Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky

4. Resurrection

51 C H A P T E R 4 Resurrection The Shatov episode commences an overcoming of Slavophil ideology, and with the Kirillov episode is begun an overcoming of nihilism, both of which will be accomplished in The Brothers Karamazov (1880). The serenity of the last novel is far removed from Demons. The spirit of Stavrogin breathes through the vengeful caricatures which are sprinkled throughout the latter narrative, for example, that of the elder Verkhovensky or that of the writer Karmazinov, in whom it is not difficult to recognize Turgenev, the longtime literary enemy. The rancors accumulated since Dostoevsky’s literary debut come up to the surface. Some of the utterances of Demons come from Belinsky himself, and we find them also in the correspondence. This critic avowed himself ready, for example, “in order to make even perhaps only a fraction of humanity happy, to destroy the rest by iron and by fire.” He professed a radical atheism: “I don’t see in the words ‘God’ and ‘religion’ anything but obscurantism, shadows , chains, and instruments of torture,” he wrote to Herzen in 1845. Feodor Mikhailovich, though horrified by his attacks against Christ, was profoundly marked by his social messianism. The novel borrows its intrigue from contemporary events and owes the main bulk of its material to recollections from the Petrashevsky circle, but it is completely directed against the man who dominated the existence of Dostoevsky for many long years. One can hardly doubt that the young writer projected on Belinsky, the redeemer, the man responsible for his passage from 52 Chapter 4 nothingness to being, filial feelings that were never realized during the life of his father. After his rupture with the Turgenev group Dostoevsky continued for some time to frequent Belinsky, but the critic finally, with all the others, took a dislike to his former protégé. He condemned all the writings after Poor Folk, and he even came to the point of repudiating the praise he so imprudently poured out on this first work. Here, for instance, is what he wrote to one of his friends about the Dostoevsky of The Landlady: “He is the worst of the inept! . . . Each of his new works is a new catastrophe. . . . We were rudely deceived about the genius of Dostoevsky. . . . I myself, the first of the critics, was nothing but a silly ass.” With its mixture of truth and falsehood, of lucidity and naive pride, the letter itself is from the underground. After having conferred the fullness of existence on the young writer, Belinsky repudiates this unworthy son and plunges him once more into nothingness. From then on Dostoevsky experienced for the critic a mixture of veneration and hate of the typically underground sort. If he begins to associate with true revolutionaries, it is not from reasoned conviction but to enter into a fervently militant rivalry with the inaccessible model. In the Petrashevsky circle where they conspired in a committed though abstract fashion, he became notable for the extremism of his opinions. He passed as a person “capable of leading a riot brandishing a red flag.” One day he declared himself in favor of a rebel army of the Russian peasantry. But his literary work does not convey to us, as it were, any echo of this political furor. Censorship does not suffice to explicate this silence. In 1848 Dostoevsky published A Weak Heart and White Nights, and the anguish that comes to expression in these works has nothing to do with the revolutionary movements that shook Europe and provoked the enthusiasm of the Russian intelligentsia. It is, then, a double existence that Dostoevsky is leading; all of the ideological side of his being is an imitation of Belinsky. His public life stems from a veritable bewitchment. On April 15, 1849, Dostoevsky read to the Petrashevsky circle a seditious letter of Belinsky to Gogol. The future informer on the circle was present and he was later to accuse Dostoevsky of having put into this reading an extraordinary passion and conviction. Dostoevsky, in turn, defends himself very sincerely against the perception that he approves the text of the letter, but the arguments he invokes are not convincing: The one who has denounced me, is he able to say to which of the two correspondents I was more attached [Belinsky or Gogol]? . . . I beseech you now to consider the following: would I have read an article of a man with Resurrection 53 whom I had become embroiled over a question...