is problematical and creates fixed
principles by which he can live. I suppose that no one will dispute the validity
of "that is": after all, with a priori judgments, it is not their origin that is vital, but
their apodictic nature, i.e., their universality and necessity. But we shall have
more to say about the Ding an sich later on.
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Nietzsche's Zarathustra says to his disciples: "So that no one could look
into my inner depths and learn my ultimate will, I devised my long and bright
silence. Many I found who were clever: they veiled their faces and muddied
their waters so that no one might see through them, deep down. But cleverer
mistrusters and diviners came to them and caught their most carefully
concealed fish. It is the clear, the bold, the transparent people who are the
cleverest among those who are silent: their ground is down so deep that even
the clearest water does not betray it." [Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, "On
the Mount of Olives."]. Nietzsche himself was no such clever man of silence:
he muddied his water; but these words can be fully applied to Count Tolstoy.
He is clear, bold, and transparent. Who would think it necessary to descend to
the bottom of his soul or believe that monsters live in its depths? He himself
likes to speak of his life as being "exceptionally happy in the secular sense."
And when as a youth you read his works, how joyfully you view his bright,
clear, and transparent depths! It seems that Count Tolstoy knows and
comprehends all; it seems that the enigmatic and contradictory aspects of life
that trouble people are merely enticing bait for man, and that the instability of
all that exists is merely a deceptive mirage. Instability - there is no such word
for Count Tolstoy.
Recall, for example, the Epilogue to War and Peace. Are there really any
doubts that could not be resolved around the tea table of Nikolai Rostovs
cozy dining room by the content and happy members of this large assembled
family? True, Pierre has brought a handful of ideas from Petersburg which
seemingly threaten to destroy the peaceful well-being of these inhabitants of
Bald Hills. But, as you know, Count Tolstoy refused to write The
Decembrists, and wrote War and Peace instead. The Decembrists, along with
Andrey Bolkonsky, were dispatched to the realm of the Ding an sich, where,
according to Kant's theory, all antinomies of the human mind are to be sent.
And life is left with a priori judgments, the chosen representative of which is
the person best suited for such matters - Nikolai Rostov. Would you like to
hear the language of apriorism? Pierre Bezukhov, mumbling and lisping, begins
to tell something about his experiences in Petersburg: "In the courts, bribery;
in the army, nothing but the rod; military drill, deportation - the people are
harassed, education is stifled. Whatever is young and honorable is crushed!
Everyone sees this can't go on much longer. Everything is too strained, and
soon it will break, Pierre said (as people have always said since governments
came into existence, and whenever people have examined the operations of
any government whatever) ."
As you well realize, these are the words of Hume's skepticism. Give them
free rein, and all the efforts expended on "war and peace" will turn out to have
been needlessly wasted. Therefore, it is necessary to shift the trend of the
conversation. And so Nikolai Rostov is allowed to speak. As a man of the a
priori, he dislikes proof, and respects only universality and necessity. He
comes right out and says so to Pierre: "I can't prove it to you. You say that
everything in our country is rotten; I don't see it. If Arakcheev were to order
me to march against,,you [i.e., against Pierre and his Petersburg friends] with a
squadron and to mow you down, I would do it without a moment's hesitation."
Splendidly said, isn't it? As a matter of fact, can anything be proved to Pierre?
And, furthermore, isn't Kant right - can we really exist without a priori
judgments, i.e., without those that are supported not by scientific arguments,
which are always contradictory and unstable, but by a never-changing force, or
in other words, by necessity? Shortly before writing War and Peace, Count
Tolstoy performed a number of experiments with "conscience" - not with the
Kantian-Rostovian conscience, which has principles, but with his own
conscience of a man of genius. And do you know what came of it? Not only
the a priori judgments, but almost all judgments disappeared. But how can a man
live without judgments, without convictions? This great writer of Russia finally
saw how convictions are born, and understood what a great advantage the
Rostovs have over the Bolkonskys.
Bolkonsky must not even be allowed to go on living. Where would you

end up with him? But Rostov, even if you were to let him live a hundred years,
would never lead you down an unknown, false path (unknown and false are
synonyms in the given instance). And see what deep respect Count Tolstoy
has for Rostov. "For a long time after his [Nikolai's] death," he tells us, "the
people retained a pious memory of his management." A pious memory!
Retained it for a long time! Look back over everything that Count Tolstoy
wrote: he never spoke of a single one of his heroes with such a feeling of
gratitude and tender emotion. Why was that, you will ask? Why did this
ordinary man deserve such gratitude? Precisely because of his
commonplaceness: Rostov knew how to live, and, therefore, he was always
stable. Throughout Count Tolstoy's career as a writer, he never valued
anything so much as precise knowledge and stability, for he found neither the
one nor the other in himself. He could only imitate Rostov, and it goes without
saying that he was obliged to shower praise on his lofty model. This "pious
memory," like the entire Epilogue to War and Peace, is an impertinent,
deliberately impertinent, challenge hurled by Count Tolstoy at all educated
men - if you will, at the entire conscience of our time. And it was precisely a
deliberate challenge: Count Tolstoy understood, he understood only too well,
what he was doing. "I bow before Rostov, but not before Pushkin or
Shakespeare, and I declare this openly before everyone" - this is the import of
the Epilogue to War and Peace. Note that during the period of his Yasnaya
Polyana journals and his early literary-journalistic experiments, when he also
repudiated Shakespeare and Pushkin, he at least opposed to them, not an
educated landowner, but the entire Russian people. This did not as yet seem so
strange. The Russian people, after all, is a great "idea," a magic carpet on
which many a reader or writer has made his transcendental journey. But Rostov
- why, there is nothing in him that even resembles an idea; he is sheer matter,
stagnation, inertia. And to dare to apply the epithet "pious memory" to him!
After that, how could anyone really believe that Count Tolstoy is nave and
innocent, or that his innermost depth is transparent and its bottom visible?
Obviously Dostoevsky's "hunch" was better than that of Count Tolstoy's other
readers: "Anna Karenina is by no means an innocent thing."
After Pierre's argument with Nikolai, Count Tolstoy takes us for several
more minutes into the bedroom of his happy couple. In bedrooms, Count
Tolstoy's conversations are carried on in a decidedly special way. In this
case, the husband and wife are so accustomed to living with each other, so
close, so inseparable that the one immediately catches the meaning of the other
at the slightest hint. Here, you can detect nothing but the basic tune of family
happiness: "Wir treiben jetzt Familien gluck, was hher lockt, das ist vom bel."
And Count Tolstoy once again depicts this entire idyll with what almost
amounts to reverence. "Let the Shakespeares go on depicting tragedy; I, for
my part, don't want to know about anything like that." Perhaps that was his
thought as he accompanied his couples into the bedroom. But he did not openly
say so. Openly, he prepared the solemn apotheosis of family happiness, which
owns that all that is "higher" comes from the devil. However, there is a note of
irony in this apotheosis - Count Tolstoy could not restrain himself. But, alas,
the irony relates not to Rostov, but to Pierre, and not to his family and
domestic affairs, but to his Petersburg plans. And even here, the irony is barely
noticeable: the word "smugness" is flung at Pierre just twice, as if by chance.
But in the Rostovs bedroom, all is lovely. Countess Marya lets her
husband read some pious literature of her own composition, and her husband, in
reading this diary of his wife's, realizes his own insignificance before her
loftiness of spirit. Moreover, Countess Marya offers, in regard to Pierre's
dispute with Nikolai, a new argument in defense of apriorism, which Nikolai
accepts with pleasure, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, he needs no
argument whatsoever - herein precisely is his finest quality. Countess Marya
says: "In my opinion, you are absolutely right. And I as much as told Natasha.
Pierre says that everyone is suffering, is harassed, is becoming corrupt, and
that it is our duty to help the poor. Of course [this "of course" is splendid!] he's
right, but he forgets that we have other obligations which are closer, and which
God Himself has marked out for us, and that we can risk our own necks, but not
our children's."
So that is how history is written! But that is not yet all. Having latched on to
Countess Maryas argument, the a priori man immediately shifts the
conversation from the children to business matters, the estate, the redemption
of promissory notes, payment of debts, and to his wealth. To Countess Marya,
such a transition seems unnaturally abrupt: "She felt like telling him [her
husband] that one does not live by bread alone, that he attaches too much
importance to these matters [Count Tolstoy's italics], but she knew that she
must not say this, and that it would be useless. She merely took his hand and
kissed it. He interpreted this gesture as a sign of approval and as sanction for
his ideas." What wonderful impertinence! Show me one writer besides Count
Tolstoy who would dare to play such a dangerous game so openly. Countess
Marya, who "always yearned for the infinite, the eternal, and the perfect,"
assents, as if nothing had happened, to the most extreme hypocrisy as soon as
instinct tells her that the stability of her "spiritual union" with her husband is
threatened. One step more and this hypocrisy would be raised to law, a law -
horrible to say - of conscience. If you will, no further step is needed; it has
already been taken in Countess Maryas words. But strangest of all is the fact
that Count Tolstoy does not give the slightest indication that he understands the
abyss over which he has just leaped. As usual, he is clear, bright, and
transparent.
What "psychology" Dostoevsky would have made of this! But Count

Tolstoy is already experienced. He knows that each time an antinomy
approaches, one must assume an air of piety, innocence, and childish navet -
otherwise, goodbye forever to all a priori judgments, universality, necessity,
stability, firm ground, and foundations! And he has no equal in this diplomatic
art. Perhaps this is the result of origin and breed - a dozen generations of
ancestors who served in an official capacity and who always needed a solemn
countenance. In this way, Count Tolstoy achieves a dual goal: he has told the
"truth," and the truth has not undermined life. Prior to Count Tolstoy, idealism
did not know such subtle techniques. For its effects, it always needed a crude
lie, fervent emotion, eloquence, tinsel, and even gaudy colors.
Had Dostoevsky recalled the Epilogue to War and Peace, he would have
realized that it is an anachronism to be angry with Levin for his indifference to
the Slavs misfortunes. The time for anger was earlier - when he read War and
Peace. And if he accepted War and Peace, then he must also accept Anna
Karenina - completely, without any reservations, its last part included. As a
matter of fact, the SliMe affair is also a great muddle! It contains one of the
antimonies - to kill or not to kill. Therefore, why not make it a Ding an sich?
Why not leave it, as Levin suggests, to the sole jurisdiction of the government,
bearing in mind the example of our ancestors, who turned all matters of
government over to foreign princes who were expressly invited for that
purpose?
All Count Tolstoy's work, including his late philosophical journalistic

articles and even his novel Resurrection (one of his few works, almost the
only one, that is relatively unsuccessful - in it, Count Tolstoy seems to be
gathering up the crumbs from his own once-sumptuous table), remains within the
bounds of the task I have indicated. He wants at any cost to tame those raging
beasts bearing the foreign names skepticism and pessimism. He does not hide
them from our eyes, but keeps them in what seem to be exceedingly sturdy and
reliable cages, so that even the most distrustful person begins to regard them
as tamed and safe once and for all. Count Tolstoy's final formula, which sums
up his many years of tireless struggle, and which he proclaims with particular
solemnity in his book What is Art, goes like this: "Goodness and brotherly
love - this is God." I am not going to speak about it here, as I had occasion
elsewhere to explain its meaning and significance in detail. [L.Shestov, Dobro
v uchenii grafa Totstogo i F. Nitshe (Petersburg, 1900)]. I want only to remind
the reader that even this "conviction," which, according to Count Tolstoy's
repeated assurance, has purest reason and truthful conscience as parents, is by
no means of such noble origin. It was begotten by that same terror of the Ding
an sich, by that same, almost spontaneous urge "back to Kant" (as
representatives of the latest school of German philosophy were shouting in
chorus not so long ago), by virtue of which Prince Andrey was dispatched,
Rostov extolled, Princess Marya poeticized, et cetera. That is why, as we
shall see below, the principle that Count Tolstoy offered as the greatest and
loftiest truth could seem a blasphemous, ugly, and disgusting lie to
Dostoevsky.
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Thus, one way to struggle against pessimism and skepticism is to create a
priori judgments and the Ding an sich - in short, idealism, which Count Tolstoy
formulates in the words "Goodness is God." But simultaneously it follows
from the foregoing that idealism needs outward support. Levin had to marry
Kitty, to set up a household, to go hunting, et cetera, et cetera. "Reason" alone
proved insufficient to erect this ethereal structure. It needed a "material"
foundation - an exceedingly material one. But the foundation goes deep in the
earth; no one sees it. This has always contributed a great deal to the triumph of
all that is "lofty" on earth. Recall, for example, the progenitors of European
idealism - Socrates and Plato - with their doctrine of good. It seemed that it
was spun from the purest of ideas, which does not derive from reason.
However, into the pure realm of ideas, contraband was smuggled all the same -
and what contraband! It turns out that the doctrine of the superiority of good
over evil cannot (I am almost ready to say does not want to) rest on dialectics
alone, however "divine" they may be. For support, it needs so crude and
material a belief as the belief in retribution. What more, strictly speaking, is
necessary after it has been proved that to experience injustice is better than to
do it to someone else? But as a matter of fact, this is not enough. In Plato's
dialogues ("Gorgias," "The Republic," and "Phaedo"), the most ordinary human
expedient is called upon to support good. There, it is stated that the wicked
will in due course (in the life to come) be punished, and the good rewarded. If
such certain victory belongs to good, then all dialectics could probably be
left in peace. The most backward mind is capable of understanding the
superiority of good, which has behind it a protector who, although remote, has
been created according to an earthly model and who, moreover, is omnipotent.
But strangely enough, you will find the Socratic-Platonic idea of retribution
in almost all idealistic schools of ethics. All moralists have considered it
necessary to make God Himself the patron of good, or even, as in the case of
Count Tolstoy, to identify good with God (and in modern times at that - the era
of positivism, evolution, et cetera). Evidently, the moralists good did not
seem very attractive in itself, an sich, and people accepted it only for fear of
incurring the wrath of the omnipotent being. Idealism is by no means so ideal as
one might expect, considering the solemnity with which its prophets spoke. In
the final analysis, it lives by the most earthly of hopes, and its a priori and
Ding an sich are merely high walls by which it defends itself from the more
difficult demands of real life. In this sense, idealism is like an oriental despotic
state: outside, all is resplendent, beautiful, and eternal; but inside, there are
horrors. Herein is also the reason for that incomprehensible phenomenon
whereby a doctrine which at first glance is so innocent has very often become
the object of the bitterest hatred on the part of people who least of all deserve
to be suspected of a "natural" tendency toward evil. But it can be safely said
that every implacable enemy of idealism was at one time, like Dostoevsky and
Nietzsche, an extreme idealist himself, and that "psychology," which has
blossomed forth so luxuriously in recent times, is the work of apostates from
idealism. And as a matter of fact, why would a man begin to pry into the
innermost depths of his soul, why should he verify creeds that are
unquestionably splendid, beautiful, and interesting?
Descartes's de omnibus dubitandum is, of course, irrelevant here: for a

