DOSTOEVSKY REPOSSESSED

...And secondly, ¦ to what degree is the figure in the book Gide, Gide masquerading as Dostoevsky for the exposition and justification of his own ideas...

...He contributes some unusual observations on the subject of Prince Myshkin's chastity but treats Myshkin's disease with shy reluctance...

...In the midst of this charged atmosphere Gide made a critical bow, as a warm defender of the Russian to those who felt then* rationality affronted, and as an intelligent moderator to these who were finding in Dostoevsky a suitable cult object...

...It is absurd that many of the works of one of our major writers of the last century should be available only in the Constable edition or in other volumes accessible to few readers...

...What o/ them when this day is dust in a chalice, o dead man't teeth in a gUus, fog in a bottle...

...Whereas he welcomes the fact that in Dostoevsky's fiction, unlike that of France and England, the conventions do not exist, he does not recognize the function which this serves...

...These are important themes in Dostoevsky and they do not yield themselves to such facile analysis...

...But the deliberate avoidance of »4ch annotation will not prevent enjoyment Melville has rich gifts, and these "pieces display them with varying degrees of success...

...Arnold Bennett's statement, "They were made for each other—*r rather Dostoevsky was made for Gide," is easily dismissed...

...The spontaneous actions of Dostoevsky's people, openly dramatizing what would ordinarily be contained only in thoughts, provide an extra dimension of freedom and allow Dostoevsky to bring into play the most bae^eaiifs1w1i,iilggfdl»ii of social man* ners and unripresssd by them...

...In those years, the influence of the great Russian novelist on Western Intellectuals was steadily increasing...

...Xn Ood?' " I...

...But now Gide's purposes are clear, and we see him, the self-conscious French Protestant hopefully evoking for his Catholic audience a doctrine based directly on the Gospels, and the refined intellectual cautiously welcoming the presence of Dostoevsky's demon, so that as artist he can define neurosis as the basis of a creative life...

...ANYONE FAMILIAR with Freud's essay, "Dostoevsky and Parricide," will recognize the extent of Gide's omissions...

...He raiakas seme dabioa* statements about an "Asiatic'* and "Bud' dhist" outlook and insists categorically that Dostoevsky's Gospcl-mspifed smith is absolute, and that the atheists in his novels are there to illustrate the...

...for this allusion and others like it cast light on "The Apple-Tree Table," in which it occurs...

...One example of the latter point will have to suffice...

...The power and conviotion with which he endows his scoffers shows his own wavering faith and his compulsion to entertain every intellectual objection to the existence of God...

...The editor has provided an illuminating introduction, and he has spared no pains to give us an accurate text...

...Reviewed by JOHN SHEPLEY GIDE'S SIX LECTURES ON DOST0EV8KY were delivered in 1922, published tins following year, and translated Into English In 1923...

...New the anpjsjMai quality of Dostoevsky's faith isibet If is not absolute...

...4?2 pp...

...edited, with an introduction and notes, by jay leyda...

...I believe In the body of Christ...

...ruin wW(*proeeads from intellectual insubordination) to God...

...It is just such thankless accuracy that the ordinary reader too often takes for granted...

...I will believe In Clod.'" In Kirillov's sacrifice, his suicide to prove the non-existence of God, Dostoevsky has embodied the essential Christian concept of the Savior, twisted it artfl mocked it, so that in the grotesque episode of Kirillov's death, we see the author not as a Christian moralist secure in his beliefs and condemning intellectual presumption, as Gide tells us, but as a man lashing himself to despair for his inability to achieve an unquestioning faith...

...Shatov muttered frantically...

...Cymbals for Melville the complete stories of herman melville...

...First, in the course of his selecting what has Gide omitted from his portrait of Dostoevsky...

...random house...

...He speaks at length on the theme of jealousy, in Dostoevsky "a suffering which is not complicated by any feeling of hatred for rivals," often leading to "a strange, imperious affection," and he illustrates this by quoting the following from the final scene between Rogozhin and Myshkln in The Idiot: "EveryJtime the delirious man (Roge^eiBSBp^^pggdj §ato PMseainiagf' dp fetlAMgs, ha hastened to pass his trembling hand swflfcy ofsr his hair and cheeks, as though caressing and soothing him...

...Although this is an honest enough statement, it raises two threatening issues...

...Relph de Teledone...

...and if Schneider himself had come from Switzerland to look at his former pupil and patient, remembering the condition in which Myshkin had sometimes been during the first year of his stay in Switzerland, he would have Rung up his hands in despair and would have said as he did then, 'An idiot I'" In the presence of this spectacle, the identification through madness of Myshkin and Rogozhin, Gide's quiet enuncia-' tions about "strange, imperious affection" are somewhat gratuitous...

