It was natural and even necessary that such a writer as Gide should deal with such a writer as Dostoevsky. They were made for each other--or rather Dostoevsky was made for Gide. I first met Gide in the immense field of Dostoevsky. He said, and I agreed, that _The Brothers Karamazov_ was the greatest novel ever written. This was ages ago, and years have only confirmed us in the opinion. “But,” said Gide, “everything that Dostoevsky ever wrote is worth reading and must be read. Nothing can safely be omitted.” At that period there was none but a mutilated French translation of _The Brothers Karamazov_, and Gide had to read Dostoevsky in German. A complete translation, I fear, still lacks in French, but André Gide can now read him in full in English: which is to our credit and his. Let us, however, not be too much uplifted. Dostoevsky’s important _Journal d’un Ecrivain_ exists in French but not in English. Those who read Gide’s _Dostoevsky_ will receive light, some of it dazzling, on both Dostoevsky and Gide. I can recall no other critical work which more cogently justifies and more securely establishes its subject. If anyone wants to appreciate the progress made by Western Europe in the appreciation of Russian psychology, let him compare the late Count Melchior de Voguë’s _Le Roman Russe_ with the present work. It is impossible to read this _Dostoevsky_ without enlarging one’s idea of Dostoevsky and of the functions of the novel. All the conventional charges against the greatest of the Russians--morbidity, etc., etc., fall to pieces during perusal. They are not killed; they merely expire. And Dostoevsky in the end stands out not simply as a supreme psychologist and narrator, but also as a publicist of genius endowed with a prophetic view over the future of the nations as astounding as his insight into the individual. “There never was,” says Gide, “an author more Russian in the strictest sense of the word and withal so universally European.” Dostoevsky had various and distressing personal defects, but his humanity and his wisdom, doubtless derived from the man Jesus who delivered the Sermon on the Mount, are unique; and André Gide’s demonstration of their worth is his invaluable contribution to Dostoevsky literature. ARNOLD BENNETT. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE