Excerpt:
Preliminary Note
The Eternal Husband was written by Dostoevsky during his stay abroad from 1867 to 1871—the longest and most significant of his foreign travels—following his second marriage to Anna Grigorievna Snitkina. The first reference to this novel is found in a letter Dostoevsky wrote to Nikolay Strakhov, dated March 30, 1869, from Florence:
“I can offer the journal Zarya a short novel, about two signatures [sheets] in length, perhaps a bit more… I thought of writing it three or four years ago, the year of my brother’s death, as a response to the words of Apollon Grigoriev, who had praised my Notes from Underground and told me: ‘Continue writing in this genre.’ But this is not like Notes from Underground; it is something entirely different in form, though the essence is the same—my usual essence, Nikolay Nikolaievich, if you recognize in me any particular essence of my own. I can write this story very quickly, for there is not a single line or word in it that is not clear to me. I could almost say it is already written, though not yet on paper.”
Later, in a letter to N. M. Maikov from Dresden, November 8, 1869:
“The novel… will not be three and a half signatures, as I first wrote to Kashpirev… but will perhaps reach six or seven… I have done everything possible to shorten it, but it was absolutely impossible. Yet it is not a matter of quantity, but of quality, regarding which I can say nothing, for I know nothing myself; others will decide.”
And at the end of the same letter:
“The novel will be titled, I believe, The Eternal Husband; but I am not certain.”
Despite this uncertainty, Dostoevsky kept the title, and The Eternal Husband appeared in the January and February 1870 issues of Zarya. Dostoevsky returned to Russia in mid-1871, and in 1872, the work was published as a book.
The work was apparently a great success from the moment of its appearance, judging by a letter from Dostoevsky to Strakhov: “I have read your approving lines about my novel with greed. They have flattered and pleased me… Kashpirev is also happy; he tells me so in two letters. All of this gladdens me very much.”
To understand the full scope of this praise, one must remember that Dostoevsky was already one of Russia’s most famous writers, the author of The Insulted and Humiliated, The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot. The Eternal Husband belongs to his prime, situated between The Idiot and The Possessed (Demons).
Commentators agree that The Eternal Husband and The Insulted and Humiliated are the two novels containing the most autobiographical elements. There is a consensus that Trusotsky is a literary incarnation of the author, reflecting his bitterest experiences as a “wronged husband.” In his daughter’s biography, we read:
“Dostoevsky put all his bitterness as a betrayed husband into the novel… It is curious to observe that the author depicted the hero as a contemptible creature—old, ugly, vulgar, and ridiculous. It is possible Dostoevsky despised himself for his own credulity.”
In the marginalia of Anna Grigorievna (his second wife), we find notes identifying characteristics of the characters with the author himself, such as Velchaninov’s memory loss. Anna writes: “All of this happened to Dostoevsky personally. He used to forget the faces of his acquaintances so completely… His lack of memory made him many enemies, who attributed it to disdain.”
Regarding the intrinsic value of the work, the critic Persky notes that while Russian readers look for social allusions, Western readers might struggle with the “mediocrity” of the hero. However, André Gide, in his book on Dostoevsky, argues:
“The Eternal Husband is considered by some scholars to be Dostoevsky’s masterpiece… The entire book responds to a classical ideal; the action itself… has already taken place… Velchaninov finds himself at that moment in life when past events begin to take on a different aspect in his own eyes.”
I. Velchaninov
Summer had already arrived, and Velchaninov, quite contrary to his expectations, found himself still in St. Petersburg. His planned trip to southern Russia had fallen through, and his lawsuit showed no signs of concluding. The case—a litigation over land ownership—was taking a turn for the worse. Three months prior, it had seemed perfectly simple, beyond any shadow of a doubt; and yet, abruptly, everything had changed. “Then again, it’s the same with everything; today, everything is going wrong,” he repeated to himself incessantly, in a foul mood.
He had hired a highly skilled, expensive, and famous lawyer, sparing no expense on fees; but, driven by impatience and mistrust, he began meddling in the case himself. He wrote legal briefs that the lawyer hurried to hide away, ran from court to court, made useless inquiries, and in reality, complicated everything. Finally, the lawyer could not help but complain, advising him to spend some time in the countryside.
