By Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé

Part Five of five.
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I HOPE I SHALL be forgiven if, before finishing this sketch, I add some of my own recollections which may help the reader to realize the personality of the man and give a better idea of the power of his influence.

Man of the House.

I chanced to meet Dostoyevsky many times during the last three years of his life. His personal appearance had the same effect as that of the most striking scenes of his novels – once seen never forgotten. To look at he was indeed the very man for such a work and such a life. Short, lean, neurotic, worn and bowed down by his sixty years of misfortune; faded rather than aged, with a look of an invalid of uncertain age, with a long beard and hair still fair, and for all that still breathing forth the “cat-life” already referred to. The face was that of a Russian peasant; a real Moscow mujik, with a flat nose, small, sharp eyes deeply set, sometimes dark and gloomy, sometimes gentle and mild. The forehead was large and bumpy, the temples very hollow as if hammered in. His drawn, twitching features seemed to press down on his sad-looking mouth. I have never before seen such a sad expression on any face. All the harrowing terrors of the soul, and the sufferings of the body had left their mark. No book of his could better convey the memories of the House of the Dead, or the long periods of terror, suspicion and torture he had undergone. Eyelids, lips and every muscle of his face twitched nervously the whole time. When he became excited on a certain point, one could have sworn that one had seen him before seated on a bench in a police court awaiting trial, or among the vagabonds who passed their time begging before the prison doors. At all other times he carried that look of sad and gentle meekness seen on the images of old Slavonic saints.

WITH THAT INEXPRESSIBLE MIXTURE of coarseness, fineness and mildness so characteristic of the peasants of Greater Russia, he was indeed a true type of the masses. He also had a curious look of unaccountable restlessness, possibly due to the effort of keeping his thoughts concentrated on upholding his proletariat attitude. At first sight he was antipathetic, but only until his magnetism had affected one. Habitually taciturn, when he did speak it was in a low voice, slow and measured, gradually warming up when obstinately defending his opinions regardless of anyone present. In arguing his favorite theme of the inherent supremacy of the Russian race, he sometimes was heard to say to the ladies in social circles which sought his presence, “You are not worth a single mujik, however bad.” All literary discussion with Dostoyevsky ended abruptly. He once stopped me with superb commiseration by saying, “We are blessed with all the talents of the whole world – even more – that of Russia; therefore we are able to understand you, but you are incapable of understanding us.” May his shade forgive me, for I am now going to show the contrary.

His opinion is unfortunate in so far that he judged of European affairs with an amusing ingeniousness and native simplicity. I well remember one of his outbursts one evening in Paris, when seized by a fit of inspiration he prophesied with Biblical indignation – like Jonah before Nineveh. These are his words, which I noted down at the time:

A prophet shall one day arise in the Café Anglais; he will write on the wall the three flaming words; they will declare the destruction of the old world, and Paris will fall by blood and fire with all that fills it with pride to-day – its theatres, and the Café Anglais….

In the imagination of this seer, this inoffensive establishment represented Sodom’s heart, a cave of attractive and infernal orgies, which had to be cursed and destroyed to prevent its being too much dreamt about. Eloquently and long he thundered on this theme like a Pope.

Dostoyevsky often reminds me of Jean-Jacques. It seems to me that I only got to know this vulgar pedantic fellow since I have studied this shadowy and gloomy philanthropist from Moscow. Both have the same kind of humour, the same alloy of coarseness and idealism, of sensitive refinement and brutal savagery and a common fund of human sympathy, all of which assured their success among their fellow contemporaries.

SINCE ROUSSEAU NO ONE had gone further than Dostoyevsky in exposing the faults of men of letters, as regards their easily offended self-esteem, their susceptibilities, jealousies and rancours. But none knew better than he how to win the generality of men or the masses by showing them a heart beating only for themselves. This writer, so disagreeable in society, was the idol of a great part of the Russian youth. Not only did they feverishly look forward to the publication of his novels, or his newspaper, but they came to him as to a spiritual preceptor, for a word of good advices and for help when in moral difficulty. During the last year of his life, his time was mostly spent in labouriously and conscientiously answering the mass of letters with which he was inundated, and which brought him the echoes of unknown sufferings.

One must have lived in Russia and at the time of the “great tribulation” to be able to understand the ascendancy that man had over the “poor folk,” consisting of that class which is between the “masses” and the “middle-class” in quest of a new ideal. Turgeneff’s literary and artistic talent had undergone an eclipse which was most unjust. Tolstoy’s philosophy addressed itself only to intellectual people. Dostoyevsky took hold of the heart, and his part in the guidance of that movement was undoubtedly the greatest.