methodological principle, man will never consent to lose the ground under his
feet. More likely the reverse - lost soil gives rise to all doubt. Consequently,
when it turns out that idealism could not withstand the pressure of reality, when
a man, who by the will of the Fates has collided head-on with real life,
suddenly sees to his horror that all the fine a priori judgments were false, then
for the first time only is he seized by that irrepressible doubt that instantly
destroys the seemingly very solid walls of the old air castles. Socrates, Plato,
good, humanity, ideas - all the assembly of former angels and saints who were
guarding the innocent human soul from attacks by the evil demons of
skepticism and pessimism - vanish without a trace into thin air, and man, faced
by his most horrible enemies, experiences for the first time in his life that
fearful loneliness from which not even the most devoted and loving heart is
able to deliver him. And precisely at this point begins the philosophy of
tragedy. Hope is lost forever, but life remains, and there is much life ahead.
You cannot die, even though you would like to. The ancient Russian prince was
mistaken when he said that the dead have no shame. [Supposedly said by Grand
Prince Svyatoslav, when faced by an overwhelming number of Greek troops in
970 - S.R.].
Ask Dostoevsky. He will tell you differently through the mouth of Dmitry
Karamazov: "I've learned a lot this night. I've learned that it is impossible not
only to live as a scoundrel, but also to die as one." Do you understand? All a
priori judgments are lost, the philosophy of Kant and Count Tolstoy is ended,
and there begins the realm of the Ding an sich. Would you like to follow
Dostoevsky and Nietzsche there? No obligations are involved: whoever so
desires has the right to go "back to Kant." You are not convinced that you will
find here what you need - "beauty" of any kind whatsoever. Perhaps there is
nothing here but ugliness. One thing only is certain: there is reality here - a
new, unheard of, unwitnessed reality, or better put, a reality that has never
before been displayed. And those who are obliged to call it their reality, those
who do not have the possibility of returning to the simple life, where concern
over Kittys health, arguments with Koznyshov, the management of estates, the
writing of books, et cetera, lead even such experienced men as Levin into the
ordinary rut of human existence - such people will view everything with
different eyes than we. We can renounce these people: of what concern are
they to us? We have done so in the past, and we still do so today.
N. K. Mikhailovsky, in his well-known and in many respects remarkable

article, called Dostoevsky a "cruel talent." [N.K. Mikhailovsky (1842-1904), a
leader of the Populists, a sociologist, and a literary critic. As a critic, he was
mainly interested in the writer's message and his degree of public utility - S.R.].
The characterization is most apt: I think it will always stick to Dostoevsky.
Unfortunately, the critic wanted with these two words not only to give a
characterization of the artist, but also to pronounce judgment on him and on all
his work. Cruel - that means mutilated, deformed, and therefore also unfit. N.
K. Mikhailovsky could only regret that it happened this way - that although
Dostoevsky was a man of vast talent, he was not at the same time a priest of
humanity. The critic's judgment in this case is based on the assumption that
humanity is unquestionably better and more lofty than cruelty. Unquestionably?
But where then is Descartes's principle which we just mentioned, where is de
omnibus dubitandum? Mikhailovsky was, of course, acquainted with it. But as
usual, it remained out of the picture, knowing all too well that it must always
appear last if it wishes to be bienvenu.
In another of his articles, this same Mikhailovsky, when speaking of

Proudhon, presents a number of facts intended to prove that the celebrated
Frenchman, with whose name we in Russia associated the concept of the best
fighter for lofty ideas, was something of a rogue in his personal life. He
concludes his story with the following words: "It is not at all pleasant to single
out these dark traits, because in doing so, one is obliged to tear something
from the heart." And then immediately after this, in a strange association of
ideas, he adds: "This is not just empty rhetoric." I do not know how the other
readers took the words quoted above, but for my part, I indeed thought that
they were empty rhetoric. Mikhailovsky was not obliged to tear anything from
his heart. This does not mean that he was indifferent to Proudhons ideas. And,
even less would I like to say that Mikhailovsky is inclined to talk for the mere
sake of talking: on the contrary, you encounter "empty rhetoric" in his works
just as seldom as you encounter serious thought in the majority of the other
writers. But this time the insincerity was obvious, and that is why he needed his
reservation. Obviously, even such an unexpected discovery as the fact that a
creator of lofty ideas was not a completely honorable man in his personal life
could not astonish Mikhailovsky. He was taken aback by his own placidity and,
as he was unable to explain this strange phenomenon, or did not have time to
think it over, he hastened to mask it with his trite phrase, which had lain for so
long in his memory.
A great deal is revealed in this apparently insignificant psychological fact.
Evidently Proudhon himself meant nothing to Mikhailovsky (although he
declares in his article that it was just the reverse). Proudhon was merely the
incarnation of the great idea of humanity (permit me to use this word in its
broadest sense); well, then, could a whole army of Proudhon-scoundrels, of
even Proudhon-bandits and murderers, cast the slightest shadow of doubt on
the sublimity of the idea? Humanity is not maintained by the authority of French
writers; it is a part of Mikhailovskys own soul, and its most stable part. He
himself states this clearly in the Preface to the new edition of his collected
works, where he sums up his many years of literary activity: "Every time the
word truth [pravda] comes to mind, I cannot help admiring its striking inner
beauty. There is no such word, I believe, in any other European language. It
appears that only in Russian are truth and justice [istina i spravedlivost] called
by one and the same word and thus seem to merge into one great whole. Truth -
in this vast meaning of the word has always lain the object of my quests. I
never could believe, and I do not now, that it is impossible to find a point of
view wherein truth as verity and truth as justice go hand in hand, the one
complementing the other." These words explain why Mikhailovsky remained
calm when he made his discovery about Proudhon, although he knew that one
should be deeply grieved in such cases.
Of what importance is Proudhon, when a man's soul contains an idea as

solid as granite, aere perennius, not made by human hands? It was this
unwavering faith in the idea, in humanity, in truth, which took the discovery
about Proudhon as a matter of secondary importance (Mikhailovsky had
probably made more than one such discovery in his life and had wondered
many a time at his soul's callousness and perhaps had even castigated himself
for it) and which prevented the critic from pausing at the sight of this unusual
case of a "cruel talent." After all, it was not a cruel mediocrity, but a cruel
talent, i.e., a characteristic of man in connection with which even the most
extreme positivists do not hesitate to recall the name of God. And suddenly
talent proves to be in the service of cruelty! But Mikhailovsky is one of those
fortunate chosen ones who have been given the possibility of serving ideas
their whole life long. Such people are also served by ideas, which protect
them from the most horrible of experiences.
This was not the case with Dostoevsky. He failed to remain to the end of
his life the priest of his early faith. He was doomed to the lot of deserter,
betrayer, and traitor. Ideas avenge themselves on such people, and they do it
mercilessly and inexorably. There is no form of inward and invisible disgrace,
there is no form of humiliation that does not fall to their lot. Dostoevsky's
penal servitude lasted not four years, but a lifetime. Mikhailovsky is, of
course, right when he explains Dostoevsky's world view by the trials that he
stood. But the question is, can such trials really prevent people from seeing the
"truth"? Isn't it just the reverse? After all, it can be that an ordinary life among
ordinary people gives one an ordinary philosophy! And who will guarantee
that people need just such a philosophy as this? Perhaps in order to find truth it
is necessary, above all, to free oneself from all commonplaceness. So that
penal servitude not only does not vindicate "convictions," it refutes them; and
the really true philosophy is the philosophy of penal servitude. If all this is so,
then it means that the idea of humanity also, which was born among free
people, has no right to pillory cruelty and reproach it for its dark, penal origin,
but must instead yield to its humble opponent all the countless rights and
advantages which it has thus far enjoyed in the world, and above all, its
glittering retinue of poets, artists, philosophers, and preachers, who for
thousands of years have tirelessly lavished it with great praise.
At any rate, justice demands that we at least listen impartially and attentively
to the cruel underground man without being confused either by Count Tolstoy's
fears or Mikhailovskys firm belief in truth.
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Skepticism and pessimism arouse the same mystical horror in the
underground man as in Count Tolstoy, but the former has not been given the
possibility of returning to commonplaceness, not even the possibility of
decently pretending to himself and others that he has returned there (he might
just try that). He knows that the past has long been forgotten, that granite, aere
perennius, things not made by human hands - in brief, everything on which
people have hitherto based their stability, all their a prioris - have been
irretrievably lost for him. And with the boldness of a man bereft of hope, he
suddenly decides to cross the fatal boundary, to take that fearful step against
which he had been warned both by precepts of the past and his own experience
gained from forty years of life. It is impossible to overcome his unhappiness
and doubts by means of idealism. All attempts at struggle in this direction have
come to naught: "The lofty and beautiful has weighed so heavily on my neck
these forty years," says Dostoevsky's underground man. One thing remains: to
abandon the fruitless struggle and follow skepticism and pessimism in order to
see where they will lead. This means saying to himself: "Everything that has
been valued, everything that has been regarded as lofty and beautiful, is
forbidden fruit for me in this life. But I continue to live, I shall go on living for
a long time in new and terrible circumstances. Therefore I shall create for
myself my own concept of the lofty and beautiful."
In other words, there begins a "revaluation of all values." Idealism, quite

unexpectedly to itself, turns from the innocent judge into the accused.
Dostoevsky is ashamed to recall that he himself was once an idealist. He
would like to renounce his past, and because it is impossible to deceive
himself, he tries to imagine his recent life in a different light; he invents
extenuating circumstances for himself. "Among us Russians, generally
speaking, there have never been any of those silly transcendental German and
particularly French romantics on whom nothing has any effect, even if the earth
were to give way under their feet, even if all France were to perish at the
barricades - they are always the same, even for decency's sake they do not
change, and they will go on singing their transcendental songs, so to say, to
the grave, because they are fools. But with us here in Russia, there are no
fools." [Dostoevsky, op. cit.. III (2), 106-107]. As if there are no "fools" in
Russia! Who sang the praises of Makar Devushkin night after night? Who shed
tears over Natasha, even at a time when the earth was already crumbling away
under his feet? Alas, one cannot erase from the memory these pages from the
past, no matter how much cunning one resorts to. Of all our romantics,
Dostoevsky was the most fanciful, the most transcendental, the most sincere.
Now that Judgment Day had come, and he saw that the ways of its court
differ from those promised by Socrates and Plato, and that, despite his virtues,
he had been driven into outer darkness along with a multitude of people like
him, he wanted to vindicate himself, at least a little. Perhaps he recalled - in
such cases, as we know, memory is always tediously obliging - perhaps he
recalled that, after all, people had warned him. They had told him that this court
rejoices more over one repentant sinner than over a hundred righteous men. He
must have understood that the righteous, all those "transcendental romantics,"
are considered ordinary, and that on Judgment Day, in their capacity as ordinary
people, they cannot expect to be pardoned. Formerly, he had not heard or had
not comprehended the warning voice, and now - now it is almost too late; now,
remorse and sell-torture are of no avail. He is doomed, and, of course, for all
eternity. On Judgment Day, there are no other sentences. It is not the same as
with Count Tolstoy and his dealings with conscience, which imposes humane,
suspended sentences in which there is justice, mercy, and, above all, a promise
of pardon. In this case, there is no pardon. But even worse is the fact that
resignation, on which moralists always rely so heavily, does not help.
Here is the testimony of the underground man, who is well versed in these
matters: "Confronted by a wall, the direct people give up in all sincerity. For
them, the wall is no evasion, as it is, for example, for us - no pretext to turn
aside. No, they throw up their hands in all sincerity. For them, the wall has
something soothing, morally assuaging, and final - perhaps even something
mystical." [Ibid., 77] The language is, of course, different, but who would fail
to recognize in this wall the Kantian a priori standing before the Ding an sich?
They were a great satisfaction to philosophers, but Dostoevsky, who needed
this "soothing, morally assuaging, and final" thing more than all else in the
world, consciously preferred to dash his head against the wall rather than to
reconcile himself to its impenetrability. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God!" You see that "eternal" truths were devised by the
sages not so much for the people needing consolation as for the consolers,
i.e., for themselves. This thought horrifies Dostoevsky. After all, his entire
life, his entire past, had been the personification of the idea of the consoler.
He was a novelist who taught people to believe that the horrible fate of the
humiliated and insulted is expiated by the tears and good sentiments of the
readers and writers. His happiness, his inspiration was nourished by the
"humblest man, our brother. Only when man sees for himself that for years on
end he had been able to cherish such a hideous lie in his soul and revere it as a
great and sacred truth, only then does he begin to understand that "ideas" must
not be believed, to understand what splendid and alluring forms our basest
impulses can assume if they need to gain ascendance over our souls. And
indeed, what can be more terrible than a singer of "poor folk" watering his
poetic flower garden with the tears of Makar Devushkin and Natasha?
Now it is clear why Dostoevsky cannot return to his former state of

tranquillity, to the wall that contains so much that is morally assuaging and final
for direct people. Better any truth at all than such a lie, he says to himself - and
thence the valor with which he looks reality in the face. Do you remember the
almost nonsensical, but brilliant, statement of Shakespeare's Lear: "Thoudst
shun a bear; but if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea, thoudst meet the bear i
th mouth." [Act II, Scene 4]. Dostoevsky fled reality, but he met idealism on
the way and turned back: all the horrors of life are not so terrible as the ideas
invented by reason and conscience. Rather than shedding tears over Devushkin,
it is better to tell the truth: let the world go to pot, as long as I can have my tea.
It was not easy for Dostoevsky to accept such a "truth." And what is a man to
do with it whose past included Makar Devushkin and penal servitude, and
whose present includes epilepsy and all the delights of the life of a struggling,
middle-aged Petersburg writer who is practically just beginning his career?
At one time it was thought that "truth" consoles and strengthens man and
bolsters his spirits. But the truth of the underground is of an entirely different
breed than its magnanimous predecessors. It does not think of man at all, and if,
metaphorically speaking, any intentions can be attributed it, they are not, at any
rate, benevolent ones. Its business is not to console. Perhaps to ridicule, to
offend - it is still capable of that. "More than anything else, the laws of nature
have constantly offended me throughout my life," says the underground man. Is
it any wonder then that he can feel no tenderness either for truths or ideals, if
both of them, now in the form of the laws of nature, now in the form of lofty
doctrines of morality, do nothing but offend and humiliate a childishly trusting
and totally innocent being? How is one to respond to such masters? What
feeling other than perpetual, implacable hatred can one have for the natural
order and for humanity? Spencer preached accommodation, the moralists -
submission to fate. But that is all very well if one assumes that accommodation
is still possible and that submission can at least bring peace. "If one assumes!"
But psychology has already shown us that all assumptions are devised solely
for the assumers, and that even Count Tolstoy participated in the conspiracy
against the humiliated and insulted.
Therein is the reason why Dostoevsky, to the surprise of his

