THE NAME AND WORK of Silvio Pellico has made the round of the whole civilized world. They have classic fame in France, and yet this same France, the highway for all that is renowned and of large ideas, was until yesterday ignorant of the very title of that cruel yet superb book which, on account both of its consummate art and for the horrors it describes, is far superior to that of the Lombard prisoner. Are Russian tears less human than Italian tears?
The writing of this book offered great difficulties. In describing that yet mysterious country, the name “Siberia” had to be used, a name at this time not voluntarily pronounced. Even the judicial language employed a euphemism to avoid its use. The courts sentenced the condemned to transportation “to distant territories,” and it was left to an erstwhile political convict to risk further persecution by defying the censor. And he won. The fundamental condition for success was seemingly to ignore the fact of the existence of such people as political convicts. It was nevertheless necessary to describe the special nature of the sufferings which men of a superior class in life had to undergo, when suddenly thrust into these infamous surroundings.

Cover image from a modern edition of Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Oxford).

The writer introduces us to a manuscript written by one Alexander Gorianchikoff, who died in Siberia after having been set at liberty. A short biography tells us that this dummy was an honest fellow, well educated, belonging to the upper classes. The crime for which he was condemned to ten years’ penal servitude was, God knows, nothing – less than nothing, a mere accident, one of those small things that cast no stain on either heart or honour. Gorianchikoff had merely killed his wife in a fit of justifiable jealousy. You do not think less of him, do you? Our judges would have acquitted him. Moreover, you will, no doubt, have guessed that he merely intended us to realize that the offence for which he was committed was no more than an error of judgment. This effected, he now makes us follow an innocent man, wrongly condemned, into the infernal regions.

A barrack within the fortifications, containing three or four hundred convicts brought together from all points of the compass, is a microscopic but faithful image of Russia, that wonderful mosaic of nationalities. There were Tartars, Kirghis, Poles, men from the Baltic provinces, and one Jew. During ten years of dreary boredom, Gorianchikoff’s – read, Dostoyevsky’s – sole occupation is the study of these unfortunate people. The result is an unequalled work of psychological interest. From under the uniform garb of these wretches and their fierce and taciturn faces, we see character sketches gradually developed which show a profound analysis of the human instinct. His sympathies extend to all these “unfortunates” (malheureux) about him. This is the term applied everywhere in Russia to any victims of justice. The writer willingly uses the same term, and we realize how he, too, does not let his mind dwell on the crime, but on the need of greater compassion for the “sufferings of expiation,” and to keep alight – for that is his object right through – the “divine spark” which is ever present amongst even the most degraded.
Some of the convicts tell him their histories. These form the material for dramatic bits, masterpieces of realism and feeling. The best as the stories of two murderers, moved by jealousy; one is the soldier Baklushin, and the other Akulina’s husband. The philosopher does not pry into the past of the other convicts, and is satisfied with depicting their moral natures as he observes them, but in that general shadowy, vague manner affected by all Russian writers, who always see their characters in the dim light of dawn on a grey day, and whose outlines, always uncertain and undefined, invariably end in nebulous possibilities. They are the paintings of Henner, compared with those of our Ingres.

The language used is in itself very remarkable. It is that of the common people, always preferred by Dostoyevsky for its indefiniteness and easy flow, which make it marvellously adaptable to his purpose.