Diary of a Writer by Fyodor Dostoevski

First published: 1873, 1876-1878, 1880, 1881

Type of work: Periodical journalism

Critical Evaluation:

Dostoevski began his series of articles in the Petersburg Citizen with the plan of talking in an informal way about any subject in current events that impressed or appealed to him. He did not intend the articles to be a specifically literary endeavor and they are not, although literary subjects appear frequently. Nor did he intend his writing to be predominantly political, although he expounds his political philosophy and his slavophilic ideas at intervals throughout. This was to be a personal and freely-ranging undertaking; hence he called it a diary. It combines characteristics found in current journalism, column, editorial, and feature story. The style is flowing, associative, digressive.

The author frequently and half humorously complains that he is having no success in keeping to his main subject because the things which were intended to take up but a few words have absorbed all the space. In fact, the announced subjects are often but launching points for what Dostoevski really has to say. At the end of the 1876 issues, he admits that his main object in writing the DIARY is to explain the ideas of Russia’s national spiritual independence, that is, the qualities of the human mind and heart as he observes them in his countrymen. Always fascinated by the consciousness and emotions of people all of kinds, Dostoevski makes many profound observations, and the pages of his DIARY reveal keen observation and sensitivity to our essential humanity. This prime interest accounts for the rambling and discursive form of his writings. As he explains, he writes of the things he has seen, heard, read. But in life, these things do not fit together, do not form patterns. All is strange, all is “segregation.” The lack of order and coherence in his writings mirrors the disorder and unrest in life, which are his true subject: what life is like in Russia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Dostoevski shows the quirks and quiddities of the Russian character by sketches, by narrated incidents, and by simple rumination. A visit he made to a mineral-water spa provides him with material for comments about railway traveling, social behavior, particularly the propensity of many Russians for speaking poor French rather than good Russian. Dostoevski analyzes this affectation and criticizes it. He is quick to see the faults of his countrymen: their simplicity, their lying, their dissipations. He observes that most men are not bad but wretched, a situation that may be attributed partly to the social confusion in the country after the liberation of the peasants in 1861, when many Russians could not be secure in their identities or their social positions. The writer observes that everybody wants to revenge himself on the world for his own nullity. Because people lack an outlet to express their identities, they feel neglected and faceless; they debauch, they drink, they write anonymous letters to newspapers. However, he insists, the Russian people should be judged not by their villainies but by the great and holy things they long for, even while they are committing wrongs. In the long run, he argues, Russia will be redeemed because her problems all arise from errors of the mind, not of the heart. Errors of the mind are easily remedied, by the very logic of events in life. But errors of the heart are a spiritual blindness that refuses to be cured, and would sooner destroy everything in the world.

Dostoevski feels that Russia needs a greater sense of solidarity, both personally and politically, for a sound cohesive sentiment is happiness in the life of a nation. He points toward the time, before Peter the Great, when Russia was isolationist and contrasts it with the present time, when Russians try to love Europeans, become Europeans. He talks of Germany’s problems as it strove to become a single nation and sees there a parallel for Russia’s problems, makes political predictions, returns to them later to comment upon their working out, discusses Russia’s finances, makes plans, explains how he has formulated them and even how he is expressing them. There is no strict method in his political musings; he explores topics as they occur to him: Russia’s struggles against the Turkish empire, its relations with Europe, general problems of religion—can it prevail?—the Pope, European politics, personalities, patriots and politicians. War, he decides, need not always be a scourge. Sometimes it can be a salvation, if the people need it and are ready for it. His conclusion is that the changes which are occurring around the world ought not to be feared but welcomed by Russia; because her mission is a true and lofty one, the country will endure anything and always emerge triumphant.

More appealing and important than politics for readers of the DIARY are Dostoevski’s discussions of minor immediate and everyday events. In these he demonstrates his real knowledge of the human heart. He returns often to the theme of alienation and the breaking of old ties. A visit to the village in which he grew up leads him to ruminate about his childhood, childhood in general, the nature of families and the changing values in the family situation. He finds a blurring of family identity, an increasing casualness toward the old ties, that he regrets. The education of children, and their peculiar charm, are related subjects he speaks on.

Current newspaper accounts involving children often come up for comment in the DIARY: trials of parents for cruelty to children are discussed at great length, and also digressively. Dostoevski begins a discussion of the ethical considerations of lawyers apropos of a particular case, then says in effect that since he knows little about law, he will talk about talent in general. And he proceeds to do so. But eventually, as always, he returns to his topic. His breadth of mind constantly suggests to him new ideas related by association to the starting ones, and his pen is given free rein.

News stories of the deaths of children attract him and lead him into a consideration of Tolstoy’s CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. Suicides are another kind of news item that provokes a response from Dostoevski. He relates long histories of suicides, speculates upon the forces that drive a man to such an extreme, and the sort of character that can accomplish self-destruction. He devotes one issue of the DIARY to a short story called “The Meek One,” which consists of a man’s monologue just after his wife has committed suicide.

Life reminds Dostoevski of literature as faithfully as literature embodies life. Despite his frequent remarks that he does not mean to deal directly with literature and criticism, he is often led into it because, as he explains, the DIARY is meant as a record of his impressions and his strongest impressions are about literature. The death of George Sand in 1876 occasions a long discussion of her popularity as a novelist, her heroines, her religion. Besides “The Meek One,” Dostoevski produces another short story called “The Dream of a Strange Man,” and also gives a sketch of his plan for a satiric novel. He broods lovingly over Cervantes’ DON QUIXOTE and its knowledge of the heart. The single issue of the DIARY for August, 1880, consists of the text of a famous address on Pushkin that Dostoevski made to a literary society earlier that year. The significance of Pushkin for Russia, he says, is that he was the first to recognize and portray in literature the negative type of man, who is restless, suffering, without faith or cooperation, refusing to be reconciled to his world. Pushkin’s universal susceptibility allowed him truly to capture the artistic beauty of the Russian spirit. There is for Dostoevski the essence of the Russian personality in this type of man, and Pushkin himself is its perfection.

The DIARY met with immense acclaim during the years it appeared, but the author’s death in 1881 cut short the publication of what had been, and still is, a continuing document of a sensitive man’s confrontation of his world and the meaning he found in it.