contemporaries, refused with such strange obstinacy to venerate the humane
ideas that exercised complete sway over our literature in the sixties and
seventies. Mikhailovsky was right in seeing a "malevolent" man in him.
(Scarcely had this epithet crept into the pages of Mikhailovskys works than
we became accustomed to meeting it in other places as well.) How, for
example, the underground man talks of "the future happiness of mankind," i.e.,
of the cornerstone on which all the "convictions" of humanitarians have always
rested and still rest today! "Then," he says, "there will be new economic
relations, completely ready-made, so that all possible questions will disappear
in an instant, simply because all possible answers to them will have been
provided. Then the Crystal Palace will be built. Well, in brief, then the bird
Kagan [a bird from Russian folk literature - S.R.] will come flying to us."
[Ibid., III (2), 89]. Obviously, these are, the words of a malevolent man
infringing on his neighbors peace and happiness. But this is nothing yet - for
the time being, it is mere irony. Later, there follows what almost amounts to a
"call to action." "I, for example, won't in the least be surprised," he continued,
"if suddenly, for no rhyme nor reason, in the midst of the future universal
rationality, there appears a gentleman with a plebian, or perhaps I should say, a
retrograde and sarcastic physiognomy, who will stand with arms akimbo and
say to us all: What about it, gentlemen, how about giving this rationality a
good kick and overthrowing it once and for all for the sole purpose of sending
all these logarithms to the devil and living again according to our own will?"
[Ibid., 90]
Obviously, we are not dealing here with a dialectician. Dostoevsky is not

disposed to argue - no, indeed! After all, he is destroying, not the hopes of
others, but of himself. "I most certainly didn't say that because I'm so fond of
sticking my tongue out," he admits later. "Perhaps the only reason I became
angry over it was because up to now there hasn't been one building of all those
you've built, at which one can help sticking his tongue out." So the man with the
retrograde and sarcastic physiognomy has nothing to do with it. The question is
whether Dostoevsky's Crystal Palace can be reconciled with his past, his
present, and his everlasting penal servitude. And the answer to this is a sharp
"no." If man's task is to find happiness on earth, then all is lost forever. This
task is indeed impracticable, for how can future happiness atone for the
unhappiness of the past and the present? Will the fate of Makar Devushkin, who
was treated contemptuously in the nineteenth century, be improved because no
one in the twenty-second century will be allowed to insult one's neighbor? Not
only will it not be improved, it will become worse. No, if it has come to that,
then let unhappiness dwell among men forever, let future Makars also be
treated with contempt. At this point, Dostoevsky not only does not want to
prepare the foundation for the future splendors of the Crystal Palace, he is
filled with spite, with bate, and at the same time, with secret joy as he exults in
advance over the thought that some gentleman will always be found to prevent
the establishment of happiness on earth. This gentleman is, of course, purely
imaginary; for a believer, he is, of course, no argument. But, after all, it is not a
question here of arguments. The main point is that Dostoevsky does not want
universal happiness in the future, he does not want the future to vindicate the
present. He demands a different vindication and prefers to beat his head against
the wall to the point of exhaustion rather than to find solace in the humane ideal.
People chose a happy lot for themselves when they threw up their hands
before the wall. But such a lot is not destined for everyone. The a priori exists
only for people of a direct nature. What then remains for Dostoevsky?
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In Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky renounces his ideals - those
ideals which, so it seemed to him, he had brought back from penal servitude
intact. I say "seemed," for as a matter of fact, what he took for ideals during his
life in the penal colony and in his first years of freedom was merely - I hope
this is now clear - a deceptive belief that upon serving his sentence, he would
become the free man he was before. Like all people, he took his own hopes
for the ideal and hastened to expel all memories of penal life from his mind, or
at least to adapt them to the conditions of his new life. But his efforts led to
nothing, or more precisely, to almost nothing. The penal truths, however much
he tried to polish and tidy them up, retained too obvious traces of their origin.
From under their magnificent attire, sad branded faces stared out at. the readers;
one could see shaved heads. In the loud, bombastic words, one could hear the
clanking of chains. Only The House of the Dead was received by the public
and critics as something kindred, ordinary, and free. And, indeed, in this work,
Dostoevsky displays - for the only time in his life - almost the Tolstoyan art
of reconciling reality with established ideals. The reader laid down The House
of the Dead enraptured, elevated, filled with tender emotion, ready to struggle
against evil, et cetera - exactly as the aesthetics of the time demanded. And, by
the way, in his elevated mood and his readiness, he considered Dostoevsky
just as good and kind a person as himself. Yet, with a modicum of attention and
a bit less enthusiasm, you can find pearls, even in The House of the Dead, such
as you will never find in the underground - for example, the concluding words
of the novel: "How much youth was needlessly buried within these walls, what
mighty powers were wasted there to no purpose! After all, the whole truth
must be told; those men were exceptional men. They were perhaps the most
talented, the strongest representatives of all our people. But their mighty
strength went to waste, it went to waste abnormally, unjustly, and
irretrievably."
Is there a Russian who does not know these lines by heart? And moreover,
isn't it partly due to them that the novel owes its fame? Consequently,
Dostoevsky did know how to embellish this hideous and disgusting idea.
How? By saying that the best Russians were in penal colonies! That the most
talented, the most remarkable, the strongest people were murderers, thieves,
arsonists, and bandits. And who said this? A man living at the time of Belinsky,
Nekrassov, Turgenev, Grigorovich, at the time of all those people who have
thus far been considered the pride and joy of Russia! And to prefer the
stigmatized inhabitants of the House of the Dead to them! Why, that is
downright madness. Yet two generations of readers have seen in this judgment
an expression of Dostoevsky's great humanity. They thought that in his
humility, in his love for his neighbor, he was singing praises in a new way to
the humblest man. For propriety's sake, they did not even notice that, in his
eagerness, the singer had indeed gone too far this time. Only recently did they
notice (and, as a matter of fact, even this was fortuitous) the absurdity of such
humility. But still, they did not venture to reproach Dostoevsky openly - so
much had his reputation for sanctity grown because of the passage quoted
above. They merely tried to reduce its importance by means of an appropriate
interpretation. They began to point out that in Dostoevsky's time, convicts were
not, strictly speaking, criminals in the true sense of the word, but merely
objectors - for the most part, people who had rebelled against the outrageous
practices of serfdom.
This explanation, although belated, was, of course, necessary.

Unfortunately, it is completely without foundation. Dostoevsky was not
particularly fond of the objectors in the penal colony; he merely tolerated
them. Recall how he spoke of the political prisoners. His enthusiasm was for
the real convicts, for those about whom his fellow prisoner, the Pole M...tsky,
always said: "Je hais ces brigands" - and it was only for them. In them, he
found strength, talent, and singularity; he ranked them higher than Belinsky,
Turgenev, and Nekrassov. Nothing is left to us but to be outraged by this
judgment, to ridicule it, to curse it, to do whatever we please, but Dostoevsky
meant precisely this and only this.
Unlike the Pole M...tsky, Dostoevsky saw in these brigands (if "all must be
told," and I think it is high time it was) his "ideal," and just as he had done earlier
in the case of Belinsky, he did now; he accepted their entire doctrine of life,
which, although it had never been set down in books, was unquestionably most
definite and clear. True, he accepted it, not joyfully and willingly, but because
he could not do otherwise, and without considering what" it might bring him: in
such cases, a beneficium inventarii is not customary. He did not even want to
admit to himself that his teachers were convicts. In defending his new views,
he always referred to the common folk. "Something else changed our views,
our convictions, and our hearts. That something else was our direct contact
with the common people, brotherly union with them in our common misery, the
realization that we ourselves had become the same as they, that we were on the
same level as they and even on a level with their lowest representative."
[Dostoevsky, in Grazhdanin, No. 50, 1873]
But what sort of people were they - those with whom Dostoevsky had
lived? They were convicts; they were those elements that the people had
rejected. To live with them means not to be on intimate terms with the people,
not to be in contact with them, but to withdraw farther from them than have any
of our Russian absentees who live permanently abroad. This must never for a
single minute be forgotten. And if this is so, it also means that all
Dostoevsky's veneration for the people, which had won him so many ardent
and devoted followers, related to an entirely different deity, and that the
Russians, the "trusting" readers, had been cruelly and unprecedentedly
deceived by their teacher. True, Dostoevsky was not the first teacher to
deceive his students. But few would have had the courage to make a
substitution such as this. I suppose that Dostoevsky himself, despite his unusual
acumen and sensitivity to everything pertaining to ideals and faith (he is the
author of "The Grand Inquisitor"), did not, in the given instance, fully realize
what he was doing. He did not want to believe in convicts, and if he placed
them on such an impossibly high pedestal in the excerpt quoted from The
House of the Dead, it was only in the vague hope that the convicts could still
be subordinated to the higher idea. At least in his writing, Dostoevsky made
open obeisance only once to his fellow convicts. And that was probably
because the general tone of The House of the Dead removes all possibility of
suspicion on the part of the reader. It contains as much sympathy for good as it
does artistry. The reader had long since stopped scrutinizing the individual
thoughts: say what you please, everything will be taken for the noble idea.
Yet, all the ordeals Dostoevsky underwent in Siberia were trivial in

comparison with the horrible necessity of bowing down before convicts.
Nietzsche asks: "My friend, do you know the word contempt? And the torment
of your justice in trying to be fair to those who despise you?" And, indeed,
there is no greater torment in life. But Dostoevsky was obliged to get to know
it. The convicts despised him; this is attested to on almost every page of The
House of the Dead; but reason, conscience, and "justice" did not permit him to
revenge himself on them, to answer contempt with contempt. Like Nietzsche,
he was still obliged to side with his inexorable foes, to acknowledge them -
and, I repeat, not out of fear, not out of the greatness of his heart and its
compassion for the humblest man, but out of conscience - as his teachers, as
the best and most talented people, whose existence justifies all that is ugly,
insignificant, and useless in life, i.e., the Dostoevskys, Turgenevs, Belinskys,
et cetera.
Such was the terrible burden Dostoevsky brought with him from penal
servitude. With the years, not only did it not grow lighter, it pressed down on
him ever more and more. He was unable to cast it off until the very last days of
his life. He had to bear it; he had to hide it from everyone's eyes, and at the
same time to go on "teaching" people. How can one cope with such a task?
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The answer to this question is in all Dostoevsky's subsequent literary work.
From then on, he was to spend almost no time on the humiliated and insulted -
only at odd moments, out of habit. His favorite subject is crime and the
criminal. One question relentlessly pursues him: "What sort of people are
convicts? How did it happen that they seemed to be right, that they still seem to
be right for having despised me, and why do I involuntarily feel so
insignificant, so weak and, horrible to say, so ordinary before them? Can this
really be the truth? Is this what the people should be taught?" There can be no
doubt that Dostoevsky asked himself such questions. Raskolnikovs article
clearly attests to it. There, people are divided, not into good and evil, but into
ordinary and extraordinary. All the "good" ones fall into the category of the
ordinary, and, in their narrow-mindedness, obey the moral laws; but the
extraordinary ones create their own laws, and to them, "all is permitted."
Razumikhin correctly sums up the gist of this article when he tells
Raskolnikov: "What is really original in all this [that is, in the article and in
Raskolnikovs arguments explaining it] and what is exclusively your own, to
my horror, is that you sanction bloodshed when one follows the dictates of
one's conscience, and, excuse my saying so, you do it with such fanaticism.
Consequently, that is the main idea of your article. But sanction of bloodshed
by conscience is... why, in my opinion, that is more horrible than the official,
legal sanction of bloodshed." (The words "original," "the dictates of one's
conscience," and "by conscience" were italicized by Dostoevsky.)
[Do s to e vs ky , Polnoe sobranie sochinenij (1894-1895), V, 260]. Thus,
"conscience" compels Raskolnikov to side with the criminal. Its sanction, its
approval, its sympathy are not with good, but with evil. The very words
"good" and "evil" no longer exist. They have been replaced by the
expressions "ordinariness" and "extraordinariness." The former is connected
with the idea of vulgarity, worthlessness, uselessness, whereas the latter is a
synonym for grandeur. In other words, Raskolnikov stands "beyond good and
evil" - and this was thirty-five years ago, when Nietzsche was still a student
dreaming of lofty ideals. Razumikhin told the truth - the idea was most original,
and it belonged entirely to Dostoevsky. In the sixties, no one ever dreamed of
such a thing, not only in Russia, but even in Europe. Even Shakespeare's
Macbeth was regarded at the time as an edifying portrayal of the pangs of
conscience in store for a sinner while still on earth. (Brandes even now goes
on interpreting Macbeth that way: fabula docet.) [Georg M. Brandes (1842-
1927), a Danish author and literary critic. - S.R.]
Now the question arises: if Raskolnikovs idea is so original that it occurred

