My dear and good friend, Apollon Nicolayevich, the time has come, at last, when I can write you a couple of pages! What have you thought of me? That I have forgotten you? I know you won’t think that. Believe me: I have not had a single hour of time; I mean literally. I have forgotten all. What is my poor Pasha doing; to whom I have sent no money now for two months? [Note: Dostoevsky’s stepson, Pavel Alexandrovich Isayev, the son of his first wife by her first marriage.] (I have not had, literally, a farthing to send him!) I write to you and shall describe everything, and shall await your answer with morbid impatience. Being in the dark is killing me.
And as for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not know! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture. Having received in advance from the Russky Viestnik so much money (Horror! 4500 roubles), I fully hoped in the beginning of the year that poesy would not desert me, that the poetical idea would flash out and develop artistically towards the end of the year, and that I should succeed in satisfying every one. Moreover, this seemed to me the more likely inasmuch as many creative ideas are always flashing through my brain and my soul, and being conceived. But then these are only flashes, and they need a complete realisation, which invariably comes unexpectedly and all of a sudden. It is impossible, however, to calculate when it is going to come. Only afterwards when one has received a complete image in one’s heart can one start artistic composition. And then one may even calculate without mistake.
Well: all through the summer and all through the autumn I selected various ideas (some of them most ingenious), but my experience enabled me always to feel beforehand the falsity, difficulty, or ephemerality of this or that idea. At last I fixed on one and began working, I wrote a great deal; but on the 4th of December (new style) I threw it all to the devil. I assure you that the novel might have been tolerable; but I got incredibly sick of it just because it was tolerable, and not positively good. I did not want that. Well, what was I to do? The 4th of December! And meanwhile the conditions of our existence can be described as follows.
Did I tell you, I don’t remember (indeed, I remember nothing), that, finally, when all my means had come to an end, I wrote to Katkov asking him to send me one hundred roubles a month? [Note: Editor and publisher of the monthly review Russky Viestnik.] I believe I did tell you. He agreed and began sending punctually. But in my letter to Katkov, thanking him, I confirmed positively, on my honour, the assurance I had given him that he should have the novel, and that in December I would send a considerable part of it to the office. (I promised the more readily, because the writing had gone well and so much had been written!) After that I wrote to him saying that my expenses were extraordinary and asking whether he could send me out of the agreed sum (500 roubles) one instalment of 200 instead of 100 (for December). His consent and the money came in December, just at the moment when I had destroyed the novel. What was I to do? All my hopes were shattered. (I had realised at last that all my real hopes are set on my work and writing novels, that, were I to write a decent novel, I could pay off my debt to the Editor, and to you, send a biggish sum to Pasha and to Emily Fiodorovna [Note: The widow of Dostoevsky’s brother, Mihail Mihailovich.], and myself be able to live. Were I, however, to write a really good novel,—I could sell the book-rights and manage to get some money, pay half or two-thirds of my debts and return to Petersburg.) But everything went smash. On receiving the 200 roubles from Katkov, I confirmed my promise that the novel would arrive without fail in time for the January number; I regretted that the first part would reach the editorial office late. But I promised it without fail for January 1st (old style), and I begged him not to bring out the January number of the Russky Viestnik without my novel (as the review never comes out before the middle of the month).
After that (since all my future turned on this) I began tormenting myself with thinking out a new novel. The old one I would not go on with for the world. I could not. I thought from the 4th till the 18th December (old style) inclusive. On the average, I fancy I turned out six plans (at least six) every day. My head became a mill. How it was I didn’t go off my head, I don’t understand. At last on December 18th I sat down to write the new novel; on the 5th January (new style) I sent off to the Editor five chapters of Part I (about five printed sheets) with a letter in which I promised to send the remaining two chapters of Part I on January 10th (new style). Yesterday, the 11th, I despatched those two chapters and so have delivered the whole of Part I, about six or six and a half printed sheets.
