Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (849 page)
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Authors: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I know, and every one will tell me, that it was not worth while, that it was ridiculous to write this long answer to your article, which was rather short com-
pared with mine. But I repeat, your article served only as a pretext: I wished to say some things generally. I am going to begin The Journal of an Author again next year.1 Let the present number serve as a profession of faith for the future, a specimen copy, so to say.
It may perhaps still be said that by my answer I have destroyed the whole sense of the ‘ Speech ‘ whieh I delivered in Moscow, wherein I myself called upon both Russian parties to be united and reconciled, and admitted the justification of them both. No, no, no! The sense of my ‘ Speech ‘ is not destroyed; on the contrary, it is made still stronger, since in my answer to you I point out that both parties, estranged one from the other, in hostility one to the other, have put themselves and their activity into an abnormal situation, whereas in mutual union and agreement, they would perhaps exalt everything, save everything, awaken endless powers and summon Russia to a new, healthy, and mighty life, hitherto unseen.
1 At the beginning of that year Dostoyevsky died.
Translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne
CONTENTS
Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF DOSTOEVSKY’S LIFE
XXIII. To Mme. Maria Dmitryevna Issayev
XXIV. To Mme. Praskovya Yegorovna Annenkov
XXV. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XXVI. To General E. I. Totleben
XXVII. To the Baron A. E. Vrangel
XXVIII. To his Brother Michael
XXXI. To Mme. V. D. Constantine
XXXIV. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XXXV. To his Niece, Sofia Alexandrovna
XXXVI. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XXXVII. To his Stepson, P. A. Issayev
XXXVIII. To his Sister Vera, and his Brother-in-Law Alexander Pavlovitch Ivanov
XXXIX. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
XL. To his Stepson, P. A. Issayev
XLI. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XLII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XLIII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XLIV. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
XLV. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
XLVI. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
XLVII. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
XLVIII. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
XLIX. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
L. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
LI. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
LII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
LIII. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
LIV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
LV. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
LVI. To his Sister Vera, and his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
LVII. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
LVIII. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
LIX. To his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna
LX. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
LXI. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
LXII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
LXIII. To Apollon Nikolayevitch Maikov
LXIV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
LXV. To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov
LXVI. To Mme. Ch. D. Altschevsky:
LXXII. To a Group of Moscow Students
LXXIV. To Frau E. A. Stackenschneider
LXXVII. To Doctor A. F. Blagonravov
Recollections of Dostoevsky by his Friends
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF D. V. GRIGOROVITCH
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF A. P. MILYUKOV
FROM THE MEMORANDA OF P. K. MARTYANOV, AT THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF BARON ALEXANDER VRANGEL
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF SOPHIE KOVALEVSKY 1866
Dostoevsky in the Judgment of his Contemporaries
I. R. P. Pobyedonoszev to I. S. Aksakov
II. I. S. Aksakov to R. P. Pobyedonoszev
The original frontispiece
Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
IN the German translator’s (Herr Alexander Eliasberg (R. Piper and Go., Munich).) preface to this volume it is pointed out that a complete collection of Dostoevsky’s letters does not yet exist. “The first volume of the first collected edition of Dostoevsky’s works (St. Petersburg, 1873), contains only a selection, which is usually lacking in the later editions.” Herr Eliasberg goes on to tell us that “a series of letters which were to have been included in the present work was at the last moment withdrawn by the novelist’s widow; the corrected proofs of these are to be preserved in a sealed portfolio at the Dostoevsky Museum in Moscow.”
The present volume derives chiefly from the book by Tchechichin: “Dostoevsky in the Reminiscences of his Contemporaries, and in his Letters and Memoranda” (Moscow, 1912). The letters here numbered XXXVIII., XLIV., L., LVI., and LVIII. are lacking in Tchechichin’s book, and were taken from a Russian monthly journal,
Rousskaya Starina.
Those numbered XXXIX., XLVI., XLVIIL, and LIX., which are incompletely given by Tchechichin, are here given in full.
From Tchechichin’s work were also taken a number of notes, as well as the reminiscences of Dostoevsky by his contemporaries, which here form an Appendix.
