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FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
By PETER LEITHART
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2011 Peter Leithart
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59555-409-3
Chapter One
FAINTING SOUL
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky slid his straight-backed, heavy wooden chair away from the table, swiveled sideways, and crossed his legs. He let out a satisfied sigh. Dinner was finished, and his wife Anna, and daughter Lyubov were clearing things away. His son Fedya was outside exploring the rocky banks of the river in the light of the setting sun. Dostoevsky was left at the table with his vodka and poet and friend Apollon Maikov.
"Thank you, Anna," Maikov said. Dostoevsky abstractedly nodded his assent.
Through the open window, they could hear the gentle murmur of the Pererititsa as it lazied past. A night of polishing and editing lay ahead of him, but Fyodor was not ready to move to his desk. He wanted to continue the argument that had begun at dinner, an argument about Russia. It was good preparation for the coming week, most excellent preparation.
"I am convinced," he told Maikov, "that Russia has been preserved for just this time. I tell you there is something in the Russian soul, something good."
"Turgenev has written ..." Maikov began.
"Turgenev! Turgenev! Don't quote Turgenev. You know he's become almost my personal enemy." Fyodor raised his voice. "What does he know of the Russian people? He has no sympathy with them. How can he? His tutors were French and Germans! He's been viewing us through a telescope for years, from his porch in Baden."
"Come, come, Fyodor! That is unfair." Maikov removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt front.
"No. I told him the same to his face. It is true, absolutely true. He has forgotten one of his fatherlands."
Maikov looked puzzled.
"We Russians have two fatherlands, Russia and Europe."
"You will offend both Turgenev and the Slavophiles with words like that."
Dostoevsky scoffed. "It is the simplest truth. We have two fathers—Vladimir is the Russian father, our Orthodox father, but then Peter is our second father, who gave us a second birth, our European father. We have two fathers and two fatherlands, and that is what makes Russia unique among all nations. It makes us a universal people."
"With two fathers, we are more likely monstrous."
Dostoevsky smiled, but he was too deep into the argument to let it diffuse. "This is what everyone misses, everyone. Both the devils and the old romantics, like Turgenev, miss it on one side, chasing every Western ghost. And the Slavophiles miss it on the other side. Unless we see that we have two fathers, we will never be the Russia we 're destined to be. There will always be the literary men on the one side, reading their Balzac and their Hugo and their Dickens and Marx and Engels, and the peasants on the other reading next to nothing at all, listening to folk tales and hiding from devils."
"But Tolstoy, of course. Tolstoy grasps the Russian character. He knows the heart of the Russian peasant."
"No! He knows nothing of them, despite his peasant airs and his beard and his boots. He's not a novelist or poet, not really. He's an historian, and he has no contact with the heart of Russia. Tolstoy is a count; Turgenev's family has wealth and social status. Even Gogol was the son of a gentry father and a mother who descended from Polish nobility. I am the son of a medical doctor, hardly a distinguished profession. Of course, far, far back my family is descended from the Lithuanian nobility, but we have declined far from that. Many of my ancestors served as priests in the Uniat church. Did you know that?"
Maikov nodded. "Your father did register you and your brother in the directory."
"Yes, but that was hard-won. He gained his noble status because of distinguished medical service. He wasn't born to it, nor was I. I didn't have any tutors, and my first adult acquaintances were my father's poor, pathetic patients at the hospital. I'd visit with them while they sat in the garden and listen to their stories."
Maikov knew Fyodor was in one of his aggressive moods, raging like Achilles. He took a sip of vodka and waited for him to continue. Dostoevsky poured water and took a drink. "Anna's veal was delicious, but it made me so thirsty." Dostoevsky coughed, setting off a deep rattle in his chest.
"Pushkin. Pushkin was different," he continued. "He was as highborn as any of them, and he knew the West and all their poets. But he knew the Russian heart and spoke directly to the Russian people." Fyodor stood, raised a hand, and adopted a pose.
"With fainting soul athirst for Grace,
I wandered in a desert place,
And at the crossing of the ways
I saw a sixfold Seraph blaze;
He touched mine eyes with fingers light
As sleep that cometh in the night."
"Yes, Pushkin was a prophet. He had his muse."
"Russia was his muse. Russia was his lady, the muse of all his desires. No one in Russia can see that. But that poem is my confession. I have seen that seraph and felt his burning touch. I know the Russian people, know them like no other writer today."
Fyodor rolled a cigarette, lit it, and sucked in the calming smoke. As smoke curled around his moustache, he asked, "Have I ever told you about Marey the peasant?"
* * *
"Darovoe! We 're going to Darovoe!"