The first parcel they ought to have received before December 30th (old style), and the second they will get by January 4th; consequently, if they like they can still publish Part I in the January number. Part II (of which of course I have not yet written a line) I gave my word to send to the Editor by February 1st (old style), punctually and unfailingly.
Do understand, my friend; how could I have thought of writing letters to any one, and there is the further question, what could I have written about? And therefore, like the humane man you are, understand, and, as a friend, forgive me my enforced silence. Besides, the time itself was a very hard one.
Now about the novel, so as to make an end of that. In the main I myself cannot tell what the thing I sent off is like. But as far as I can form an opinion—it is not very ship-shape and not at all effective. I have long been troubled by a certain idea, but I have been afraid to make a novel of it; for the idea is too difficult, and I am not ready for it, although the idea is perfectly alluring and I love it. That idea is to depict a thoroughly good man. In my opinion, there can be nothing more difficult than this, above all in our time. Certainly you will absolutely agree with this. At one time this assumed a partial creative form; but only a partial one, when a complete one was needed. My desperate position alone compelled me to make use of this abortive idea. I took my chance as at roulette: ‘Perhaps the idea will develop under the pen!’ That is unpardonable.
On the whole the plan has been created. Details occur in the subsequent development, which tempt me very much and keep up the ardour in me. But the whole? But the hero? For the whole turns on the figure of the hero. So it has posited itself. I am obliged to posit a figure. Will it develop under the pen? And imagine what horrors presented themselves: it turned out that besides the hero there was also a heroine, consequently two heroes! And apart from these heroes there are two more characters—absolutely front-rank characters—that is to say, nearly heroes. (Subsidiary characters, to whom I am greatly in debt—a great multitude besides, the novel is in eight parts.) Out of the four heroes—two are firmly outlined in my soul, one is not yet outlined at all, and the fourth, the principal, the first—is extraordinarily faint. Perhaps in my heart he dwells firmly enough but he is terribly difficult. At any rate I should need twice as much time (this is a minimum) in order to write it.
The first part, in my opinion, is weak. But it seems to me there is still hope for it: the hope is in this, that nothing is yet compromised and that the subsequent parts are capable of satisfactory development. (At least I hope they are!) Part I is, essentially, a mere introduction. One thing is necessary: that it should arouse a certain curiosity about what is going to follow. But of this I positively can’t judge. I have one reader only—Anna Gregorevna [Dostoevsky’s wife]; she likes it very much; but she is no judge in my business. In Part II everything must be definitely posited (but still far from being explained). Then there will be one scene (one of the vital ones), but how is it going to turn out? Yet I have it written in the rough, and well.
On the whole all this is still in the future; but from you I expect a strict judgment. Part II will decide everything: it is the most difficult; but write to me also about the first part (although I know in my heart that it is not good, write to me nevertheless). Besides, I implore you, let me know immediately the Russky Viestnik is out whether my novel is published there? I am still terribly afraid it may have arrived too late. And that it should appear in January is to me of the utmost necessity. Let me know, for the love of God, let me know instantly, even if you send only two lines.
When I sent Katkov Part I, I told him almost exactly the same as I have told you about my novel. The novel is called The Idiot. Yet no man can judge himself, especially when he is hot from the work. Perhaps Part I also is not so bad. If I have not developed the principal character, this was necessary by the laws of my whole scheme. That is why I await your opinion with such eager impatience. But enough about the novel. All the work I have done since the 18th of December has put me into such a fever that I can neither think nor speak of anything else. Now I’ll say a few words about our life here from the time I left off writing to you.