to absolutely no one but its originator, why did Dostoevsky have to arm
himself against it? What was the use in struggling against it? Against whom was
Dostoevsky struggling? Answer: against himself, and only himself. He alone
in the entire world envied the moral grandeur of the criminal, and, as he did not
dare to express his true thoughts openly, he created various "situations" for
them. First, in The House of the Dead, he expressed his admiration for convicts
in such a way that he lured the kindest and most compassionate people to his
side. Then he substituted convicts for the idea of the people. Then, for the
remainder of his life he fought against the theoretical apostates from "good,"
although there was just one such theoretician in world literature - Dostoevsky
himself. After all, if Dostoevsky's task really amounted to a struggle against
evil, then he must have felt splendid. Who of his fellow writers did not have
just such a task? But Dostoevsky had his own original, very original, idea.
Struggling against evil, he offered in its defense arguments such as it never
dared even dream of. Conscience itself intervened for evil! The idea on which
Raskolnikov based his article was developed at great length and in a different
form by Nietzsche in his Toward a Genealogy of Morals and still earlier in
Human, All-Too-Human. I do not mean that Nietzsche borrowed it from
Dostoevsky. When he was writing Human, All-Too-Human, no one in Europe
had heard of Dostoevsky. But one can safely say that the German philosopher
would never have been so bold and frank in expounding it in Toward a
Genealogy of Morals if he had not felt Dostoevsky's support behind him.
At any rate, it is evident that, despite the novel's plot, Raskolnikovs real
tragedy does not lie in his decision to break the law, but in the fact that he
realized he was incapable of such a step. Raskolnikov is no murderer; he is
guilty of no crime. The incident with the old pawnbroker and Lizaveta is
invention, slander, and false accusation. And Ivan Karamazov, later on, was not
involved in the Smerdyakov affair. He too was slandered by Dostoevsky. All
these "heroes" are of Dostoevsky's own flesh and blood; they are
transcendental thinkers, romanticists, designers of projects for a future ideal
and felicitous social order, devoted friends of mankind, who have suddenly
grown ashamed of their loftiness and transcendentalism and have realized that
discussions about ideals are idle chatter that does not add one iota to the
common treasury of ,human wealth. Their tragedy is in their inability to begin a
new and different life. And so profound, so hopeless is this tragedy that it was
not difficult for Dostoevsky to present it as the cause of the agonizing
experiences of his heroes who murder. But there is not the slightest basis here
on which to regard Dostoevsky as an expert on or an investigator of the
criminal soul. Although he knew convicts, he saw them only in prison. Their
earlier life, when they were free, and the history of their crimes remained just
as much of a mystery to him as it does to all of us. The prisoners never spoke
about all that. People will ask: what about poetic fantasy? In my opinion, it
must not even be mentioned in connection with Dostoevsky. The ancient bards
were endowed with fantasy. The Muses would indeed come flying to them at
night and whisper in their ear wonderful dreams, which these favorites of
Apollo would jot down in the morning. But to Dostoevsky, the underground
man, the convict, the Russian man of letters who used to carry his wife's
clothing off to the pawnshop, this sort of mythology is most unbecoming. His
idea wandered about the deserts of his own soul. And from there, it brought the
tragedy of the underground man, of Raskolnikov, of Karamazov, et cetera.
These criminals without crime, these pangs of conscience without guilt form
the content of Dostoevsky's numerous novels. Herein is Dostoevsky himself,
herein is reality, herein is real life. All else is "doctrine." All else is a
wretched hut hastily knocked together from odds and ends of old buildings.
Who needs it? Dostoevsky himself, it must be noted, attached great
significance to his doctrine, just as Count Tolstoy and Nietzsche did, just as
almost all writers do. He thought that he could tell people what to do and how
to live. But of course, this ridiculous pretension always remained a pretension.
People do not live according to books; they never have.
At the end of Crime and Punishment, you read the following promising
lines: "But here begins a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man,
the story of his regeneration, of his gradual crossing from one world into
another, of his acquaintance with a new, hitherto totally unknown reality. This
could constitute the subject of a new story, but our present story is now
ended." Don't these words sound like a solemn promise? And didn't
Dostoevsky, as a teacher, assume the responsibility of showing us this new
reality and these new opportunities for Raskolnikov? But the teacher never
went beyond his promise. In the Foreword to The Brothers Karamazov,
Dostoevsky's last work, we again come across this same promise. One novel
is too little for Dostoevsky. In order to portray his true hero, he needs still
another novel, although in The Brothers Karamazov, which is spun out over a
thousand pages, there should have been room enough for the "new life" as
well. And, as you know, between Crime and Punishment and The Brothers
Karamazov, Dostoevsky wrote three whole novels, each of them massive: The
Idiot, A Raw Youth, and The Possessed! But he never remembered his promise.
The Idiot, with its Prince Myshkin, cannot, of course, be taken into
consideration. If such a "new" reality is all that awaits man, if Prince Myshkin,
that pitiful shadow, that cold, anemic specter, is to serve as our "ideal," then
wouldn't it be better not to look into the future at all? The most unassuming and
grievously insulted man, even Makar Devushkin, would renounce such "hopes"
and return to his impoverished past. No, Prince Myshkin is nothing but idea, i.e.,
a void. And what a role he has! He stands between two women, and just like a
Chinese roly-poly, leans now in one direction, now in the other. True, from
time to time, Dostoevsky lets him have his say. But surely this is no great
merit: it is the author himself speaking. Moreover, Prince Myshkin, like
Alyosha Karamazov, is endowed with an unusual gift of foresight that
practically verges on clairvoyance. But this, too, is no great virtue in the hero
of a novel where the thoughts and deeds of all the characters are controlled by
the author. And beyond these traits, Prince Myshkin is a complete nullity.
Eternally grieving over those who grieve, he is unable to console anyone. He
antagonizes Aglaya, and fails to soothe Nastasya Filippovna; he befriends
Rogozhin, foresees his crime, but can do nothing about it. If only it were in his
power to comprehend the tragic situation of the people around him! But he
lacks even this. His grief is mere grief from a sense of duty. That is why he is
so free with his words of hope and solace. He even offers his literary balm to
Ippolit, but here he is met, or if you will, sent packing, as he well deserves.
No, Prince Myshkin is a black sheep, even among Dostoevsky's eminent

people, although they are all more or less unsuccessful. Dostoevsky
understood and could portray only the rebellious, struggling, seeking soul. As
soon as he tried to depict a man who had found himself, one who was
composed and comprehending, he immediately fell into offensive banality.
Recall, for example, Father Zosimas visions of "the splendid unison of men in
the future." Don't they reek of the tritest Zukunftsmalerei?, which even the
Socialists, who are so ridiculed in the underground, had long since repudiated?
But in all such instances, Dostoevsky has no desire to think. With an
indiscriminate hand, he takes from wherever it suits him: from the Slavophiles,
from the Socialists, from the commonplaceness of bourgeois life. Evidently,
he himself felt that this was not his task, and he performed it with astonishing
negligence. But he was unable to renounce moralization and prophecy: they
alone bound him to the rest of the people. This was the part of him that was
best understood, that was esteemed, and for which he was elevated to prophet.
However, one cannot live without people, entirely without people: "After all,
every man must have at least somewhere to go. For there comes a time when
he definitely must go somewhere," says Marmeladov. And for that occasion,
one needs the customary uniform. After all, one must not appear in public with
the words of the underground man, with deep respect for penal servitude, with
all the "original" thoughts that filled Dostoevsky's head! People would not
want to listen to such a neighbor; they would drive him away. People need
idealism at any cost. And Dostoevsky throws this blessing to them by the
handful, so that in the end, he himself at times thinks that such an occupation is
indeed worth while. But only at times, so that afterward he can laugh at himself.
Who is the person in question in the "Legend of the Grand Inquisitor"? Who
is this cardinal, from whose hands the people get their daily bread? Isn't this
legend a symbol of Dostoevsky's own prophetic work? Miracle, mystery, and
authority - after all, his preaching consisted of these, and only of these
elements. True, Dostoevsky intentionally refrained from saying the main thing.
The Grand Inquisitor, who boldly undertook to correct Christ's work, is himself
as weak and pitiful as the people whom he treats with such contempt. He made
a dreadful miscalculation in appraising his role. He can tell but part of the truth
- and not the most horrible part. The people accepted ideals from him
indiscriminately, without examining them. But that was only because, for the
people, ideals are nothing more than a pastime, a decoration, a formality. Their
childish, nave faith, which has not yet known doubt, demands nothing more for
itself than a few words or other for its expression. That is why the people
follow almost anyone who feels like leading them, and why they so readily
change their idols: le roi est mort, vive le roi. But the old, wretched cardinal,
exhausted by long hours of meditation, imagined that his feeble idea was
capable of molding the confused, chaotic masses and giving them a fixed
direction, that it was in its power to play the benefactor to hundreds of
thousands, even millions of people. What a happy and dazzlingly splendid
delusion!
And, as you know, it is not only characteristic of the Grand Inquisitor in

Dostoevsky's novel. In all ages, all teachers have thought that the world rested
on their shoulders and that they were leading their students to happiness, to joy,
to light! As a matter of fact, the flock needed the shepherds much less than the
shepherds needed the flock. What would have become of the Grand Inquisitor
if he had not held the proud belief that all mankind would perish without him?
What would he have done with his life? And then this very old man, who with
his keen mind can penetrate all the mysteries of our existence, cannot (perhaps
he only pretends that he cannot) see one thing - the most important thing of all
for him. He does not know that the people are not indebted to him for their
faith, but he to the people - for the faith which at least partly justifies in his
eyes his long, dismal, agonizing, and lonely life. He had deceived the people
with his stories of miracles and mysteries; he had assumed the look of an
omniscient and all-understanding authority; he had called himself God's deputy
on earth. The people had trustingly accepted this lie, for they did not need the
truth; they did not want to know it. But the old cardinal, with almost a century of
experience behind him, with a mind sharpened by inquisitive and relentless
thought, did not notice that he had fallen victim to his own deceit by imagining
himself the benefactor of mankind. He needed this deceit, he had no other way
to find faith in himself, and he accepted it from the hands of the contemptible,
insignificant crowd.
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But Dostoevsky himself could not bear this deceit; he could not be satisfied
with such "faith in himself." Despite his ability to talk so beautifully and
seductively of the "proud loneliness" of his Grand Inquisitor, he understood
that the whole magnificent masquerade of high-flown and noble words was
needed, again, not for himself, but for others, for the people. Proud loneliness!
Can present-day man really be proud when he is alone with himself? In public,
in speeches, in books - that is a different matter. But when no one sees or hears
him, when in the dead of night, in complete silence, he realizes what his life
really is, how dare he use even one lofty word? Prometheus was lucky - he
was never left alone. He was always heard by Zeus; he had an adversary,
someone he could irritate and provoke to anger by his austere look and his
proud words. He had a "cause." But modern man, Raskolnikov or Dostoevsky,
does not believe in Zeus. When people abandon him, when he is left alone
with himself, he automatically begins to tell himself the truth, and, my God,
what a horrible truth it is! How few it contains of those fascinating and
wonderful images which we, on the basis of poetic legends, have regarded as
the constant companions of solitary people! Here, for example, is one of
Dostoevsky's meditations (actually it is Raskolnikovs, but, as we know, it is
one and the same thing):
"Therefore I'm definitely a louse," he added, grinding his teeth.

"Because I myself am perhaps more vile and disgusting than the louse I
killed, and I felt beforehand that I would tell myself so after killing her.
Can anything really equal this horror? Oh, the vulgarity, Oh, the
baseness! Oh, how well I understand the prophet, with his sword in
hand, mounted on his steed: Allah orders, and you must submit - you
trembling creature! The prophet is right, he's right when he places an
excellent battery of guns from one side of the street to the other and
mows down both the innocent and the guilty without even deigning to
explain. Submit, you trembling creature, and wish not, for that is not your
business! Oh, I'll never forgive that old hag, not for anything in the
world!" [Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij (1894-1895), V, 272]
What humiliating, disgusting words and images! Isn't it true that Raskolnikov
had to murder the old woman and Lizaveta "for poetry," in order to have a
proper explanation for such moods? But as a matter of fact, no blood was shed
here, no criminal act was committed. It is the usual "punishment" that is sooner
or later in store for all "idealists." Sooner or later the hour will strike for each
of them, and they will exclaim with horror and gnashing of teeth: "The prophet
was right; submit, you trembling creature!" As early as three hundred years
ago, the greatest of all poets pronounced a terrible judgment on the greatest of
all idealists. Recall Hamlet's mad cry: "The time is out of joint!" Since then,
writers and poets have never ceased to phrase these words in an infinite number
of ways. But thus far, no one has wanted to come right out and say to himself
that there is no use even trying to join the links once they have been broken, that
there is no use trying to steer time back again into the channel from which it has
gone. New attempts are ever being made to restore the illusion of former
happiness. People tirelessly shout to us that pessimism and skepticism have
destroyed everything, that we must again "believe," "turn back," become
"direct," et cetera. And as binding cement, they invariably offer the old "ideas,"
while stubbornly refusing to understand that these ideas contained all our
unhappiness.
What will you tell Dostoevsky when he declares to you: "It was as if I had
taken scissors and severed myself from everyone and everything"? [Ibid., 115]
Will you send him to play the benefactor to his neighbors? But he tried that
path long ago, and then wrote "The Grand Inquisitor." Let whoever can
continue to occupy himself with lofty truths and deceit, but Dostoevsky knows
that if the bond of time lies in this, then it is severed for good. He speaks of
this matter not as a dilettante who has read a lot of pamphlets, but as a man who
has seen everything with his own eyes and felt everything with his own hands.
Book V, Chapter 4 of The Brothers Karamazov is entitled "Rebellion." It
means that Dostoevsky not only does not want to try to restore the former
"bond," but is ready to do anything to show that there is no longer any hope
here, that there cannot be any. Ivan Karamazov rebels against the most stable
principles on which our contemporary world view is based. The chapter starts
right off with the following words: "I must make a confession to you, Ivan
said. I could never understand how anyone could love his neighbors. It is
precisely his neighbors, in my opinion, that he can't love; perhaps he could
love those people at a distance." [Ibid., XII, 280] Alyosha interrupts his
brother with a remark intended to show us that Dostoevsky does not share
Ivan's opinion. But we are already accustomed to this infant's importunate and
monotonous babbling, and it bothers us very little, especially as we are
reminded of another passage, this time, one from an entry dated 1876 in The
Diary of a Writer. Dostoevsky says there: "I declare that love of mankind is
totally inconceivable, incomprehensible, and utterly impossible without a
concomitant belief in the immortality of the human soul."
It is clear that there is no difference between Ivan Karamazov's words and

