Kindest and good friend, Apollon Nicolayevich, first of all I thank you, my dear friend, most deeply for the execution of all my commissions which have turned out so troublesome, and in doing which you have had to run about so much. Forgive me for worrying you; but indeed you are the only man on whom I can rely (which is no excuse at all for worrying you). Secondly—I thank you for your greetings, congratulations, and wishes of happiness for us three. You are right, my good friend, you have described from nature the feeling of being a father, and you have taken your beautiful words from nature: all is perfectly true. I have had, now almost for a month, feelings utterly new and hitherto completely unknown to me from the moment when I saw my Sonia for the first time up to this minute when we have just been washing her, by our common efforts, in the tub. Yes, an angelic soul has flown into our house too. But I shall not describe to you my sensations. They grow and develop with each day.
Now, my dear friend: last time when I wrote to you in such anxiety, I forgot (!) to tell you that as far back as last year in Dresden, Anya and I had agreed (and she scolded me terribly for having forgotten to tell you) that you are to be Sonia’s godfather. My dear friend, don’t refuse! It is now nearly ten months since we decided on it. If you refuse, it will bring Sonia unhappiness: the first godfather and he refused! But you will not refuse, dear friend. I add, that this will not cause you the least possible trouble; and as to our becoming related by compaternity—so much the better. The godmother is Anna Nicolayevna. Did she tell you? For the love of God let me know your answer as soon as possible—for it is needed for the christening. It is now nearly a month, and she is not yet christened! (Could it be like that in Russia?) And your goddaughter (I am sure she is your goddaughter)—I inform you is very good-looking in spite of the fact that she takes after me impossibly, even ridiculously to the verge of strangeness even. I would not believe it if I did not see it myself. The baby is only about a month old; but she has perfectly my expression of face, my complete physiognomy,—up to the wrinkles on her forehead,—she lies in her cot as though she were composing a novel! I don’t speak about the features. Her forehead is like mine, even strangely so. It should of course follow that she is not very good-looking (for I am a beauty only in the eyes of Anna Gregorevna—and seriously a beauty to her, I tell you!). But you, an artist yourself, know excellently well that it is possible to look exactly like a plain person, and yet to be very lovely. Anna Gregorevna is extremely keen on your being godfather. She loves you and Anna Ivanovna very much and respects you boundlessly.
You are too much of a prophet: you prophesy that now that I have new cares I shall become an egoist, and this, unfortunately (since anything else was impossible), has come true. Imagine: all this month I have not written a single line! My God, how am I treating Katkov, my promises, my words of honour, my obligations! I was incredibly glad when, because of my confession that I might be late in view of my wife’s confinement, the Russky Viestnik announced at the end of Part I of my novel, that the continuation would follow in the April, not in the March number. But, alas! even for getting it ready for the April number only twenty days remain now (I am awfully behind!), and not a single line is written. To-morrow I am writing to Katkov to apologise, but they can’t make a fur coat out of my promises. And yet I must manage to have it ready for the April number, although the time is so short. And meanwhile, apart from all the rest, all my existence (as regards money) depends on them. In truth a desperate position! But what can I do: the whole month has passed in extraordinary fears, troubles and anxieties. And I have not slept for whole nights on end, not only on account of moral anxieties, but because I could not help myself. And with epilepsy it is awful. My nerves are upset now to the last degree. March here was disgustingly bad, with snow and frost, almost as bad as in Petersburg. Anna Gregorevna was terribly upset physically (don’t for the world tell Anna Nicolayevna, for she will imagine God knows what. Simply that Anya could not recover for a long time, and added to this, she nurses the child herself). She has little milk. We also use the bottle. Still the baby is very healthy (touch wood!). And Anya is beginning to go out for walks. It is now the third day of wonderful sunny weather and the first shoots of green. I can hardly recover yet from all this. Then there’s the awful trouble,—money. They have sent us 300 roubles. This, owing to the exchange, is 1025 francs. But we have almost nothing left. Expenses have increased, we had to pay our former debts, to redeem the pawned things, and exactly three weeks from now great expenses are imminent on account of our having to move into other rooms (they are turning us out of these because of the baby’s crying), and, besides, certain payments must be made,—terrible! And we have also, beginning from to-day, to exist for at least two months before we can hope to receive any more money from the Russky Viestnik. But I can get nothing from the R.V. until I have delivered Part II, and when am I going to write it? Again perhaps in 18 days, the time it took me to write the instalment published in the January number? Your disposition of the money was very good. And though it is too bad of me to trouble you, do send me the remaining 25 roubles here, to Geneva, if possible at once. The last extreme of need! (N.B. Simply put a 25-rouble note in a letter, register it, so that it shall not be lost, and send it to my address.)
