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Dostoyevski and the religion of suffering 4.

IN THE POSSESSED WE have the world of the revolutionary Nihilist before us. I have slightly modified the Russian title of The Demons, for it seemed rather obscure. The author had made his own meaning quite clear, by taking St. Luke’s text referring to the exorcising of the one “possessed” of the devil as his epigram. He had put aside the real title, which applies, not only to this book, but to all his others. Dostoyevsky’s characters are all in the state of being “possessed,” using the word in the sense as understood in the Middle Ages. An outside and irresistible power compels them against their wills to commit monstrous acts. Such “possessed” are Natasha in Humbled and Outraged; Raskolnikoff in Crimes and Punishment; Rogojin in The Idiot, and all those conspirators who commit murder and self-murder without a motive and without a definite object. The history of this novel is curious enough. Dostoyevsky was always separated from Turgeneff by differences of political opinion, and alas! by literary jealousy. At the time Tolstoy had not yet established his own power, and the two novelists had the field to themselves wherein to dispute for the leadership of the Russian mind. The inevitable rivalry between them in Dostoyevsky almost amounted to hatred. He placed himself entirely in the wrong; and in the novel before us he took the unpardonable step of ridiculing his fellow author on the stage, in the garb of an absurd character.

Ivan Turgenev (Vasily Perov, 1872).

The secret grievance which he would not forgive was that Turgeneff had been the first to discover Nihilism and to write about it in his famous book, Fathers and Sons . But since 1861 Nihilism had ripened; it had passed from the stage of metaphysical discussion into the field of action. Hence Dostoyevsky wrote The Possessed in revenge. Three years later Turgeneff took up the challenge by publishing Virgin Soil. Both novels dealt with the same subject – a revolutionary conspiracy in a small provincial town. Were I to adjudge a prize in this bout, I confess I think the gentle artist of Virgin Soils had been beaten by the dramatic psychologist, for the latter manages, better than the former, to enter into the innermost recesses of these tortuous souls. The scene in which Shadoff is murdered is rendered with diabolical force, which Turgeneff could never have attained. But as a last criticism, which applies to both works, I cannot help recognizing their Bazaroff lineage. All their Nihilists have directly descended from their imperishable prototype, the cynical hero of Fathers and Sons. Dostoyevsky felt it himself, and it distressed him.

And yet his part is quite good, for his book is a prophecy and an explanation. A prophecy because in 1871, at which time the leaven of anarchy was still brooding, the visionary gives us facts on all points analogous to those which have since come to pass. I have myself attended Nihilistic prosecutions. I can testify to the fact that many of the accused and many of the murders committed were precisely those depicted and predicted by the novelist.

The book is also an explanation. If it is translated, as I so much wish it to be, Western Europe will be able to learn the real data of the problem of Nihilism, which have hitherto not been known because they have been sought for in the field of politics. Dostoyevsky has shown us the various kinds of minds from which this sect is recruited. First comes the “simple-minded,” the pervert who places his capacity for being led by religious fanaticism at the service of atheism. Our author has a very striking way of using him. It is well know that every Russian peasant’s room contains a small shrine on which stand holy pictures. – “Lieutenant Erkel, after having overturned and smashed the images with a hatchet, using the shelves as pulpits placed on them copies of Vogt, Moleshott and of Büchner; and before each open volume he placed a lighted candle.”

Next to the childlike and simple-minded come the “weak-minded,” those who submit themselves to the magnetic influence of force, and follow their chiefs wherever they may lead. Then come the ‘logical pessimists,’ like the engineer Kirilof – those who destroy themselves because they not the moral courage to live, and who are exploited by the party; for the man who is without moral principles, and is intent on dying because he cannot find such principles, lends himself willingly to what is wanted of him, it being a matter of no consequence to him.

Lastly come the ‘possessed,’ those who deliberately kill as a protest against a world they cannot understand; to make a singular and novel use of their will power; to find a delight in imparting terror, and, lastly, to assuage the ferocity of the brute which is in their nature.

The great merit of this vague and badly constructed book, often ridiculous and encumbered with apocalyptic theories, is that in spite of those blemishes it gives us a clear idea of the force that gives the Nihilists their power. That force is not inherent in their doctrines, which are absent, nor in the power of their organization, which is overrated. It lies only and solely in the character of a few individuals. Dostoyevsky thinks – and the revelations made during the legal proceedings would bear him out – that the worth of the conspirators’ ideas is almost nil, that the vaunted organization is reduceable to that of a few local associations, badly welded together, and that all those phantoms of “central committees,” “executive committees,” only exist in the imagination of the adepts. On the other hand he makes much of those wills stretched to the uttermost, and those souls of ice-cold steel. He contrasts them with the timidity and irresoluteness of the legal authorities as personified in Goverenor von Lembke. Between these two poles he shows us the mass of weaklings attracted to the one possessing the greater magnetic force.

It cannot be repeated too often: it is the characters of those resolute men which take hold of the people, not their ideas; and the philosopher’s piercing eye in this matter looks beyond Russia. Men are everywhere becoming less and less unreasonable as regards ideas, and more and more skeptical as regards cut-and-dried formulas. Those who believe in the virtue of absolute doctrines are now rare to find. What does captivate men is character, even if their energies are put to a wrong purpose, for that guarantees a leader and a guide, the first requirements of an association of human beings. Man is born the “serf” of every will stronger than his own that passes before him.

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