Winter Notes

on Summer Impressions
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Translated by Kyril FitzLyon

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Winter Notes on Summer Impressions first published in Russian in 1863

This translation first published by John Calder Ltd in 1955
English Translation and Preface © Kyril FitzLyon, 1955
First published by Alma Classics in 2008. Reprinted 2011, 2013
This new edition first published by Alma Classics in 2016.
Reprinted with corrections in 2021
Extra material © Ignat Avsey, 2008

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 Contents

Preface vii

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 1

Notes 105

Extra Material 115

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Life 117
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Works 129
Select Bibliography 140
 Winter Notes
on Summer Impressions
 1

Instead of a Preface

F or months now, my friends, you have been urging me to

give you a description of my impressions while travelling
in foreign lands, never suspecting that you are thereby placing
me in a quandary. What shall I tell you? What shall I say that is
new, that has not been told before? Who of us Russians (those,
at least, that read periodicals) does not know Europe twice as
well as he knows Russia? I have put down “twice” merely out
of politeness, I should probably have said “ten times better”.
Besides, apart from these general considerations, you are well
aware that I, of all people, have nothing to tell and least of all
can I give a methodical account of anything, because there was
no method in my sightseeing, and even when I did see anything
I did not have time to examine it very closely. I visited Berlin,
Dresden, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, Cologne, Paris, London,
Lucerne, Geneva, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Venice, Vienna and
a few other places (to which I went twice), and the whole tour
took me precisely two and a half months! Now, I ask you, is
it possible to see anything thoroughly while travelling over so
many roads in the course of two and a half months?
You will remember that I composed my itinerary while still in
St Petersburg. I had never been abroad, but I longed to go there
even as a small child, when, still unable to read, I listened agape,


 winter notes on summer impressions

enthralled and terror-struck in turn, to my parents’ bedtime

reading of Mrs Radcliffe’s novels, which put me into a fever and
kept me awake at night. When at last I wrenched myself away
from my preoccupations and went abroad, I was forty years
of age and, naturally enough, I was not content with seeing as
much as possible; I wanted to see everything – yes, everything
– despite the time limit. Besides, I was quite incapable of coolly
choosing places to visit. Heavens, how much I expected from
my tour! “It doesn’t matter if I don’t look at things in great
detail,” I thought. “I shall, at least, have seen everything and
been everywhere, and all I have seen will have fused itself into
one whole and made up a kind of general panorama. I shall,
at one fell swoop, have had a bird’s-eye view of the entire ‘land
of holy miracles’,* like the Promised Land from the mountain
– in perspective. In fact, I shall experience a new, wonderful
and mighty impression.” After all, what do I regret most now,
sitting at home and recalling my summer time wanderings? Not
that I saw nothing in great detail, but that, although I have been
almost everywhere, I have not, for example, been in Rome. And
in Rome I might, perhaps, have missed the Pope… In fact, I was
overwhelmed by an unquenchable thirst for something new, for
a constant change of place, for general, synthetic, panoramic,
perspective impressions.
Now what do you expect from me after such a confession?
What shall I tell you? What shall I depict? A panorama? A
perspective? A bird’s-eye view of something? But you will
probably be the first to tell me that I have flown too high.
Besides, I consider myself to be a conscientious man, and I
should not at all like to tell lies, or even travellers’ tales. But even
should I limit myself to depicting and describing the panoramic


