The Village of Stepanchikovo by Fyodor Dostoevysky
May 16th 2007 09:39
The Village of Stepanchikovo by Fyodor Dostoevysky
The Village of Stepanchikovo is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevysky, one of the greatest novelists of all time and one of my all time favorites. I had discovered him via Ayn Rand who loved Victor Hugo the most but also admired Dostoevysky very highly. I read them both, only to lose Hugo and keep Fyodor.
Dostoevysky frequently wrote shorter novels or long stories in which he rehearsed ideas that would be later integrated into his major works. They provided a way to formalise recurrent themes in his mind before he stumbled on a suitable vehicle that could carry and transform them into a magum opus. He stumbled on ideas for larger novel fortuitously but he carrried the shorter novels always within him.
That is why, they lack that manic burst of energy that's the hallmark of his major novels and chief appeal as a novelist. That is why I could never finish his other short pieces like The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. This short novel too suffers from the same defect. Still, the author had confessed that he took more pains with this novel than he did with any other. Coming from the source, this assertion astonished me and that is why I persisted with it.
The story is about a young man Sergei who visits his uncle Rostanev's estate. Rostanev is hosting Foma Fomovich who has become a sort of a permanent fixture and clung to the house like a barnacle. His own uncle seems reluctant to part with the man even though he has come to accept that Foma is not a saint as he initially postured. Still, either from attachment or inability, he can't get rid of Foma and the increasingly impatient nephew to oust him. This story ,like many others from Dostoevysky, has been copied by countless others. A Devil in Paradise by the miserable Hnery Miller is the story about one such guest the author has hosted, reads as if Dostoevysky's story were rewritten from Rostanev's perspective.
It is usually said that Foma is a charlatan. Viewed from the angle of the nephew, he may be. But certainly not in the eyes of the uncle. Even when we are supposed to think that the nephew is right, he is usually not more than inarticulately indignant. Whereas the uncle is stoically eloquent in his inability to detach himself from Foma. The author leans heavily on this power structure and it is this stoicism that is under special attack. Miller, like many, miss the point that The Village of Stepanchikov is an attack on people like himself.
It can be seen as a broad metaphor for modern society and the essential failure of liberalism where evil usually commands widespread support and respect but the good has to choke on burning indignation and helplessness. And probably works as a fantasy (despite the master's penchant for realism) where such do-for nothing do-gooders are shooed away without ceremony.
Having experimented with it himself, Dostoevysky is the most profound, still unbeaten, window into the soul of collectivist politics, or what Rand would call altruism. And this simple but profound portrait about liberal commensalism is accordingly a lesson few others have been able to teach us.
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