Dostoevski and Parricide
SIGMUND FREUD
(The following essay by Freud opens a series of texts for th e times.
This department will include important w ork by writers of the modern
epoch, selected with th e aim of affirming the continuity and variety of
the modern tradition. Most of the pieces we plan to print are unavailable
in English or not accessible to readers in this country. Freud's essay has
not previously appeared in America.-The Editors)
FouR
FACETS
may be distinguished in the rich personality of Dos–
toevski: the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist, and the sinner.
How is one to find one's way in this bewildering complexity?
The creative artist is the least doubtful; Dostoevski's place is not
far behind Shakespeare.
The Brothers Karamazo v
is the most magni–
ficent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of
the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be over-praised.
Unfortunately, before the problem of the creative artist, analysis must
lay down its arms.
The moralist in Dostoevski is the most readily assailable.
If
we
try to rank him high as a moralist on the plea that only a man who
has gone through the depths of sin can reach the highest heights of
morality, we are neglecting one consideration. A moral man is one
who reacts to the temptation he feels in his heart without yielding to
it. The man who alternately sins, and in
his
remorse makes high
moral demands, lays himself open to the reproach that he has made
things too easy for himself. He has not achieved the most important
thing in morality, renunciation, for the moral conduct of life is a
practical human interest. He reminds one of the barbarians of the
great migrations, who murder and do penance therefor, wh,ere
penitence becomes a technique to enable murder to be done. Ivan the
Terrible behaved in exactly this way-in fact, this compromise with
morality is a characteristic Russian trait. Nor was the ultimate result
of Dostoevski's moral struggles anything very glorious. After the most
violent battles to reconcile the impulsive claims of the individual with
the demands of the community, he ended up, retrograde fashion,
with submission both to the temporal and the spiritual authorities,
with veneration for the Tsar and the God of the Christians, and a
narrow Russian nationalism, a position which lesser minds have
