The Age of Suspicion Read online

  Emerging from this whirlwind, we are obliged to admire the credit that adherents of the method that consists in being content to skirt prudently around the object from the outside, must grant the reader (thus conceding to him what, by a curious contradiction, they refuse their characters) when they imagine that, even after reading a long novel, he can possibly perceive, through some sort of magic intuition, so much as a part of what the six pages of which we have just given a very rough summary, have shown him.

  All of these strange contortions—and we should reproach ourselves for pointing this out, if there were not still those today who, like Paul Léautaud, allow themselves to speak seriously of 'that lunatic Dostoievski'—all of these disordered leapings and grimacings, are the absolutely precise outward manifestation, reproduced without indulgence or desire to please, the way the magnetic needle of a galvanometer gives amplified tracings of the minutest variations of a current, of those subtle, barely perceptible, fleeting, contradictory, evanescent movements, faint tremblings, ghosts of timid appeals and recoilings, pale shadows that flit by, whose unceasing play constitutes the invisible woof of all human relationships and the very substance of our lives.

  Of course the methods that Dostoievski used to reproduce these subjacent movements were primitive ones, ff he had lived in our time, the more delicate instruments of investigation at the disposal of modern techniques would have doubtless permitted him to seize these movements at their source, thus avoiding all these incredible gesticulations. But by using our techniques, he might also have lost more than he gained. They would have inclined him towards greater realism and finer minutiae, but he would have lost his originality and ingenuous boldness of line; he would have sacrificed something of his poetic force of evocation as well as of his tragic power.

  And it should be said immediately that what is revealed by these starts and sudden changes, these pirouettings, premonitions and confessions, has absolutely no relation to the disappointing, abstract exposure of motives to which our methods of analysis are accused of leading today. These subjacent movements, this incessant swirl, similar to the movement of atoms, that all of these grimaces bring to light, are themselves nothing else but action, and they only differ by their delicacy, their complexity and their 'underground' nature—to use one of Dostoievski's favourite words —from the larger, close-up actions we are shown in a Dos Passos novel, or in a film.

  We find these same movements again in different degrees of intensity, and with infinite variations, in all of Dostoievski's characters: in the hero of Notes from Underground, in Hippolite or Lebedieff, in Grouchenka or Rogojine, and above all, only more precise, more complicated, more delicate and broader than elsewhere, in the Eternal Husband. Here, it will be recalled, we have the same furtive starts, the same skilful thrusts, the same feints, the same mock quarrels, the same attempts at rapprochment, the same extraordianry presentiments, the same provocations, the same subtle, mysterious game in which hatred mingles with tenderness, revolt and fury with child-like docility, abjectness with the most authentic pride, cunning with ingenuousness, extreme delicacy with extreme rudeness, familiarity with deference; Pavlovitch teases, provokes, attacks, crawls, lies in wait, flees when sought, remains when driven out, tries to touch people's hearts, then immediately bites, weeps and shows his love, dedicates himself, sacrifices himself, and, a few seconds later, leans over, razor in hand, to kill; he speaks in the same saccharine, slightly mocking and obsequious manner, a speech that is larded with crawling, aggressive diminutives, with words servilely prolonged by those hissing suffixes that, in the Russian language of the time, denoted a sort of acrid, sweetish deference; then, occasionally drawing himself up to all his manly height, he dominates, bestows, generously pardons, overwhelms.

  These attitudes are repeated so often in countless different situations, throughout Dostoievski's works, that we might almost reproach him with a certain monotony. In fact, at times, we have the impression of being in the presence of a veritable obsession.

  'All of these characters,' wrote Gide,{4} 'are cut from the same cloth. Pride and humility remain the secret motives of everything they do, although differences of dosage give varied reactions.' But it appears that humility and pride are also mere modalities, mere shadings, and that underneath them there is another, still more secret motive, a movement of which pride and humility are but repercussions. It is doubtless to this initial movement, which lends impulse to all the others, to this spot at which all the trunk lines that traverse this tumultuous mass converge, that Dostoievski alluded when he spoke of his 'source,' 'my eternal source,' from which he derived, as he said, 'the material for each one of my works, even though their form be different.' This meeting-place, this 'source' is rather hard to define. We might perhaps convey an idea of it by saying that, when all is said and done, it is nothing but what Katherine Mansfield called, with some fear and, perhaps, slight distaste: 'this terrible desire to establish contact.'

  It is this continual, almost maniacal need for contact, for an impossible, soothing embrace, that attracts all of these characters like dizziness and incites them on all occasions to try, by any means whatsoever, to clear a path to the 'other,' to penetrate him as deeply as possible and make him lose his disturbing, unbearable opaqueness; in their turn, it impels them to confide in him and show him their own innermost recesses. Their momentary dissimulations, their furtive leaps, their secretiveness, their contradictions, the inconsistencies of their conduct, which, at times, they appear to multiply for the mere pleasure of it and dangle before the eyes of the other, are, in their case, nothing but coy, flirtatious attempts to arouse his curiosity and oblige him to draw nearer. Nor is their humility anything but a timid, round-about appeal, a way of showing that they are quite near, accessible, disarmed, open, acquiescent, in complete surrender, completely abandoned to the understanding, the generosity, of the other: all the barriers erected by dignity, by vanity, have been torn down, anyone can approach them, no one need fear to come in, entrance is free. And their sudden starts of pride are merely painful attempts, in the face of an intolerable refusal, a rejection of their appeal, when the path their humility had tried to follow is closed, to quickly back away and, by choosing other means of access, through hatred, contempt, inflicted suffering, or through some brilliant feat, some bold, generous gesture that astounds and dumbfounds people, succeed in re-establishing contact, in re-assuming possession of the other.

