How to Read Dostoevsky’s Dialogues: Following the Scene Beneath the Argument

David Lapadat | Music PhD

14 hours ago

7 min read

We can follow every sentence of a Dostoevsky conversation and still lose our way. Someone explains himself at length; the other person answers briefly; suddenly the first speaker is furious, though the answer seems almost harmless. Going back over his ideas may leave us with the same puzzle. We also need to hear what he was asking this particular listener to do with them.

A good way into these exchanges is to keep three questions nearby: Who is listening? What response does the speaker need? What happens when the listener replies? We need not settle the answers at once. A character may be unsure of his own motives, and a later remark may oblige us to reconsider the request we thought we heard. For now, these questions help us follow the interruptions, declarations, and sudden changes of subject.

The examples below move from an exchange of letters in Poor Folk to a public provocation in The Gambler and a doctor's appointment in The Double. If you are choosing which novel to begin with, the Dostoevsky beginner’s guide covers reading order; here we will stay inside a few conversations.

Spoiler note: This guide discusses selected scenes from Poor Folk, The Gambler, and The Double, including the immediate consequences of those exchanges.

In Poor Folk, read the address on the letter

Makar Devushkin, the impoverished clerk in Poor Folk, has opinions about the books he borrows from his young friend Varvara. In C. J. Hogarth’s translation, she is called Barbara. When we reach his verdict on Gogol’s The Overcoat—called The Cloak in this edition—it helps to remember that she will be reading the verdict. She has sent him the story; she also knows how he lives.

His letter of July 8 begins with a defense of his own life. Makar accounts for his years of service, his conduct, and the usefulness of his copying. He has been a good employee; he takes pride in his legible handwriting. These are the credentials with which he approaches a story about another poor clerk, and they make the book’s description of that clerk feel dangerously close to an inspection of his own life. Why should a stranger know what happens inside his lodgings, or whether his boots need mending?

As Makar imagines a kinder course for the story, its clerk’s troubles become entangled with the people in his own office:

Yet would it not be better, instead of letting the poor fellow die, to give him a cloak while yet he is ALIVE—to give it to this same Thedor Thedorovitch (that is to say, to myself)?

The parenthesis is brief enough to pass over. Stop there, and we can hear him asking for a part in the ending he is proposing. His next sentence has a superior summon the dutiful clerk, promote him, and raise his salary. Through this revised ending, he lets Varvara see what he longs for in his own life.

To defend Gogol, Varvara would have to answer the charge that the story humiliates someone like Makar. He may have no intention of cornering her. His affection, embarrassment, and literary judgment share the same letter, and she cannot respond to one without touching the others.

Makar had welcomed another likeness only a week earlier. In his letter of July 1, he finds consolation in Pushkin’s story of a stationmaster and his daughter. He is also trying to persuade Varvara to stay near him, while she is considering work elsewhere and worrying about the cost of his generosity. The story lets him speak about his fear of separation. A week later, he resents Gogol for making a poor clerk’s private life available for ridicule. Saying that Makar “identifies with fictional characters” leaves out why one resemblance consoles him while the other wounds his pride.

Try reading the July 8 letter twice: first for what Makar says about the story, then for what Varvara would have to say to reassure him. The second reading makes his criticism harder to dismiss, even where it seems unfair to Gogol. He is asking whether a writer may turn a poor man’s lodgings, shabby clothes, and small pleasures into public entertainment. His appeal to Varvara carries the shame of imagining himself among the people being laughed at.

In The Gambler, follow a declaration into action

Alexey, the narrator of The Gambler, is employed as a tutor in Polina’s stepfather’s household and is in love with her. In Chapter V, he invokes his devotion to excuse the questions he puts to her. In Hogarth’s translation, she answers with a rebuke:

“You know that you and I stand on no ceremony, and that sometimes I put to you very plain questions. I repeat that I am your slave—and slaves cannot be shamed or offended.”

“You talk like a child. It is always possible to comport oneself with dignity. If one has a quarrel it ought to elevate rather than to degrade one.”

By calling himself her slave, Alexey offers her extraordinary power over him, while giving himself a way to demand her attention. Polina insists that he can still choose how to behave. As their conversation continues, he imagines an absolute command from her, even an order to jump from a height; he supplies both the devotion and the terrible possibility himself.

Polina eventually gives him a smaller, uglier task. He is to approach a passing Baroness, take off his hat, and say something in French. She wants to see the Baron hit him with his stick. Alexey objects that the insult would also embarrass the General, her stepfather. Polina treats his hesitation as evidence that he has been talking extravagantly. His avowal of absolute obedience now commits him to this foolish errand; a refusal would discredit the proof of love he has just offered.

