It came as a surprise to me that Fyodor Dostoevsky had a brother who he describes as "a gifted writer, an expert on European literatures, a poet, a translator" and the founder and publisher of journals like The Epoch and Time. Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky had died by the time Dostoevsky wrote this feuilleton piece in his diary, defending his brother's name against allegations of financial impropriety. Called On behalf of one deceased, Dostoevsky's tone is that of an offended brother, eager to clear his brother's name, worried that such allegations might tarnish Mikhail's name.
It follows that one Shchapov, a writer presumably and a contributor to Mikhail Dostoevsky's journal was refused financial payment as promised, especially that Shchapov was in dire financial need. According to Shchapov's obituary, the man was desperate for warm clothes as the winter was severe and to his surprise, Mikhail said....."I know a tailor who will give you what you need on credit." He was given very dubious clothes to wear, for which he was billed dearly. It seems he never got his promised roubles.
Dostoevsky goes on to suggest that the incident was fabricated, the whole affair ridiculous and in this piece he goes on to prove otherwise. Dostoevsky distances himself from the financial dealings of his brother, even though the literary journals were co-founded by the brothers themselves. Dostoevsky goes on to claim how large hearted his brother was, sending cheques in advance for scripts not yet sent to the journals, citing evidence in a case when his late brother's family had to claim back an advance through a law suit. Dostoevsky is also upset in this piece about the tone his brother is depicted as spoken in, saying that his brother was "extremely decent and a gentleman".
It also transpires from this piece that Mikhail Dostoevsky too was a member of The Petrachevsky Circle, having spent a few months in prison like his famous brother. However, Dostoevsky says that his brother was innocent, even though he knew Petrachevsky, attended his evenings and borrowed books from him. Towards the end of the case, Mikhail was released, without incriminating others, though Dostoevsky claims his brother "knew a great deal". This proves the high ideals of his brother and Dostoevsky rubbishes any claim otherwise. How could Mikhail have allowed the poor writer to die of the winter cold!
The reason I wrote this post was that I found this piece quite amusing and funny, for one expects the great writer, any great writer to have risen above the foibles and other delirious desires of this life and yet how ordinary everyone actually is. I do not doubt that Dostoevsky was writing the truth about his brother but was also surprised by the vehemence of his defense. At the same time, it reveals his affection for his deceased brother which is quite natural. The whole incident reveals the jealous attitude of various publishers at that time and this attack on Mikhail could well have been fabricated, as Dostoevsky claims.
What I felt was more interesting is that of two Dostoevsky's writing at the same time, what a luxury of riches, considering that Dostoevsky claims that Mikhail was gifted. Even if Mikhail was only half as good as the great writer himself and even if Dostoevsky was being a bit carefree with praise, it will still take something to beat Mikhail. I wonder if there are any published pieces from Mikhail Dostoevsky? Did he write a great masterpiece that lies hidden, that is lost? How much did Fyodor borrow from Mikhail, how much did Mikhail contribute to the Dostoevsky canon? Did Mikhail approve of Fyodor's writing? All these are questions, one thinks however that two Dostoevskys might have been two much!
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7 comments:
I didn't know that writer's diary contained his writings from the early 70s. If i am not confusing things, his brother died somewhere around that time. He had to take care of the finances of the magazine and also support his brother's family. It was because of this that he ran away to Germany to escape his creditors...
I have read parts of Joseph Frank's biography but I don't remember reading anything about the literary works of his brother. Whenever I think of all those russian characters i think of them as passionate intellectuals feverishly debating ideas... my guess is that his brother was one of those young intellectuals.
His wife Anna had some literary talent as well. Her diary is said to have some literary merit and is a great resource for his biographers. Frank quotes a lot from this... Actually it was written in cryptic short hand and it was only after lot of scholarly work that they were able to decipher it.
Actually i got to know all this when i read Summer in Baden-Baden, a russian novel which was almost forgotten before Susan Sontag found it and had it republished to great acclaim. I didn't find it as good as she says in her foreword, it is still a very unusual book. It is written in long run-on sentences somewhat reminiscent of thomas bernhard. you may have read it already. the author's name was leonid tsypkin.. there is also some stuff about dostoevsky's anti-semitism in the book (tsypkin was a jew).
Sorry if it is all redundant ;)
"Whenever I think of all those russian characters i think of them as passionate intellectuals feverishly debating ideas..."
i agree with you entirely. you might be right about Mikhail being one of the intellectual sort.
No, I have not read this book you mentioned but will aim to do so.I believe the Frank biography is quite extensive and detailed. you are absolutely right about the date of his brother's death.
i am finding this diary, which runs over 700 pages a great reflection on Dostoevsky as a person, for too often we build a persona about a writer, even a great one and yet we know so little about a writer actually......i kind of think now that one should read everything that a novelist writes to understand or make sense of just one work only...if that is possible......
for eg, reading all of say Bernhard makes one sense a thread, a pattern.....
too often, the Russian writers have been read in isolation, just one work and that is it.....this does not give any inkling of the writer's inner sense of things nor his world view.......
