- Project Runeberg -  Impressions of Russia /
327

(1889) [MARC] Author: Georg Brandes Translator: Samuel Coffin Eastman - Tema: Russia
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It is evident that Dostoyevski’s fancy frequently
turned on such unnatural inclinations, just because,
according to his train of reasoning, there is no room
left for a sound sensuousness. His inclination to
describe bodily sufferings, the dwelling greatly on
cruelties, are suggestive of unnatural desires. It is peculiar
that Turgenief again and again returns to the comparison
between Dostoyevski and De Sade. Quite evidently
it is very much in consequence of his dislike to see his
hateful rival installed as a hero, but also it is plain that
it was Turgenief’s conviction that there is to be found
here physiologically and psychologically a real kinship.[1]

Thus much is clear at all events, that with Dostoyevski’s
gifts there was a perverse nervousness.

However high the delineation of character stands in
“Crime and Punishment,” the book suffers from the
imperfections of the narrative style. The portions in
dialogue are immeasurably the best. As soon as the
author himself begins to talk, art ceases. Dostoyevski
was not able, like Turgenief, to acquire the French art
of narration; what he appropriated to himself from
them was their ideal of humanity, a national, fundamental
view, which is akin to that of Louis Blanc and
of Victor Hugo in his later years.

Though an author of such a high rank, he was an
artist of a low rank. He allowed all his writings to be
printed as they ran off from his pen, without revision of
any kind whatever, to say nothing of recasting them.
He did not trouble himself to give them the highest
possible degree of perfection by condensation or
pruning, but only worked as a journalist works, and is
therefore universally too prolix.

Thus so far as this, his best work, is concerned, it is


[1] See especially Turgenief’s letter to Saltykof of September 24, 1882.

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