 chapter 1

view, I could not fail to tell lies, and not even because I am a
traveller, but simply because in such circumstances as mine it
is impossible not to lie. Reason it out for yourselves. Berlin, for
instance, made a very sour impression on me and I stayed only
twenty-four hours in it. But I know now that I have wronged
Berlin, that I have no right to my assertion that it makes a sour
impression. There is a dash of sweetness in it, at the very least.
And what was the cause of that fatal mistake of mine? Simply
the fact that, though a sick man, suffering from an attack of
liver, I sped along through rain and fog to Berlin for two whole
days and nights, and when I arrived after a sleepless journey,
yellow, tired and broken, I noticed suddenly and at the very first
glance that Berlin was incredibly like St Petersburg. The same
monotonously straight streets, the same smells, the same…
(but I cannot enumerate all the things they had in common!)
Blow me, I thought to myself, it was really hardly worthwhile
spending a back-breaking forty-eight hours in a railway carriage
only to see the replica of what I had just left. I did not even like
the lime trees, to preserve which a Berliner will sacrifice all he
holds most dear, even his constitution; and what can be dearer
to a Berliner than his constitution? Besides, all Berliners, all of
them without exception, looked so German that (oh, horror!)
without so much as an attempt to see Kaulbach’s frescoes,* I
slipped away to Dresden as fast as I could, deeply convinced in
my heart of hearts that it needed a special knack to get used to
a German and that at first he was very difficult to bear in large
masses.
In Dresden I was unfair even to German women. I decided
immediately when I stepped out into the street that no sight
was more horrible than a typical Dresden woman, and that


 winter notes on summer impressions

even Vsevolod Krestovsky,* that poet of love and the most

inveterately joyful of all Russian poets, might despair and come
to doubt his vocation. Of course I felt the very same minute
that I was talking nonsense and that under no circumstances
whatever could he possibly come to doubt his vocation. A couple
of hours later I realized what it was: back in my hotel bedroom
I put out my tongue in front of a mirror and had to confess that
my opinion of the ladies of Dresden was in the highest degree
slanderous. My tongue was yellow and unpleasant… “Can it
really be true” thought I, “that man, that lord of creation, is so
dependent on his own liver? How low!”
With these comforting thoughts I went off to Cologne. I
admit to having expected a lot from the cathedral, of which
I reverently made drawings in my youth when I studied
architecture. On my way back through Cologne a month later,
when I saw the cathedral a second time on my return from Paris,
I almost “asked its forgiveness on my knees” for not having
fully grasped its beauty, just like Karamzin* fell on his knees
in front of a Rhine waterfall. But all the same, that first time I
did not like the cathedral at all; it seemed to me to be nothing
but a piece of lace, lace and lace again, a bit of fancy goods,
something like a paperweight, some 500 feet high.
“Not very majestic,” I decided, just as our grandfathers con­
cluded about Pushkin: “His writings are too light,” they used
to say, “not enough of the lofty style in them.”
I suspect that this first opinion of mine was influenced by two
circumstances, the first of them being eau de Cologne. Jean
Maria Farina* is situated next to the cathedral, and no matter
at which hotel you stay, whatever your mood, however hard you
may be trying to hide from your enemies and particularly from


 chapter 1

Jean Maria Farina, his clients are sure to find you, and then it is
the case of “eau de Cologne ou la vie”* – one of the two, there
is no other choice. I cannot vouch for the fact that these are the
very words people shout – “eau de Cologne ou la vie” – but
who knows, perhaps they are? I remember at that time I kept
imagining I could hear them.
The second circumstance which irritated me and made me
unfair in my judgements was the new Cologne bridge. The
bridge is excellent, of course, and the town is justly proud of
it, but I thought it was too proud of it. Naturally this made
me angry. Besides, the collector of pennies at the entrance
to the marvellous bridge should not have made me pay that
reasonable tax with an air of fining me for some misdemeanour
of which I myself was not aware. I don’t know, but it struck
me that the German was trying to bully me. “He has probably
guessed,” I thought, “that I am a foreigner, and a Russian at
that.” Anyway, his eyes almost as good as said: “You see our
bridge, you miserable Russian? Well, you are a mere worm
in comparison with our bridge and with every German man
because you haven’t got a bridge like that.” You must agree this
is enough to make one take offence. The German never said it,
of course, and never even harboured it in his thoughts perhaps,
but it does not matter. I was so convinced that that was what
he wanted to say, that I completely lost my temper. “Damn it
all,” I thought, “We have something to be proud of too, the
samovar for instance… We’ve got magazines… We make first-
class things… We have…” In short, I lost my temper, and, after
buying a bottle of eau de Cologne, which I could not avoid,
I immediately rushed off to Paris in the hope that the French
would be a great deal nicer and more entertaining.