  This incapacity to take their place to one side, at a distance, to stand 'on their dignity,' in a state of opposition, or of just plain indifference, is the source of their strange malleability, of that curious docility with which, constantly, as though they were trying to wheedle and win people over, they take as their model the image of themselves that others reflect back to them. This is also the source of that strange impulse that constantly impels those who feel debased to debase themselves even further and force others to wallow in the same debasement. And if, as André Gide observes,{5} 'they would not know how, they are incapable of being jealous' and 'all they know about jealousy is suffering,' it is because the rivalry implied by jealousy produces the unbearable antagonism, the break that they seek to avoid at all cost; in consequence, this rivalry, in their case, is continually being destroyed, submerged under a curious kind of tenderness, or under that very special sentiment that can hardly be called hatred, which, with them, is simply a way of approaching one's rival, of grasping, of clasping him to oneself by means of the object of their love.

  This refusal to consider their claim, this 'wise don't understand' that Rilke speaks of, and concerning which he adds that it means 'accepting to be alone, (whereas) struggle and contempt are ways of participating,' in their case, are rarely met with. Contact is inevitably established, the appeal is always heard. Nor does the reply ever fail to come, whether it be in the form of an impulse towards tenderness and forgiveness, or towards struggle and contempt.

  For although for certain privileged characters, such as Aliosha, Father
Zossima or the Idiot, the roads that lead to their neighbour are the broad straight roads of love, others, less fortunate, find only muddy, winding roads ahead of them; and some can only walk backwards, stumbling over countless obstacles. All, however, have the same goal.

  They all respond, they all understand. Each one knows that he is nothing but a fortuitous, more or less felicitous assemblage of elements derived from the same common source, that all the others harbour within themselves his own possibilities, his own stray impulses; this explains why each one of them judges the actions of others as he would his own, at close range, and from within, with all their countless shadings and contradictions, which prevent classification and indiscriminate labelling; why no one can ever have the panoramic view of the conduct of others that, alone, makes rancour and blame permissible; it explains the disturbed curiosity with which each one continually scrutinises the soul of others, the astonishing premonitions, the presentiments, the clearsightedness, the supernatural gift of penetration, which are not the sole privilege of those who are enlightened by Christian love, but of all these dubious characters, these parasites with their saccharine, bitter talk, these larvae who continue to dig and stir in the very dregs of the soul and sniff with delight its nauseous slime.

  Crime itself, assassination, which is a sort of ultimate end of all these movements, the bottom of the abyss towards which they all continue to lean, fearful and attracted, is merely, in their case, the supreme embrace, and the only definitive break. But even this supreme break may yet be repaired thanks to public confession, by means of which the criminal deposits his crime in the common patrimony.

  In fact, in Dostoievski's entire works, with perhaps one single exception, no definitive break, no irreparable separation ever occurs.

  If, here and there, one of the two partners permits himself too great a deviation in conduct, or is so bold as to remain aloof and look down upon the other, the way Yeltchaninov does in The Eternal Husband when, 'the game' having been up for a long time, he becomes again the satisfied man of the world he had been formerly, before the game started, a brief call to order suffices (a hand that refuses to be stretched out, four words: 'and what about Lisa?') for the polite varnish to crack and fall away, and contact to be re-established.

  In only one of his stories—and it is also the only one that is really despairing—the Notes from Underground, which is situated, as it were, on the very confines, in the extreme forefront of his entire œuvre, because of the pitiless refusal the man underground meets with on the part of his comrades, narrow-minded, dull little civil servants, and the young officer, Zverkov, the root of whose name is a word that means 'animal' or 'beast', with the stupid head of a ram and elegant, clever, self-assured manners, full of a remote sort of politeness, who 'examines him in silence as though he were some curious insect,' while he carries on before them, hurling in vain his shameful, ludicrous appeals at them—here, it will be recalled, the break does occur.

  This continual need to establish contact—which is one of the primal characteristics of the Russian people, in whom Dostoievski's work is so firmly rooted—has contributed to making of Russian soil the chosen soil, the veritable black loam of 'the psychological.'

  Indeed, nothing could be better calculated than are these impassioned questions and answers, these attractions, these feigned withdrawals, these pursuits and flights, these flirtings and rubbings, these clashes, caresses, bites and embraces, to excite, disturb, bring up to the surface and allow to spread, the immense, quivering mass, whose incessant ebb and flow, whose scarcely perceptible vibration, are the very pulse of life.

