322
PARTISAN REVIEW
ANYTHING GOES
FvoDOR DosTOEVSKY.
By
f.
A. T. Lloyd.
Scribner's.
$3.50.
T
HE AUTHOR of this latest biography of Dostoevsky is so little
in
com–
mand of his material and intellectually so much below the level
required for evaluating it that the result is nothing less than grotesque.
The book is badly written, particularly so in the passages of critical
comment, which are muddled in the extreme. Actually one can speak
of Mr. Lloyd's "critical comment" only in a Pickwickian sense, since
whenever it comes to discussing Dostoevsky as a literary artist he is so
patently at a loss for ideas that he is forced to pad out not a few chapters
with synopses of novels. that everyone has
read
and with lengthy quota–
tions of dialogue which, again, serve no useful purpose except to fill
space.
The literature dealing factually with Dostoevsky's life and work is
very extensive; most of it is in Russian and German, languages with
which Mr. Lloyd, who depends entirely oR English and French texts,
is evidently unfamiliar. And his acquaintance even with the inadequate
sources at his disposal is meager, for he makes no use (or mention)
of such standard biographies as those by Yarmolinsky, Carr, and Troyat.
(Thus for want of facts he bungles
the
story of Dostoevsky's affair with
Polina Suslova, fully and accurately recounted both by Yarmolinsky and
Troyat.) What he mainly draws on is the antiquated biographical study
by Evgeni Soloviev, translated into English some thirty years ago, and
Aimee Dostoevsky's book about her father. Though Mlle. Dostoevsky is
a notoriously untrustworthy witness, her opinions and onesided construc–
tions are none the less quoted at great length without questioning, in–
cluding the passage in which, impelled by vulgar snobbery and spiteful–
ness, she gives a muckraking account, altogether false, of Tolstoy's fam–
ily history in order to make more credible, perhaps, her fanciful appro–
priation of an aristocratic pedigree for her own family.
1
Also, this author is the victim of the philistine idea that in writing
about a great man one is in duty bound to make everything about him
appear noble and great. Contradictions bother Mr. Lloyd, and he pre–
fers not to
recognize
their existence. Thus in trying to refute the political
charges made against Dostoevsky, Mr. Lloyd states that he was never a
1. There are even worse lapses, as when Mr. Lloyd mentions a story by
Dostoevsky called "The Twins" (p. 31).
Of
course, no such story exists. The
error can be traced
to
Mr. Lloyd's careless reading of Soloviev's study, where
the title of tho early story
Dvoinik
is for some unaccountable reason translated
not as "The Double" but as "The Twins."
It
is perfectly clear from Soloviev's
context which story is meant, for Golyadkin is named as the hero of it. Yet Mr.
Lloyd speaks of "The Double" and of "The Twins" in the same paragraph, as
if they were separate works.