Mikhail, Fyodor, and Andrey all sighed and stared out the window of the carriage as it clattered past the last houses of Moscow. Behind them lay the cramped rooms and low ceilings of the Dostoevsky home. Behind them was Dr. Dostoevsky, busy with his patients at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Dr. Dostoevsky was as stiff as his collar, with his military, monotonous, demanding regimen—up at six, lessons until lunch when they would have to stand erect to endure an exacting review from Father, lessons all afternoon, dinner at nine, prayers before the icons, bed, then up at six and the whole joyless round again and again. Behind this regimen were all the suppressed tensions that simmered beneath the surface of Dostoevsky propriety. Behind them were Father's irritable rages, his tirades at the slightest error in Latin or arithmetic. He never hit them, but his insults were painful. "Sluggards and fools," he would roar, and Fyodor's heart would whirl in confusion—eager to please, resentful, rebellious, then guilty for his resentfulness and bitterness, all at once. Sometimes he wanted to disappear, or die.
In good weather, Dr. Dostoevsky took his children for a walk in the evening, but even then Father frowned sternly if they began to run or wrestle or behave in any manner un befitting to respectability and family honor. Home in Moscow, Fyodor stayed indoors most of the time, and he never ventured out without his father.
But now they were going to Darovoe, the Dostoevsky country estate. There a boy could stretch his legs, run, roam, explore. There he could be free. No wonder the boys greeted every trek to Darovoe with ecstatic excitement.
Life in Moscow was not without its joys, Fyodor thought as he listened to the bells jingling on the horses' harness. Often it was happy. Mother made it happy. Mother was with them in the carriage to Darovoe.
With her natural gaiety, kindness, and compassion, Marya Fyodorovna Dostoevsky made up for what her strict, anxious husband lacked. She, too, was eager to visit Darovoe. Since her husband had bought the property the previous year, in 1831, she had found it a place where she could be useful. She was heartbroken at the living conditions of the peasants on the estate, and she did all she could—too much, her husband scolded—to ease their lot. She provided seed for the peasants to plant and then dug a canal to make it easier for the peasants to get water. She enlisted her sons in the same ministry, sending Fyodor to fetch water for a woman who had just had a baby or to help gather firewood for an injured peasant.
Fyodor was looking thoughtfully across the carriage at his mother. "Tell us again how you and Father met," he said.
Mother smiled and reached over to smooth her son's gingery hair. "It's not much of a story, Fyodor. Our families arranged it all ahead of time. The first time we met was the day our families decided to betroth us."
"You weren't in love when you married, then?" Mikhail asked.
"We barely knew each other."
"But you love him now, don't you?" Andrey butted in.
Marya blushed. Mikhail, her husband, was a difficult man, too hard on the children, too stingy with his servants. But he was a good man, a pious man, who believed firmly that God was with him and would preserve him and the family. Years after their wedding, his letters to her when they were separated still left her breathless. "Good-bye, my soul, my little dove, my happiness, joy of my life, I kiss you until I am out of breath." She liked to respond in kind. "My sweetheart, my angel, my only wish is to have you visit me; you know that it's the greatest holiday for me, the greatest pleasure in my life when you're with me."
"Yes, I love him now."
Fyodor felt better. If Mother loved Father, he must be good. She could only love a good man. If she loved him, she made him good. Fyodor thought again about Father's softer side. He had taught the boys to read with a book of Bible stories that communicated his own sturdy Orthodox Christianity, and all the Dostoevsky children knew Christ and the gospels from their earliest childhood. When Fyodor read through the book of Job for the first time, it overwhelmed him with sorrow. It was one of the first books that ever made an impression on him, and he felt that when he read it, he received the seed of God into his heart. Every time he read it, the seed grew, and he felt as if he were gulping down a flood of grace.
Fyodor loved the evenings, after dinner, when Dr. Dostoevsky would take out one of Ann Radcliffe 's haunting tales that made Fyodor's hair stand on end. Sometimes Father read from history books or travel writings, and Fyodor imagined traveling in distant lands. Father's demanding educational methods instilled in Fyodor and Mikhail both a love of reading and a passion for theater, art, and poetry. Father taught him to love Pushkin, terrifying him with the tale of the Bronze Horseman coming to life to chase Eugene through the dark streets of Petersburg, chasing him to his death; moving him to tears with the story of Aleko joining the gypsies out of love for Zemfira or Onegin's sad love for Tatiana; thrilling him with Pushkin's incomparable lyrics. Fyodor would never forget the thrill of watching Schiller's The Robbers with his family when he was ten, the very same year his father bought Darovoe. Father gave him the Walter Scott novels that he would devour during one summer at Darovoe.
"Darovoe! We 're going to Darovoe!" The word was an enchantment, a magic land from a fairy tale.