 winter notes on summer impressions

Now you reason it out for yourselves: if only I had made

an effort and stayed a week in Berlin instead of one day, the
same in Dresden, and say about three days, or two at the very
least, in Cologne, I should most probably have had another or
even a third glimpse of the same things, but with a different
eye, and should have obtained a more favourable impression
of them. Even a ray of sunshine, just an ordinary ray of
sunshine, would have had a lot to do with it; if only the sun
had shone over the cathedral as it in fact did shine when I
arrived in the city of Cologne for the second time, the whole
building would have appeared to me in its true light and not
as it did that bleak and even somewhat rainy morning, fit
only to provoke an outburst of wounded patriotism. It by no
means follows, however, that patriotism is only born in bad
weather.
And so you see, my friends, you cannot look at everything
in two and a half months and never make a mistake, and I
am unable to give you the most accurate information. I must
willy-nilly be untruthful occasionally, and therefore…
But here you interrupt me. You tell me that this time you do
not, in fact, want accurate information, that if need be you
will find it in Reichard’s guidebook, and that, on the contrary,
it would not be at all a bad thing if travellers aimed not so
much at absolute truth (which they are almost never able to
attain) as at sincerity, if sometimes they were not afraid to
reveal some personal impression or adventure, even of the
kind that did not redound much to their credit, and if they did
not look up well-known authorities in order to check up on
their own conclusions. You tell me, in short, that all you want
are my own impressions, provided they are sincere.


 chapter 1

Ah! say I, so what you want is just gossip, light sketches,

fleeting personal impressions. That certainly suits me, and I
shall immediately consult my diary. And I shall try to be as
simple and frank as possible. I only ask you to bear in mind that
I shall often be wrong in the things I write about. Not wrong
about everything, of course. One cannot be wrong about such
facts, for instance, as that the Cathedral of Notre Dame is in
Paris and so is the Bal Mabille. The latter fact in particular
has been so thoroughly recorded by all Russians writing about
Paris that it is almost impossible to doubt it. Even I shall not
perhaps make a mistake about this, though strictly speaking,
I cannot guarantee even this. Now, for example, they say that
it is impossible to go to Rome and not see St Peter’s. But just
think: I have been in London, but never saw St Paul’s. Honestly,
I did not. Never saw St Paul’s Cathedral. True enough, there
is quite a difference between St Peter’s and St Paul’s, but all
the same, it is somehow hardly decent for a traveller not to
have seen it. There’s my first adventure for you, which does not
redound much to my credit (that is to say, I did in fact see it
perhaps, at a distance of some 500 yards, but I was in a hurry
to get to Pentonville, did not bother and ignored it). But let
us be more to the point. And do you know – I did not just
travel about and enjoy a bird’s-eye view of things (enjoying a
bird’s-eye view of things does not mean looking down on them.
It is an architectural term, you know). I stayed in Paris for a
whole month – less the eight days I spent in London. And so I
shall now write something about Paris for you, because I have,
after all, had a much better look at it than I had at St Paul’s
Cathedral or the ladies of Dresden. Well, here goes.


