542
PARTISAN REVIEW
conduct show this, and something more as well. He never rested until
he had lost everything. Gambling was for him also a method of self–
punishment. He had time and again given his young wife his promise
or
his
word of honour not to play again, or not to play again on a
particular day, and, according to her, he almost always broke it.
When his losses had reduced himself and her to the direst need, he
derived a second pathological satisfaction from that. He could abuse
and humiliate himself to her, invite her to despise him and to regret
that she had married an old sinner; and when he had unburdened his
conscience in this way, the gambling was resumed next day. The
young wife accustomed herself to this cycle, because she had noticed
that the one thing which offered any real hope of escape, namely his
literary activity, was never more successful than when they had lost
ev~rything
and pawned their last possessions. Naturally she did not
understand the connection. When his sense of guilt was satisfied by
the punishments he had imposed on himself, the inhibitions to work
ceased to operate, and he allowed himself to take a few steps on the
way to success.
1
What part of long-buried childhood compels its repetition in the
gambler's compulsion may without difficulty be divined from a story
by a young novelist. Stefan Zweig, who,. by the way, has himself de–
voted a study to Dostoevski (
Drei Meister),
in a collection of three
long short stories,
Die Verwirrung der Gefuhle (The Confusion of
the Emotions),
has a story which he calls
Vierundzwangziz Stunden
aus dem Leben teiner Frau (Four and twenty Hours in a Woman's
Lif{il)
.
This
littl~
masterpiece ostensibly purports only to show what an
irresponsible creature woman is, and to what excesses, surprising even
to herself, an unexpected experience may drive her. But the story
tells far more than this: when it is subjected to an analytical inter–
pretation it represents without such apologetic tendencies something
quite different, something universally human or rather masculine.
And such an interpretation is so obvious that it cannot be denied. It
is characteri:stic of the nature of artistic creation that the author, who
is a personal friend, was able to assure me that the interpretation
given by me was completely alien both to his mind and his intention,
although many details were woven into the narrative which seemed
expressly designed to indicate the secret clue. In the story a distin-
1 "He always remained at the gambling tables until he had lost everything
and was completely ruined. It was only when the damage was complete that the
demon at last retired from his soul and made way for the creative genius."
(Rene Fiilop-Miller,
Dostojewski am Roulette,
page lxxxvi).
