“But this is all philosophy; let us go back to the imaginary novelist. The position of our novelist in such a case would be quite definite: he would be unable to write in any other genre than the historical, for the beautiful type no longer exists in our time, and if any remnants remain, in the now-dominant opinion, they have not kept their beauty. Oh, in the historical genre it is still possible to portray a great many extremely pleasant and delightful details! One can even carry the reader with one so far that he will take the historical picture for something still possible in the present. Such a work, given great talent, would belong not so much to Russian literature as to Russian history. It would be an artistically finished picture of a Russian mirage, which existed in reality until people realized that it was a mirage. The grandson of the heroes portrayed in the picture portraying a Russian family of the average upper-class cultivated circle over three generations and in connection with Russian history—this descendant of his forebears could not be portrayed as a contemporary type otherwise than in a somewhat misanthropic, solitary, and undoubtedly sad guise. He should even appear as a sort of eccentric, whom the reader could recognize at first glance as someone who has quit the field, and be convinced that the field is no longer his. A bit further, and even this misanthropic grandson will vanish; new, as yet unknown persons will appear, and a new mirage; but what kind of persons? If they are not beautiful, then the Russian novel will no longer be possible. But, alas! is it only the novel that will turn out then to be impossible?
“Rather than go far, I will resort to your own manuscript. Look, for instance, at Mr. Versilov’s two families (this time allow me to be fully candid). First of all, I will not expand on Andrei Petrovich himself; but, anyhow, he still belongs among the ancestors. He is a nobleman of very ancient lineage, and at the same time a Parisian communard.49 He is a true poet and loves Russia, but on the other hand he totally denies her. He is without any religion, but is almost ready to die for something indefinite, which he cannot even name, but which he passionately believes in, after the manner of a multitude of Russian-European civilizers of the Petersburg period of Russian history. But enough of the man himself; here, however, is his hereditary family. I will not even speak of his son, and he does not deserve the honor. Those who have eyes know beforehand what such rascals come to among us, and incidentally what they bring others to. But his daughter Anna Andreevna—is she not a young lady of character? A person on the scale of the mother superior Mitrofania50—not, of course, to predict anything criminal, which would be unfair on my part. Tell me now, Arkady Makarovich, that this family is an accidental phenomenon, and my heart will rejoice. But, on the contrary, would it not be more correct to conclude that a multitude of such unquestionably hereditary Russian families are, with irresistible force, going over en masse into accidental families and merging with them in general disorder and chaos? In your manuscript you point in part to the type of this accidental family. Yes, Arkady Makarovich, you are a member of an accidental family, as opposed to our still-recent hereditary types, who had a childhood and youth so different from yours.
“I confess, I would not wish to be a novelist whose hero comes from an accidental family!
“Thankless work and lacking in beautiful forms. And these types in any case are still a current matter, and therefore cannot be artistically finished. Major mistakes are possible, exaggerations, oversights. In any case, one would have to do too much guessing. What, though, is the writer to do who has no wish to write only in the historical genre and is possessed by a yearning for what is current? To guess . . . and be mistaken.
“But ‘Notes’ such as yours could, it seems to me, serve as material for a future artistic work, for a future picture—of a disorderly but already bygone epoch. Oh, when the evil of the day is past and the future comes, then the future artist will find beautiful forms even for portraying the past disorder and chaos. It is then that ‘Notes’ like yours will be needed and will provide material—as long as they are sincere, even despite all that is chaotic and accidental about them . . . They will preserve at least certain faithful features by which to guess what might have been hidden in the soul of some adolescent of that troubled time—a not-entirely-insignificant knowledge, for the generations are made up of adolescents . . .”
NOTES
PART ONE
1. The princely family of Dolgoruky belonged to the oldest Russian nobility. Yuri Dolgoruky founded the princedom of Suzdal in the twelfth century.
2. At that time there were seven classes in the Russian gymnasium (high school), the seventh being the last. Graduates would generally be between nineteen and twenty years old.
3. Anton the Wretch, a novella by Dostoevsky’s old school friend D. V. Grigorovich (1822–1899), and Polinka Sachs, a novella by A. V. Druzhinin (1824–1864), were both published in the journal The Contemporary in 1847. The former portrays peasant life in the darkest colors; the latter, written under the influence of George Sand, tells of a loving husband who, when betrayed by his wife, grants her the freedom to marry his rival. Both are sentimental tales in the liberal taste of the period.
4. The Semyonovsky quarter in Petersburg was named for the illustrious Semyonovsky Guards regiment, which was stationed there.
5. In the table of fourteen civil ranks established by the emperor Peter the Great, the rank of privy councillor was third, equivalent to the military rank of lieutenant general.
6. Dostoevsky himself was sent to a boarding school run (in K. Mochulsky’s phrase) by “a poorly enough educated Frenchman” named Souchard. He stayed there for only a year, but the experience clearly left its mark on him. In his notes for the novel, he first uses the name Souchard and later alters it to Touchard.
7. The Senate in Petersburg also served as the highest Russian court; hence the opportunities for bribery.
8. The German romantic poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) stood, in Dostoevsky’s keyboard of references, for notions of the ideal, the “great and beautiful,” and a simplified struggle for freedom. Having loved Schiller’s works as a young man, Dostoevsky indulged in a good deal of indirect mockery of him in his later works.
9. The Summer Garden in Petersburg is on the left bank of the Neva, a short distance from the imperial Winter Palace. Copies of antique sculptures were placed in it, on the orders of the tsar Peter the Great (1672–1725), for the edification of the public that went strolling there.
10. Lambert, being French, is a Catholic. In the Catholic Church at that time, first communion followed and was directly connected with confirmation in the faith, and was received at the age of ten or twelve, usually accompanied by a family celebration. (In the Orthodox Church, communion is given immediately after baptism to infants as well as adults.)
11. The relics of a saint are “revealed” when they start producing miracles of one sort or another—giving off a sweet fragrance, healing the sick, and so on.