But he could not bring himself to leave. The dust, the stifling heat, the St. Petersburg “white nights” that overexcite and unnerve—all of it seemed to perversely delight him and keep him pinned to the city. He lived near the Great Theatre in a small flat he had recently rented and which he didn’t even like. “Nothing ever quite suits him!” His hypochondria, the seeds of which had been planted long ago, was growing day by day. He was a man who had lived much, and lived well and cheerfully. Despite being only thirty-nine, he felt far removed from youth. This “old age,” as he called it, had fallen upon him “almost all at once.” He understood that what had aged him so rapidly was not the quantity, but the quality of his years, and that if he felt himself failing prematurely, it was a fault of the spirit rather than the body.
At first glance, he might still be taken for a young man: tall, strong, and fair, with a thick head of hair without a single grey strand, and a handsome beard that reached nearly to the middle of his chest. His appearance might initially seem coarse or unkempt; but upon closer inspection, one immediately recognized a man perfectly educated and refined in the manners of the best society. He maintained an air of ease and even elegance that could not quite hide the sudden surliness that had taken hold of him.
His once-delicate complexion, which women used to compare to “pearls and roses,” was now cruelly infected by hypochondria. His large blue eyes, which ten years ago had made many conquests—eyes so clear, so cheerful, so carefree—now reflected the cynicism of a man of loose habits, weary of everything. A new shade had appeared in them: a shade of suffering and sadness—distracted, seemingly objectless, yet profound.
This sadness manifested most when he was alone. It was strange that this man, who only two years prior was jovial and dissipated, had come to prefer solitude above all else. He had deliberately broken with his numerous friends, an unnecessary move even after the total ruin of his fortune. To tell the truth, pride played a large part in it. His hypersensitive pride made the company of old friends intolerable; thus, he drifted into isolation.
“Assuming there truly are ‘superior’ motives and ‘inferior’ motives,” he would add to himself. He found himself obsessed by higher concerns he had never previously considered. Deep down, what he meant by “superior motives” were those things—to his great astonishment—that no one could sincerely laugh at when alone. He knew well enough that at the first opportunity, tomorrow even, he would abandon these secret, pious dictates of his conscience and be the first to laugh at them. But in the meantime, he had gained a singular independence from the “inferior motives” that had once ruled him so despotically.
Often, upon waking, he felt ashamed of the ideas he had during his bouts of insomnia. He had long observed in himself a marked inclination toward scrupulousness, whether over important matters or trifles. He had consulted a famous doctor, a friend of his, who told him that the “doubling” of ideas and sensations during insomnia was common in men who “think and feel intensely,” and that the action of the night could flip a lifetime of convictions on its head.
Velchaninov didn’t want to hear any more; the matter was clear: he was sick. “So that’s what the obsession I attributed to something ‘superior’ boils down to! A simple illness!” he exclaimed bitterly.
Soon, this phenomenon began occurring during the day as well. Memories of his earlier life emerged “suddenly, and God knows why,” with strange clarity. Despite his failing memory for recent events or faces, scenes from ten or fifteen years ago returned with vivid detail. Why did a certain past act now feel like a crime? His self-reproach was so deep it led to internal tears. What would he have said two years ago if told he would one day weep?
He remembered worldly failures, humiliations, and unpaid debts of honor. But soon, “superior” remorse took hold. He recalled a bald, grotesque old clerk he had once insulted for the sake of a joke. He remembered the old man defending his daughter’s reputation, then bursting into tears as others mocked him with champagne. This scene, once comic to him, was now agonizing—especially the image of the old man’s head buried in his hands.
He remembered defaming a schoolmaster’s wife for sport, and abandoning a girl of modest means with whom he had a child. Hundreds of such memories surfaced, each pulling at another.
“Yes,” he thought sarcastically, “no doubt someone is concerned with ‘improving’ me by suggesting these damned memories and tears of repentance. But what of it? It’s all blank cartridges! What good are tears if I have no free will left? If the same temptation appeared tomorrow, I would do it all again, perhaps even more vilely.”
There was no longer a schoolmaster’s wife to defame, but the mere thought that he could repeat such acts drove him to despair. He needed a distraction, but St. Petersburg only made it worse. He considered fleeing to Crimea, only to laugh at the idea an hour later. "No climate can kill these cursed thoughts. And why leave? The dust, the heat, the nerves of the courtroom… in all these faces passing from morning to night, one sees only an egoism…
…"
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