The New Russian Dostoevsky: Readings for the Twenty-First Century

The Dostoevsky Syndrome

The Dostoevsky Syndrome Vladimir Zakharov "Sindrom Dostoevskogo," Sever, no. 11 (1991): 145-51. Every great writer has both fanatical admirers and raging critics. Most likely no writer has a perfect artistic reputation; each has at least one Zoilus, and sometimes more. Of course there are any number of reasons why Zoilus criticized Horner, why Voltaire and Tolstoy denied the genius of Shakespeare, and why Pisarev wished to depose Pushkin. For years Mayakovsky had no patience for Pushkin and "other generals of the classics"; in 1912 along with other Futurists he proposed to "throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and all such others overboard from the Steamship of Modernity.,,1 During the years of the civil war he demanded, in the poem "It's Too Early to Rejoice," "Why is no one attacking Pushkin?"2 But within six years he had exchanged revolutionary wrath for kind indulgence: "Alexander Sergeevich, allow me to introduce myself. Mayakovsky ...,,3 (Anniversary, 1924). These and other similar opinions reflect obvious personal biases and political and poetic ambitions , but most of all, banal misunderstanding and aesthetic narrow-mindedness on the part of critics. There is nothing surprising or unusual about not liking Dostoevsky. The problem here is different: the terms in which some of our more famous readers have voiced their dislike. Their reaction to Dostoevsky's work is so unhealthy that it merits the introduction into literary criticism of a medical term: the "Dostoevsky syndrome." We should note that Dostoevsky himself was free of the affliction, which is otherwise unknown to medical science. 111e first signs of this mysterious illness arose as early as the 1860s. The first to experience its symptoms was none other than the sensitive Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, who in the mid-sixties would occasionally express his opinions about Dostoevsky's work in pathological terms. On 25 March/6 April 1866 Turgenev wrote, referring to the first part of Crime and Punishment, 1 V. V. Maiakovskii, Poshchechilla obshchestvenllomu vkusu (Moscow: Izd. g. Kuz'mina i S. D. Dolinskogo, 1912),3. 2 V. V. Maiakovskii, Poinoe sobra/lie sochinellii v 13-/i tomakh (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1956),2: 16. 3 Ibid., 6: 47-56. Caro l Apollonio, ed., The New Russian Dostoevsky: Readings for the Twenty-First Century, Bloomington, IN: Siavica Publishers, 2010, 9-24. 10 VLADIMIR ZAKHAROV "a lot of nonsense seeped into the ending, and it gives off a rotten and fermented hospital smell.,,4 On the same day, in a letter to A. A. Fet, he wrote, "it reeks of a fetid scabbiness.,,5 Ultimately, Turgenev "gave up reading it: it's something like chronic colic-like crying 'God have mercy!' in times of cholera .,,6 Turgenev gave the novel A Raw Youth a similar appraisal in a letter to M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin on 25 November/7 December 1875: "Chaos: my God, such sourness - the stench of the sickbed, such pointless rambling and psychologizing!"7 According to the reminiscences of S. L. Tolstoy, during the summer of 1881 Turgenev characterized his view of Dostoevsky and his heroes as follows : "Do you know what a reverse commonplace is? When a person is in love, his heart pounds. When he's angry he will turn red in the face, and so on. These are all commonplaces. But with Dostoevsky everything happens backwards. For example, a person encounters a lion. What will he do? Naturally he will turn pale and try to run away or hide. In any ordinary story, such as one by Jules Verne, for example, that is what will happen. But Dostoevsky tells it backwards: the person turns red and stands his ground. TI,ere's your reverse commonplace. It's a cheap means for passing yourself off as an original writer. That is why on every other page Dostoevsky's heroes are raging deliriously or in a fever. But it's not like that in reality."g Turgenev was particularly harsh in his judgment of Dostoevsky in a letter he wrote to Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin on 24 September/6 October 1882 after reading Nikolai Mikhailovsky's article "A Cruel Talent" (1882)9 In Turgenev 's words, Mikhailovsky "correctly identified the most characteristic feature of his work. He might also have recalled that French literature had a similar phenomenon - namely, the notorious Marquis de Sade."l0 Turgenev does not limit himself to a simple juxtaposition-a few lines later he blatantly labels Dostoevsky "our own de Sade."l1 4 1. S. Turgenev to P. V. AlUlenkov, in Poilwe sobranie sochinen ii i pisem...