At the inauguration of Pushkin’s monument, in 1880, at time which was the “Grand Assize” of Russian literature, our romancer’s popularity was greater than that of all his rivals. When he spoke, the people sobbed, and carried him in triumph on their shoulders. The students rushed his platform to get a better view of him, even to touch him, and one of those young man fainted from emotion on getting quite close to him. This flood of enthusiasm carried him to high that had he lived a few years longer it would have placed him in a very awkward position. In the official hierarchy of that Empire, as in Trajan’s garden, there is no room for premature and too quickly growing plants; nor for a Giant Goethe or a King Voltaire. The late convict, in spite of the perfect orthodoxy of his politics, risked being compromised and brought under suspicion by his fanatical partisans. His greatness and his dangerousness were only realized the day of his death. However repugnant it is to me to end my study, already gloomy, with a mournful scene, I must give an account of this man’s apotheosis and of the impression we all felt at the time, for it will serve better than any long explanation, and will at a glance enable the reader to see the position which that man actually held in that country.

ON FEBRUARY 10, 1881, some of Dostoyevsky’s friends informed me of the fact that he had died the evening before after a short illness. We went to his house to join in the service of “Prayers for the Dead,” which in the Russian Church begins the moment one of her children closes his eyes and continues up to the time of burial. Dostoyevsky’s house was in a small street in one of the poorer parts of St. Petersburg. We found a compact crowd round the entrance and on the stairs. With great difficulty we pushed our way through into the study, in which the writer was having his first rests. It was a small room strewn with papers, and filled with people crowding round the coffin.

It stood on a small table in the only corner of the room not taken possession of by these unknown invaders. For the first time I saw on that face a look of peacefulness, from which every trace of suffering had passed away…. His features had a painless, calm look, and seemed at last to be having a pleasant dream among a “mountain of roses,” which, however, was gradually disappearing at the hands of the people, who each took one to keep as a sacred relic. The crowd was getting larger every moment. The women were in tears, and the men noisily and roughly pushing their way, anxious to have a last look. The air was stifling. The room, like all rooms in winter, in Russia, was hermetically sealed.

All of a sudden the numerous candles began to sputter and went out. There only remained the uncertain light given by the small lamp hanging before the holy images of the Saints. At the same moment, favoured by the darkness, there was a rush from the stairs, bringing more people into the room. It seemed as if the whole crowd from the street was coming up. Those in front were pushed onto the coffin, which leant over. The unfortunate widow and her two children standing between the table and the wall threw themselves over the corpse to keep it in position, at the same time uttering frightful cries. For some minutes we expected that the dead man trampled under foot. He was being swayed by this wave of loving and brutal humanity which, impelled from below, was near crushing him. – At that moment I rapidly recalled to mind all that the man had done in life, his cruel power, his own feelings of terror, as also his compassion, and reflected on his exact relation to the world he wished to portray. All these unknowns before me took the names and features familiar to me. Imagination had depicted them in his books, reality had brought me in contact with them and this horrible scene so often described. Dostoyevsky’s characters came to torment him unto the very end. They brought him now their clumsy and rough pity, careless as to whether it profaned the object of their compassion or not. This scandalous homage was exactly what he would have wished.

Two days later we beheld this same scene, but on a larger scale and more complete. February 12, 1881, is a date well remembered in Russia, for excepting possibly that of Scobeleff’s no funeral had in that country been so imposing and of such significance. It would be difficult for me to say which of the two was the grander, that of the hero of action or that of the hero of Russian thought. Since early morning the whole town had turned out on to the Nyevski Perspect. A hundred thousand people lined the streets by which the procession had to pass on its long journey to the Monastery of Saint Alexander Nyevsky. The mourners who followed the coffin were estimated at twenty thousand. The Government was anxious, for it feared a public demonstration. It was known that some of the turbulent spirits had planned to monopolize the corpse; and the students, who wished to carry the Siberian convict’s chains in rear of the coffin, had to be forcibly restrained. The more timid minds protested that such a revolutionary pageantry should be forbidden altogether.

It will be remembered that this happened at the time of great nihilistic activity, a month only before the Tsar lost his life and the many daring attempts made to assassinate Loris-Melikoff. All Russia was in a ferment, and the least thing might have brought about an explosion. Loris-Melikoff decided it was wiser to respect the popular sentiment than to stifle it. He was right. The evil designs of a few were drowned in the tears of the multitude. By one of those unforeseen and unexpected fusions of the elements fires by a national idea of which Russia knows the secret, one saw all parties, all adversaries, all the disjointed rags of the Empire, reunited by this death into a “communion of enthusiasm.”

