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Updated: May 23, 2025
The hero is almost an imitation of the man in Gogol's short story, "The Cloak," affording another striking example of the germinal power of that immortal work. Dostoevski seemed fully to realise his debt to Gogol, and in particular to "The Cloak;" for in "Poor Folk," one entire letter is taken up with a description of Makar's emotions after reading that extraordinary tale.
If Rudin is a transitional type, why does the same kind of character appear in Tolstoi, in Dostoevski, in Gorki, in Artsybashev? Why has Sienkiewicz described the racial temperament in two words, improductivite slave? It is generally agreed that no man has succeeded better than Chekhov in portraying the typical Russian of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century.
In 1859 he published "The Uncle's Dream," a society novel, showing both in its humour and in its ruthless satire the influence of Gogol. This is an exceedingly entertaining book, and, a strange thing in Dostoevski, it is, in many places, hilariously funny.
No pride, no scorn, no envy. He regarded them as his brothers, and one feels that not one of the men would ever have turned to Dostoevski for sympathy and encouragement without meeting an instant and warm response.
Baring's language is an echo of Merezhkovski; but this Russian critic, while loving Dostoevski more than Turgenev, was not at all blind to the latter's supreme qualities. Listen to Mr. Baring:
The other, all his life dreaming and preaching of poverty, not only has not given away, but has greatly multiplied his very substantial possessions." In order to make an impressive contrast, the Russian critic is here unfair to Tolstoi, but there is perhaps some truth in the Tolstoi paradox. No wonder Dostoevski loved children, for he was himself a great child.
But a little later, when Dostoevski obtained in Siberia the two numbers of the periodical containing "Childhood" and "Boyhood," he was deeply moved, and wrote to a friend, asking, Who is this mysterious L. N. T.? But for a long time Tolstoi refused to let his name be known. Tolstoi took part in the Crimean war, not as a spectator or reporter, but as an officer.
If ever there was a person who would forgive any human being anything seventy times seven, that individual was Dostoevski. He never had to learn the lesson of brotherly love by long years of experience: the mystery of the Gospel, hidden from the wise and prudent, was revealed to him as a babe.
The most cheerful thing he has written is perhaps "The Seven Who Were Hanged." This is horrible enough to bring out a cold sweat; but it is redeemed, as the work of Dostoevski is, by a vast pity and sympathy for the condemned wretches. This is the book he dedicated to Tolstoi, in recognition of the constant efforts of the old writer to have capital punishment abolished.
The Orthodox Church of Russia seems to have been and to be as remote from the life of the people as the political bureaucracy. The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed. The Christian religion is the dominating force in the works of Gogol, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski.
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