I am very glad that you handed over to Pasha 50, and not 25 roubles. That is good. I am awfully glad that he has got employment. My dear friend, look him up, if only now and then! When I write to him, I shall tell him that, having learnt from you that you have given him 25 roubles on credit, I have already repaid you. But I want to know this: isn’t Pasha going to write me anything and congratulate me about Sonia? Others have congratulated me: you, Strahov, the Moscow people, Petersburg friends of Anna Gregorevna; but Pasha—not only have I received nothing from him lately, but I have had no reply to the letter I sent him about six weeks ago, addressed to you (did you receive it? Somehow you did not mention it). On this point, extremely important: After all I do not know whether he was in Moscow or not? Did he go to Katkov? It is very important for me to know. Remember, I sent Katkov a long letter of apology, solely on that account! I must know. Can’t you get to know the truth about it, my dear friend, for the love of Christ! (Emily Fiodorovna I have officially, solemnly notified that a daughter has been born to me; but nothing, no reply from her!) Moreover, on the previous occasion, she sent me no answer to my extremely important question about their flat and Alonkin the landlord. It surprises even me. Indeed it is quite disgustingly rude!
As regards my will and all your other advice, I have always been of exactly the same opinion myself. But, my friend, my sincere and devoted friend (perhaps my only one!), why do you consider me so good and generous? No, my friend, no, I am not so good as all that, and this troubles me. And Pasha—poor Marie Dmitrievna gave him into my charge on her deathbed! How could I desert him? (You yourself didn’t advise it.) No, no, I must help him, moreover, I love him sincerely; indeed for over ten years I brought him up in my house! He is like a son to me. We lived together. And to leave him to his own resources so young, and alone, how can I possibly do it? After all, however poor I may be, help him I must. True, he is a great lazybones; but in truth I myself, at his age, was perhaps even worse (I remember it). Now he should be supported. To leave a good and pleasant impression on his heart now will help him in his later development. And that he is now employed and works for himself,—I am awfully, awfully glad of it, let him do some work. And you I embrace and kiss as a brother for having gone to Rasin and secured the post for him there. … As for Emily Fiodorovna, there again my dead brother Misha is concerned. And indeed you do not know what he was to me—all my life, from my first conscious moments! No, you don’t know! Fedya is my godson, moreover he is a young man, who is earning his bread by hard work. And in his case, if only it is possible, I must help at times (for he is a young man; everything ought not to be thrown on his shoulders, it is too hard). And yourself, my dear friend, why do you make yourself out to be so practical and egotistical: didn’t you lend me 200 roubles and didn’t you lose nearly 2000 roubles by my brother Misha’s death and the failure of the review! Yet I should not have broached these subjects. At any rate, I consider your advice perfectly correct. And as for myself, there’s a very appropriate proverb: ‘Don’t boast when going to war.’ And I say this because I have been harping on my obligation to help and so on. And how can I tell what is going to happen to myself?
However ugly, however beastly living abroad has become to me, do you know that at times I think with fear of what will happen to my health when it pleases God to permit me to return to Petersburg? If my fits occur here so often,—what would it be like there? I am positively losing my mental faculties, for instance, my memory… All that you write about Russia, and especially your mood (rose-coloured), makes me very happy. It is perfectly true that it is not worth while paying attention to various particular cases: it is only the whole that should be considered, its impetus and aim, and all the rest is bound to come as part of the tremendous regeneration which is taking place under the present great Sovereign. My friend, you really look at things exactly as I do, and you have at last expressed what I was saying, saying aloud three years ago, at the time I was editing the review; but it was not understood, namely: that our constitution is the mutual love of the Monarch for the people and of the people for the Monarch. This principle of the Russian State, the principle of love not of strife (which I believe was first discovered by the Slavophils), is the greatest of all ideas, an idea on which much will be built. This idea we shall proclaim to Europe, which does not understand anything at all about it. Our wretched, uprooted tribe of clever ones, alas! was sure to end like that. They will die like that, they can’t be reborn. (Take Turgenev, now!) But the newest generation—it is there we have to look. (Classical education might be of great assistance. What is Katkov’s Lyceum?) While here abroad, with regard to Russia I have finally become a complete monarchist. If any one has done anything in Russia, it is obviously the Tsar alone. (But not on this account only, but simply because he is the Tsar, beloved by the Russian people, beloved for himself and because he is the Tsar. With us the people have given and give their love to every Tsar, and only in him do they finally believe. To the people it is a mystery, a priesthood, an anointment.) Our Westerners understand nothing about this; they pride themselves on basing themselves on facts, and they overlook the primary, the greatest fact of our history. I like your idea of the pan-Slav significance of Peter the Great. It is the first I have heard of this idea and it is a perfectly true one. But there: I read the Golos here. Terribly distressing facts are at times described in it. For instance, about the chaotic state of our railways (the newly constructed ones), about affairs in the Zemstvos, about the awful condition of the colonies. The dreadful misfortune is that we still