The present text, therefore, while it contains much that is relatively “inedited,” yet cannot pretend to full completeness. On comparing it with a French translation of some of the letters, issued by the Société du Mercure de France in 1908, it is seen to be a good deal the more judiciously edited of the two — the German translator has pared away many repetitions, much irrelevant and uninteresting matter, while he has used material of the highest biographical value which the French editor either unaccountably omitted, or, it may be, had not at disposal. Of such are the letters enumerated above; and, more than all, the peculiarly interesting passage in Letter XXXIV., which relates Dostoevsky’s historic quarrel with Turgenev.
A word about the punctuation. It has been, so far as was thought at all feasible, left as Dostoevsky offered it. Like Byron, he “did not know a comma; at least, where to put one”, — or rather, in Dostoevsky’s case, where
not
to put one, for his lavish use of the less important and lucid sign is very remarkable. Here and there, this predilection has been departed from by me, but only when it too deeply obscured the sense; elsewhere, since even punctuation has its value for the student of character, Dostoevsky’s “system” is retained in all its chaotic originality.
E.C.M.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF DOSTOEVSKY’S LIFE
AFTER V. TCHECHICHIN
1821. “In the parish of St. Peter and Paul at Moscow was born on October 30 of the year 1821, in the dwelling-house of the Workhouse Hospital, to Staff-Physician Michail Andreyevitch Dostoevsky, a male child, who was named Fyodor. Baptised on November 4.”
1831. Dostoevsky’s parents purchase a country-house in the Tula Government, where the family henceforth spends the summer.
1834. Dostoevsky enters the boys’ school of L. J. Tchermak at Moscow.
1836. Great influence of the Literature-master upon the boys. Enthusiasm for Pushkin.
1837. On February 27, Maria Fyodorovna Dostoevsky, his mother, dies. Early in the year, Fyodor Dostoevsky goes with his elder brother Michael to Petersburg, and enters the Preparatory School of K. F. Kostomarov. In the autumn, he is admitted to the Principal College of Engineering.
183 7-43. Study at the College of Engineering.
1838. Summer in camp. Enthusiasm for Balzac, Hugo, E. — T. A. Hoffmann. In the autumn, failure in the examinations; is not promoted. In the winter, friendly relations with Schidlovsky and Berechetzky. Interest in Schiller.
1839. Death of his father, Michail Andreyevitch Dostoevsky.
1840. November 29: Promotion to non-commissioned officer’s rank. December 27: To ensign’s.
1841. Dramatic efforts, “Maria Stuart” and “Boris Godounov.” (They have not come down to us.) August 5: Dostoevsky undergoes the examination for promotion to commissioned rank, and is promoted to be Field-Engineer’s Ensign, on the recommendation of the College of Engineering.
1842. Promotion to Lieutenant’s rank.
1843. August 12: Leaves the College. August 23: Obtains an appointment in the Department of Engineering.
1844. At the end of the preceding and in the beginning of this year, Dostoevsky is occupied in translating Balzac’s “Eugénie Grandet.” During the year he reads and translates works by George Sand and Sue.
Works at “Poor Folk.”
Project for a drama (Letter of September 30, 1844).
October 19: Dostoevsky is by Royal permission discharged with the rank of First-Lieutenant “on account of illness.”
December 17: He is struck off the lists of the Corps of Military Engineers.
1845. In the beginning of May, the novel “Poor Folk” is finished.
Nekrassov and Grigorovitch pay the midnight visit after reading “Poor Folk.”
Intercourse with Bielinsky. In the summer he goes, to his brother Michael at Reval.
November 15: Letter to his brother with news of his first successes in literary circles.
At the end of the year, plans for the satirical journal,
Suboskal.
“Novel in Nine Letters.”
1846. January 15: Nekrassov’s
Petersburg Almanac
appears with Dostoevsky’s first book, “Poor Folk.”
Bielinsky’s article on “Poor Folk” in the
Otetschestvennia Zapiski.
February 1: The story of “The Double” (“ Goliadkin”) appears in the
Otetschestvennia Zapiski.
“The Whiskers that were Shaved Off” and the “Story of the Abolished Public Offices.” (Neither work has come down to us.)