Simon Karlinsky, and Russian Writers, on THE DOWNSIDE OF DOSTOEVSKY: ДОСТОЕВЩИНА

Simon Karlinsky, and Russian Writers, on The Downside of Dostoevsky

Despite my admiration for Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (FMD) as a psychologist and philosopher, there are things I do not appreciate about his fiction. Far from all Russian writers accept Dostoevsky’s greatness. Well-known figures such as Chekhov, Bunin, Tsvetaeva and Nabokov are often contemptuous in their disdain of FMD.

For a thorough account of objections to Dostoevsky’s writings, a good place to start is the article by Simon Karlinsky, “Dostoevsky as Rorschach Test” [originally published in "The New York Times," June 13, 1971; reprinted in The Norton Critical Edition of Crime and Punishment, p. 629-36]. Here are a few quotations from that article.

“All accepted standards of literary criticism and textual analysis tend to break down when applied to Dostoevsky. His prose has always been a magnet for the kind of reader (and commentator) who does not give a hoot about the art of literature, who mistrusts sober observation of reality, and who primarily looks for a reflection of his own self and for a possible vehicle of self-expression in every book he reads.”

Often “neither his biography, nor his general views are familiar to those who modishly bandy his name about. Someone ought to translate the set of disgustingly chauvinistic, jingoist and anti-Semitic poems (yes, poems) that Dostoevsky wrote in the late 1850s, urging that Russia conquer other countries, calling down God’s blessing on Russian conquests and denouncing the Jews as leeches who torture Russia; copies of these poems should be handed out to all the starry-eyed champions of the progressive, revolutionary Dostoevsky. Of course, a simple reading of The Possessed [The Devils] and of The Diary of a Writer might also help.”

“There somehow has to be room for a more balanced appraisal that takes into full cognizance Dostoevsky’s obscurantist, reactionary ideology, the excessively nagging and hysterical tone of his narrators, the cheap and flashy effects with which he stages some of his dramatic confrontations, and the occasional but undeniable sloppiness of his plots and of his Russian style.”

“One of the best kept secrets in Western criticism is that Dostoevsky does not happen to be everyone’s cup of tea. Many intelligent, compassionate, sensitive people find his overheated universe of stormy passions, gratuitous cruelty, tormented children and hysterical women definitely uncongenial.”

“Russian dictionaries list a common noun, derived from the writer’s name, достоевщина (dostoevshchina), which is a derogatory term describing an undesirable mode of behavior. A person guilty of dostoevshchina is being deliberately difficult, hysterical or perverse. Another possible meaning of this word is excessive and morbid preoccupation with one’s own psychological processes. The word, incidentally, is part of the normal Russian vocabulary.”

“Tolstoy tried to reread The Brothers Karamazov in 1910, the year of his death. ‘I’ve started reading it,’ he wrote to one of his correspondents, ‘but I cannot conquer my revulsion for its lack of artistic quality, its frivolity, posturings and wrong-headed attitude toward important matters.’”

“First reading Dostoevsky at age twenty-nine, Anton Chekhov wrote to his publisher Suvorin: ‘It’s all right but much too long and lacking in modesty. Too pretentious.’ In Chekhov’s stories and personal letters, the name of Dostoevsky usually occurs in passages condemning some high-strung, hysterical or hypocritical female.”

During his lifetime Vladimir Nabokov qualified Dostoevsky as “a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar,” “a prophet, a claptrap journalist, and a slapdash comedian,” and “a much overrated sentimental and Gothic novelist.”

But “it was none other than Nabokov who in Lolita gave the world a full-scale treatment of a subject around which Dostoevsky circled like a cat around a saucer of hot milk in novel after novel, only to recoil from it in horror.” Pedophilia.