T A HE DOLESCENT F D YODOR OSTOEVSKY TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR & LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY ISBN 0375719008 Copyright © 2003 Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................... 7 Translators' Notes ...................................................................................................... 17 List Of Principal Characters .................................................................................. 17 A Note On The Topography Of St. Petersburg ................................................... 17 Part One ......................................................................................................................... 18 Chapter One ............................................................................................................... 18 I ............................................................................................................................... 18 II .............................................................................................................................. 18 III ............................................................................................................................. 19 IV ............................................................................................................................ 20 V .............................................................................................................................. 21 VI ............................................................................................................................ 24 VII ........................................................................................................................... 25 VIII .......................................................................................................................... 27 Chapter Two .............................................................................................................. 29 I .............................................................................................................................. 29 II .............................................................................................................................. 31 III ............................................................................................................................. 33 IV ............................................................................................................................ 40 Chapter Three ........................................................................................................... 42 I .............................................................................................................................. 42 II ..............................................................................................................................43 III ............................................................................................................................ 46 IV ............................................................................................................................ 50 V .............................................................................................................................. 51 VI ............................................................................................................................ 54 Introduction Chapter Four .............................................................................................................. 55 I ............................................................................................................................... 55 II ............................................................................................................................. 58 III ............................................................................................................................ 63 IV ............................................................................................................................ 65 Chapter Five .............................................................................................................. 66 I .............................................................................................................................. 66 II ............................................................................................................................. 68 III ............................................................................................................................. 71 IV ............................................................................................................................ 76 Chapter Six ................................................................................................................ 79 I .............................................................................................................................. 79 II ............................................................................................................................. 83 III ............................................................................................................................ 87 IV ............................................................................................................................ 92 Chapter Seven ........................................................................................................... 95 I .............................................................................................................................. 95 II ............................................................................................................................. 98 III ........................................................................................................................... 102 IV ........................................................................................................................... 104 Chapter Eight ........................................................................................................... 104 I ............................................................................................................................. 104 II ............................................................................................................................ 107 III ............................................................................................................................ 115 Chapter Nine ............................................................................................................ 120 I ............................................................................................................................. 120 II ............................................................................................................................ 123 III ........................................................................................................................... 128 IV ........................................................................................................................... 129 V ............................................................................................................................ 130 Chapter Ten ............................................................................................................. 135 I ............................................................................................................................. 135 II ............................................................................................................................ 139 III ........................................................................................................................... 142 IV ........................................................................................................................... 144 Translators' Notes V ............................................................................................................................ 146 Part Two ....................................................................................................................... 148 Chapter One ............................................................................................................. 148 I ............................................................................................................................. 148 II ............................................................................................................................ 149 III ........................................................................................................................... 153 IV ........................................................................................................................... 155 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................. 158 I ............................................................................................................................. 158 II ............................................................................................................................ 