Dostoevsky (173 page)

Despite a social and public life that would have proved taxing even for a younger man, work on
The Brothers Karamazov
proceeded apace. Dostoevsky had sent Book 9 to Lyubimov in early January, and he sent Book 10 sometime between the end of March and early April. At the same time, whatever the status that Dostoevsky had now attained in Russian literary life, he was reminded of some of the embarrassments of his youthful literary début by a reference in the April issue of the liberal Westernizing journal
European Messenger
. This influential publication had been running a series of reminiscences of the 1840s by Annenkov, later published as
The Extraordinary Decade
—a book that takes its place just behind Herzen’s
My Past and Thoughts
as the most penetrating and insightful portrait of the period. Many pages are devoted to Belinsky, the central figure of that day, and the critic’s enthusiastic response to Dostoevsky’s first novel,
Poor Folk
, provides part of the story. But Annenkov, who was the closest Russian confidant of Turgenev and served as his literary factotum, could not resist paying back Dostoevsky for the deadly caricature of Turgenev in
Demons
and for the recent incident at the banquet. According to Annenkov, the young Dostoevsky
became so inflated with his newly acquired fame that he asked Nekrasov, the editor of the
Petersburg Almanac
, “to separate [
Poor Folk
] from all the other works by a special typographical sign, for example—borders. The novel was actually surrounded by such borders in the almanac.”
¹⁸

Incensed by this charge, Dostoevsky dashed off a letter to Suvorin, who a few days later printed a denial in his conservative Petersburg newspaper
New Time
(
Novoe Vremya
). After several other publicists joined in the fray, Dostoevsky ended the controversy by requesting Suvorin to print the following: “We have received a formal declaration from F. M. Dostoevsky that nothing similar to what was stated in the
European Messsenger
ever happened, nor could it have.”
¹⁹
Dostoevsky intended to reply at length in his
Diary
for 1881 since the gossip about “borders” had cast doubt on his account of his relations with Belinsky, and “if I do not object, they would say that [Annenkov’s version] was the correct one.”
²⁰
Dostoevsky “was so infuriated by Annenkov’s slander,” Anna writes, “that he resolved not to recognize him if he met him at the Pushkin festivities, and if Annenkov should approach him he would refuse to shake hands.”
²¹

The Pushkin festivities mentioned by Anna refer to the planned unveiling of a monument to Pushkin in Moscow and to a series of public receptions, speeches, and banquets celebrating Russia’s national poet. The prestige of the romantic and aristocratic Pushkin had been considerably damaged by the campaign carried on against him, and against art in general, by the radical publicists of the 1860s. Nonetheless, a large majority of educated Russians read and admired Pushkin, whose poems formed part of the school curriculum, and the idea of erecting a monument to him in Moscow had long been making the rounds. A subscription to raise funds became serious in 1871. After several competitions, the sculptor A. M. Opekushin was chosen to create the full-scale statue; its unveiling, along with the other planned events, was finally scheduled for June 5–9, 1880. Dostoevsky had set down a few thoughts for an article about Pushkin when, on April 5, he received a letter from Sergey Yuriev, chairman of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature (in charge of the preparations for the festivities). Yuriev had earlier asked Dostoevsky to contribute a new novel to his journal
Russian Thought
; this time he was approaching him for a contribution about Pushkin. Dostoevsky doubted that he would “be able to find the time to write anything,” but promised to keep
Russian Thought
in mind.
²²

The month of April was so crowded with social engagements that he found it impossible to supply
The Russian Messenger
with a new installment. “I am really prevented from writing here,” he wrote apologetically to Lyubimov.
The Karamazovs
are again to blame for that. So many people come to see me every day apropos of them, so many people . . . invite me to their homes—that I’m absolutely at my wit’s end and am now fleeing Petersburg!” Dostoevsky planned to leave for Staraya Russa “in a week, and in three weeks I will have the whole novel finished.”
²³

If he had been able to work uninterruptedly in Staraya Russa, he might have come closer to meeting the sanguine schedule outlined for his editor. On May 1, however, he received another letter from Yuriev, written on behalf of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, asking him “to honor the memory of the great poet” by speaking at one of the public sessions to take place after the unveiling of the monument.
²⁴
A private letter from Yuriev urged him to prefer the Moscow celebration to the one that would also take place in Petersburg, and he lists the names of other participants who would be present: Ivan Aksakov, Pisemsky, Ostrovsky, Turgenev. On May 4, at a meeting of the Slavic Benevolent Society, Dostoevsky (who had recently been elected vice president) was appointed the society’s representative to the Moscow festivities, and he accepted Yuriev’s invitation the very next day.
²⁵

On May 8, he was again the guest of Grand Duke Konstantin and read fragments from
The Brothers Karamazov
, including, at the request of his host, the confession of Zosima, which the grand duke considered one of the best pieces Dostoevsky had ever written. The tsarevna, all through the evening, “listened very attentively and was in ecstasy”; one of the ladies openly wept.
²⁶
Once this highly gratifying obligation had been fulfilled, the family left for Staraya Russa sometime between May 9 and 11.

¹
Quoted in P. Zaionchkovsky,
Krisis samoderzhaviya na rubezhe 1870–1880–kh godov
(Moscow, 1964), 148.

²
Letopis
,
zhizni i tvorchestvo F. M. Dostoevskogo
, ed. N. F. Budanova and G. M. Fridlender, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1995), 3: 379.

³
Ibid., 379.

⁴
Ibid.

⁵
The text of this address can be found in
PSS
, 30/Bk. 2: 47–48.

⁶
Biografiya
, 366; cited in I. Volgin,
Posledny god Dostoevskogo
(Moscow, 1986), 84.

⁷
Letopis
, 3: 381.

⁸
Ibid.

