DOSTOEVSKY DOSTOEVSKY By André Gide TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH With an Introduction by ARNOLD BENNETT “Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier even than the discovery of Stendhal.” NIETZSCHE [Illustration Publisher’s Colophon] ALFRED A. KNOPF 1926 D O S T O E V S K Y By André Gide, was first published in Paris by PLON-NOURRIT et CIE. in 1923 Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London INTRODUCTORY NOTE André Gide is now one of the leaders of French literature. The first book of his to attract wide attention among the lettered was _L’Immoraliste_. Since then, in some twenty years of productiveness, he has gradually consolidated his position until at the present day his admirers are entitled to say that no other living French author stands so firm and so passionately acknowledged as an influence. His authority over the schools of young writers who contribute to or are published by _La Nouvelle Revue Française_ (with which he has been intimately connected from its foundation) is quite unrivalled. And it must be stated, as a final proof of mastership, that he has powerful and not despicable opponents. To my mind his outstanding characteristic is that he is equally interested in the æsthetic and in the moral aspect of literature. Few imaginative writers have his broad and vivacious curiosity about moral problems, and scarcely any moralists exhibit even half his preoccupation with the æsthetic. He is a distinguished, if somewhat fragmentary, literary critic--not merely of French but of Russian, English and classical literatures. I shall not forget his excitement when he first read _Tom Jones_. “Ce livre m’attendait,” said he, with grave delight. His practical interest in the technique of fiction never fades; indeed it grows. So much so that his latest novel, now appearing serially in _La Nouvelle Revue Française_, really amounts to an essay in a new form; and with startling modesty he has labelled it, in the dedication, “my first novel.” Of course no novelist can achieve anything permanent without a moral basis or background. Balzac had it. De Maupassant had it to the point of savagery. Zola had it, in his degree. Paul Bourget--a writer whom highbrows French and English have still to reckon with--has it. But André Gide writes in the very midst of morals. They are not only his background, but frequently his foreground. Scarcely one of his books (the exception may be _Les Caves du Vatican_) but poses and attempts to resolve a moral problem.