My life certainly is work. But we have this to the good that, thanks to the monthly receipt of a hundred roubles, we are in want of nothing. Anna Gregorevna and I live modestly, but quite comfortably. But expenses are impending and a small sum, if only a very small one, must always be kept in reserve. In a month and a half Anna Gregorevna (who bears up excellently) is going to make me a father. You realise what expenses are impending. But during that period I shall ask for 200 roubles per month, and the Editor will send it. I have already sent him the equivalent of nearly a thousand roubles. And by February 5th I shall have sent the equivalent of another 1000 (and perhaps better stuff, more solid, more effective); consequently I am entitled to ask for a somewhat larger sum. By the way, my dear fellow, but for the destruction of the novel, I could certainly have paid you what you lent me by the New Year. But now I ask you to wait another couple of months; for I can’t ask the Editor for a considerable sum until I have delivered Part II. But then I will pay you without fail. But my chief, but my most terrible obsession is the thought of what is happening to Pasha? My heart bleeds and the thought of him, added to all my literary torments in December, drove me simply to despair! What is he doing? In November and in December I sent him no money; but even before November he had left off writing to me. With the last allowance I made to him (60 roubles from Katkov), sent through you, I wrote him a long letter, and also asked him to make an inquiry, very important to me, and quite easy for him. I implored him to answer me. Not a single line from him. For the love of God, do give me some news of him. Does he hate me, does he? What for, why? Is it because I strained my resources to the very utmost to send him money and wait with burning impatience for the moment when I can send him more? It is impossible that he should hate me. I put it all down not to his heart, but to his lightmindedness and to his incapacity to make up his mind even to write a letter, just as he could not make up his mind to learn even the multiplication table till he was twenty.
He lived in the same house with Emily Fiodorovna and got into debt in spite of the fact that up to November I was sending him quite enough. It was through you that I paid that debt to Emily Fiodorovna. But how were they all in November and December? They themselves are in want. Fedya [Note: Fiodor—son of Mihail Mihailovich, Dostoevsky’s brother.] works, but he can’t keep them all, and I can’t send any money for a month (through you, of course; I implore you, my dear friend, it is to you that the money from Katkov will come. Don’t disdain my request and don’t be annoyed with them. They are poor. And I will be your servant all my life long, I will prove to you how much I value what you have done for me). To-morrow I shall write to Fedya. Are they still living in Alonkin’s house? I expressly asked Pasha to send me Alonkin’s Christian name and his father’s name (I forgot it) so that I could write to him. Alonkin trusts me, but he will turn them out of the flat, if he does not hear from me; since I had made myself responsible to him for it. Neither from Pasha, nor from Emily Fiodorovna have I had an answer about the man’s Christian name and his father’s name. And how can I write a letter to Alonkin without that? He is a merchant, he will be offended.
But perhaps I may be able to send them money before; although I am in awful need of money in expectation of my wife’s confinement. Although we rub along without denying ourselves the prime necessities, yet our things are constantly being pawned. Every time I receive money I redeem them; but towards the end of the month we pawn them again. Anna Gregorevna is my true helper and comforter. Her love to me is boundless; although there is a great deal of difference in our characters. (She sends her best greetings to you and to Anna Ivanovna [Maikov’s wife]. She loves you awfully because you value her mother, whom she adores. She values you both very highly, you and Anna Ivanovna, and esteems you deeply, with sincere, with the sincerest feeling.)