 2

In a Railway Carriage

“
F renchmen are not rational and would consider them-
selves most fortunate if they were.” This phrase was writ-
ten by Fonvizin* as far back as the last century, and Heavens,
how cheerfully he must have written it. I bet the sheer joy of
it warmed the cockles of his heart when he was thinking it up.
And who knows, perhaps all of us coming after Fonvizin, three
or four generations at a stretch, read it not without pleasure. All
such phrases, which put foreigners in their place, contain, even if
we come across them now, something irresistibly pleasant for us
Russians. We keep this very secret, sometimes even secret from
ourselves. For there are in this certain overtones of revenge for
an evil past. Maybe this is a bad feeling, but somehow I am con-
vinced it exists in almost everyone of us. Naturally enough, we
kick up a fuss if we are suspected of it, and are not one bit insin-
cere, and yet I should imagine Belinsky* himself was in this sense
a Slavophile. I remember about fifteen years ago, when I knew
Belinsky, how reverently (sometimes even oddly so) all that set
used to bow down and worship the West, mostly France that is.
France was all the fashion then – this was in ’forty-six. And it is
not that people adored such names as George Sand, Proudhon
etc., and felt respect for those of Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin* and
others. Oh no! People thought highly even of little pipsqueaks,

11
 winter notes on summer impressions

bearing the most wretched names, who simply collapsed when

they were put on their mettle later on. Even those were expected
to perform great deeds in the future service to humanity. Some
of them were talked about in a special reverent whisper… And
what do you think? In all my life I have never seen a man more
passionately Russian than was Belinsky, though before him
only Chaadayev* perhaps spoke with such bold and sometimes
blind indignation about much in our native land and apparently
despised everything Russian. There are certain reasons why I
should remember and think of it now. But who knows, maybe
Belinsky himself did not always consider that mot* of Fonvizin’s
particularly scandalous. Surely there are moments when people
fail to appreciate the most appropriate and indeed legitimate
tutelage. Oh, but for Heaven’s sake, don’t run away with the
idea that to love one’s country means to revile the foreigner or
that I think it does. I don’t think so at all and have no intention
of thinking so, on the contrary even… Only it is a pity I have no
time to explain myself somewhat more clearly.
By the way, please don’t think that I have forgotten Paris and
launched myself into Russian literature instead, or that I am
writing an article of literary criticism. It’s only because I have
nothing else to do.
My diary tells me that I am now sitting in a railway carriage
and am getting ready to see Eydtkuhnen tomorrow, to receive,
that is, my first impression of a foreign country, and my heart
even misses a beat occasionally. Shall I really see Europe at last,
I who have vainly dreamt of it for almost forty years, I who,
when still only sixteen, in dead earnest and like Nekrasov’s
Belopyatkin,* “wished to flee to Switzerland”, but did not flee
and am now about to enter “the land of holy miracles”,* the

12
 chapter 2

land for which I have yearned so long and from which I expected
so much, and in which I believed so implicitly.
“Good Heavens,” I kept thinking as I sat in the railway
carriage, “how can we be called Russians? Are we really
Russians in fact? Why does Europe make such a powerful and
magic impression on all of us whoever we are? Why does it
appeal to us so much? I don’t mean to those Russians who stay
at home, those ordinary Russians whose name is Fifty Million,
on whom we, all the one hundred thousand of us, look with
disdain and whom our profound satirical journals make fun
of, because they do not shave their beards. No, I mean our
privileged and patented little group.
After all, everything, literally almost everything we can
show which may be called progress, science, art, citizenship,
humanity, everything, everything stems from there, from that
land of holy miracles. The whole of our life, from earliest
childhood, is shaped by the European mould. Could any one
of us have withstood this influence, appeal, pressure? How
is it that we have still not been finally metamorphosed into
Europeans? And I think everyone will agree that we have not
been metamorphosed – some with pleasure, others, of course,
with fury because we have not yet reached metamorphosis. But
that is another matter. I am merely speaking about the fact that
we have not been metamorphosed even after being subjected to
such an overwhelming influence, and am at a loss to account for
it. It could surely not have been our nannies and mammies that
have preserved us from metamorphosis. It is sad and absurd,
really, to think that but for Arina Rodyonovna, Pushkin’s nurse,
we should perhaps have had no Pushkin. That is nonsense, is
it not? Of course it is. And what if in fact it is not nonsense?

