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<\/a><\/td>\nIn the summer of 1862, Dostoevsky travelled to Western Europe, discovering France and paying his one and only visit to Britain. On his return, he published these impressions of his trip. It is thought that Dostoevsky intended to reveal and explain the nature of the French and English people to his fellow Russians, but something much more important happened. For, in these notes, Dostoevsky appears to have introduced the ideas and themes that were to preoccupy him in many of his masterpieces: the effect of European civilisation on the Russian character, the influence of individualism on the West, the hollowness of 19th Century material progress and political achievements, the inevitability of the proletarian revolution.<\/p>\n
Dostoevsky spent one week in London, and three in Paris; his experiences in these cities brought life to ideas which can be clearly identified in The Devils, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. It is puzzling why Dostoevsky endured three weeks in Paris, as he reports that Paris bored him to death! London, on the other hand, overwhelmed his senses. He concluded that the outstanding trait of the French is hypocrisy, and the English, pride. Dostoevsky travelled through Germany, and he is scathing about the Germans. He declares that Berlin is incredibly like St Petersburg. He recognises that his opinions are probably unfair: \u2018Blow me, I thought to myself, it was really hardly worth while spending a back-breaking forty-eight hours in a railway carriage only to see the replica of what I had just left.\u2019 He accused the Berliners of looking \u2018German\u2019 and said \u2018no sight was more horrible\u2019 than a Dresden woman. He was also irritated by the new bridge at Cologne as he felt the town was \u2018too proud of it.\u2019 He believed that he was only charged a toll to cross the bridge because the collector \u2018guessed that he was Russian.\u2019
\nIn these notes, Dostoevsky chats to the reader as though he were a good friend, touchingly revealing his personality. In Chapter 1, he admits that he is \u201cunable to give you the most accurate information. I must willy-nilly be untruthful occasionally. You tell me, in short, that all you want are my own impressions, provided they are sincere.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Dostoevsky in 1862<\/p><\/div>\n
Chapter 2 begins the telling of the comical story of Dostoevsky\u2019s train journey into Paris, but he opens the chapter with. \u201c\u2019Frenchmen are not rational and would consider themselves most unfortunate if they were,\u2019\u201d a phrase written by Denis Fonvizin. Dostoevsky reacts: \u201cAll such phrases, which put foreigners in their place, contain, even if we come across them now, something irresistibly pleasant for us Russians. We keep this secret, sometimes, even from ourselves. For there are in this, certain overtones of revenge for an evil past.\u201d He describes his companions in the train carriage in mocking terms; of a quiet Englishman, he writes: \u201cHe reads all day without lifting his head a book of that very small English print which only English people can tolerate and even praise for its convenience, and at precisely ten o\u2019clock at night he took off his boots and put on slippers.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>A train arrives in Paris in 1862<\/p><\/div>\n
Chapter 3 is entitled, \u2018Chapter 3 Which is Quite Superfluous\u2019, and it certainly steers the reader away from the subject of the book, exploring Dostoevsky\u2019s opinions on Fonvizin, rural village councils, \u2018The Brigadier\u2019, the Chevalier de Rohan, cotton-wool padding in European ladies\u2019 dresses, Russian literature, peasants and the character of Chatsky, to name but a few. At the close of this long chapter he begins to ask for forgiveness for digressing, then writes, \u201cBut anyway, there is not need to insist on being forgiven. This chapter of mine is superfluous, as you will remember.\u201d And it is.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Denis Fonvizin<\/p><\/div>\n
Chapter 4 resumes the story of Dostoevsky\u2019s train journey towards Paris. He finds himself in pleasant conversation, on and off, with a Swiss gentleman who sits opposite him. Dostoevsky is mystified when, on the entry of four new passengers, a group of baggage-less Frenchmen, the Swiss man falls silent and cannot be coaxed into further talk. The new passengers completely ignored Dostoevsky and the Swiss gentleman, giving Dostoevsky the opportunity to study them:<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all wore a thin sort of frock-coat, terribly shabby and threadbare, little better than those worn by our officers\u2019 batmen or by servants in the house of a not very well-off country squire. Their shirts were dirty, their neck-ties very bright and also very dirty; one of them wore the remnants of a silk kerchief, of the kind which are constantly worn and become stiff with grease after fifteen years\u2019 contact with the wearer\u2019s neck. The man also had studs with imitation diamonds the size of a hazel nut. However, there was a certain smartness and even dash about them. All four appeared to be of the same age \u2013 thirty-five or thereabout \u2013 and though their faces were dissimilar, they themselves were very much alike. Their faces, somewhat haggard in appearance, had the usual little French beards which also looked very much alike. They sat and smoked with a somewhat nonchalant air and affected complete indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four men left the train at the next station, and the Swiss man immediately snapped shut his book and began talking to Dostoevsky again, explaining that the men were the police, whose sole intention was to study these foreign travellers. He explains that they would already have had their names, and copies of their documents, but needed to make detailed descriptions of these foreigners. Dostoevsky discovered, once he arrived in Paris, that each hotel took down his particulars in great detail, and he knew that all of this information was immediately sent to the authorities:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019But what do you want it for?\u2019 I asked.
