March 1916

Jinnie Moore was awfully good at elocution. Was she better than I? I could make the girls cry when I read Dickens in the sewing class, and she couldn't. But then she never tried to. She didn't care for Dickens; she liked something about horses and tramps and shipwrecks and prairie fires — they were her style, her reckless, red haired, dashing style.

Nastasya Filipovna Barashkov (" The Idiot"). Page 7. She is first mentioned by Rogozhin in the train and she is immediately * recognised ' by a man with a red nose and a pimpled face who ' knows all about her.' "Armance and Coralie and Princess Patsy and Nastasya Filipovna." " We'll go and see Nastasya Filipovna." Prophetic words. Page 9. Why did she accept the ear-rings from a man she had never seen? She was not greedy for jewels. She had plenty, and she was extremely particu- lar in her conduct towards other men. Is that a kind of Russian custom? To accept the ear-rings as a kind of recognition of her beauty ? Pages 26, 27. The Portrait : " Dark and deep, pas- sionate and disdainful." Page 33. " Her face is cheerful, but she has passed through terrible suffering, hasn't she? . . . It's a proud face, awfully proud, but I don't know whether she is good hearted. Ah! If she were! That would redeem it all." Page 37. The Story of Nastasya. That change in her when she appears in Petersburg — her knowledge, al- most ' technical/ of how things are done in the world, is not at all impossible. With such women it seems to be a kind of instinct. (Maata was just the same. She simply knew these things from nowhere.) Her action, that Dostoevsky says is ' from spite,' is to shew her power, and that when he has jerked out the weapon with which he wounded her she feels the dreadful smart. Having read the whole of " The Idiot " through again, and fairly carefully, I feel slightly more be- wildered than I did before as regards Nastasya Fili- povna's character. She is really not well done. She is badly done. And there grows up as one reads on a kind of irritation, a balked fascination, which almost succeeds finally in blotting out those first and really marvellous ' impressions ' of her. What was Dostoev- sky really aiming at? Shatov and his Wife (" The Possessed ") There is something awfully significant about the attitude of Shatov to his wife, and it is amazing how, when Dostoevsky at last turns a soft but penetrating and full light upon him, how we have managed to gather a great deal of knowledge of his character from the former vague side-lights and shadowy impressions. He is just what we thought him ; he behaves just as we would expect him to do. There is all that crudity and what you might call * shock-headedness ' in his nature — and it is wonderfully tragic that he who is so soon to be destroyed himself should suddenly realise — and through a third person — through a little squealing baby — the miracle just being alive is. Every time I read those chapters about his new- born happiness I cherish a kind of tiny hope that this time he will escape — he will be warned, he won't die. How did Dostoevsky know about that extraordi- nary vindictive feeling, that relish for little laughter — that comes over women in pain? It is a very secret thing, but it's profound, profound. They don't want to spare the one whom they love. If that one loves them with a kind of blind devotion as Shatov did Marie, they long to torment him, and this tormenting gives them real positive relief. Does this resemble in any way the tormenting that one observes so often in his affairs of passion? Are his women ever happy when they torment their lovers? No, they too are in the agony of labour. They are giving birth to their new selves. And they never believe in their deliverance.