those of Dostoevsky himself. Everything Ivan Karamazov says is based on the
assumption that the soul is not immortal. True, he offers no evidence to support
his "assumption," but, after all, Dostoevsky also makes his assertion "for the
time being without substantiation." In any event, there is no doubt that neither the
hero of the novel nor the author believes in the salutary power of the idea
"love thy neighbor." If you will, Dostoevsky goes even further than Ivan
Karamazov. He writes: "Moreover, I maintain that an awareness of one's utter
inability to help or to be of the slightest benefit or relief to suffering mankind,
while simultaneously being thoroughly convinced that mankind does suffer,
can even turn the love in one's heart into hatred for it" (Dostoevsky's italics)
[Ibid., X, 425].
Isn't it unfortunate that Razumikhin did not happen to be present, and that
there was no one to remind Dostoevsky that his idea was extraordinarily
original? After all, this is the same thing as in Raskolnikovs article:
conscience permits hatred for people! If you cannot help your neighbor, then
you cannot love him either. But, as you know, precisely those neighbors who
usually claim our love are, for the most part, people whom it is impossible to
help - I am no longer speaking of all mankind. Formerly, it was enough to sing
the praises of the suffering man, to shed tears over him, to call him brother.
Now, this is not enough; people want to help him at any cost; they want the
humblest man to cease being the humblest and to become the best! But if that is
not feasible, they tell love to go to the devil, and place everlasting hatred on
its vacant throne forever. Dostoevsky (I suppose that after the above
quotations no one will again confuse him with Alyosha) no longer believed in
the omnipotence of love or valued tears of compassion and tender emotion.
The inability to help is the final and all-annihilating argument for him. He seeks
strength and power. And you discover that the ultimate, the most sincere, the
most cherished aim of his aspirations is the Wille zur Macht, and that it is as
sharply and clearly expressed as it is with Nietzsche. He, too, could have
followed Nietzsche's example and printed these words in huge, black letters at
the end of any of his novels, for in them is the point of all his quests!
In Crime and Punishment, the chief task of all Dostoevsky's literarY work
is overshadowed by the idea of retribution, which has been cleverly fitted to
the novel. To the unsuspecting reader, it seems that Dostoevsky is actually
Raskolnikovs judge, and not the accused. But in The Brothers Karamazov, the
question is posed with such clarity that it no longer leaves any doubt as to the
author's intentions.
Raskolnikov is "guilty." By his own admission (forced from him by torment,

and consequently unworthy of belief), he committed a crime: murder. People
decline all responsibility for his suffering, however terrible it is. Ivan
Karamazov knows this logic. He knows that if he were to propose his own
fate for discussion, he would immediately be accused in some way or other of
having "eaten the apple," as Dostoevsky puts it, i.e., of being guilty in thought,
if not in deed. Therefore, he does not even try to speak of himself. He raises
his famous question about the unavenged tears of a child. "Tell me," he says to
his brother. "I ask you frankly. Answer me: suppose you were constructing the
edifice of human destiny, with the aim of making men finally happy, of giving
them peace and rest at last; but that in order to do it, you found it necessary and
unavoidable to torture one single tiny creature - for example, that same little
child who was beating its breast with its tiny fist [about which Ivan had told
Alyosha earlier], and you had to erect this edifice on its unavenged tears -
would you agree to be the architect under these conditions? Tell me, and don't
lie." Alyosha answers this question, also in a quiet voice, as Prince Myshkin
answered Ippolit, but the answer is, of course, different. No mention is made
of "forgiveness," and Alyosha flatly rejects the proposed project. Dostoevsky
has at last come to his final word. He now states openly what he had at first
expressed with reservations and annotations in Notes from the Underground:
absolutely no harmony, no ideas, no love or forgiveness, in brief, nothing that
sages have devised from ancient to modern times can justify the nonsense and
absurdity in the fate of an individual person. He speaks of a child, but this is
merely for the "simplification" of an already complex question, or more
probably in order to disarm his adversaries, who, in arguing, toy so cleverly
with the word "guilty."
And as a matter of fact, can that little child, beating its breast with its tiny
fist, be any more horrible than Dostoevsky-Raskolnikov, when he suddenly
realized that he had "severed himself as if with scissors from everyone and
everything?" Recall what happened to Razumikhin when he followed
Raskolnikov out of the room after that incredible, that horribly agonizing scene
of the latter's leave-taking with his mother and sister: he suddenly divined the
hell that was taking place in his unfortunate friend's soul. "Do you understand?
Raskolnikov asked him with a painfully contorted face" - and the question
makes one's hair stand on end. Yes, there are horrors on this earth that have
never been dreamt of by the erudition of the most learned men. Compared to
them, Karamazov's stories of Turkish brutality and of parents torturing their
children seem pale. And, of course, the "apple" explains nothing here. One
must either "avenge" those tears or - but can there be an "or" for people like
Dostoevsky, who themselves have shed them? What answer can there be here?
"Back to Kant"? God be with you, the way is open? But Dostoevsky goes
forward, no matter what may await him up ahead.
When Raskolnikov is convinced after the murder that he is forever cut off
from his former life, when he sees that his own mother, who loves him more
than anything in the world, has ceased being a mother to him (prior to
Dostoevsky, who could have thought such horrors possible?), that his sister,
who for the sake of his future had agreed to enslave herself forever to Luzhin,
is no longer a sister to him, he instinctively runs to Sonya Marmeladov. Why?
What can he find in that unfortunate, unschooled, and unknowledgeable girl?
Why does he prefer that meek and humble person to his true and devoted
friend, who can speak so admirably about lofty subjects? But he does not even
think of Razumikhin! This friend, ready as he is to help, would not know what
to do with Raskolnikovs secret. He would probably advise him to do good
deeds and thus assuage his poor conscience. But Raskolnikov flies into a rage
at the mere thought of good. In his deliberations, one already senses that
agony of despair that later prompted Ivan Karamazov to ask his dreadful
question: "Why must we get to know this devilish good and evil, when it costs
so much."
Devilish good and evil - do you understand what Dostoevsky is infringing

on? Human daring can go no further than this. As you know, all our hopes - and
not only those in books, but also those in men's hearts have thus far lived and
been supported by the belief that no sacrifice is too terrible for the triumph of
good over evil. And suddenly out of the blue, there appears a man who
solemnly, openly, and almost fearlessly (almost, for Alyosha does babble
something in objection to Ivan) sends to the devil everything before which all
people of all ages have prostrated themselves! And people were so gullible
that, because of Alyoshas pitiful chatter, they forgave Dostoevsky Ivan
Karamazov's dreadful philosophy. In all Russian literature, there was but one
writer, N.K. Mikhailovsky, who sensed in Dostoevsky a "cruel" man, an
advocate of a dark power that everyone has considered hostile from time
immemorial. But even he did not guess the full danger of this enemy. It seemed
to him that one had but to expose Dostoevsky's "evil design," to call it by its
real name, and it would be destroyed forever. He could not imagine twenty
years ago that the ideas of the underground were destined soon to be revived
and to lay claim to their rights, not timidly and fearfully, not under the cover of
the usual conciliatory, stereotyped phrases, but boldly and freely, with a
presentiment of certain victory. The "devilish good and evil," which seemed to
be a chance phrase from the lips of a literary hero who was alien to the author,
is now decked out as the scholarly formula "beyond good and evil," and in this
guise it hurls a challenge at the millennial faith of all sages past and present.
And before what did Dostoevsky's "good" bow its proud head?
Karamazov speaks of the fate of a tormented child. But Raskolnikov