Above all we have suffered real discomfort in Geneva from the cold. Oh if you only knew, what a stupid, dull, insignificant, savage people it is! It is not enough to travel through as a tourist. No, try to live there for some time! But I can’t describe to you now even briefly my impressions: I have accumulated too many. Bourgeois life in this vile republic has reached the nec plus ultra. In the administration, and all through the whole of Switzerland—there are parties and continuous squabbles, pauperism, terrible mediocrity in everything. A workman here is not worth the little finger of a workman of ours. It is ridiculous to see and to hear it all. The customs are savage; oh, if you only knew what they consider good and bad here. Their inferiority of development: the drunkenness, the thieving, the paltry swindling, that have become the rule in their commerce! Yet they have some good traits which after all place them immeasurably above the Germans. (In Germany I was above all struck by the stupidity of the people: they are infinitely stupid, they are immeasurably stupid.) Yet with us—even Nicolay Nicolayevich Strahov [Note: Dostoevsky’s friend and biographer.], a man of high intellect, even he does not want to understand the truth: ‘The Germans,’ he says, ‘have invented gunpowder.’ But it is their life that settled it for them! And we at that very time were forming ourselves into a great nation, we checked Asia for ever, we bore an infinity of sufferings, we managed to endure it all, we did not lose our Russian idea, which will renew the world, but we strengthened it; finally, we endured the German, and yet after all our people is immeasurably higher, nobler, more honest, more naïve, abler; full of a different idea, the highest Christian idea, which is not even understood by Europe with her moribund Catholicism and her stupidly self-contradictory Lutheranism. But I shan’t go on about that! But it is so difficult for me to live without Russia, I have such a yearning for the country that I am positively wretched! I read the Moscowskya Viedomosti and Golos, every number to the very last letter! Good luck to the Golos for its new policy. I could say much, a great deal, to you, my friend; and what a mass of things have accumulated! But perhaps this year I shall embrace you. But I await your letters without fail. For the love of God, do write, my dear fellow. In my gloomy and tedious isolation—this is my sole comfort. Anna Gregorevna finds herself happy because she is with me. But I need you also, I need also my country.
In Switzerland there are still enough forests, there are still on its mountains incomparably more forests than there are in other countries of Europe, although they are diminishing terribly with each year. And now imagine: five months in the year there is awful cold and bises (north winds breaking through the chain of the mountains). And for three months almost the same winter as we have. Everybody shivers from the cold, they don’t take off their flannels and cotton-wool (they have no public baths—imagine now the uncleanliness to which they are accustomed); they don’t provide themselves with winter clothes, they run about almost in the same clothes as in the summer (and flannel alone is quite insufficient for such a winter), and with all this—not a grain of understanding how to improve their houses! Why, what use is a fireplace burning coal or wood, even if you were to keep it going all day long? And to keep it going all the time costs two francs a day. And what a lot of wood is consumed;—even then there’s no warmth. Why, if they had only double windows—then even with an open fireplace it might be tolerable! I won’t ask them to introduce stoves; then all these forests could be saved. In twenty-five years’ time nothing will be left of them. They live like veritable savages! But still they can put up with things! In my room, even when heated to the extreme, it is only 5° Centigrade (five degrees of warmth)! I sat in my overcoat, and in that cold waited for money, pawned things and thought out the plan of the novel—isn’t it pleasant? They say that in Florence this winter there were nearly 10 degrees of cold. In Montpellier there were 15° Centigrade. In Geneva the cold did not rise higher than 8°; but still it is just as bad, if the water in the room freezes. Now I have lately changed my rooms, and we have now two nice rooms, one always cold, the other warm. Since therefore it is constantly 10° or 11° in the warm room life is tolerable. I have written so much, but have not managed to say anything! That is why I don’t like letters. The chief thing—I am awaiting a letter from you. For the love of God write as soon as you can: a letter to me, in my present depression, will have almost the value of a good deed. Yes, I have forgotten to ask you: don’t tell any one what I have written you about the novel, for the time being. I don’t want it to reach the Russky Viestnik by any chance; for I have told them a fib, having said that I had written a good deal in the rough and that I am now only reshaping and copying it. I shall manage to do it and—who knows?—perhaps on the whole it will turn out not a bad novel. But again about the novel; I tell you—I have gone mad about it.
My health is very satisfactory. I have fits only very rarely, and now it is two and a half or three months on end since I had any. My sincerest greetings to your parents. Remember me also to Strahov when you see him. And tell him to remember me to Averkiev and Dolgomostiev, particularly to Dolgomostiev. Haven’t you met him? I embrace and kiss you. Your true and loving
F. Dostoevsky.
PS. My particular greetings to Anna Ivanovna. I have had a letter from Yanovsky. He is a very good man, at times wonderful. I love him deeply.