Turgenev's politics gets more evident after you read Virgin soil but it makes more sense if you have read his other works too. in thiss way i think, reading really good secondary literature seems the key.......but not just pedestrian sources.....i find Bakhtin such brilliance as for as Dostoevsky is concerned.
thanks for your comments as always and how are you finding Virgin Soil?
I am halfway through Virgin Soil right now and really enjoying it. I feel once again that I was born in the wrong century and in the wrong country. May be I was one of those young men in Turgenev's novels in my previous life. hehe...
I totally agree about necessity of reading the writers taking into consideration their entire oeuvre and the historical context. It is specially true for these Russian writers... because they were not just creating art in isolation.. they were important public intellectuals and were using artistic medium to explore and comment on vital political and personal questions of their time. There are so many interconnections and so many details that it is maddening. I have only scratched the surface of Russian literature but really it is fascinating and way too deep.
Frank's biography is a little too extensive and too scholarly... I have read parts of the third volume which covers the time during and before he wrote Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground and The Possessed. It is overwhelming for a non-specialist reader...
After reading Berlin's essays, now I feel much more confident about going deeper into contextual histories. Berlin being a man of moderation, pragmatism and belonging to the centre doesn't like Dostoevsky that much but his essays on Turgenev and Herzen are masterpieces. I have also been looking for Herzen's memoirs but without success. Prob out of print...
you can check out James Wood's review of Summer in Baden-Baden. The book assumes a good knowledge of Dostoevsky's life though Susan Sontag's foreword lays down most of it...
Alok....how i have felt akin to what you describe about belonging and feeling as if you might have been one of those men engaged in discussing things etc.....
but does it also not mean this sort of literature, ideas allowing us sometimes, only sometimes rising above the morass of petty nationalism and prejudice for after all, what is the ultimate essence of all this art, this literature?
isn't it to allow a certain sense of a shared value, values which allow us to call ourselves human, if only sometimes in our lives, lives that are usually sordid. however, it is important not to get carried away by feeling an affinity with a culture or country just by soaking in some atmosphere. remember Nabokov warning against feeling like this only by reading Gogol......
sometimes even after reading great literature, we may not enter the essence of that place, what Gogol describes as Roos, a name for Russia that only the fervent russian can identify with......you are right about the scratching surface bit.......
reading Bachmann gave me the same feeling, as if i was going crazy in a way, lost in a haze of Malinas......barely piecing together something that has escaped me.
however, the reason a non-european might feel an affinity with things russian is that russia is not really European in its intrinsic approach to things, its way of expressing, its fluent prolixity. that is why perhaps they wrote huge novels while the real european novel is an essence a kind of greek myth married to psychoanalysis to existentialism to a kind of realism that produces largely "dry" stream of consciousness style laden stories, approaches......
perhaps that is why the literture of latin america, with its passionate blood and sweat and politics and poetry and passion makes me feel so attached to its various manifestations.
again,, it is a matter of taste too. but i agree that the prototypical great russian novel, say like Dead Souls is so appealing because it depicts a kind of way, approach, symbol and method which is so naturally realistic......
thanks for the link. yes, the Berlin essays on Turgenev and Herzen are fine essays. i think the Herzen book is available on amazon.
however, it is important not to get carried away by feeling an affinity with a culture or country just by soaking in some atmosphere. remember Nabokov warning against feeling like this only by reading Gogol
I can't agree more. In fact fetishization of culture has become so commonplace (because of the influence of entertainment and tourism industry) that we hardly notice it anymore. People read Japanese comics and are deluded into thinking that they understand what being japanese means.. the same with so many aspects of indian culture and also islamic culture... objectification and fetishization are ubiquitous.
that said, I don't entirely agree with what Nabokov says in his essay on Gogol. His brand of aestheticism feels too narrow and restrictive to me. Of course it is stupid to read Gogol just to know about the serfdom or the feudal system... but Gogol was indeed responding to these concrete realities in his fiction. You can get the tingles of excitement from his descriptions but you can also try to understand about what it meant to a Russian at that time just by reading Dead Souls. it is not an either-or situation at all.
also entirely agree about Russian not being part of Europe. In fact it is one the most important and most recurring theme in the russian literature of 19th century - how european is russia...and is there anything like "Russian-ness."
also interesting is their attitudes towards the Asians, most of which was even more orientalistic than the colonialist europeans. Have you read Tolstoy's Hadji Murad... very interesting disucussion of east-west debate.
No, i have not read Hadji Murad though i have it lying with me. i will now.
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