"I can't wait to see all the birds and bugs. I saw a hedgehog last year, and squirrels, and I love the smell of dead leaves. And I like the berries too, and I found some mushrooms," Andrey gushed.
"I can't wait to explore Brykovo," Fyodor said out loud.
"Fedya's wood, you mean," Mikhail countered.
Fyodor did not deny that the wood was his. When in Darovoe, the Dostoevskys stayed in a three-room bungalow with a thatched roof and clay walls, nestled in a large and shady linden grove. On the far side of the garden from the cottage in Darovoe was a dense birch wood, gloomy and wild, riddled with ravines. It was thick, verdant, shadowy. Fyodor loved to walk and run there, though the wood filled him with terror as much as it drew him in. He could not think of Brykovo without a shiver, his heart a strange mixture of pleasure, childish curiosity, and terror.
Fyodor snuggled into the carriage seat and watched the fields pass. The first time he came to Darovoe, they were cutting hay. He had watched the long rows of sharp scythes gleaming all together at every sweeping movement of the haymakers and then disappearing like fiery snakes, just as if they were hiding somewhere, and the grass, cut at the root, flying on one side in dense, thick piles and laid in long, straight furrows.
Darovoe! We're going to Darovoe! he thought dreamily. The words of Pushkin ran through his head, a poem his father had taught him.
With fainting soul athirst for Grace,
I wandered in a desert place,
And at the crossing of the ways
I saw a sixfold Seraph blaze;
He touched mine eyes with fingers light
As sleep that cometh in the night:
And like a frightened eagle 's eyes,
They opened wide with prophecies.
Then he was asleep.
* * *
When the carriage lurched to a stop in front of the Dostoevsky home, Fyodor awoke. He carried parcels into the house and helped Mother with the little ones. Then, as soon as he could, he raced across the field toward Fedya's wood, his wood. As he walked along the edge of the forest, it seemed as if someone were calling him in, beckoning him into the darkness, where the smooth stumps of trees were scattered blackly and thickly. It was deathly silent, and he felt an obscure fear at the uncanniness of the spot. Carefully, stealthily, he walked farther in, into the darkness, into the silence.
Suddenly he heard a voice. This was not the forest speaking to him, but a human voice, and when he heard it his blood froze. "Wolf!" it warned. Brykovo was a refuge for snakes, wolves, and other wild animals.
In a frenzy of fear, Fyodor dashed out of the forest and into the field. At the far end of the field was an old peasant plowing. It was Marey, one of the peasants on the Dostoevsky property. Fyodor ran straight for him and stood panting while Marey pulled his filly to a stop.
"I heard a shout ... Someone just shouted, 'Wolf,'" the boy babbled.
Marey looked around and, seeing nothing threatening, reassured him. "There 's no wolf; you're just hearing things."
He stretched out his hand and stroked Fyodor's cheek.
"Never mind, now; there 's nothing to be afraid of. Christ be with you. Cross yourself, lad."
Fyodor was too frightened to cross himself. The corners of his mouth were trembling, and this particularly struck Marey. He quietly stretched out a thick, earth-soiled finger with a black nail and gently touched it to the boy's trembling lips.
"Now, now." He smiled with a broad, almost maternal smile. "Lord, what a dreadful fuss. Dear, dear, dear! Here, take a drink." Marey slung the skin of water from his neck and held it to Fyodor's lips. He gulped it down.
At last Fyodor was convinced there was no wolf and that he had imagined hearing the cry of "Wolf." It had been such a clear and distinct shout. Two or three times before, he remembered, he had imagined such cries (not only about wolves).
"Well, I'll be off now," Fyodor said, making it seem like a question and looking at him shyly.
"Off with you, then, and I'll keep an eye on you as you go. Can't let the wolf get you!" Marey added, still giving Fyodor a maternal smile, "Well, Christ be with you, off you go." He made the sign of the cross over the boy, and Fyodor finally was able to cross himself. He set off, looking over his shoulder almost every ten steps. Marey continued to stand with his little filly, looking after Fyodor and nodding every time he looked around. Fyodor felt a little ashamed at taking such a fright, but he went on, still with a good deal of fear of the wolf, until he had gone up the slope of the gully to the first threshing barn. Here the fear vanished entirely, and the family dog Volchok came dashing out to meet him. With Volchok he felt totally reassured, and he turned toward Marey for the last time. He could no longer make out his face clearly, but he felt that the peasant was still smiling kindly at him and nodding. Fyodor waved, and Marey returned the wave and urged on his little filly.
"Gee-up," came his distant shout, and his little filly once more started drawing the wooden plow.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY by PETER LEITHART Copyright © 2011 by Peter Leithart. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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