  Under the pressure of this tumult, the envelope that contains it wears thin and tears; there occurs a sort of displacement from outside inwards, from the centre of gravity of the character; a displacement that the modern novel has continued to stress.

  Many have noted the impression of unreality—as though we saw them transparently—that Dostoievski's characters make upon us, despite the minute descriptions that he felt obliged to give in order to satisfy the demands of his epoch.

  This comes from the fact that his characters tended already to be what, more and more, characters in fiction were to become, that is, not so much 'types' of flesh and blood human beings, like those we see around us, to enumerate whom seemed to be the novelist's essential goal, as simple props, carriers of occasionally still unexplored states of consciousness, which we discover within ourselves.

  It may be that Proust's snobbishness, which recurs in an almost maniacally besetting manner in all his characters, is nothing but a variety of this same need of fusion, only grown and cultivated in a very different soil, in the formal, refined society of the Faubourg St. Germain, at the beginning of this century. In any case, Proust's works show us already that these complex, subtle states (we should say, these movements) the slightest shadings of which, in the anxiety of his quest, he has succeeded in capturing in all his characters, remain what is most precious and soundest in his work, while the envelopes, which were perhaps a bit too thick—Swann, Odette, Oriane de Guermantes, or the Verdurins—are already on the way to the vast Wax Works to which, sooner or later, all literary 'types' are relegated.

  But, to return to Dostoievski. These movements upon which all his attention, that of all his characters and also of the reader, are concentrated; which derive from a common source and, despite the envelope separating them from one another, like little drops of mercury, continually tend to conglomerate and mingle with the common mass; these roving states that, from one character to another, traverse the entire œuvre, are to be found in everybody, refracted in each one of us according to a different index; and each time they present us one of their as yet unknown, innumerable facets, thus allowing us to sense something that might foreshadow a sort of new unanimism.

  The tie between this work, which is still a living source of research and new techniques, still rich in promise, and the work of Kafka, to which people tend to contrast it today, appears evident, and if literature were to be regarded as a continuous relay race, it would no doubt have been from Dostoievski's hands, more certainly than from those of any other, that Kafka would have seized the token.

  It will be recalled that his 'K.', whose very name is reduced to a mere initial, is but a slender prop. And the sentiment or cluster of sentiments gathered and held together by this frail envelope are nothing if not this same passionate, anxious desire to establish contact that runs like a guiding thread through Dostoievski's entire work. But whereas the quest on which Dostoievski's characters are bent leads them to seek a sort of interpenetration, a total and ever possible fusion of souls, in the most fraternal of worlds, the entire effort of Kafka's heroes is aimed at a goal that is at once less ambitious and less attainable. All they want is to become, 'in the eyes of these people who regard them with such distrust . . . not their friend, perhaps, but in any case, their fellow citizen' . . . , to be able to appear and justify themselves before unknown, unapproachable accusers, or to seek to safeguard, despite all obstacles, some paltry semblance of a relationship with those closest to them.

  This humble pursuit, by virtue of its desperate obstinacy, of the depths of human suffering, the distress and complete abandonment that it brings to light, extends well beyond the domain of psychology and lends itself to all kinds of metaphysical interpretations.

  However, readers who would like to assure themselves that Kafka's heroes have no connection with those characters in fiction whose authors, out of a need to simplify, through prejudice or from didactical motives, have emptied them of 'all subjective thought and life,' and present them as 'the very image of human reality when it is divested of all psychological conventions,' need only re-read the minute, subtle analyses that Kafka's characters indulge in with impassioned lucidity, as soon as the slightest contact is established between them. As, for instance, the skilful dissections of K.'s conduct and sentiments towards Frieda, performed with the keenest of blades, first by the landlady, then by Frieda, then by
K. himself, and which reveal the complicated interplay of delicate wheel-works, a flash of multiple and often contradictory intentions, impulses, calculations, impressions and presentiments.

  But these moments of sincerity, these states of grace, are as rare as the contacts that may give rise to them (love between Frieda and K.—if their strange relationship may be so called—or hatred for K. on the part of the landlady).

  If we were to try to locate the exact spot in Dostoievsky's writings at which Kafka 'seized the token,' it would no doubt be found in the Notes from Underground which, as we have seen, constitutes a sort of ultimate limit, the furthermost point of this œuvre.

  The hero of these Notes knows that, for the officer who 'takes him by the shoulders and without any explanation, without a word, moves him to one side and passes on, as though he did not exist,' he is now nothing but a mere object, or, in the eyes of Zverkov, with his 'ram's head,' a 'curious insect'; as he tries to mingle with the crowd and 'slips between the passersby in the most odious way,' he feels 'like an insect', he becomes very clearly aware that, in their midst, he is nothing but a 'fly,' 'a nasty fly.' This furthermost point at which he finds himself for a very brief moment—for he is quickly revenged, he discovers within easy reach human beings with whom the closest fusion will always be possible (such as Lisa, whom he immediately causes to suffer, and by whom he succeeds in making himself both intensely loved and hated)—this furthermost point to which he is driven for an instant only, was the same world without exit, enlarged to the dimensions of an endless nightmare, in which Kafka's characters were to flounder.