160 III ........................................................................................................................... 163 Chapter Three .......................................................................................................... 169 I ............................................................................................................................. 169 II ............................................................................................................................ 173 III ........................................................................................................................... 174 IV ........................................................................................................................... 178 Chapter Four ............................................................................................................ 179 I ............................................................................................................................. 179 II ............................................................................................................................ 183 Chapter Five ............................................................................................................. 188 I ............................................................................................................................. 188 II ............................................................................................................................ 192 III ........................................................................................................................... 196 Chapter Six .............................................................................................................. 200 I ............................................................................................................................ 200 II ........................................................................................................................... 202 III .......................................................................................................................... 204 IV .......................................................................................................................... 207 Chapter Seven ......................................................................................................... 209 I ............................................................................................................................ 209 II ............................................................................................................................ 213 III ........................................................................................................................... 216 Chapter Eight ........................................................................................................... 222 I ............................................................................................................................. 222 II ........................................................................................................................... 224 Introduction III ........................................................................................................................... 227 IV .......................................................................................................................... 228 V ............................................................................................................................ 231 VI ........................................................................................................................... 233 Chapter Nine ............................................................................................................ 235 I ............................................................................................................................. 235 II ............................................................................................................................ 237 III .......................................................................................................................... 240 IV ........................................................................................................................... 243 Part Three..................................................................................................................... 245 Chapter One ............................................................................................................. 245 I ............................................................................................................................. 245 II ........................................................................................................................... 247 III .......................................................................................................................... 249 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................. 254 I ............................................................................................................................. 254 II ........................................................................................................................... 256 III .......................................................................................................................... 259 IV ........................................................................................................................... 263 V ........................................................................................................................... 265 Chapter Three ......................................................................................................... 267 I ............................................................................................................................ 267 II ........................................................................................................................... 268 III ........................................................................................................................... 271 IV ........................................................................................................................... 272 Chapter Four ........................................................................................................... 279 I ............................................................................................................................ 279 II ........................................................................................................................... 284 III .......................................................................................................................... 289 IV .......................................................................................................................... 292 Chapter Five ............................................................................................................ 294 I ............................................................................................................................ 294 II ........................................................................................................................... 297 III ........................................................................................................................... 302 Chapter Six .............................................................................................................. 308 Translators' Notes I ............................................................................................................................ 308 II ............................................................................................................................. 313 III ........................................................................................................................... 316 Chapter Seven .......................................................................................................... 319 I ............................................................................................................................. 319 II ............................................................................................................................ 322 III ........................................................................................................................... 325 Chapter Eight ........................................................................................................... 329 I ............................................................................................................................. 329 II ............................................................................................................................. 331 Chapter Nine ............................................................................................................ 334 I ............................................................................................................................. 