aristocracy.
Dostoevsky had gone abroad in 1863 not only to try his hand at gambling but to join a young woman by the name of Apollinaria (Polina) Suslova, a twenty-year-old writer who had become his mistress and soon became his tormentor. The milieu of Roulettenburg, the name of the heroine, and her “love/hate” relations with Alexei Ivanovich have led commentators to an autobiographical reading of
Alexei Ivanovich is twenty-four years old, of noble birth but no fortune, employed as a tutor in the general’s household. He is also an amateur writer, who is struggling to understand himself and what has happened to him by writing it down. The nameless narrator of
But what drew Dostoevsky to these young protagonists? The Russian emigre thinker Vladimir Weidle suggests an answer in his magisterial inquiry into the destiny of modern art,
“Adventure is what advenes, that is, what is added on, what comes into the bargain, what you were not expecting, what you could have done without. An adventure novel is an account of events that are not contained in each other.” Such is the admirable definition formulated by Jacques Riviere in one of his finest critical essays.
Even if it becomes explicable by what follows, says Weidle, the true adventure “must always appear to us first of all as free and unexpected.” That condition is what gives inner unity to Dostoevsky’s world, from the misadventures of Alexei Ivanovich in Roulettenburg to Alyosha Karamazov’s vision of the messianic banquet. For Dostoevsky, it is not the finished man, sculpted by the hand of destiny, who embodies the highest human truth, but the unfinished man, who remains open to what can only ever be freely and unexpectedly given.
THE GAMBLER
A Novel
(From a Young Man’s Notes)
CHAPTER I
I’VE FINALLY COME BACK from my two-week absence. Our people have already been in Roulettenburg for three days. I thought they would be waiting for me God knows how eagerly, but I was mistaken. The general had an extremely independent look, spoke to me condescendingly, and sent me to his sister. It was clear they had got hold of money somewhere. It even seemed to me that the general was a little ashamed to look at me. Marya Filippovna was extremely busy and scarcely spoke with me; she took the money, however, counted it, and listened to my whole report. Mezentsov, the little Frenchman, and some Englishman or other were expected for dinner; as usual, when there’s money, then at once it’s a formal dinner; Moscow-style. Polina Alexandrovna, seeing me, asked what had taken me so long, and went off somewhere without waiting for an answer. Of course, she did it on purpose. We must have a talk, however. A lot has accumulated.
I’ve been assigned a small room on the fourth floor of the hotel. It’s known here that I belong to
“But I don’t even have any money,” I said calmly. “To lose it, you have to have it.”
“You shall have it at once,” the general replied, blushing slightly. He rummaged in his desk, consulted a ledger, and it turned out that he owed me about a hundred and twenty roubles.
“How are we going to reckon it up?” he began. “It has to be converted into thalers. Here, take a hundred thalers, a round figure—the rest, of course, won’t get lost.”
I silently took the money.
“Please don’t be offended by my words, you’re so touchy…If I made that observation, it was, so to speak, to warn you, and, of course, I have a certain right to do so…”
Coming back home with the children before dinner, I met a whole cavalcade. Our people had gone to have a look at some ruins. Two excellent carriages, magnificent horses! Mlle Blanche in the same carriage with Marya Filippovna and Polina; the little Frenchman, the Englishman, and the general on horseback. Passersby stopped and looked; an effect was produced; only it won’t come to any good for the general. I calculated that with the four thousand francs I had brought, plus whatever they had evidently managed to get hold of here, they now had seven or eight thousand francs. That is too little for Mlle Blanche.
Mlle Blanche is also staying in our hotel, along with her mother; our little Frenchman is here somewhere as well. The servants call him “M. le comte,” Mlle Blanche’s mother is called “Mme la comtesse”; well, maybe they really are comte and comtesse.[1]
I just knew that M. le comte would not recognize me when we gathered for dinner. The general, of course, did not even think of introducing us or of presenting me to him; and M. le comte himself has visited Russia and knows what small fry an
I first met this strange Englishman in Prussia, on a train where we sat opposite each other, when I was catching up with our people; then I ran into him on entering France, and finally in Switzerland; twice in the course of these two weeks—and now I suddenly met him in Roulettenburg. Never in my life have I met a shyer man; he’s shy to the point of stupidity, and, of course, he knows it himself, because he’s not at all stupid. However, he’s very nice and quiet. I got him to talk at our first meeting in Prussia. He announced to me that he had been at Nordkap