...These pages contain a good deal of information on Dostoevsky's creative life, derived from varied sources and sensN tively evaluated...

...This condition is fast being remedied by the appearance of the Hendricks House series (under the general editorship of Howard P. Vincent) and by volumes like the one under review...

...What of them then — and what of u...

...But what of them born of and in this hour, having no future vision, no rearward scope, whose language and whose mind are functions of this day, this swell of history— no landscape stretching from the soul's window, only the figure of death squat on their doorsteps...

...Seen in this light, Gide's is a literary appraisal which, despite its lapses into coyness and apology, is almost uniformly provocative, and easily justifies its re-publication after a quarter of a century...

...For the understanding, of his total meaning, these short pieces of fiction - are indispensable...

...The two sections on Dostoevsky's correspondence are especially noteworthy...

...I should crave your pardon did I think that thereby I had presented Dostoevsky's in a false light* No, like the bees Montaigne tells of, I have but gathered from his works what I needed to make my own honey...

...The ordinary reader is sure to be pleased by this book, if he has any interest in Melville at all...

...I believe that the new advent will take place in Russia...

...I believe In her orthodoxy...

...4.00...

...The willingness to accept humiliation he sees as somehow pure, the desire to inflict it an aspect of power and the corrupted intellect...

...One might dwell at length on the fine qualities of this little volume, citing the warmth of Gide's presentation, the welcome absence of critical jargon, the ease and sophistication which we have come to expect from the French master...

...Leyda, whose name is known to every Melville student, has taken "story" in a broad sense and gathered together in the present volume all of the Piazza Tales and nine less familiar pieces written at about the same time, like "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo...

...But what of them, the census takers of frustration/the forgers of expediencies, the welders of the airtight and waterproof, the makers of shoes for angels...

...I believe...

...And so, after all, his portrait of Dostoevsky, however accurate in outline, revealsy when we stand close enough, the countenance of Gide...

...f John Bhepley is completing his first novel...

...Omitted, probably by inadvertence, from the 1856 Piazza Tales, it was likewise omitted from the Constable volume and from Professor Oliver's recent edition...

...Consjance Gornetfs English translations had appeared, a new and complete French translation of The Brothers Karamazov was being eagerly anticipated, and great excitement was provoked by the publication in Germany and later in other countries of the suppressed chapter from The Possessed, *Stavrogin's Confession...

...In a scene in the possessed, Stavrogin asks Shatov: "'i only wanted to know, do you believe in Ood, yourself?' '"I believe in Russia...

...Throughout he inclines to linger about* the periphery of a situation, examining its secondary aspects with genuine perception but recoiling from the deeper implications...

...Edward Flees Is doing graduate were: as Yale...

...For there is but a very hazy dividing line between abjectness and humility, and the passive submissiveness which* characterizes many of Dostoevsky's people is intrinsically bound up with an active quest for punishment...

...Whatever else literary revivals may bring them, the present well-founded enthusiasm for Melville is certain in the long run to provide us with a series of accurate and usable texts...

...Gide himself is more modest and more accurate: "You have grasped, have you not, what I meant in my introduction when I said that Dostoevsky was often an excuse for expressing my own ideas...

...and 'The Apple-Tree Table...

...Although GiSe has proclaimed his scorn for conventions, they have continually plagued him, and he remains the uneasy moralist emd literary exhibitionist, treading a thin line between piety and abandon...

...And then Gide turns to consider The Eternal Hulbsnd, ignoring the crux of the scene, wrack appears in tne vary next sentence: "But by now he could understand no questions he was asked and did not recognize the people surrounding him...

...Reviewed by EDWARD FIESS THE SOUNDS OF THE MELVILLE BOOM can now be heard by even the dullest literary ear...

...For instance, there seems little reason why he should not be informed who the "Fox girls" were, even if the explanation is superfluous to those who know the period...

...NOTATION ON A CALENDAR Some men are born before their time and some whose eyes are focussed back to a patterned day of ancient and resplendent noise...

...In this case, he will want to know what the book contributes to his understanding of Dostoevsky and likewise what it reveals about Gide...

...Perhaps he will occasionally be irritated by the absence of explanatory notes...

...But when one renowned writer comments on another, the reader's attention will necessarily be divided between author and subject...

...There is a paragraph at the end of "The Lightnlng-Rod Man" which occurs only in the original version In putnam's monthly...

...Confronted by the psychological complexity of Dostoevsky's characters, Gide hastens to classify them into two categories, the proud and the humble...

...However life-like a portrait, there is always much of the artist in it, as much of him almost as of the sitter...

...And in God...

...a • OIDE IS ANXIOUS that Dostoersky's Christianity not offend his French and, he assumes, Soman Catholic audience...