demands an answer for himself, and only for himself. And failing to find the
necessary answer with good, he rejects it. Recall his conversation with Sonya
Marmeladov. Raskolnikov did not go to her to repent. To the very end, he
could not repent deep down in his heart, for he felt that he was completely
innocent; he knew that Dostoevsky had burdened him with the accusation of
murder merely for appearance's sake. Here are his thoughts, his very last while
still in the penal colony: "Oh, how happy he would be if he could consider
himself guilty [i.e., of the murder]. He could have endured anything, even the
shame and disgrace. He judged himself severely, but his embittered
conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except perhaps a
blunder [Dostoevsky's italics], which could have happened to anyone. But he
felt no remorse for his crime." [Ibid., V, 539] These words are a summary of
Raskolnikovs entire horrible story. He had been crushed for reasons unknown
to him. His task, all his aspirations now amount to justifying his misfortune, to
restoring his life - and nothing, neither the happiness of the entire world nor the
triumph of any idea whatsoever can give meaning in his eyes to his personal
tragedy. That is why, as soon as he notices Sonyas Bible, he asks her to read
to him the "Resurrection of Lazarus." He is not interested in the "Sermon on the
Mount," the "Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican," or, in brief, in anything
that had been transferred from the Gospel to present-day ethics in accordance
with Tolstoy's formula "Goodness and brotherly love - this is God."
He had examined and tried all that, and, like Dostoevsky himself, was
convinced that when taken separately, when torn from the general context of
the Holy Scripture, it becomes not truth, but a lie. Although he does not yet
dare to acknowledge the idea that truth lies not with science, but where these
enigmatic and mysterious words are written: "He that endureth to the end shall
be saved," [Matthew X, 22] he nevertheless tries to turn his gaze in the
direction of those hopes that Sonya lives by. "After all," he thinks, "she's like
me - also a humble person; she has learned by experience what it means to live
such a life. Maybe I'll learn from her what our erudite Razumikhin cannot
explain, what even an infinitely loving maternal heart, ready for any sacrifice,
cannot guess." He tries again to revive in his memory that understanding of the
Gospel that does not reject the prayers and hopes of a solitary, mined man
under the pretext that to think of one's personal grief means to be an egoist. He
knows that his lamentations will be heard here, that he will no longer be strung
up on the rack of ideas, that he will be permitted to tell the whole, terrible,
hidden truth about himself, the truth with which he was born into God's world.
But he can expect all this only from the Gospel that Sonya reads, which is as
yet uncut and unaltered by science and Count Tolstoy, from the Gospel in
which there is preserved, along with other teachings, the story of Lazarus's
resurrection; where, what is more, Lazarus's resurrection - indicating the great
power of the miracle worker - gives meaning also to the other words that are
so puzzling and incomprehensible to the poor, Euclidean human mind. In the
very same way that Raskolnikov seeks his hopes solely in Lazarus's
resurrection, so Dostoevsky sees in the Gospel not the propagation of this or
that moral philosophy, but the pledge of a new life. He said: "Without a
sovereign idea, neither man nor nation can exist. And there is but one
[Dostoevsky's italics] sovereign idea in this world: namely, the idea of the
immortality of the human soul, for all the rest of life's sovereign ideas that
man can live by derive solely from it." [Dostoevsky, op. cit., X, 424]
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All this, of course, is not "scientific"; moreover, it is all diametrically
opposed to the basic premises of modern science. And Dostoevsky knew
better than anyone else how little support he could get from the latest
acquisitions and achievements of the human mind. That is why he never tried to
make science his ally, and, simultaneously, why he was equally wary of going
into battle against it with its own weapon. He understood perfectly well that
there are no longer any guarantees from Heaven. But the triumph of science,
the certainty and manifestness of its incontestability do not reduce Dostoevsky
to submission. After all, he told us long ago that, for him, a wall is not an
insuperable obstacle, but merely an evasion, a pretext. To all scientific
arguments he has one answer (Dmitry Karamazov): "How can I live
underground without God? A convict can't exist without God." [Ibid., XII, 700]
Raskolnikov arouses violent, implacable feelings of hatred in his fellow
convicts because of his scientism, his adherence to indisputable evidence, his
lack of faith, which, in Dostoevsky's words, they immediately sensed in him.
"You're a pagan! You don't believe in God, they would shout at him. You
ought to be killed!" [Ibid.,V,541] It goes without saying that all this is illogical.
From the fact that the convicts regard lack of faith as the most horrible of
crimes, it by no means follows that we must deny the incontestable
conclusions of science. Even if all convicts and men of the underground were
to perish, we must not, because of them, revise the axioms recently acquired
from the work of dozens of generations of men; we must not renounce a priori
judgments, which were vindicated only a hundred years ago, thanks to the great
genius of the Konigsberg philosopher [Kant].
Such is the clear logic of the people who live above ground as contrasted
to the vague yearnings of those from the underground. It is impossible to
reconcile the two inimical sides. They struggle to the point of complete
exhaustion and, la guerre comme la guerre, they are not fastidious about the
means of struggle. Convicts have been slandered, cursed, and dragged through
the mud since the world began. Dostoevsky tries to apply these same methods
to free people as well. Why not, for example, make a vulgar lampoon of a
scientist? Why not ridicule Claude Bernard? [Claude Bernard (1813-1878), a
French physiologist - S.R.] Or slander and humiliate a journalist, an employee
of a liberal publication, and along with him, all liberally inclined people?
Dostoevsky did not stop at that. The things he fabricated about Rakitin! The
most inveterate convict seems a noble knight in comparison to this future leader
of the liberals, who for twenty-five rubles does not scruple to assume the role
of pimp. All that is said of Rakitin is out-and-out slander of the liberals, and the
slander is deliberate. Say what you will about them, there is no doubt that the
best and most honest people joined their ranks. But hatred is not particular about
its means. If they do not believe in God, they should be killed - this is
Dostoevsky's inner impulse, this is what impels him to fabricate all sorts of
cock-and-bull stories about his former liberal associates. The Pushkin Speech,
in which all strata and parties of Russian society were apparently called on to
unite, was in fact a declaration of unceasing struggle to the death. "Humble
thyself, proud man; get to work, idle man." Surely Dostoevsky knew that these
words would arouse a whole storm of indignation and resentment in the very
people they were intended to reconcile. What do they mean? They summon the
aboveground man to the underground, to penal servitude, to eternal darkness.
Dared Dostoevsky hope for a single minute that anyone would follow him?
He knew, he knew all too well, that those of his listeners who were unwilling
to play the hypocrite would not accept his call. "We want to be happy here and
now," - that is what each aboveground man thinks. What does he care if
Dostoevsky has not yet completed his penal servitude? It is said that everyone
present at the Pushkin Celebration was deeply moved by Dostoevsky's
speech. Many even wept. But what is surprising about that? After all, the
speaker's words were taken by the audience as literature, and only as literature.
Why not be moved, why not weep? It is a most common story.
But there also happened to be people who saw the matter in a different light
and who began to object. They answered Dostoevsky by saying that they
willingly accepted his noble words about love, but that this in no way
prevented - it must not prevent - people from "concerning themselves with the
establishment of happiness here on earth," or in other words, from having
"social ideals." Had Dostoevsky allowed this, just this one limitation, he could
have reconciled himself for good with the liberals. But he not only did not
make concessions, he attacked Professor Gradovsky (who had undertaken the
defense of the liberal cause) with such mad, with such unrestrained fury that it
seemed as if Gradovsky were robbing him of his last possession. And the main
thing is that Gradovsky not only was not repudiating the noble doctrine of love
for man, to which Dostoevsky had devoted so many ardent pages in his Diary
of a Writer, in his novels, and in the Pushkin Speech - on the contrary, he was
basing all his plans for the social order on it, and on it alone.
But this was precisely what Dostoevsky feared most of all. In Renans
Preface to The History of Israel, there is a curious appraisal of the significance
of the Hebrew prophets: "Ils sont fanatiques de justice sociale et proclament
hautement que si le monde nest pas juste ou susceptible de le devenir, il vaut
mieux quil soit dtruit: manire de voir trs fausse, mais trs fconde; car
comme toutes les doctrines dsespres, elle produit lhroisme et un grand veil
des forces humaines." [They are fanatics of social justice and loudly proclaim
that if the world is not fair and is not about to become such, it is better that it be
destroyed: a very wrong yet fruitful way of looking at things. For, as all
desparate doctrines go, this one produces heroism and arouses a mighty
energy in men - A.K.] In this very same way, Professor Gradovsky regarded
Dostoevsky's ideas. He found them "essentially" false, but admitted their
fruitfulness, i.e., their ability to arouse people and provide those heroes
without which the progress of mankind is impossible. Actually, one could not
have wished more. For a "teacher," at least, it should have sufficed. But
Dostoevsky saw his condemnation in such an attitude toward himself. He had
no need of "fruitfulness." He did not want to content himself with the handsome
role of the old cardinal in "The Grand Inquisitor." He wanted one thing, and one
thing only: to be convinced of the "truth" of his idea. And if necessary, he was
ready to destroy the whole world, to doom mankind to eternal suffering - if
only to guarantee victory to his idea, if only to rid it of all suspicion of being
incongruous with reality. Worst of all was the fact that deep in his heart he
obviously feared that right was not on his side and that his adversaries,
although more superficial than he, were nearer the truth. That was what aroused
such fury in him; that was what made him lose his self-control; and that is why
he overstepped all the bounds of decency in his polemic against Professor
Gradovsky. What if everything turns out exactly as scholars say, and his work,
contrary to his will, ultimately plays into the hands of the liberals and proves
to be fruitful, while the idea that guided him proves to be false, and if sooner
or later, the "devilish good" actually does prevail on earth - an earth inhabited
by content, joyful, and regenerated people beaming with happiness?
It goes without saying that the most sensible thing for a man with such views
and sentiments to do would be to steer clear of journalism, where he would
inevitably run into the practical question: what is to be done? In novels and
philosophical discussions, one can, for example, assert that the Russian people
like to suffer. But how can such an assertion be put into practice? By
proposing the formation of a committee to protect the Russian people from
happiness? Obviously, that will not do. Moreover, one cannot even express
one's joy constantly over forthcoming occasions when mankind will have to
suffer. One must not celebrate when sickness or famine befalls man; one must
not rejoice over poverty or drunkenness. People are stoned for things like that.
Mikhailovsky reports that the idea expressed in articles in Notes of the
Fatherland for January, 1873, according to which "the people, after the
Reform, and partly even in connection with it, are threatened with the
misfortune of being mentally, morally, and economically fleeced," seemed "a
new revelation" to Dostoevsky. Very likely, Dostoevsky understood, or,
more accurately, interpreted, the articles in Notes of the Fatherland in exactly
this way. The Reform, in which visionaries had placed so much hope, had not
only not brought the "hateful happiness," it was threatening terrible misfortune.
Evidently, the matter could get along even without the gentleman with the
retrograde physiognomy on whom the underground dialectician had relied. It is
still a long way to the Crystal Palace if the most lofty and noble undertakings
bring only unhappiness instead of abundant fruit.
True, as a publicist, Dostoevsky did not say such things openly. His
"cruelty" did not vet risk such frankness. Even more than that, he never missed a
chance to castigate (and how he castigated!) all possible manifestations of
cruelty. For example, he rebelled at European progress on the grounds that
"rivers of blood would be shed" before the class struggle would do our
Western neighbors even the slightest good. This was one of his favorite
arguments, which he tirelessly repeated dozens of times. But here one can be
quite certain that all argumenta are argumenta ad homines. Dostoevsky afraid
of blood and horror? But he knew how to produce an effect on people, and
when necessary, he drew terrifying pictures. At almost one and the same time,
he was reproaching the Europeans for their struggle, which was as yet
relatively bloodless, and adjuring the Russians to declare war on the Turks,
although, of course, the most modest war requires more bloodshed than
dozens of revolutions. Or another more striking example of his argumentation:
Dostoevsky says that one of his "acquaintances" came out in favor of the
retention of the flogging of children, because corporal punishment hardens
them and inures them to combat. We are not, of course, interested in the opinion
of his "acquaintance" (in Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer, there is a multitude of
"acquaintances" who express "original" opinions), but it is curious that
Dostoevsky himself took an interest in this opinion and promised to think it
over at his leisure. Yet this same Dostoevsky, who was so willing to deal out
suffering to people, even to children, suddenly grew sensitive and sentimental
when the question arose of the fate of Tatyanas husband. [in Pushkin's Eugene
Onegin - S.R.] Had Tatyana decided to leave him and make him unhappy, all
ideals would have been tarnished forever! Well, now, I believe that many a
person could be found, and not only among advocates of "cruelty," who
would admit that a decent amount of "suffering" would by no means be wasted
on this gentleman, who held his nose and shoulders so high. At any rate,
wasted no more than it is on Russian children, who, as we well know, are not
forgotten by "suffering" even when out of school. One can find a great many
such examples in Dostoevsky. On one page, he demands renunciation of us in
the name of delivering our neighbors from suffering, and on another, almost the
very next, he sings the praises of this same suffering.
From this, it follows that the underground man has nothing to say when he
appears in the role of teacher of man. In order to keep up such a role, he must
forever conceal his truth and deceive people, as the old cardinal did. And if it
is no longer possible to remain silent, if the time has finally come to tell the
world the secret of the Grand Inquisitor, then people must seek their priests not
from among teachers as in the olden days, but from among disciples, who
always perform all sorts of solemn duties willingly and in good faith. The
teachers have been deprived of their last consolation: they are no longer
acknowledged as the people's benefactors and healers. They have been told,
and they will be told: physician, heal thyself. In other words: find your task,
find your cause, not in the doctoring of our illnesses, but in looking after your
own health. Look after yourself - only after yourself.
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At first glance, the task seems simple. But look at it for a moment from the
standpoint of Dostoevsky, the underground man, the Grand Inquisitor, and you
will understand the torment that is concealed in this simplicity. To doctor
oneself, to look after oneself, to think of oneself in the underground, when,
apparently, no doctoring is any longer possible, when nothing is left to devise,
when all is finished! But it is amazing: when man is threatened with inevitable
death, when an abyss opens before him, when his last hope vanishes, he is
suddenly relieved of all his burdensome obligations to the people, to mankind,
to the future, to civilization, to progress, et cetera, and in place of all this, he is
presented with the simplified problem of his lone, insignificant, and ordinary
personality. All tragic heroes are "egoists." Each of them calls the whole
universe to account for his unhappiness. Karamazov (Ivan, of course) declares
bluntly: "I do not accept the world." What do these words mean? Why is it that
Karamazov, instead of hiding from dreadful, insoluble problems as everyone
else, goes straight at them, charges them just as a bear charges a huntsman's
spear? After all, it is not because of ursine stupidity. Oh, how well he knows
what insoluble problems are and how man must beat his already clipped wings
against the walls of eternity! And nevertheless, he does not give up. No Ding
an sich, no will, no deus sive natura tempts him to reconciliation. This man,
forgotten by good, treats all philosophical systems with undisguised contempt
and disgust.
Karamazov says: "Some sniveling moralists call the thirst for life
despicable." Not one of Dostoevsky's heroes who questions fate ends up a
suicide, with the exception of Kirillov, who it is true does kill himself, but not
to withdraw from life, but to test his strength. In this respect, they all share old
Karamazov's point of view: they do not seek oblivion, no matter how difficult
life may be for them. Ivan Karamazov's youthful daydreams, which he recalls
in his conversation with the devil, can serve as an interesting illustration of this
"point of view." A certain sinner was condemned to walk a quadrillion
kilometers before the heavenly gates would be opened to him. But the sinner
was stubborn. "I won't do it," he said. He lay down and refused to move from
the spot. Thus he lay for a thousand years. Then he rose and started out. He
walked a billion years. "And two seconds had not passed after the heavenly
gates had opened to him when he exclaimed that for those two seconds, he
would have walked, not only a quadrillion, but even a quadrillion quadrillion
kilometers, even if it were raised to the quadrillionth power." [Dostoevsky, op.
cit., XII, 272].
Such were the things Dostoevsky pondered over. Those staggering

quadrillions of kilometers traversed, those billions of years of nonsense
endured for the sake of two seconds of heavenly bliss for which the human
tongue lacks the necessary words are merely an expression of the thirst for
life about which we have been talking. Like his father, Ivan Karamazov is an
egoist through and through. Not that he cannot, he does not want to try in some
way or other to dissolve his personality in a noble idea, to fuse it with the
"primordial," with nature, et cetera, as philosophers recommend. Although he
received a very modern education, he is not afraid to make his demands in the
face of the entire body of philosophical science. He is not even afraid that he
will be confused (and at the same time rejected) with his father. He bluntly
says so himself: "Fyodor Pavlovich, our dad, was a swine, but he thought
correctly." [Ibid., 702] And Fyodor Pavlovich, the swine, who saw and knew
perfectly well the opinion people had of him, "thought" that even though he had
lived long enough, this life was too little for him. He also wanted immortality
for himself. This is shown by the following conversation with his children:
"Ivan, tell me, is there a God or not?"
"No, there's no God." "Alyosha, is there a God?" "There is a God."
"Ivan, is there immortality, in some form or other - well, at least a little, a
tiny bit?"
"There's no immortality either."
"None?"
"None."
"You mean, there's a complete blank? But maybe there is something or
other. After all, there can't just be nothing."
"Absolutely nothing."
"Alyosha, is there immortality?"
"There is."
"Both God and immortality?"
"Both God and immortality..."
"Hmm. More than likely, Ivan is right."
As you see, like father, like son. Dostoevsky endows even Fyodor
Pavlovich Karamazov with the ability to seek the "sovereign idea." After all,
you must admit that the conversation is most characteristic. "More than likely,
Ivan is right" - this is merely an objective conclusion which kept thrusting itself
on Dostoevsky and which he feared so much. But the important thing here is the
fact that Dostoevsky found it necessary to show Fyodor Pavlovich in a good
light. It may seem to the reader that if there is immortality, it is not, at any rate,
for such vermin as Fyodor Pavlovich, and that some law will certainly be
found that will put an end to this disgusting being. But Dostoevsky cared little
for the views of the readers. He keeps Rakitin at a mile's distance from his
sovereign idea, but lets the old man Karamazov walk right up to it - he accepts
him, if only partially, into the honorary society of convicts. Accordingly, all
that is ugly, disgusting, difficult, and agonizing - in brief, all that is problematic
in life - finds an ardent and exceptionally talented mouthpiece for itself in
Dostoevsky. As if on purpose, he tramples before our eyes on talent, beauty,
youth, and innocence. In his novels, there are more horrors than in reality. And
how masterfully, how truthfully he describes these horrors! We haven't one
artist who could describe the bitterness of insult and humiliation as Dostoevsky
does. In the stories of Grushenka and Nastasya Filippovna, nothing strikes the
reader so much as the disgrace these women must suffer. Nastasya Filippovna
says of Totsky: "He would come here, disgrace me, insult me, infuriate me,
seduce me, and then leave - I wanted a thousand times to throw myself into the
pond." [Ibid., VI, 184]
And how much agony Grushenka suffered in recalling the wrong done her!
She says: "Now that man who led me astray has arrived, and I've been sitting
here waiting to hear from him. And do you know what that offender has been to
me? Five years ago, when Kuzma first brought me here, I used to stay inside,
biding from people, so they wouldn't see or hear me. I was a thin, silly girl,
and I'd sit here sobbing. For nights on end I wouldn't sleep! I'd keep thinking:
Where is he now, the fellow who led me astray? Probably laughing at me
with another girl. Oh, if only I could see him, if I could meet him sometime - I'd
really get even with him. Oh, how I'd get even with him. At night, in the
darkness, I'd sob into my pillow and think back over all this. I'd torment myself
on purpose and gloat over my anger. Oh, I'll get even with him, I really will
get even with him! That's what I'd cry out lying there in the dark. And then I'd
suddenly think that I wouldn't do anything at all to him, and that he was laughing
at me then, or maybe had completely forgotten me, and I'd throw myself from
the bed to the floor, break into helpless tears, and shake - I'd lie there shaking
until dawn. In the morning, I'd get up madder than a dog, ready to tear the whole
world to pieces. Then, what do you think? I began to save my money, I
became merciless, I put on a lot of weight. I grew wiser - don't you think so?
No, indeed, no one in the whole world sees or knows it, but when it gets dark,
I sometimes lie there as I did five years ago, when I was a silly girl, clenching
my teeth, crying all night long, and thinking: Oh, I'll get even with him, I really
will get even with him! Did you hear everything I said?" [Ibid., XII, 420]
That is how convictions "are born" in Dostoevsky's heroes and heroines, to