WHOSO WITNESSED THIS PROCESSION has seen all Russia in every shape or form. There were priests, a numerous body of clericals chanting their prayers; students from all the universities; the children of the primary schools; the girl medical students; the Nihilists, easily recognized by their peculiar dress, the men with a shawl over the shoulders, the women with hair cut short and wearing spectacles; deputations from all parts of the Empire; aged shopkeepers from Moscow; and peasants in their sheepskins, lacqueys and beggars. Waiting in the church to receive the body stood the high officials – the State Minister for Education and the young Princes of the Imperial Blood. A forest of banners and crucifixes spread over this army on the march.

The spectators of this procession could not help being struck by the different expressions on the faces of these facial fragments of “All the Russias” as they moved along with looks gentle or sullen, with their tears, or prayers, or sneers, with their periods of thoughtful silence or dumb shyness, and which caused their own impressions to undergo many changes in succession. All of them judged by what they witnessed at the moment; and they really believed they saw, as group after group passed by, the historical advent of newly created classes, the triumphant march of revolution in the Capital of Nicholas, the solemn celebration of the national genius and the sorrows of an entire nation. But they all judged imperfectly. What passed before them was but the result of this restless and formidable man’s doings – of his majestic eccentricities. First and foremost and by far the greater number, we see his special clients, the “poor folk,” the “humbled,” the “outraged,” even the “possessed”; the miserable wretches made happy in having this day the opportunity afforded them of honouring their advocate on his way to glory; yet with them and surrounding them were also all the uncertainty and the confusion of the national life as pictured by him, all the vague hopes he had roused within them. As said of former Tsars who “gathered together” the Russian soil, so this King of Spirits had to-day “gathered together” the Russian heart.

The crowd piled itself up in the small church of the Lavra, already encumbered with flowers, and in the shrines among the surrounding birch trees. The medley of interests, ideas and parties caused a babel of words. In front of the altar the Archimandrite spoke of God and Eternal Hope; others seized the body to lower it into the grave, there to speak of Fame. Officials, students, Slavophils, Liberals, professors, poets, one and all came to expound their ideas, and to claim for their own this spirit just passed away, and, as is usual in such cases, took the opportunity to flatter their own ambitions. – Whilst the February wind was blowing about their eloquence, in company with dried-up leaves and the dust of frozen snow stirred up by the spades, I endeavoured to form a fair judgment on the moral value of this man and all his deeds. I felt as perplexed as when called upon to form an opinion of the value of his literary work. He had spent himself for this people evoked in them feelings of pity, even of piety; but at the cost of how many extravagant ideas and moral disturbances! He had poured out his heart on the crowd – which is good, but without having first made them acquainted with that severe and necessary helpmate of the heart – reason.

It would have taken me some time to form a judgement had I not suddenly had a vision of that life, born in a hospital, brought up in misery, in sickness, in pain, to be continued in Siberian prisons, in the barracks; ever pursued by want and moral distress, always being crushed and yet ennobled by the work of a – Redeemer. Then I understood that this persecuted soul escaped all known standards, because it stood alone. I bowed to the judgment of Him who carries as many burdens as there are hearts and destinies. And when I bent low over this last earthly refuge he was so long in reaching, and when in my turn throwing handfuls of snow on the bower of laurel wreaths beneath, I could find no other words of farewell than those the student addressed to the young girl, words which summed up Dostoyevsky’s faith and now come back to him, “It is not before thee I kneel – I prostrate myself before the sufferings of all humanity.”

Note: This is part five of a five-part series. This text was first published as an extended chapter in an English-language translation by Col. Herbert Anthony Sawyer in The Russian Novel (Chapman & Hall, 1913). It has been manually transcribed exclusively for the New Series, with very minor edits to track usage.

Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé.

THE FIRST FRENCH EDITION of Le roman russe appeared in 1886 and was perhaps one of the most influential books of literary comment of the 19th century, bringing Russian fiction to the attention of French, then English, readers, most of whom were previously unaware of it. Le roman russe, wrote historian Owen Chadwick, “was so critical, and yet so constructive, so personal and yet so objective, so penetrating without being astringent, so prosaic and yet so haunting, that even after so many decades you cannot read it without wanting to go back to read the Russian novelists for themselves. If we say that Vogüé ‘popularized’ Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, that would be true. But the description is very inadequate both to explain what the book achieved and the way it achieved that effect.” Vogüé was an acquaintance of Maupassant’s and other contemporary literary celebrities, a contributor to the Revue des deux Mondes and a friend of Ferdinand Brunetiere’s.

To obtain the unedited text, please see the copyright page for instructions. Please note The Fortnightly Review and fortnightlyreview.co.uk in citations based on this transcription.