334 II ............................................................................................................................ 335 III .......................................................................................................................... 340 IV ........................................................................................................................... 343 V ............................................................................................................................ 345 Chapter Ten ............................................................................................................ 346 I ............................................................................................................................ 346 II ........................................................................................................................... 349 III ........................................................................................................................... 353 IV ........................................................................................................................... 355 Chapter Eleven ......................................................................................................... 359 I ............................................................................................................................. 359 II ............................................................................................................................ 363 III .......................................................................................................................... 366 IV .......................................................................................................................... 368 Chapter Twelve ........................................................................................................ 372 I ............................................................................................................................. 372 II ............................................................................................................................ 374 III ........................................................................................................................... 377 IV .......................................................................................................................... 380 V ............................................................................................................................ 381 Chapter Thirteen: Conclusion ................................................................................ 383 I ............................................................................................................................. 383 II ........................................................................................................................... 386 Introduction III .......................................................................................................................... 388 ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS ................................................................................ 392 Translators' Notes Introduction In the early 1870s, the radical satirist M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin declared that in Russia the family novel was dead: "The family, that warm and cosy element... which once gave the novel its content, has vanished from sight... The novel of contemporary man finds its resolution in the street, on the public way, anywhere but in the home." In 1875, however, two novels began to appear serially in rival journals: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in the conservative Russian Messenger, and Dostoevsky's The Adolescent in the populist Notes of the Fatherland. Though they have nothing else in common, both are family novels in excelsis. Their appearance at that time suggests that, far from having vanished from sight, the family was still the mirror of Russian social life, and the fate of the family was a key to Russia's destiny. Tolstoy defied the radicals by portraying the ordered life of his own class, the hereditary aristocracy, and the tragedy of its disruption — that is, by looking back at a world which, as Dostoevsky saw, had become a fantasy. "But you know," Dostoevsky wrote to his friend Apollon Maikov, "this is all landowner's literature. It has said everything it had to say (magnificently in Leo Tolstoy). But this word, a landowner's in the highest degree, was the last. A new word, replacing the landowner's, does not exist yet." In The Adolescent, which he conceived in part as an answer to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky found that new word, portraying what he calls the "accidental family" of his time, the reality behind Tolstoy's grand "mirage." In Dostoevsky, His Life and Work, Konstantin Mochulsky draws the ultimate conclusion about the family chronicle as Dostoevsky conceived it. The main theme of The Adolescent, he writes, is "the problem of communion: man is determined by his character, but his fate is defined in freedom, in spite of his character. The influence of one personality on another is limitless; the roots of human interaction go down into metaphysical depths; the violation of this organic collectivity is reflected in social upheavals and political catastrophes."1 What Saltykov-Shchedrin saw taking place on the public way had its cause in what was taking place in the fundamental unity of the family, which could still serve as the image of Russian society in its inner, spiritual dimension. The Adolescent is the fourth of the five major novels that Dostoevsky wrote after the turning point of Notes from Underground (1864). These novels in their sequence represent an ascending movement from "underground" towards the cold, clear light at the end of The Brothers Karamazov. The Adolescent is the next-to-last step in this ascent. And yet it is the least known of the five novels, the least discussed in the vast critical literature on Dostoevsky, simply omitted, for instance, from such major readings of his work as Vyacheslav Ivanov's Freedom and the Tragic Life, Romano Guardini's Der Mensch und der Glaube ("Man and Fate"), and the essays of the philosopher Lev Shestov. In The Mantle of the Prophet, the final volume of his critical biography of Dostoevsky, Joseph Frank refers to The Adolescent rather dismissively as "a curious hybrid of a novel" and "something of an anomaly among the great creations of Dostoevsky's last period." He finds that it lacks "the collision of conflicting moral- 1 "Organic collectivity" here is a translation of the nearly untranslatable Russian word sobornost, meaning a free, inner, organic "unity in multiplicity." It is a central term in Russian religious philosophy, which drew much inspiration from Dostoevsky. A profound exploration of the meaning of sobornost, and one extremely pertinent to The Adolescent, is to be found in The Spiritual Foundations of Society, by the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank, translated by Boris Jakim (Ohio University Press, 1987). Introduction spiritual absolutes that invariably inspired his best work." Edward Wasiolek, editor and annotator of The Notebooks for "A Raw Youth,"2 simply calls it "a failure." It is true that The Adolescent lacks the dark intensity of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and Demons, the mephitic atmosphere, the whiff of brimstone that many readers consider Dostoevsky's essence. It is very different in tone from the preceding novels. But that difference is a sign of its special place in the unity of Dostoevsky's later work. The Adolescent is up to something else. The distinctive tone of the novel is set by the adolescent narrator himself, that is, by the fact of his being an adolescent, speaking in the first person and writing as an amateur. Dostoevsky's notebooks show how carefully he weighed the question of point of view, and with what effect in mind. In September 1874, during the early stages of planning the novel, he notes: "In the first person it would be much more original, and show more love; also, it would require more artistic skill, and would be terribly bold, and shorter, easier to arrange; moreover, it would make the character of [the adolescent] as the main figure of the novel much clearer..." And a little further on: "A narrative in the first person is more original by virtue of the fact that the [adolescent] may very well keep skipping, in ultra-naive fashion... to all kinds of anecdotes and details, proper to his development and immaturity, but quite impossible for an author conducting his narrative in regular fashion." A few days later, he repeats: "In the first person it would be more naive, incomparably more original, and, in its deviations from a smooth and systematic narrative, even more delightful." Dostoevsky had considered writing both Crime and Punishment and The Idiot in the first person, but had abandoned the idea. He came back to it in The Adolescent, which is his only novel with a first-person protagonist after Notes from Underground, The two have more than a little in common. For instance, both narrators, though they are constantly