⁹
Ibid., 381–382.

¹⁰
Ibid.

¹¹
Cited from the
Diary
of A. S. Suvorin in Volgin,
Posledny god Dostoevskogo
, 141.

¹²
Letopis
, 384.

¹³
LN
86 (Moscow, 1973), 496.

¹⁴
Ibid.

¹⁵
Letopis
, 3: 384.

¹⁶
PSS
, 30/Bk. 1: 147–149; April 11, 1880.

¹⁷
Ibid.

¹⁸
Ibid., 335. A satirical poem about Dostoevsky, written jointly by Turgenev and Nekrasov, had circulated among the members of the Belinsky Pléiade of young writers during 1845–1846. It contained a jesting reference to a story of his that had been framed “with borders,” and the anecdote resuscitated by Annenkov turns the jeering thrust into fact.

¹⁹
Ibid., 155; May 14, 1880.

²⁰
PSS
, 27: 198.

²¹
Anna Dostoevsky,
Reminiscences
, trans. and ed. Beatrice Stillman (New York, 1975), 330.

²²
PSS
, 30/Bk. 1: 147; April 9, 1880.

²³
Ibid., 151–152; April 29, 1880.

²⁴
LN
86 (Moscow, 1973), 509.

²⁵
Ibid., 153–154; May 5, 1880.

²⁶
LN
, 137.

The Moscow Pushkin festival in the spring of 1880 has been remembered by posterity largely because of the sensation created by Dostoevsky’s impassioned apotheosis of the great poet. At the time, however, the event assumed considerable importance because of the tense and ominous social-political climate in the country, which imparted a political coloring to any large manifestation of public opinion. In this instance, the cream of the Russian intelligentsia gathered in the ancient capital (as well as in other major cities) to eulogize a poet who had incurred the displeasure of Nicholas I, had been sent into exile, and had close friends among the revolutionary Decembrists of 1825. Such a celebration was in itself unprecedented and, indeed, was felt as an implicit demand for a liberty of expression still lacking in Russian literature and society.

Even more, the initiative for this enterprise had come from private individuals (a group of Pushkin’s surviving classmates from the lycée in Tsarskoe Selo), and funds for the statue had been raised by private subscription. Eventually the project was approved and even patronized by the crown, and the Moscow Duma agreed to pay the expenses of all the invited guests; but participants did not feel they were taking part in any official function. Instead, as one observer put it, here “for the first time a social longing was displayed by us with such broad-ranging freedom. Those who attended felt themselves to be citizens enjoying a fullness of rights.”
¹

Moreover, the official acceptance of this independent endeavor was seen positively as the augury of a new era in the relations between the tsar and the intelligentsia. Indeed, as a testimony to the influence that the educated class had begun to exercise, Count Loris-Melikov instructed the government of Moscow not to require preliminary approval of the speeches to be given after the unveiling. “Here in Petersburg,” Dostoevsky complains to Yuriev, “at the most innocent literary reading . . . every line, even one written twenty years ago, [has to be] submitted . . . for advance permission for reading. . . . Will they really allow one to read something newly written without
someone’s
advance censorship?”
²
An atmosphere of expectation was created; perhaps even more concessions by the government would be forthcoming! What seemed to be a purely cultural event thus took on—as was usually the case in Russia, where no unfettered political discussion of any kind was possible—an important social-political sub-text. On a more personal level, this subtext was dramatized by the culmination of the ideological duel that Turgenev and Dostoevsky had been carrying on ever since the mid-1860s.

On May 19, Dostoevsky wrote to convey name day greetings to Pobedonostsev, and also to wish him “every wonderful success in your new labors” as head procurator of the Holy Synod, the council supervising the Russian Orthodox Church. Informing him of the impending trip to Moscow, Dostoevsky reveals some of the ideological dissensions that had begun to surface in the preparations for the great event. As it happens, he writes, “I’ve already heard in passing even in Petersburg that there is a clique raging there in Moscow . . . and that they are afraid of certain
reactionary
words that could be spoken by
certain people
at the sessions of the Lovers of Russian Literature.”
³
Dostoevsky, however, firmly declares: “I have prepared my speech about Pushkin, and precisely in the most
extreme
spirit of my (that is
our
, I make bold to thus express myself) convictions, and therefore I expect, perhaps, a certain amount of abuse . . . but I’m not afraid, and one should serve one’s cause, and I will speak without fear. The professors there are paying court to Turgenev, who is absolutely turning into a personal enemy of mine.”

In the background of these remarks is the attempt by the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature to ban Katkov from speaking. The committee of the society in charge of organizing the festivities was ideologically in league with the moderately liberal Westernizer orientation of influential professors at the University of Moscow, who felt reinforced by the presence of Turgenev. He had returned to Russia for the celebration and had been appointed an honorary member of the society. Turgenev and Katkov had long been enemies, and the latter had recently attacked the novelist for being in sympathy with the revolutionaries. In addition, Katkov had offended the intelligentsia as a whole by objecting to Loris-Melikov’s appeal for their collaboration, which he regarded as a first step toward a weakening of the autocrat’s power. “There is no need to seek support and aid from society,” he had written after the explosion in the Winter Palace. “Only discipline in state ranks, which will make everyone in them fear deviating from their duty and deceiving the supreme power, and patriotism in the educated spheres of society—that’s what’s needed.”
⁴
It was thus a simple matter for Turgenev to persuade the committee to blacklist Katkov, even though the latter was
a member of the society and had defended the value of Pushkin’s art against the attacks of the radical critics in the 1860s. An attempt was also made to blacklist Dostoevsky because of the disruptive incident at the dinner for Turgenev the previous year, but Dostoevsky had too many admirers, including the chairman of the society, Yuriev, for this effort to succeed.