have so few men of executive capacity. Talkers there are, but men who do things—you can count them on your fingers. Of course I’m not referring to administrators in high positions, but simply to officials of all kinds in general, a whole host of whom is needed, and who are not there. For the courts, for the juries, perhaps there are plenty of men. But what about the railways? And the other public services? It is a terrible conflict of new men and new demands with the old order. I do not speak of inspiring them with an idea: freethinkers we have in plenty, but Russian men are but few. The chief thing—the self-realisation of the Russian man in oneself—that is what is needed. And how greatly publicity helps the Tsar and all Russians, even the hostile publicity of the Westerners. I long for us to have political railways soon (the Smolensk-Kiev railway: as soon as possible), and also new guns as soon as possible! Why is Napoleon increasing his army, and thus running the risk of making himself unpopular with his people, at such a critical moment? The devil knows why. But it won’t end well for Europe. (I’m deeply convinced of this somehow.) Awkward, if we get mixed up in it. If they would only wait a couple of years. Nor is it Napoleon alone. Apart from Napoleon the future is threatening, and we must be prepared for it. Turkey is on its last legs; Austria is in much too abnormal a state (I only analyse the elements, but form no judgment); there is the damned problem of the proletariat, in its acute stage, in the West (which is not even mentioned in the politics of the day!), and, lastly, chiefly, Napoleon is an old man in indifferent health. He won’t live long. As long as he lives he will be involved in more failures, and the Buonapartes will become still more loathsome to the French, what will happen then? For this contingency Russia must prepare herself without fail and without delay; for it may come to pass very soon.
How glad I am that the Heir Apparent has revealed himself to Russia in such a good and noble manner, and that Russia testifies her hopes in him and her love for him, as to a Father. God grant that our Alexander live happily for another forty years. He alone has done for Russia almost more than all his predecessors taken together. And the most important thing is that he is so much loved. This is now the mainstay of the whole Russian movement; on it alone all regeneration is based. Oh, my friend, how I should love to come back, how sickening my life is here! A bad life. And, above all, my work does not go right. If only I could finish the novel satisfactorily, how good it would be! This is the beginning of my whole future. Anna Gregorevna does not feel homesick, and sincerely says she is happy; but I am nauseated. I go nowhere and see no one. And even if I had acquaintances I don’t think I should go to them, I have completely lost my bearings, and yet my work does not come off. At five o’clock every day I leave the house for two hours and go to the café to read Russian newspapers! I know no one here, and I’m glad of it. It is horrible to meet our clever ones. Poor! Insignificant! Rubbish, puffed up with self-love! Sh…! Loathsome! By chance I met Herzen in the street; we talked for ten minutes in a hostile-polite tone, mockingly, and then parted. No, I shan’t go. How far behind the times, how terribly backward they are, and they understand nothing! And puffed up, how terribly puffed up they are!
I read here greedily the announcements in the papers about the appearance of the numbers of the reviews and the lists of contents. How strange are the titles and lists of contents of publications like the Otechestvennya Zapiski! Yes, rags instead of flags, that is true! My dear friend, don’t give them anything, wait. And the question as to where to publish your things seems to worry you. Don’t be worried, my friend. I am writing hastily now, or I would have a good talk with you. I have an idea for you but its exposition would require a whole letter, and now I have no time. I will write soon. This idea I conceived apropos your ‘Sophia Alexeyevna.’ And believe me, it is serious, do not laugh! I will expound it to you. It is neither novel nor poem. But it is so deeply needed, it is so necessary, and so original and new and of such an urgent, Russian tendency, that you yourself will be surprised! I shall expound the programme to you. It is a pity I must do it in a letter and not do it in friendly talk. Through it you might become famous, and it is important that you should bring it out as a book, after having previously published a few fragments. The book should sell enormously. So you have finished your translation of the Apocalypse? And I thought you had given it up. Certainly it cannot possibly escape the ecclesiastical censorship, not possibly; but if you have translated perfectly accurately, then of course it will pass. I received a letter from Strahov. It made me happy. I want to answer him as soon as possible; but as he did not give his address (he forgot!) I shall answer him through you. And I shall ask you to let him have the letter.
My dear friend, do write to me more frequently. You can’t believe what your letters mean to me! To-day is already the third of April of the new style, and the 25th is the last day (absolutely the last) for the delivery of the novel, and I have not a line, not a single line written! Lord, what shall I do?
Well, good-bye, I kiss and embrace you. Anya greets you, and we both greet Anna Ivanovna.
Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.
PS. For the love of God, tell me everything you hear (if only you do hear) about The Idiot. I must, must, must know without fail! For the love of God! The finale of Part II—about which I wrote to you—is the same as that published at the end of Part I. And I relied on it so much! Though I still believe in the perfect fidelity of the character of Nastasya Filipovna. By the way, many little things at the end of Part I are taken from life, and certain characters are simply portraits, for instance, General Ivolgin and Kolya. But perhaps your opinion is quite true.