Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Letter to Madame N.D. Fonvizina: Translation and Analysis
Sarah Lage
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Letter to Madame N.D. Fonvizina: Translation and Analysis
It can– and often has been– argued that Fyodor Dostoyevsky remains the greatest writer of all time. Though often poor and plagued with a gambling addiction, Dostoyevsky composed stories that question and explore the parameters of countless philosophies and the human condition itself, and his work continues to resonate with Russians and non-Russians alike. English actor, broadcaster, and writer Stephen Fry lucidly explained the world’s longstanding adoration of Dostoyevsky’s writing: “Great writers, I discovered, were not to be bowed down before and worshipped, but embraced and befriended. Their names resounded through history not because they had massive brows and thought deep incomprehensible thoughts, but because they opened windows in the mind, they put their arms ‘round you and showed you things you always knew but never dared to believe. Even if their names were terrifyingly foreign and intellectual sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire or Cavafy, they turned out to be charming and wonderful and quite unalarming after all.”
A friend of mine once summed up his thoughts about Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, a short novel that follows a chronically inert and spiteful modern St. Petersburg man, with a single question: “What was [Dostoyevsky] thinking?” This may sound snarky, but it is actually an important question. In many ways, Dostoyevsky’s writings were heavily influenced by his life and experience as a 19th-century St. Petersburg man– things he himself experienced, read in the crime section of the newspaper, or overheard. In the late 1840s, Dostoyevsky joined the Petrashevksy Circle, which was a group of utopian socialists who aligned themselves with Western liberal philosophies rather than traditional Slavic values. Dostoyevsky often features Petrashevksy Circle-esque characters in his books, such as Pyotor Petrovich Luzhin from Crime and Punishment and Pyotor Aleksandrovich Miusov from The Brothers Karamazov.
However, in 1849, the members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested, and Dostoyevsky was sent to Siberia for four years and was exiled from St. Petersburg for an additional four years afterward. During his time in Siberia, Dostoyevsky’s philosophy underwent a complete transformation. His mind and heart exited the Petrashevksy Circle and instead shifted to profound religiosity and belief in traditional Russian values. In his novels, loving and religious characters are often juxtaposed with Westernized liberals, and a consistent philosophical “debate” unfolds at the turn of every page.
The following letter offers a unique perspective into Dostoyevsky’s personal philosophy and faith. He sent this note to Nataliya Dmitrievna Fonvizina, the wife of a Decembrist revolutionary who followed her husband into exile. Dostoyevsky met multiple Decembrists while in exile in Siberia and felt great admiration for them. Fonvizina’s willingness to live in exile by her husband’s side also serves as an example of the “active love” that Christian leader Elder Zosima promotes in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. An excerpt of the letter in both Russian and English may be found below.
In Russian:
Я слышал от многих, что Вы очень религиозны, Наталия Дмитриевна. Не потому, что Вы религиозны, но потому, что сам пережил и прочувствовал это, скажу Вам, что в такие минуты жаждешь, как «трава иссохшая», веры, и находишь ее, собственно, потому, что в несчастье яснеет истина. Я скажу Вам про себя, что я — дитя века, дитя неверия и сомнения до сих пор и даже (я знаю это) до гробовой крышки. Каких страшных мучений стоила и стоит мне теперь эта жажда верить, которая тем сильнее в душе моей, чем более во мне доводов противных. И, однако же, Бог посылает мне иногда минуты, в которые я совершенно спокоен; в эти минуты я люблю и нахожу, что другими любим, и в такие-то минуты я сложил в себе символ веры, в котором всё для меня ясно и свято. Этот символ очень прост, вот он: верить, что нет ничего прекраснее, глубже, симпатичнее, разумнее, мужественнее и совершеннее Христа, и не только нет, но с ревнивою любовью говорю себе, что и не может быть. Мало того, если б кто мне доказал, что Христос вне истины, и действительно было бы, что истина вне Христа, то мне лучше хотелось бы оставаться со Христом, нежели с истиной.
In English:
I’ve heard from many people that you are very religious, Nataliya Dmitrievna. Not because you are religious, but because I experienced this myself and felt this, I will tell you that in such moments you thirst like “withered grass” for faith, and you find it, actually, because in misfortune the truth becomes clearer. I’ll tell you about myself, that I– a child of this century, a child of unbelief and doubt until even now (I know it), to the lid of a casket. What horrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is stronger in my soul the more counterarguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I’m completely calm; in these moments I love and I feel loved by others, and in such minutes I’ve formed a symbol of faith within myself, in which everything is clear and sacred to me. This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, sweeter, reasonable, courageous, and perfect than Christ, and not only does such a thing not exist, but I tell myself with jealous love that it is also impossible for such a thing to. Moreover, if someone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and indeed this was so, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.
Sources
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. 39. Н.Д. Фонвизиной. 20 Feb. 1854, https://rvb.ru/dostoevski/01text/vol15/01text/383.htm.
Perov, Vasily. Vasily Perov - Портрет Ф.М. Достоевского - Google Art Project. Oil on canvas, 1872, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vasily_Perov_-_%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%82_%D0%A4.%D0%9C.%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.
Rosengrant, Sandra, and Elena Lifschitz. The Golden Age. John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
The Reading Agency. The Library Book. Profile Books, 2012.
Znamenskiy, M. S. Fonvizina Natal. 1840.