say nothing of Raskolnikov, Karamazov, Kirillov, and Shatov. They were all
subjected to unprecedented humiliation. How cleverly Dolgoruky (A Raw
Youth) is thrown out of the gambling casino! How the underground man is
humiliated! Dostoevsky assembled all the means at his disposal in order once
again to strike a blow of unprecedented power at the reader's heart, but this
time it was not to make the reader a better person or to have him
magnanimously consent to call the humblest man his brother on Sundays and
holidays. Now the task was different. Now it was necessary to force science,
or "ethics," as Rakitin and Dmitry Karamazov call it, to admit that the chief
problem of life cannot be solved by a felicitous arrangement of things for the
majority, by the future happiness of mankind, by progress, by ideas, et cetera -
in brief, by all that had previously been used to justify the disgrace and
destruction of the individual man. And indeed, when faced with reality as
depicted by Dostoevsky, the most inveterate and convinced positivist, the very
best person would be ashamed to think of his ideals. When "egoism," which
everyone slanders so much, leads to tragedy, when the struggle of a solitary
human being turns into unceasing torment, no one would have the impudence to
use lofty words. Even believing hearts grow silent. But here we encounter not
the doctrine of the positivists or idealists, not philosophical theories or
scientific systems. People can be brought to reason, philosophers and
moralists can be restrained in their pursuit of synthesis and the formation of
systems, if they are shown the fate of tragic people. But what can be done with
life? How can it be forced to reckon with the Raskolnikovs and Karamazovs?
As you know, it has neither shame nor conscience. It looks indifferently on the
human comedy and the human tragedy. This question leads us from the
philosophy of Dostoevsky to the philosophy of his successor, Nietzsche, the
first person openly to display on his banner the terrible words: the apotheosis
of cruelty.
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We have traced the history of the regeneration of Dostoevsky's
convictions. Basically, it amounts to an attempt to rehabilitate the rights of the
underground man. If we now turn to Nietzsche's works, we shall find, above
all, that although they bear little outward resemblance to what Dostoevsky
wrote, they contain definite and clearly expressed traces of those moods and
experiences that astonished us in the creative work of the latter. Nietzsche,
too, was a romantic, a transcendental dreamer in youth. We learn this not only
from his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, but also from his articles
"Schopenhauer as Educator" and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth," which
immediately preceded Human, All-Too-Human, a work in which, for the first
time in his life, he permits himself, still timidly and cautiously, to look at the
world and its people with his own eyes. This experience cost him dearly. The
majority of his friends, Wagner among them, turned from him. As is always the
case, none of them were interested in the reason for the sudden change that had
taken place in Nietzsche's soul. His friends merely raised the cry that he had
"betrayed" his former convictions, and they found this quite sufficient to
condemn the man. They all knew that Nietzsche was seriously and painfully ill.
But even in this they saw no extenuating circumstances. Wagner, who a short
time earlier had extolled Nietzsche's literary work, became so indignant upon
reading Human, All-Too-Human that he did not even think it necessary to try to
bring his young friend and student to reason. He simply grew silent and to his
dying day did not resume his relations with Nietzsche. So that at the most
difficult moment of Nietzsche's life, when, as is generally agreed, a person
most of all needs moral support, Nietzsche was left completely alone.
True, public opinion in this instance, as in many others, offers us an obvious

error in the guise of an obvious truth. In the truly difficult moments of life, the
support of friends usually does not and cannot provide a person with anything;
it merely burdens him with the importunate demand for candor and confession.
At such moments, it is best of all to be left alone. If you have the strength to
bear your misfortune, you will emerge the victor. If you do not, no Wagner
will help. I am, of course, speaking not of ordinary, everyday difficulties,
when two minds are always better than one, but of those cases when, as
Dostoevsky expressed it, the earth crumbles away beneath your feet. And, as
you know, they occur much more frequently in life than in novels. On these
occasions, friends can be of no help whatsoever. But Nietzsche's friends did
not even think of helping him. They became his enemies, and as they did not
wish to take the trouble to understand the man, they avenged themselves on him
with contempt. In Nietzsche's own words - and this time they are particularly
worthy of belief - the contempt of other people is much more difficult to bear
than one's own contempt for oneself. [Nietzsche, op. cit., II, 376] And indeed,
no matter how much a man despises himself, he always has the hope deep in his
heart that he will nevertheless find a way out of his difficult situation. But
condemnation by other people is merciless, inexorable, and final. It is hurled at
odd moments at the accused with the intention of never again being
reconsidered.
Nietzsche avowedly wrote "Schopenhauer as Educator" and "Richard

Wagner in Bayreuth" when he no longer believed either in Schopenhauer's
philosophy or Wagner's art. Yet both these articles are an out-and-out
panegyric to them. Why then was such pretense necessary? Nietzsche explains
that in taking leave of his teachers, he wanted to express his thanks and
gratitude to them for the past. I suppose that the reader will not find such a way
of expressing gratitude worthy of approval: one must be able to sacrifice
one's friends and teachers for the sake of truth. Probably Nietzsche himself
was of the same opinion; and if he nevertheless appears in the role of an
undisguised partisan of Schopenhauer and Wagner, while knowing that the time
had come to take leave of them, then he had other, perhaps less comely, but
undoubtedly more profound and serious reasons to do so. Evidently, it was not
a question of the teachers, but of the student: Nietzsche would probably have
taken leave of the mentors of his youth with less ceremony, had he definitely
known where to go after leaving them. We see that gratitude did not prevent
him from subsequently writing a sharp article about Wagner, nor did it prevent
him from calling Schopenhauer "an old counterfeiter."
But that was near the end of his literary career, between 1886 and 1888. In
1875, he dared not yet think that it would be possible to oppose the thoughts
and moods arising in his soul, vague and chaotic as they were, to
Schopenhauer's harmonious and masterfully developed philosophy, which had
already won recognition, and to Wagner's fame, which had resounded
throughout Europe. At the time, it seemed to him that the most terrible thing that
could befall a man was to suffer a break with his teachers and a betrayal of his
former faith and convictions. He thought that a man receives his convictions
once and for all from the hands of worthy teachers. Although he read a good
deal, it never occurred to him that such convictions, when obtained ready-made
from other people, are less valuable than his own view of life, which had been
formed from his own ordeals, from his own suffering. Or, if you will, he knew
that as well. He himself used to express such an opinion, for in the books he
read (in Schopenhauer, for example), it was frequently discussed in detail. But
when the time came for a "test," when uncertainty arose, Nietzsche, like
everyone else in his situation, failed to guess that this was what is spoken of in
books. He merely had a horrible feeling that something unprecedentedly
hideous and terrible had begun to stir in his soul. In his torment, in his despair,
he did not recognize the celebrated "suffering," to which, following
Schopenhauer's example, he had given his blessing, and for which he had
called in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. To himself, he seemed so little
like a hero, so little like one of the many interesting sinners such as
Tannhuser, who pose so beautifully in Wagner's operas. In his situation, there
was not even a trace of the tragic beauty which he customarily admired in the
works of the classic writers. He had not stolen fire from the heavens for the
good of mankind. He had not guessed the Sphinx's riddles, as Oedipus had. He
had not even been in Venus's grotto.
On the contrary, when he surveyed his past, it seemed to him an

uninterrupted series of most shameful humiliations. Here is the light in which he
pictures his service to art, i.e., the story of his relationship with Wagner: "In a
certain party," he says in an aphorism called "A Martyr in Spite of Himself,"
"there was a man, who was too timid and cowardly to contradict his comrades:
they used him for all sorts of purposes. They demanded anything at all from
him, as he feared the bad opinion of his companions more than death itself. His
was a pitifully weak soul. His comrades recognized this, and used his
characteristics mentioned above to turn him into a hero, and finally even a
martyr. Although this weak man always said "No" inwardly, he would always
say "Yes" with his lips - even on the scaffold when the time came for him to
die for his party's convictions. Beside him stood one of his old comrades, who
had so tyrannized over him by words and looks that he indeed suffered death
with dignity, and since then has been hailed as a martyr and a great character.
[Ibid., II, 86]
If these words sum up Nietzsche's "past," can anyone believe that upon
taking leave of it, the man experienced a feeling of gratitude? Isn't it more
likely that the articles "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" and "Schopenhauer as
Educator" were written only because Nietzsche still continued to feel
Wagner's gaze directed at him (and perhaps not only Wagner's) and was unable
to struggle against its hypnotic effect? And how could he struggle? To do that,
it was first of all necessary to uproot all self-respect from his own being, to
call his past by its real name, to admit that the newspaper critics, whom he
customarily regarded as pitiful and unworthy rabble, were right when they
called him "Wagner's literary lackey." In other words, it was necessary to
doom himself to the life of the "humblest man." A person does not decide on
such a horrible step immediately. Nietzsche still hoped that he might be of use
to his party, if only by words that would support its principles and aspirations.
At least his good name would be preserved; at least no one would know how
shamefully and disgustingly unhappy he was. That is worth something.
Nietzsche was a proud man. He did not want to display his wounds; he wanted
to conceal them from the eyes of strangers. For this, it was, of course,
necessary to pretend and to lie; for this, it was necessary to write fervent,
laudatory articles in honor of both Schopenhauer and Wagner, whom he
practically hated by then in his heart of hearts, for he considered them the main
instigators of his terrible misfortunes. And indeed, who needed his truth? And
what could he say if he wanted to speak the truth? Frankly admit his
worthlessness? But aren't there a good many worthless people in the world?
And could such a confession really surprise or interest anyone? As a matter of
fact, nothing much had happened. Nietzsche thought that he was a worthy man
destined to do a serious and important deed: it turned out that he was mistaken,
that he was an insignificant and pitiful man. Such things frequently happen in
life. No one even remembers them. Thus, for example, Nietzsche persuaded
himself that David Strauss, whom the Germans considered a great philosopher
and an exemplary stylist, was really nothing but an "educated Philistine" with a
poor command of the customary literary language. [David Strauss (1808-1874),
a German theologian, biographer, and idealist philosopher, who was influenced
by the followers of Hegel - S.R.].
Did this discovery really surprise or shock anyone, Nietzsche included? Of

course not. There were enough noteworthy philosophers and exemplary
stylists on earth without David Strauss. If Nietzsche had reasoned objectively,
he could easily have convinced himself that his own case was of no particular
importance. And, moreover, if he had also recalled the fundamental principles
of Schopenhauer's philosophy, he could have found perfect consolation in his
misfortune. After all, "will" remained unchanged; therefore, was it worth
thinking about the fact that an individual, i.e., one of billions of instances of its
objectification, had been crushed? But usually "the basic principles of
philosophy" instantly vanish from the memory as soon as a person comes into
conflict with life. If Nietzsche did recall Schopenhauer, it was not to seek
consolation or support from him, but to curse him as his worst enemy. "But this
word I want to say to my enemies: What is all murder compared to what you
have done to me? What you have done to me is worse than any murder; you
have taken the irretrievable from me: that is what I want to say to you, my
enemies. For you murdered the visions and dearest wonders of my youth. You
took my comrades from me, those blessed spirits. In their memory, I lay down
this wreath and this curse. This curse is on you, my enemies." [Nietzsche, op.
cit., VI, 161]. These words of Zarathustra refer to Wagner and Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche curses his teachers because they ruined his youth.
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But suppose we ask again: Wozu solch Lrm? What had happened? Was
Nietzsche being destroyed? Was this reason enough to curse Schopenhauer's
philosophy and Wagner's music? If we recall Nietzsche's early works, if we
consider Zarathustras "doctrine" of the superman, we see that, in effect,
Nietzsche had no need whatsoever to be so upset. One life had been a failure-
there is no great harm in that. Nature makes individuals by the millions, and her
task lies not in preserving and developing individual specimens, but in
perfecting the species. That is what Schopenhauer said. And that, or almost that,
is what Zarathustra said. What does it matter if the youthful dreams of one
professor were not fulfilled? Does this really threaten mankind with any
danger?
Nietzsche understood perfectly well that the philosophical principles that

he had accepted from Schopenhauer contained his condemnation. If only he had
the right to consider himself a remarkable man! But in justification of himself,
he could not even refer to his extraordinary talents. As is obvious from the
aphorism "A Martyr in Spite of Himself," quoted in the preceding chapter, he
saw in himself at that time a mere wretched servant of Wagner. Why then
should such a nonentity continue to exist? Wouldn't it be better quietly and
inconspicuously to withdraw into the background, to yield his place in life to a
more worthy representative of the human species? At that precise time, the
opportunity presented itself to Nietzsche to fulfill the lofty demands of
generally accepted morality, which Schopenhauer's philosophy had taken under
its protection, and to prove, not in words, but in deeds, that the idea of self-
abnegation and self-sacrifice is not just a name, but a great force, capable of
inspiring man and giving him the courage humbly to endure the most agonizing
fate. But Nietzsche acted directly counter to the demands of his former
"convictions," which he had received from his great teacher Schopenhauer. In
his misfortune, instead of submitting and rejoicing over the past successes and
new hopes of mankind - which, above all, would have been in keeping with the
convictions expressed in The Birth of Tragedy - Nietzsche decided to verify
by his own fate the justice and truth of ideals bequeathed us by several
millennia and brilliantly vindicated so many times by the best minds of mankind.
As early as Human, All-Too-Human, he raised the question of "the values

of non-selfish instincts, the instincts of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice,
which Schopenhauer had so persistently painted in golden colors, idolized, and
etherealized (verjenseitigt), until they finally became for him intrinsic values in
themselves (an sich)." [Ibid., VII, 292-293] And in order to solve this problem,
he no longer turned, as before, when writing his first works, to philosophers,
poets, and preachers, in brief, to doctrines that people have transmitted from
generation to generation. He felt that he would not find an answer for himself
in all this; it was as if all the teachers of mankind had conspired to remain silent
about what was most important for him. And for a long time he did not venture
to say a single word about his own works, in which he had once spoken with
the pride and certainty of an omniscient and all-understanding judge. Only later,
many years later, did he make an attempt in the Foreword, or more accurately
the Afterword, to The Birth of Tragedy to appraise his first literary attempts.
How strangely the human heart is constructed! Despite the fact that this book
seems to him to be poorly written in many respects, despite the fact that he is
perfectly aware of all its defects ("but the book in which I had poured forth my
youthful ardor and suspicion - what an impossible book had to grow from a task
so disagreeable to youth!")[Ibid., I, 3], he cannot help feeling the tender
affection of a father for it.
Yet, strictly speaking, he should have hated it just as much as he hated

Schopenhauer's books and Wagner's music. It was, after all, a perfect
expression of that alienation from life, of that fear of reality, in brief, of that
romanticism which, thanks to Nietzsche's typical hothouse-upbringing, had so
completely possessed his trusting heart in very early youth. And not only The
Birth of Tragedy, but all Nietzsche's early works down to Human, All-Too-
Human must have been odious to their author for the same reason. All of them
are romanticism of the first water, i.e., a more or less graceful toying with
ready-made poetic images and philosophical concepts. For the young
Nietzsche, Schopenhauer's word was law. "I belong," he wrote in 1875, when
he was already thirty years old and when reality had already begun to make its
first formidable demands on him, "to the group of readers of Schopenhauer,
who know for certain after reading the first page of his works, that they will
read all that he wrote and, in general, listen attentively to his every word. He
immediately won my confidence, and it is no less intense now than it was nine
years ago. I understand him as if he were writing purposely for me." [Ibid.,
398] As you see, Nietzsche had made a poor choice of men in which to place
his confidence. And, in general, one must handle "confidence" more carefully.
Schopenhauer is least suitable as a teacher of youth, if only because the
questions he deals with are usually of very little interest to a young man, even
a gifted one. And it was no better in the case of music. Even Wagner, with his
operas, is dangerous for immature people, for he obliges them to enter strange
realms that are beyond their comprehension. Later on, Nietzsche himself
realized this quite clearly. "I had a genuinely passionate love for art," he
writes, "and finally saw nothing but art in all that exists - in those years when
other passions usually excite a man's heart." [Ibid., XI, 130]
But, strictly speaking, confidence in Schopenhauer's doctrine and love of