aware of the reader, deny any literary or artistic purpose and claim to be writing only for themselves. "I, however, am writing only for myself," asserts the man from underground, "and I declare once and for all that even if I write as if I were addressing readers, that is merely a form, because it's easier for me to write that way. It's a form, just an empty form, and I shall never have any readers. I have already declared as much ..." The adolescent, Arkady Dolgoruky, begins his "notes" with the declaration that he is "not writing for the same reason everyone else writes, that is, for the sake of the reader's praises." Later he says: ... The reader will perhaps be horrified at the frankness of my confession and will ask himself simple-heartedly: how is it that the author doesn't blush? I reply that I'm not writing for publication; I'll probably have a reader only in some ten years, when everything is already so apparent, past and proven that there will no longer be any point in blushing. And therefore, if I sometimes address the reader in my notes, it's merely a device. My reader is a fantastic character. Arkady also turns out to share some of the underground man's opinions, for instance about rational egoism and social progress. At a meeting of young radicals, he delivers a perfect "underground" tirade: Things are not at all clear in our society, gentlemen. I mean, you deny God, you deny great deeds, what sort of deaf, blind, dull torpor can make me act this way [i.e. nobly], if it's more 2 Dostoevsky's title in Russian is Podrostok, which means "adolescent." Constance Garnett altered it to A Raw Youth in her translation, and that title has also been used most often in English critical writings on the novel. Translators' Notes profitable for me otherwise? You say, "A reasonable attitude towards mankind is also to my profit"; but what if I find all these reasonablenesses unreasonable, all these barracks and phalansteries? What the devil do I care about them, or about the future, when I live only once in this world? Allow me to know my own profit myself: it's more amusing. What do I care what happens to this mankind of yours in a thousand years, if, by your code, I get no love for it, no future life, no recognition of my great deed? No, sir, in that case I shall live for myself in the most impolite fashion, and they can all go to blazes! The unaware reader would find it hard to tell which of the two is speaking. But the differences between them are far more important. And the main difference is precisely Arkady's adolescence. The underground man is trapped in the endless alternation of "Long live the underground!" and "Devil take the underground!" and has sat in his corner like that for forty years. Arkady Dolgoruky is young, fresh, resilient. Time and again he falls asleep after some disastrous blunder or crushing humiliation, sleeps soundly and dreamlessly, and wakes up feeling heartier than ever. The underground man is inwardly fixed; Arkady is all inner movement, constantly going beyond himself. His experiences do not bind him as the underground man's do; they liberate him. Why did Dostoevsky come to give such a privileged place to adolescence in his work? A brief sketch jotted down in his notebook sometime in October or November of 1867, years before he began writing The Adolescent, may suggest an answer. Among plans that would later be realized, we find a heading all in capitals, "A THOUGHT (POEM) / THEME WITH THE TITLE: 'THE EMPEROR,'" followed by two pages of notes for a story based on the strange life of the Russian emperor Ivan VI, better known as Ivan Antonovich, who lived from 1740 to 1764. Ivan Antonovich was the son of Peter the Great's niece, the empress Anna Ivanovna. She died the year he was born, and he was immediately proclaimed emperor, but he never reigned. In 1741 Elizaveta Petrovna, the daughter of Peter the Great, seized the throne and had the one-year-old emperor imprisoned in the Schlusselburg fortress, where he remained until 1764, when a certain Lieutenant Mirovich attempted to restore him to the throne by means of a coup. The plot failed, and Ivan Antonovich was killed. As his notes make clear, what interested Dostoevsky was not so much the historical episode as the thought of this boy growing up in complete isolation from the world: "Underground, darkness, a young man not knowing how to speak, Ivan Antonovich, almost twenty years old. Description of his nature. His development. He develops by himself, fantastic frescoes and images, dreams, a young girl (in a dream). He imagines her, having seen her from the window. Elementary notions of all things. Extravagant imagination..." And then the catastrophic confrontation of this isolated consciousness with reality. Dostoevsky made only a few notes for the story and never came back to it, but in imagining the situation of Ivan Antonovich, he was preparing himself for the portrayal of Prince Myshkin, Alyosha Karamazov, and, above all, Arkady Dolgoruky. In the notes, Mirovich "finally declares to [Ivan Antonovich] that he is the emperor, that everything is possible for him. Visions of power." "Everything is possible" — that is the link between Ivan Antonovich and the state of adolescence. "Visions of power" are certainly part of it in Arkady's case. He has his "Rothschild idea" of achieving power by accumulating money. He also has a document sewn into his coat which he believes gives him power over certain people who are central to his life. Introduction He even tells himself that the consciousness of power is enough, without the need to exercise it, and declaims, "enough for me / Is the awareness of it," quoting from Pushkin's The Covetous Knight. Further on he comments: They'll say it's stupid to live like that: why not have a mansion, an open house, gather society, exert influence, get married? But what would Rothschild be then? He'd become like everybody else. All the charm of the "idea" would vanish, all its moral force. As a child I had already learned by heart the monologue of Pushkin's covetous knight; Pushkin never produced a higher idea than that! I'm also of the same mind now. Dostoevsky himself reread Pushkin's "little tragedy" during the summer of 1874, while staying at the German health spa of Ems and trying to start work on his new novel. "Please God only that I can begin the novel and draw up at least some plan," he wrote to his wife. "Beginning is already half the affair." But he read Pushkin instead and "grew intoxicated with ecstasy." Here, clearly, is the origin of Arkady's vision of power. And it is linked, through Pushkin, with the struggle between son and father. Mikhail Bakhtin notes in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics that, starting with The Gambler in 1866, The Covetous Knight "exercises a very fundamental influence on all of Dostoevsky's subsequent works, especially on The Adolescent and The Brothers Karamazov." The "Rothschild idea" is Arkady's underground. "My idea is — my corner," he says. "The whole goal of my 'idea' is - solitude ... Yes, I've thirsted for power all my life, power and solitude." The formula is perfect and reveals the extent of Arkady's willed refusal of human communion. This refusal will be sorely tested in the course of the novel. But if the phrase "everything is possible" suggests an abstract dream of power, it also describes adolescence in another way, as that state of uncertainty, ignorance, incompleteness, but also of richness and exuberance, in which everything is literally still possible. In fact, far more turns out to be possible than Arkady ever suspected. He keeps being astonished, keeps stumbling into situations he was unaware of, keeps speaking out of turn. This constant maladroitness sets the tone of the novel and also governs its events. This was the freshness and naivete Dostoevsky was seeking, a sense of the world and the person being born at the same time. Thus "adolescence" also determines the compositional method of the novel, which is characteristic of Dostoevsky's later work in general. Bakhtin was the first to define it clearly: The fundamental category in Dostoevsky's mode of artistic visualizing was not evolution, but coexistence and interaction. He saw and conceived his world primarily in terms of space, not time. Hence his deep affinity for the dramatic form. Dostoevsky strives to organize all available meaningful material, all material of reality, in one timeframe, in the form of a dramatic juxtaposition, and he strives to develop it extensively... For him, to get one's bearings on the world meant to conceive all its contents as simultaneous, and to guess at their interrelationships in the cross-section of a single moment. The action of The Adolescent covers a period of some four months, but each of its three parts takes place in only three days: the 19th to 21st of September, the 15th to 17th of November, and "three fateful days" in December. Nothing takes shape over time; everything is already there and only waiting to be revealed. Arkady writes his notes a year after the start of events, and it is then that his real awakening occurs, as he says himself: "On finishing my notes and writing the last line, I suddenly felt that I had reeducated myself precisely through the process of recalling and writing down." In