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On the 28 January 1881, he died, and forty thousand mourners saw his body committed to the earth. Much as I admire the brilliant Russian critic, Merezhkovski, I cannot understand his statement that Dostoevski "drew little on his personal experiences, had little self-consciousness, complained of no one."
Every argument that he can think of to persuade himself of his sanity he marshals; but there are plenty of arguments on the other side. The story is an excellent example of what Merezhkovski must mean by the passion of thought. Another illustration of Andreev's uncanny power is seen in the short story "Silence."
In some characters, such as those Dostoevski has given us, it leads to deeds of wild absurdity; in Andreev, it usually leads to madness. One of Andreev's books is indeed a whole commentary on the remark of Merezhkovski quoted above. No one should read this story unless his nerves are firm, for the outcome of the tale is such as to make almost any reader for a time doubt his own sanity.
As Merezhkovski puts it: "This victim of poverty dealt with money as if he held it not an evil, but utter rubbish. Dostoevski thinks he loves money, but money flees him. Tolstoi thinks he hates money, but money loves him, and accumulates about him. The one, dreaming all his life of wealth, lived, and but for his wife's business qualities would have died, a beggar.
Not long after, he published another story in the Russian periodical "Life;" into the editor's rooms dashed the famous critic Merezhkovski, who enquired whether it was Chekhov or Gorki that had selected this assumed name.
The whole article should be read for the charming picture it gives of the patriarchal happiness at Yasnaya Polyana, and while she saw clearly the real comfort enjoyed by Tolstoi, which aroused the fierce wrath of Merezhkovski, she proved also how much good was accomplished by the old novelist in the course of a single average day.
And the farther, apparently, it is from life the more abstract, the more fiery is their thought, the deeper it enters into their lives. O strange young Russia!" Merezhkovski is talking of the heroes of Dostoevski; but his remark is applicable to the work of nearly all Russian novelists, and especially to Chekhov and Andreev.
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:
*For a very unfavourable view of Tolstoi's later conduct, the "Tolstoi legend," see Merezhkovski, Tolstoi as Man and Artist. Even the revolutionary views on art, which he expressed toward the end of the century in his book, "What is Art?" were by no means a sudden discovery, nor do they reveal a change in his attitude. The accomplished translator, Mr.
It is a profound criticism that, if once grasped by the foreign reader, will enable him to understand much in Russian fiction that otherwise would be a sealed book. Every one must have noticed how Russians are hag-ridden by an idea; but no one except Merezhkovski has observed the PASSION of abstract thought.
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