Wagner are by no means always so fatally destructive for a person. Had
Nietzsche's life proceeded without chance complications, he would perhaps
have preserved in his heart his feelings of love and his devotion for his
teachers until ripe old age. Romanticism by no means always mutilates and
spoils human destiny. On the contrary, it often successfully protects people
from a clash with reality and helps for long years to preserve that beauty of
spirit, that clarity and resplendence of views, that confidence in life, which we
most of all esteem in philosophers. And to his dying day, Nietzsche could
have gone on developing the ideas on which he had based The Birth of
Tragedy. He could have taught people to reconcile themselves to the horrors
of life; he could have done as his predecessors and glorified "the philosopher,
the artist, and the saint." And he would probably have won the deep respect of
his contemporaries and fame from posterity: after all, Professor Riehl called
The Birth of Tragedy a work of genius. [Alois Riehl (1844-1924), a German
positivist, neo-Kantian philosopher, logician, and critic - S.R.] True, it is
perhaps possible to see a certain political cunning in the German professor's
appraisal. Perhaps Professor Riehl did not find it convenient to condemn
absolutely everything in Nietzsche, and, wishing to give the appearance of an
impartial and fair judge, he perhaps preferred to exaggerate his praise of this
book of Nietzsche, which most closely resembles the books that everyone
else writes, in order to have a free hand later on to attack his other works.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that if Nietzsche had continued to write in the
spirit of The Birth of Tragedy, he would have had to disassociate himself from
commonly accepted opinions and convictions only in so far as this is allowed
by the prevailing ideas on permissible and desirable originality. Of course, at
the beginning of his literary career, he would also have had enemies, but in the
end, he would have achieved that virtuosity of presentation which even subdues
enemies and most of all guarantees a man the joyful respect of the people
around him. Undoubtedly, Nietzsche would have written differently under
different circumstances, and Professor Riehl could with a clear conscience
have called his works brilliant.
But fate decided otherwise. Instead of letting Nietzsche calmly concern

himself with the future of all mankind and even the whole universe, it asked him,
as it did Dostoevsky, one short and simple question - about his own future. And
this highly perceptive philosopher, who had intrepidly viewed the horrors of
the whole world, became confused and flustered, like a child who has lost its
way in a forest, before this simple and reputedly easy problem. In this matter,
his past learning proved useless, even cumbersome, to him. "Everything
solemn has become odious to me," he wrote. "What are we?" [Nietzsche, op.
cit., XI, 153] Yet, what he called "solemn" was everything that he had formerly
lived by, everything that he had regarded as the deepest wisdom, and in the
dissemination of which he saw his predestined purpose. Now, all this had to be
abandoned. But what would then remain? How could he look people in the
face, what could he say to Wagner, how could he remain alone with himself?
For a time, Nietzsche made attempts to reconcile his new life with his old
"convictions." As was already pointed out, he wrote articles about Wagner and
Schopenhauer, hoping that habit would prevail, and that he would again
accommodate himself to a faith in ideals, which was so necessary to him now.
But his calculation was false. Simulated dedication, even for a man in ordinary
circumstances, is not an easy matter. And for Nietzsche, in his horrible
situation, it became sheer torture. He saw that it was impossible to live as
before. And knowing what awaited him, knowing that his friends, chiefly
Wagner, would never forgive his treachery, he turned from the old gods and
set out on a new path, although the new path as well promised nothing but
danger, agonizing doubt, and perpetual loneliness.
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And with what did he set out on this new path? What did he have in place of
his earlier convictions? The answer can be given in a word: nothing. Nothing
but loathsome physical suffering in the present; shameful, humiliating memories
of the past; and a mad fear of the future. He could have no hope, for what is a
broken, sick man capable of when he has wasted the best years of his life on
futile, needless projects which had brought him nothing? Until the age of thirty,
like our Ilya Muromets [a legendary hero in the early Russian folk epic S.R.],
he sat in a corner, contemplating the ideals of others. Now it was necessary to
rise and walk, but his legs refused to serve him. Kind old sages did not, and
would not, appear with a magic potion: nowadays, there are no miracles.
To top it all off, his illness assumed such proportions that he i had to give
up his usual professorial duties, which had filled his day, and remain idle from
morning to night, alone with his thoughts and memories. Even night did not
bring him peace and quiet, for he suffered from insomnia, the usual companion
of serious nervous disorders. And then such a man becomes a writer and takes
the liberty of turning to the public with his word. What can he tell us? That he
suffers, that he has suffered? But we have already heard enough complaints
from poets; the young Lermontov long ago openly expressed that idea, which
others had kept to themselves. What business is it of ours if Nietzsche suffered
or not? And, moreover, it is a different matter with poets. They do not just
complain. Who would listen to them if they "just" complained? They express
their complaints in beautiful, resonant poems, and from their tears, flowers
grow. We admire the flowers and forget the tears; the divine harmony of the
poetry makes us rejoice at even the most plaintive tune.
But Nietzsche is a philosopher: he cannot and must not sing. He must speak.
Is it possible that he would decide to offer the public the dull and monotonous
story of the horrors he had to experience? Or does philosophy also have its
flowers and poetry, which also constitute its raison dtre? And is this science
of sciences also an art - the art of passing off various interesting and
entertaining things as truth? Let us listen to Nietzsche's explanations. In these
matters, few people can compare with him in range and variety of experience.
He will tell us in detail how he wrote his books. "Whoever can even slightly
imagine," he writes, "the consequences involved in every deep suspicion;
whoever knows the horror and chills of loneliness to which every
uncompromising difference of outlook condemns us, will also understand how
often I had to seek shelter in some sort of veneration or hostility, in scientism
or flippancy or stupidity, in order to recover from myself, and to find
temporary self-forgetfulness; and why, in those instances when it was
impossible to find ready-made what I needed, I had to make it myself, to
falsify it, and to invent it (what else have poets ever done?). And for what
purpose does art in general exist?" [Nietzsche, op. cit., II, 3-4]. Not a bad
confession, is it? Art is understood to be the deliberate falsification of reality,
and philosophy is recommended to use the same method. Otherwise, it will be
impossible to bear the horror and chill of loneliness. But can falsification,
particularly if deliberate, really help in such cases? Does one's own view of
life really become less dismal when the mind and conscience resort to such
tricks? And furthermore, is it really in our power to change our view
arbitrarily? We see what we see, whatever lies before us, and no efforts of the
will can make black seem white to us, or vice versa. Evidently, Nietzsche
thought otherwise. In the Preface to the third volume of his collected work, he
says:
"It was then [i.e., during his illness] that I learned the hermitic habit of
speech that is known only to those who are lonely and who have suffered
much. I spoke without witnesses, or more accurately, without thinking of
witnesses. And I always spoke of things that did not at all concern me, but I
gave the impression that they were important to me. Then I also learned the art
of appearing cheerful, objective, curiouS, and, most of all, healthy and
derisive: in a sick man, I dare say, this is a sign of good taste. Nevertheless, a
keener and a more sympathetic eye will not miss what perhaps gives a
particular charm to these writings [Human, All-Too-Human]: the fact that a sick
and unfortunate man is speaking here as if he were not sick and unfortunate. A
man is striving here at all costs to maintain equipoise, composure, and even
gratitude to life; here reigns a stern, proud, ever cheerful, ever excited will,
which has set itself the task of defending life against suffering and warding off
all conclusions which usually. grow like poisonous fungi in all kinds of
marshy soil - from suffering, disappointment, satiety, and isolation." [Ibid., III,
5-6]
Now we know how Nietzsche wrote his books. Evidently, he had not been
given the possibility to escape the power of ideas. Formerly, in defending
Wagner and Schopenhauer, he spoke of things that did not concern him, but he
did it with a look that made them seem important to him; now, upon entering a
new career as an "advocate of life," he again, evidently, suppresses in himself
all protest, all that is personal, all that is essentially his own, in order to
glorify his new client. Again he plays the hypocrite, again he plays a role, but
this time it is no longer unintentional, no longer with a clear conscience as in
youth: now he is fully aware of his conduct. Now he knows he cannot do
otherwise, and not only is he not horrified when he must say "Yes" aloud when
his entire being says "No," he even prides himself on this art and finds a
particular charm in it. He rejects all conclusions growing on the soil of
disappointment, suffering, isolation, et cetera - the only conclusions that could
appear to a man in his situation. Then who, or what, was it that dwelt in him and
had been given such sovereign rights over his soul? Was it perhaps his old
reason, which had once played such a dirty trick on Nietzsche and therefore
had been deprived of all its former rights, that had again occupied its former
predominant position by force or by cunning? Or were his conscience and
shame before the public again enticing Nietzsche to an alien faith and
persuading him, sick and miserable as he was, to feign health and happiness? A
fact of unusual importance!
At this point, we must note that in all of his work, down to the very last, in
which Nietzsche speaks as an unequivocal immoralist and atheist, in which he
takes as his slogan the fearful words that had served in the Middle Ages as the
secret password of a Mohammedan sect that had clashed with the Crusaders in
the Holy Land: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" - in all of his works,
Nietzsche always, unfailingly, appeals to some higher court (at one time, it is
simply called "life," at another, "the totality of life"), and does not venture to
speak in his own name. An impression is produced which is best summed up by
Dostoevsky's derisive words: "Everything is permitted, and that's that! And if
you want to swindle, what further need is there of the sanction of truth?"
[Dostoevsky, op. cit., XII, 769]. For partisans of the categorical imperative,
Nietzsche's passion for the sanction of truth could serve as the best refutation
of his entire doctrine, and I am most surprised that no one has as yet challenged
him with this seemingly irrefutable argument. Especially as the contradictions
that one encounters in Nietzsche's judgments - a shortcoming for which he was
so often reproached - mainly derive from this veneration of the new "Moloch
of abstraction," which has now replaced numerous old ones. I do not, however,
mean by this that the sanction of truth or, perhaps I should say, every last
sanction in general is on the side of those who proclaim that not all is permitted
and who refrain from swindling - in the sense, of course, in which Dostoevsky
used the word (after all, even such reservations are still necessary). Moreover,
I have already pointed out that, in Dostoevsky's admiration of penal servitude,
there are clear indications of an awareness that precisely this sanction, which
the idealists have hitherto boasted as their inalienable and undivided
prerogative, had been illegitimately appropriated by the latter. Schiller once,
without any hesitation, without even thinking that any hesitation was possible,
put the following words into the mouth of Phillip the Second:
Gern mag ich hren,

Dass Karlos meine Rte hasst, doch mit
Verdruss entdeck ich, dass er sie verachtet.
In this sentence, the relations of those types of which Phillip II and Don
Carlos are representatives, are, as it were, defined and fixed once and for all.
Don Carlos despises Phillip II, but Phillip would feel flattered if he could see
at least hatred for himself on the part of his son. And no one had any doubt that
between good and evil, to use more general terms, such relations would
continue for all eternity: evil is not in a position to get the better of goods
scorn, and therefore it secretly scorns itself. That is, the sanction of truth is on
the side of Don Carlos and his beauty of soul. As for Phillip, if he wants to
"swindle," then let him abandon hope of any sanction. That is the way it was in
Schillers time. But now the situation has changed. Now the Don Carloses look
to the Phillips for hatred just as they would for charity, but, other than
contempt, they get nothing. Example: Dostoevsky and penal servitude, or
Nietzsche, who expressed this idea with such frightful clarity in the words of
Zarathustra quoted above: "My friend, do you know the word contempt? And
the torment of your justice in trying to be fair to those who despise you?"
Translate these words into concrete language - and such translations must be
made by anyone who wants to find more than just aesthetic pleasure in books -
and you will get a new formula for the mutual relations of Phillip and Don
Carlos. It is no longer Phillip who knows the word contempt, it is no longer he
who is tormented by the need to admit that justice (the sanction of truth) is not
with him, but with his enemies - on the contrary, all these pleasures now fall to
the lot of Don Carlos.
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Lev Shestov - Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche - ToC 11/16/15

DOSTOEVSKY, TOLSTOY and

download Translated by Bernard Martin

DOSTOEVSKY AND NIETZSCHE

Translated by Spencer Roberts

Find ANY word He lp

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Dostoevsky and Nietzsche

Aimes-tu les damns? Dis-moi, connais-tu lirrmissible?

To a considerable extent, Dostoevsky's works realize this program. With

Indeed, if it is a similarity of inner experience rather than a common origin, a

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This would, of course, be unnatural, but, as we saw, it is psychologically

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As a result, the disciple, for "unimportant reasons," abandoned his master,

For us, Dostoevsky is a psychological enigma. The key to it can be found

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I am not saying this to reproach Dostoevsky. And, in general, I would be

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In this respect, Dostoevsky's journalistic articles relating to the period in

The article in question here is little known. Therefore, it will not be

The entire article is written in such a vein. It is not particularly remarkable

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Notes from the Underground is a public, albeit a veiled, renunciation of his

As we saw, he did everything possible to preserve his old faith. He

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In this respect, Dostoevsky could never compare with Count Tolstoy.

If we recall that, later on, Dostoevsky, in referring to Anna Karenina,

These remarks are unusually characteristic of War and Peace. Wherever

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Nevertheless, the clash of these prophets was a matter of pure chance!

Oh, Anna Karenina is by no means an innocent thing! Levin despairs, Levin

"You're married, I hear, asked the landowner.

It goes without saying that such a marriage produces a feeling of pride in a

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With Count Tolstoy, it was quite a different matter. He was deeply

This purely Schopenhauerian "immortality of the soul," as depicted by

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Bolkonsky must not even be allowed to go on living. Where would you

What "psychology" Dostoevsky would have made of this! But Count

All Count Tolstoy's work, including his late philosophical journalistic

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Descartes's de omnibus dubitandum is, of course, irrelevant here: for a

N. K. Mikhailovsky, in his well-known and in many respects remarkable

In another of his articles, this same Mikhailovsky, when speaking of

Of what importance is Proudhon, when a man's soul contains an idea as

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In other words, there begins a "revaluation of all values." Idealism, quite

Now it is clear why Dostoevsky cannot return to his former state of

Therein is the reason why Dostoevsky, to the surprise of his

Obviously, we are not dealing here with a dialectician. Dostoevsky is not

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This explanation, although belated, was, of course, necessary.

Yet, all the ordeals Dostoevsky underwent in Siberia were trivial in

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Now the question arises: if Raskolnikovs idea is so original that it occurred

No, Prince Myshkin is a black sheep, even among Dostoevsky's eminent