13
 winter notes on summer impressions

Many Russian children are now being brought up in France;

what if another Pushkin has been taken there to be deprived
from his cradle upwards both of an Arina Rodyonovna and of
Russian speech?
No one could have been more Russian then Pushkin. Though
himself of gentle birth, he yet understood Pugachev* and
penetrated right into his innermost being at a time when nobody
penetrated anywhere. An aristocrat, he yet carried Belkin*
within his soul. By the force of his artistry he renounced his
class and in Onegin* judged it with stern judgement from the
standpoint of the nation as a whole. He is a prophet and a
forerunner.
Is there really a chemical bond between the human spirit and
a man’s native land which makes it impossible to break away
from one’s country and, even if one does break away from it,
makes one come back to it in the end? After all, Slavophilism
did not fall in our midst straight out of the clear blue sky, and
though it did afterwards become a Muscovite fad, the basis of
this fad is considerably broader than allowed for by Moscow’s
formula, and lies possibly much deeper in some people’s hearts
than seems likely at first sight. In fact, even in Moscow this basis
is perhaps broader than Moscow’s own formula. It is at first so
terribly difficult to express oneself clearly, even to oneself.
Some ideas, though powerful and full of vitality, take over
three generations fully to manifest themselves, so that their final
end does not resemble their beginnings in the very slightest…”
Thus did all these thoughts assail me in my railway carriage
on the way to Europe, partly in spite of myself and partly
because I was bored and had nothing to do. To be frank, only
those of us who have nothing to do have hitherto given thought

14
 chapter 2

to this sort of thing. Oh, how boring it is to sit idly in a railway

carriage! In fact, just as boring as it is to live in Russia without
having anything specific to do. You may be taken along and
cared for, you may even be lulled to sleep sometimes, indeed
your every wish may be anticipated, but you are bored, bored
all the same, and precisely because you are being cared for and
all you have to do is to sit and wait till you are brought to your
destination. Honestly, one sometimes feels like jumping out of
the carriage and running along by the side of the engine on
one’s own flat feet. The results may be worse, lack of practice
may soon tire one out, but at least one would be using one’s
own legs and doing a job one has found oneself and, were the
carriages to collide and turn somersaults, one would not be
sitting shut in and twirling one’s thumbs and one would not be
answerable for someone else’s blunder…
What extraordinary ideas one gets when one has nothing to
do!
In the meantime night was drawing on. Lights were being
lit in the carriages. I had a husband and wife sitting opposite
me, elderly people, landowners and probably respectable. They
were in a hurry to get to London for the Exhibition,* but only
for a few days, and they had left their family at home. Sitting
next to me on my right was a Russian who had been working
in an office in London for the last ten years, who had come to
St Petersburg on business for just a fortnight and who seemed
to have lost all sense of longing for his native land. On my left
sat a clean, pure-bred Englishman, intensely serious and with
his red hair parted in the English way. Throughout the journey
he never said a single word in any language to any of us; he
read all day, without lifting his head, a book of that very small

15
 winter notes on summer impressions

English print which only English people can tolerate and even
praise for its convenience, and at precisely ten o’clock at night
he took off his boots and put on slippers. He was probably
used to doing this all his life and had no desire to change his
habits even in a railway carriage.
Soon everyone was dozing; the whistling and knocking
sounds of the train made one terribly sleepy. I sat and thought
and thought and somehow – I do not know how – came to
the conclusion that “Frenchmen were not rational”, which
served as the beginning of this chapter. And, do you know, I
am impelled by something or other, while we are making our
way to Paris, to let you know my carriage thoughts, just like
that, for the sake of human sympathy: after all I was bored
enough, sitting in that carriage, so you might as well be bored
now. However, other readers should be protected, and I shall,
therefore, deliberately include all these thoughts in one chapter
which I shall call “superfluous”. It will bore you a little, but as it
is superfluous, other people can simply leave it out. The reader
must be treated carefully and conscientiously, but friends can
be dealt with a little more cavalierly.
Well, now…

16
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