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A TALE WHICH HOLDETH CHILDREN FROM PLAY

& OLD MEN FROM THE CHIMNEY CORNER

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

THE HOUSE _of the_ DEAD

_or Prison Life in Siberia_

BY FEDOR DOSTOÏEFFSKY

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LONDON: PUBLISHED

by J.M. DENT & SONS LTD

AND IN NEW YORK

BY E. P. DUTTON & CO

FIRST ISSUE OF THIS EDITION 1911

REPRINTED 1914

INTRODUCTION

“The Russian nation is a new and wonderful phenomenon in the history of

mankind. The character of the people differs to such a degree from that

of the other Europeans that their neighbours find it impossible to

diagnose them.” This affirmation by Dostoïeffsky, the prophetic

journalist, offers a key to the treatment in his novels of the troubles

and aspirations of his race. He wrote with a sacramental fervour whether

he was writing as a personal agent or an impersonal, novelist or

journalist. Hence his rage with the calmer men, more gracious

interpreters of the modern Sclav, who like Ivan Tourguenieff were able

to see Russia on a line with the western nations, or to consider her

maternal throes from the disengaged, safe retreat of an arm-chair exile

in Paris. Not so was _l’âme Russe_ to be given her new literature in the

eyes of M. Dostoïeffsky, strained with watching, often red with tears

and anger.

Those other nations, he said--proudly looking for the symptoms of the

world-intelligence in his own--those other nations of Europe may

maintain that they have at heart a common aim and a common ideal. In

fact they are divided among themselves by a thousand interests,

territorial or other. Each pulls his own way with ever-growing

determination. It would seem that every individual nation aspires to the

discovery of the universal ideal for humanity, and is bent on attaining

that ideal by force of its own unaided strength. Hence, he argued, each

European nation is an enemy to its own welfare and that of the world in

general.

To this very disassociation he attributed, without quite understanding

the rest of us, our not understanding the Russian people, and our taxing

them with “a lack of personality.” We failed to perceive their rare

synthetic power--that faculty of the Russian mind to read the

aspirations of the whole of human kind. Among his own folk, he avowed,

we would find none of the imperviousness, the intolerance, of the

average European. The Russian adapts himself with ease to the play of

contemporary thought and has no difficulty in assimilating any new idea.

He sees where it will help his fellow-creatures and where it fails to be

of value. He divines the process by which ideas, even the most

divergent, the most hostile to one another, may meet and blend.

Possibly, recognising this, M. Dostoïeffsky was the more concerned not

to be too far depolarised, or say de-Russified, in his own works of

fiction. But in truth he had no need to fear any weakening of his

natural fibre and racial proclivities, or of the authentic utterance

wrung out of him by the hard and cruel thongs of experience. We see the

rigorous sincerity of his record again in the sheer autobiography

contained in the present work, _The House of the Dead_. It was in the

fatal winter of 1849 when he was with many others, mostly very young men

like himself, sentenced to death for his liberal political propaganda; a

sentence which was at the last moment commuted to imprisonment in the

Siberian prisons. Out of that terror, which turned youth grey, was

distilled the terrible reality of _The House of the Dead_. If one would

truly fathom how deep that reality is, and what its phenomenon in

literature amounts to, one should turn again to that favourite idyllic

book of youth, by my countrywoman Mme. Cottin, _Elizabeth, or the Exiles

of Siberia_, and compare, for example, the typical scene of Elizabeth’s

sleep in the wooden chapel in the snow, where she ought to have been

frozen to death but fared very comfortably, with the Siberian actuality

of Dostoïeffsky.

But he was no idyllist, though he could be tender as Mme. Cottin

herself. What he felt about these things you can tell from his stories.

If a more explicit statement in the theoretic side be asked of him, take

this plain avowal from his confession books of 1870-77:--

“There is no denying that the people are morally ill, with a grave,

although not a mortal, malady, one to which it is difficult to assign a

name. May we call it ‘An unsatisfied thirst for truth’? The people are

seeking eagerly and untiringly for truth and for the ways that lead to

it, but hitherto they have failed in their search. After the liberation

of the serfs, this great longing for truth appeared among the

people--for truth perfect and entire, and with it the resurrection of

civic life. There was a clamouring for a ‘new Gospel’; new ideas and

feelings became manifest; and a great hope rose up among the people

believing that these great changes were precursors of a state of things

which never came to pass.”

There is the accent of his hope and his despair. Let it prove to you the

conviction with which he wrote these tragic pages, one that is affecting

at this moment the destiny of Russia and the spirit of us who watch her

as profoundly moved spectators.

JULIUS BRAMONT.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(_Dostoïeffsky’s works, so far as they have appeared in English._)

Translations of Dostoïeffsky’s novels have appeared as

follows:--Buried Alive; or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in

Siberia, translated by Marie v. Thilo, 1881. In Vizetelly’s One

Volume Novels: Crime and Punishment, vol. 13; Injury and Insult,

translated by F. Whishaw, vol. 17; The Friend of the Family and the

Gambler, etc., vol. 22. In Vizetelly’s Russian Novels: The Idiot,

by F. Whishaw, 1887; Uncle’s Dream; and, The Permanent Husband,

etc., 1888. Prison Life in Siberia, translated by H. S. Edwards,

1888; Poor Folk, translated by L. Milman, 1894.

See D. S. Merezhkovsky, Tolstoi as Man and Artist, with Essay on

Dostoïeffsky, translated from the Russian, 1902; M. Baring,

Landmarks in Russian Literature (chapter on Dostoïeffsky), 1910.

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAP. PAGE

I. TEN YEARS A CONVICT 1

II. THE DEAD-HOUSE 7

III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 24

IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) 43

V. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) 61

VI. THE FIRST MONTH 80

VII. THE FIRST MONTH (_continued_) 95

VIII. NEW ACQUAINTANCES--PETROFF 110

IX. MEN OF DETERMINATION--LUKA 125

X. ISAIAH FOMITCH--THE BATH--BAKLOUCHIN 133

XI. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 152

XII. THE PERFORMANCE 171

PART II

I. THE HOSPITAL 194

II. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_) 209

III. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_) 225

IV. THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA 248

V. THE SUMMER SEASON 264

VI. THE ANIMALS AT THE CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT 286

VII. GRIEVANCES 302

VIII. MY COMPANIONS 325

IX. THE ESCAPE 344

X. FREEDOM! 363

PRISON LIFE IN SIBERIA.

PART I.