\n\u2018Oh, it is es-sential,\u2019 replied the landlady, with a polite drawl on the word \u2018essential\u2019. But at the same time entering my height in the book. \u2018Now, monsieur, your hair? Fair\u2026 er\u2026 very fair, really\u2026 straight\u2026\u2019
\nShe made a note of the hair as well.
\n\u2018Would you mind, monsieur,\u2019 she went on as she put down her pen, left her seat and came up to me with all the politeness she could muster, \u2018over here, a step or two nearer the window. I must have a look at the colour of your eyes. Hm\u2026 light colour\u2026\u2019
\nAnd again, she glanced questioningly at her husband. \u2018A bit greyish,\u2019 remarked the husband with a particularly business-like, even worried expression. \u2018Voila,\u2019 he said and gave his wife a wink, pointing at something over one of his eyebrows, but I understood perfectly well what it was he was pointing at. I have a small scar on my forehead and he wanted his wife to take note of this distinguishing mark, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter 5 embarks on Dostoevsky\u2019s general observations about London and Paris. He notices something that the modern traveller might recognise even today about Paris: \u201cParis tries to contract, willingly, lovingly somehow tries to make itself smaller than it really is, tries to shrink within itself, smiling benignly as it does so.\u201d And yet, of London, he says: \u201cThe impression [London] left on my mind was of something on a grand scale, of vivid planning, original and not forced into a common mould. Everything there is so vast and so harsh in its originality.\u201d But, he writes, \u201cBoth Paris and London have one thing in common: the same desperate yearning, born of despair, to retain the status quo, to tear out by the roots all desires and hopes they might harbour within them, to damn the future in which perhaps even the very leaders of progress lack faith, and to bow down in worship of Baal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dostoevsky finds London to be something \u201cout of the Apocalypse\u201d: \u201cThe immense town, forever bustling by night and by day, as vast as an ocean, the screech and howl of machinery, the railways built above the houses (and soon to be built under them), the daring of enterprise, the apparent disorder which in actual fact is the highest form of bourgeois order, the polluted Thames, the coal-saturated air, the magnificent squares and parks, the town\u2019s terrifying districts such as Whitechapel with its half-naked, savage and hungry population, the City with its millions and its world-wide trade, the Crystal Palace, the World Exhibition\u2026\u201d Not much has changed since then! Dostoevsky is amazed at how the streets of London fill up with men and women at the beginning of the weekend, seeking \u201csalvation in gin and debauchery.\u201d He remarks on the area of Haymarket where \u201cprostitutes swarm by night in their thousands. You will find old women there and beautiful women at the sight of whom you stop in amazement. There are no women in the world as beautiful as the English.\u201d Well, I\u2019m not sure about that!<\/p>\n Whitechapel 1862<\/p><\/div>\n Chapters 6 and 7 offer a richly colourful and cruel excavation of the \u2018bourgeois\u2019. He has them uttering, \u201cI don\u2019t exist, I don\u2019t exist at all; I am hiding, walk past, please, don\u2019t take any notice of me, pretend you don\u2019t see me: pass along, pass along!\u201d Of the French, he opines, \u201cAll Frenchmen have an extraordinarily noble appearance. The meanest little Frenchman who would sell you his own father for sixpence and add something into the bargain without so much as being asked for it, has at the same time, indeed at the very moment of selling you his father, such an impressive bearing that you feel perplexed. Go into a shop to buy something, and its least important salesman will crush you, simply crush you, with his astounding nobility.\u201d Dostoevsky\u2019s judgement on France continues with: \u201cThough socialism is possible, it is possible anywhere but in France,\u201d because of the bourgeoisie. Cuttingly, Dostoevsky states that \u201cThe Frenchman loves attracting the attention of authority in order to suck up to it, and he does it in a completely disinterested sort of way, with no thought of an immediate reward; he does it on credit, on account.\u201d As a Brit living in France, I have to admit that this seems to be the case even today.<\/p>\n Rue Royale, Paris 1862- Louis Marie de Schryver<\/p><\/div>\n Chapter 8 presents a farcical romp in the telling of the story of the bourgeois Bribri and Ma Biche. Their scandalous story runs to its end, and that is the end of the book! No further comment from Dostoevsky is provided! I absolutely love this short book; it reveals so much about the man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and I now feel as though I\u2019ve spent time with him exchanging our very personal views on the people of Europe.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Want to know about VM Productions’ Dostoyevsky-Los Angeles Project<\/em> and about the films we make? Want to participate in our projects? Sign up to get tickets to the premiere of our movie (currently in post production), <\/strong>Dostoyevsky Reimagined-BTS<\/strong><\/em> and <\/strong><\/p>\n grab our\u00a0 FREE e-books !<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>