The dialogue continues through the action. In Chapter VI, Alexey addresses the Baroness:

“Madame la Baronne,” said I, loudly and distinctly—embroidering each word, as it were—“j’ai l’honneur d’être votre esclave.”

His French salutation declares him her slave. The word has traveled from his conversation with Polina into an encounter with a stranger. Spoken to Polina, it asks her to take his devotion seriously; spoken to the Baroness with his bow and insolent manner, it provokes. Polina, for whose benefit he undertakes the encounter, remains the person whose response he wants.

The bow and the effrontery, Alexey admits, were his own additions. He enjoys the incident. When he later explains himself to the General, he enjoys making his explanation more offensive too. Even while obeying Polina, he devises insults she never prescribed.

At the hotel, he reports back to Polina:

“I have perpetrated the—the piece of idiocy,” I said as I came level with her.

“Have you? Then you can take the consequences,” she replied without so much as looking at me. Then she moved towards the staircase.

The General dismisses him from his employment. Polina offers no tenderness and refuses to share responsibility for the performance he undertook at her request.

Blame cannot be assigned from Alexey’s promise alone. We have watched Polina test it and seen him embellish the task she set. We also have to remember who is telling us all this. Alexey narrates his agitation at length and confidently supplies motives for Polina, whose few replies scarcely justify his certainty. Her words and conduct can guide our reading; his account of her secret wishes remains conjecture.

In The Double, listen for the plea in the repeated name

At his doctor's office in Chapter II of The Double, Golyadkin struggles to explain that he is an ordinary, independent man. He lives quietly, works at his office, and keeps to himself. His doctor, Krestyan Ivanovitch, recommends company and a change of habits. Golyadkin responds by explaining his character in greater detail. In Constance Garnett’s translation, the exchange stalls:

“You have, I think, departed a little from the subject,” Krestyan Ivanovitch said at last, in a low voice: “I confess I cannot altogether understand you.”

“I’m not a great hand at eloquent speaking, Krestyan Ivanovitch; I’ve had the honour to inform you, Krestyan Ivanovitch, already,” said Mr. Golyadkin, speaking this time in a sharp and resolute tone.

Read a little of this exchange aloud and the doctor's name becomes almost impossible to miss. Golyadkin returns to “Krestyan Ivanovitch” as he qualifies, restarts, and extends his sentences. Even his assertion that he depends on nobody is addressed, insistently, to a man he hopes will take his side. Each repetition renews the appeal. Read the names as mere courtesy and the speech loses its pleading cadence.

As Golyadkin continues, the doctor eventually prepares to write a prescription:

“No, it’s not necessary, Krestyan Ivanovitch! No, that’s not necessary at all!” said Mr. Golyadkin, getting up from his seat, and clutching Krestyan Ivanovitch’s right hand. “That isn’t what’s wanted, Krestyan Ivanovitch.”

Before we attempt a diagnosis of our own, we can attend to this refusal: the patient interrupts the treatment because he wants something the prescription cannot supply.

Golyadkin has spoken of his openness, his refusal to intrigue, and the enemies who threaten him. He seems to want the doctor to affirm his innocence and side with him against those enemies. The doctor has scarcely been told what happened. After Golyadkin breaks down in tears, the doctor asks him to explain the trouble and identify these enemies. Golyadkin postpones the explanation: for the moment, he solicits assent while withholding the account that might justify it. When he does resume, he speaks of malicious rumors about a man he knows, leaving the doctor to infer who is meant.

We may smile at his circumlocutions and still flinch when he begins to cry. Through the repeated name, the unfinished phrases, the pauses, and the hand stopping the prescription, Dostoevsky prolongs an appeal that the doctor cannot satisfy. We can follow the failure of this appointment without pretending to have settled the nature of Golyadkin’s distress.

When a conversation loses you

When you lose the thread, return to the last reply that changed the exchange. Read the speech leading into it and the reaction immediately after it. A listener may have denied a request, accepted a claim more literally than the speaker intended, or answered a different question. Mark the place where you think that happened, and test your reading against what follows.

Ask who is interpreting the reply for us. Compare the listener’s words and conduct with the motives the speaker attributes to them. In a letter, allow for the answer being delayed; in a public scene, notice anyone else who is watching. If a name or a formal address keeps returning, hear its recurrence before you decide it adds nothing.

Then return to the idea that first caught your attention. Makar’s protest against having his private life offered up to strangers deserves a hearing, even when he is asking Varvara for comfort. Alexey’s declarations raise a question about freedom that his own conduct prevents us from answering too neatly. We can take an argument seriously while following the person trying to make it, and give the reply enough time to unsettle our first judgment.