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Publié par
Date de parution
01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781776581672
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781776581672
Langue
English
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
OR PRISON LIFE IN SIBERIA
* * *
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Translated by
H. S. EDWARDS
Edited by
ERNEST RHYS
*
The House of the Dead Or Prison Life in Siberia From a 1911 edition Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-167-2 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-168-9 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Introduction Bibliography PART I Chapter I - Ten Years a Convict Chapter II - The Dead-House Chapter III - First Impressions Chapter IV - First Impressions (Continued) Chapter V - First Impressions (Continued) Chapter VI - The First Month Chapter VII - The First Month (Continued) Chapter VIII - New Acquaintances—Petroff Chapter IX - Men of Determination—Luka Chapter X - Isaiah Fomitch—The Bath—Baklouchin Chapter XI - The Christmas Holidays Chapter XII - The Performance PART II Chapter I - The Hospital Chapter II - The Hospital (Continued) Chapter III - The Hospital (Continued) Chapter IV - The Husband of Akoulka Chapter V - The Summer Season Chapter VI - The Animals at the Convict Establishment Chapter VII - Grievances Chapter VIII - My Companions Chapter IX - The Escape Chapter X - Freedom! Endnotes
Introduction
*
"The Russian nation is a new and wonderful phenomenon in the history ofmankind. The character of the people differs to such a degree from thatof the other Europeans that their neighbours find it impossible todiagnose them." This affirmation by Dostoïeffsky, the propheticjournalist, offers a key to the treatment in his novels of the troublesand aspirations of his race. He wrote with a sacramental fervour whetherhe was writing as a personal agent or an impersonal, novelist orjournalist. Hence his rage with the calmer men, more graciousinterpreters of the modern Sclav, who like Ivan Tourguenieff were ableto see Russia on a line with the western nations, or to consider hermaternal throes from the disengaged, safe retreat of an arm-chair exilein Paris. Not so was l'âme Russe to be given her new literature in theeyes of M. Dostoïeffsky, strained with watching, often red with tearsand anger.
Those other nations, he said—proudly looking for the symptoms of theworld-intelligence in his own—those other nations of Europe maymaintain that they have at heart a common aim and a common ideal. Infact they are divided among themselves by a thousand interests,territorial or other. Each pulls his own way with ever-growingdetermination. It would seem that every individual nation aspires to thediscovery of the universal ideal for humanity, and is bent on attainingthat ideal by force of its own unaided strength. Hence, he argued, eachEuropean nation is an enemy to its own welfare and that of the world ingeneral.
To this very disassociation he attributed, without quite understandingthe rest of us, our not understanding the Russian people, and our taxingthem with "a lack of personality." We failed to perceive their raresynthetic power—that faculty of the Russian mind to read theaspirations of the whole of human kind. Among his own folk, he avowed,we would find none of the imperviousness, the intolerance, of theaverage European. The Russian adapts himself with ease to the play ofcontemporary thought and has no difficulty in assimilating any new idea.He sees where it will help his fellow-creatures and where it fails to beof value. He divines the process by which ideas, even the mostdivergent, the most hostile to one another, may meet and blend.
Possibly, recognising this, M. Dostoïeffsky was the more concerned notto be too far depolarised, or say de-Russified, in his own works offiction. But in truth he had no need to fear any weakening of hisnatural fibre and racial proclivities, or of the authentic utterancewrung out of him by the hard and cruel thongs of experience. We see therigorous sincerity of his record again in the sheer autobiographycontained in the present work, The House of the Dead . It was in thefatal winter of 1849 when he was with many others, mostly very young menlike himself, sentenced to death for his liberal political propaganda; asentence which was at the last moment commuted to imprisonment in theSiberian prisons. Out of that terror, which turned youth grey, wasdistilled the terrible reality of The House of the Dead . If one wouldtruly fathom how deep that reality is, and what its phenomenon inliterature amounts to, one should turn again to that favourite idyllicbook of youth, by my countrywoman Mme. Cottin, Elizabeth, or the Exilesof Siberia , and compare, for example, the typical scene of Elizabeth'ssleep in the wooden chapel in the snow, where she ought to have beenfrozen to death but fared very comfortably, with the Siberian actualityof Dostoïeffsky.
But he was no idyllist, though he could be tender as Mme. Cottinherself. 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, takethis 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 aname. May we call it 'An unsatisfied thirst for truth'? The people areseeking eagerly and untiringly for truth and for the ways that lead toit, but hitherto they have failed in their search. After the liberationof the serfs, this great longing for truth appeared among thepeople—for truth perfect and entire, and with it the resurrection ofcivic life. There was a clamouring for a 'new Gospel'; new ideas andfeelings became manifest; and a great hope rose up among the peoplebelieving that these great changes were precursors of a state of thingswhich never came to pass."
There is the accent of his hope and his despair. Let it prove to you theconviction with which he wrote these tragic pages, one that is affectingat this moment the destiny of Russia and the spirit of us who watch heras 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.
PART I
*
Chapter I - Ten Years a Convict
*
In the midst of the steppes, of the mountains, of the impenetrableforests of the desert regions of Siberia, one meets from time to timewith little towns of a thousand or two inhabitants, built entirely ofwood, very ugly, with two churches—one in the centre of the town, theother in the cemetery—in a word, towns which bear much more resemblanceto a good-sized village in the suburbs of Moscow than to a town properlyso called. In most cases they are abundantly provided withpolice-master, assessors, and other inferior officials. If it is cold inSiberia, the great advantages of the Government service compensate forit. The inhabitants are simple people, without liberal ideas. Theirmanners are antique, solid, and unchanged by time. The officials whoform, and with reason, the nobility in Siberia, either belong to thecountry, deeply-rooted Siberians, or they have arrived there fromRussia. The latter come straight from the capitals, tempted by the highpay, the extra allowance for travelling expenses, and by hopes not lessseductive for the future. Those who know how to resolve the problem oflife remain almost always in Siberia; the abundant and richly-flavouredfruit which they gather there recompenses them amply for what they lose.
As for the others, light-minded persons who are unable to deal with theproblem, they are soon bored in Siberia, and ask themselves with regretwhy they committed the folly of coming. They impatiently kill the threeyears which they are obliged by rule to remain, and as soon as theirtime is up, they beg to be sent back, and return to their originalquarters, running down Siberia, and ridiculing it. They are wrong, forit is a happy country, not only as regards the Government service, butalso from many other points of view.
The climate is excellent, the merchants are rich and hospitable, theEuropeans in easy circumstances are numerous; as for the young girls,they are like roses and their morality is irreproachable. Game is to befound in the streets, and throws itself upon the sportsman's gun. Peopledrink champagne in prodigious quantities. The caviare is astonishinglygood and most abundant. In a word, it is a blessed land, out of which itis only necessary to be able to make profit; and much profit is reallymade.
It is in one of these little towns—gay and perfectly satisfied withthemselves, the population of which has left upon me the most agreeableimpression—that I met an exile, Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff,formerly a landed proprietor in Russia. He had been condemned to hardlabour of the second class for assassinating his wife. After undergoinghis punishment—ten years of hard
