I am absolutely delighted by your opinion and shall certainly write without waiting for your long letter, my dearest and precious friend Apollon Nicolayevich. (But remember, remember, dear man, that you promised me a long letter soon!) Firstly, I thank you for your thought about me and my interests. [Note: The letter then enters into details about a will made by Dostoevsky’s aunt which are omitted here.]
Next year (even if I have to go to the debtors’ prison) I must return to Russia. Yes, things have now taken such a turn that it’s better for me to sit in the debtors’ prison in Russia than to remain abroad. My health is quite good, leaving aside my fits, and I can bear all kinds of trouble; but if I were to remain here a year longer, I should be surprised if I were able to write anything; I don’t mean write it well, but write it at all—I’ve got so out of touch with Russia. I feel it. Anna Gregorevna also longs for Russia, I can see it. Besides, the loss of one child (a child such as I have never seen, so strong, beautiful, so full of understanding and feeling) was due solely to the fact that we could not fall in with the foreign way of feeding and rearing babies. If we lose the one which is expected, we both shall fall into real despair. Anna Gregorevna expects her confinement in three weeks at the latest. [Note: The second child, Lubov or Aimee, was born at Dresden, on September 14, 1869.] I am terribly afraid for her health. Her first confinement she bore courageously. This time it is a completely different thing: she is seedy all the time, and besides she feels nervous and anxious; she’s become impressionable and, added to this, she’s seriously afraid of dying in childbirth (when she remembers the pains of the first childbirth). Such fears and anxieties are truly dangerous in natures which are not timid and weak, and therefore I am very anxious. By the way: my wife greets you and your wife affectionately. She remembers you often and passionately, she thanks you for your congratulations on my novel, and we decided, eight months ago, to ask you to stand godfather again. Pray, Apollon Nicolayevich, do not refuse; it is our great fixed desire. (The godmother as before is to be Anna Nicolayevna, whom you know,—my wife’s mother.)
In general I am having a very worrying time and an awful lot of troubles; nevertheless I have to sit down to write—for the Zarya [The Eternal Husband], and then begin a long thing for the Russky Viestnik [The Possessed]. … It is eight months since I wrote anything. I shall certainly start writing in a fever; but what will happen later? Ideas I have of some sort; but I need Russia.
Of course I know better than you how you spend the summer, and I knew beforehand that you would not write to me before the autumn. Yet there was one point about which I did expect to receive two lines of information from you. I don’t mean it as a reproach. It was with regard to Basunov and the publication of The Idiot,—simply a matter of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; I did not even dare dream of putting on you, my dear man, the whole burden of the business; and it wouldn’t have been decent on my part to trouble you in such a way. Still, just the ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ with Basunov’s views, would have been interesting; though I am not very keen on selling the work now. Later on—it may perhaps suit me better—and apart from this, in any case, I now have other aims and intentions; for, come what may, I have decided to return to Russia next year.
One more favour, my dear friend! Write me a word about Pasha! I am in anguish and torment, thinking and pondering over him. I know he has his salary—if only he continues his work; but I should like to help him awfully. At the present moment I haven’t a penny to spare; but in a month or five weeks I shall send my story to the Zarya, which, owing to its length, will, I believe, fetch more than I’ve had in advance from the Zarya. Then I shall again be able to give Pasha a small sum (a little is better than nothing). God knows how much I shall need money myself by that time. The Dostoevskys have probably received some money and will not need help from me for some time. Write to me about that, my dear friend. Write to me also about yourself. Write me the promised long letter. I think by the time this letter reaches Petersburg you will have returned from the country.
I press your hand firmly, I greet your wife. Do you know, at times I have an idea that we have lost touch with one another much more than we think, and that it is already difficult to communicate our ideas fully in letters.
Wholly and ever your F. Dostoevsky.