Letters (1868-1871)

When Dostoevsky was early in the process of writing the novel Demons, he told a friend that “I want to have my say, even if in the process my artistry should perish.”  This statement is striking because it reveals a battle within him.  He has convictions that he wants to air, yet what he wants to say can be at odds with the process of art.  

Dostoevsky might’ve fought his art, but his art won.  Demons is a masterpiece of the novelistic form that has rarely been surpassed.  So what happened?  How did Dostoevsky write this towering acheivement almost against his own wishes?

About six months later, he wrote to his editor that he’d decided “to destroy everything I’ve written, redo the novel radically . . . I am compelled to begin nearly a year’s work all over from the beginning . . .”  The idea with which he began simply didn’t work once he got into the details of executing it.  He had to return to artistry because it was the only way he could finish the book.  

Artistry for Dostoevsky isn’t simply a superficial prettification.  It has to do with what he calls “higher realism.”  He expressed frustration with many of his peers because “with their realism you can’t explain a hundredth part of real, actually occurring facts.”  The problem with these novels is that they focus on “the ordinariness of phenomena and a banal view of them.”  He sees these writers as trapped inside a materialist view, and so they can only pay attention to facts that will neatly compliment that view.  

The worst critique Dostoevsky can level at a piece of fiction is that “it’s as though it takes place on the moon.”  He dislikes more than anything a book that is so enamored with theories that it loses touch with the here-and-now.

Dostoevsky claims that many events happen that materialism cannot explain.  Thus, for literature to progress, it must hunt out exceptional facts.  One can see this in his rebuilding of Demons.  He has a particular interest in the character of the saint because it has been so rarely treated in literature.  This is the hot spot for Dostoevsky—something observable in reality (however rare) that has been mostly ignored in fiction.  He strives to recognize an aspect of reality overlooked by his mileu and adjust his work to encorperate this new data, thus nudging language closer to truth.

Dostoevsky had so trained his pen to follow honesty that when he saw his own ideas fraying in Demons, he felt compelled to rework them.

Perhaps key to the level of art Dostoevsky was able to acheive was this almost compulsive honesty.  “The more educated a person is,” he writes to his stepson, “the more he studies.”  It’s this unquenchable thirst for knowledge that pushes Dostoevsky to trash a draft on which he had been working overtime for a year.

In fact, the mere thirst for truth seems a much more defining characteristic of this great writer than any speed of inspiration.  When I think of an author of his caliber, I tend to imagine someone who has brilliance tumbling out of them, without effort.  But reading Dostoevsky’s letters made clear that his works “smell of sweat.”  “In many ways,” he writes, “inspiration depends on time.”  This he demonstrated by the sheer amount of time he spent writing and rewriting.  He revised and rewrote Part One of Demons twenty times.  When I read Dostoevsky’s fiction, I’m astounded by the quantity of good writing, but when I read his letters, I’m astounded by his ability to persist through so much bad writing.  He tells his friend: “I have covered such heaps of paper with writing that I’ve even lost a system for checking what I’ve written down.”

But given Dostoevsky’s life circumstances, (frightening debt, extreme poverty, dependant loved ones), it isn’t surprising that he worked long and hard. What’s surprising is that someone who’s doing things like pawning his pregnant wife’s coat for food would so regularly tear up his work and start over.

At first I thought this was just because he had a noble commitment to art.  He certainly did, but that isn’t the full picture.  After all, if your baby is dying of pneumonia and you have zero money for doctors, who cares about art?  

No, what’s interesting is that Dostoevsky tore up those drafts because he thought it was the best way to provide for his family.  He believes that he must deliver the highest quality novel because this is what his readers will most want.  He’s convinced that he won’t be able to continue to be published unless he’s putting out fiction of the highest excellence.

In this attitude, Dostoevsky betrays a remarkable faith in his readers.  It doesn’t seem to occur to him that he could be more successful in the literary world through pandering tricks rather than striving after the highest quality of art.  This might not be entirely surprising given that he was submitting to a journal that at the same time was putting out pieces by Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, two of history’s greatest novelists.  But regardless of context, this attitude is key to Dostoevsky’s genius.  Without this almost childlike faith that his readers will respond best to what is best in him, he never could’ve pushed himself like he did.