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- Impressions of Russian Literature
- VI
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VI.
In contrast to the national pessimism in Turgenief
stands the national optimism in Dostoyevski. The great
sceptic Turgenief, who believed in so little, believed in
the culture of Western Europe. Dostoyevski despised
the Occident, and believed in Russia. If the works of
Turgenief are, to some extent, to be regarded as emigrant
literature, then we stand with Dostoyevski wholly on
Russian soil; he is the autochthonic author, “the true
Scythian,” the legitimate barbarian without a drop of
classic blood in his veins.
Look at this countenance! half the face of a Russian
peasant, half the physiognomy of a criminal, with
flattened nose, small, piercing eyes, under eyelashes which
tremble with nervousness, long, thick, untidy beard, and
light hair; add to this the forehead of a thinker and a
poet, large and shapely, and the expressive mouth,
which, even when closed, speaks of tortures without
number, of ingulfing sadness, of unhealthy desires,
enduring pity, sympathy, passionate envy, anxiety,
torture! Look at this body, which is nothing but nerves,
small and slender, round-shouldered, and tenacious of
life, from his youth up subject to epileptic fits and
hallucinations! This exterior, at first sight plain and
vulgar, on closer examination stamped with weird genius,
thoroughly morbid and wholly extraordinary, speaks of
Dostoyevski’s epileptic genius, of the depths of mildness
which filled his soul, of the billows of almost insane
acuteness which frequently mounted into his head;
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