Dostoyevsky and Islam (And Chokan Valikhanov) Author(s): Michael Futrell Source: The Slavonic and East European

Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 1979), pp. 16-31 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207756 . Accessed: 04/11/2013 13:24
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SEER, Vol.57, No. i,January 1979

Dostoyevsky
(and
TOLSTOY'S

and

Islam

Chokan

Valikhanov)

MICHAEL FUTRELL
long and deep concern with Oriental religions and philosophies, his correspondence with and influence on certain Chinese, Japanese, Indians (such as Gandhi) and other Orientals, and similarities between some Oriental ideas and his, have received considerable attention.' Comparable aspects of Dostoyevsky's life and work seem to have been neglected,2 though biographers have noted the repeated request to his brother Michael for the Quran after his release from the Omsk prison in I854, and many readers must have been struck by the prominent reference, in both The Idiotand TheDevils, to a major mystical experience of Muhammad. In fact, although Dostoyevsky'slibrary in his later years included a book on Buddhismas well as a copy of the Quran,3 the religion other than Christianity with which Dostoyevsky had some particular concern was indeed Islam. It seems sometimes to be forgotten that Dostoyevsky spent continuously no less than nine-and-a-half years of his life beyond the Urals, during which, both as a prisoner at Omsk and as a soldier at Semipalatinsk, he was at times in close contact with people other than ethnic Russians - particularly with Muslims or people of Islamic background- contact, as prisoner or soldier, different from that of Goncharov, Chekhov or Bunin during their Asian travels. Islam (particularly the Quran) was of some significance in the work of several Russian poets, including Pushkin (who visited the Caucasus) and Lermontov (who served and fought there in the Russian army, as did the young Tolstoy). Griboyedov spent several years in the Caucasus and in Persia. However, the closest analogy to Dostoyevsky's experience would seem to be that of Solzhenitsyn, with his years of forced labour and exile in Soviet Central Asia. In the epilogue of Crime andPunishment, after the prisonerRaskol'nikov's
M. Futrellis Professor of Russianat the Universityof BritishColumbia.
For example, P. I. Biryukov, Tolstoi und der Orient,Ziirich and Leipzig, I925; Derk Bodde, Tolstoyand China, Princeton, 1950; A. I. Shifman, Lev Tolstoyi Vostok,Moscow, I960, and second revised edition, Moscow, I971; Vytas Dukas and Glenn A. Sandstrom, 'Taoistic Patterns in War and Peace' (The Slavic and East European Journal, xiv, 2, Madison,
Wisconsin, 1970, pp. I82-93). 2 Mention should however be made of a brilliant article by a scholar of Buddhism,
1

Grigoriy Pomerants: ' "Yevklidovskiy" i "neyevklidovskiy" razum v tvorchestve Dostoyevskogo' (Kontinent, 3, Berlin, 1975, pp. I09-50)3 L. P. Grossman, Seminariy po Dostoyevskomu, Moscow-Petrograd, 1922, pp. 43-44.

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Easter nightmare of the whole world 'ravaged by an unknown and terrible plague that had spread across Europe from the depths of Asia',4 his observation of 'the tents of the nomads ... where time itself seemed to stand still' in the 'vast steppe, flooded with sunlight' (6, 42i) beyond the Siberian prison may have seemed less exotic to Dostoyevsky himself than it probably does to most of his readers and critics. The Russian nationalism of Dostoyevsky's later journalistic writings, with their refrain 'Constantinople must be ours', has perhaps obscured his interest in the personality of Muhammad and the meaning to him of what were seemingly close relationswith two Muslims in Siberia, and also with a Kazakh - a most remarkable intellectual and man of action, one of the most unusual human beings Dostoyevsky ever knew. It may be useful to survey the available information about his acquaintance with Islam, with Muslims and with this Kazakh friend. Dostoyevsky's second published story The Double (i846) contains references (in chapters iv and vii) to Turks and to Muhammad; but more meaningful evidence comes from his four years (January i 85o-February I 854) in the Omsk prison, which provided the theHouse material for NVotesfrom of theDead,published during I 860-62. Many critics have noted Dostoyevsky's descriptions of unbreakably self-willed convicts such as Orlov: 'Never in my life have I met a more powerful, more iron-charactered man. . . Clearly a complete victory over the flesh. It was evident that this man had boundless control over himself, despised all torments and punishments and feared nothing in the world' (4, 47). But juxtaposed in the same chapter to the man of iron Orlov are two Muslims, the Lezgian Nurra and the Daghestan Tatar Aley. [Nurra] made upon me from the first day the most happy and ... He was alwayscheerfuland friendlyto everypleasingimpression one, worked uncomplainingly,was calm and serene, though often lookedwith anger at the filth and dirt of prisonlife and was furiously indignantat all the thieving,cheatingand drunkenness and everything but nevermadequarrels, dishonest; just turnedawayin disgust.During all his prisonlife he had neverstolen anything,never done a bad deed. He was extremelydevout. He said his prayersreligiously;during the fasts before the Muslim holy days he fasted like a fanatic and stood whole nightsin prayer.Everyone likedhim and believedin his honesty. 'Nurrais a lion', the prisoners used to say; so the name 'lion' stuckto him ... One could not help noticinghis kind, sympathetic face among the angry, surlyand sneeringfaces of the other convicts... Kind and naive Nurra! (4, 50-5I)
4F. M. Dostoyevsky, Polnoyesobraniye v tridtsati tomakh,Leningrad, I972-, sochineniy vol. 6, I973, p. 419. All references to Dostoyevsky's work in the text are from this edition. All the translations are mine. 2

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Of three Daghestan Tatar brothers, the youngest, Aley, who was not more than twenty-two, occupied the place next to the narrator on the bunks. His handsome,open, intelligentand at the same time good-naturedly naive face won my heartat firstglance,and I was so glad that fate had sent me him ratherthan anyoneelse as neighbour.His whole soul was in his handsome,one can even say beautiful,face. His smile expressed his large dark eyes so was so trusting,so childishlystraightforward; soft, so gentle, that I alwaysfelt particular pleasurein lookingat him, even reliefin distress and sadness.I am not exaggerating .. . (4, 51) In obedience to his elder brothers, Aley had joined them in a highway robbery, and received a four-year sentence. It is difficultto imagine how this boy duringhis whole imprisonment was able to preservesuch gentlenessof heart, to develop such strict and not to becomecoarseand honesty,such sincerityand likeableness, ... corrupt.But he was strongand firm, despitehis apparentsoftness I began to talk with him; in a few monthshe learnt to speakRussian excellently... I consider Aley farfroman ordinary person,and I recall my meetingwith him as one of the best meetingsin my life. There are naturesso innatelygood,so endowedby God, that the veryidea of their ever changingfor the worseseemsimpossible.One is alwaysconfident in them. And now too I am confidentabout Aley. Where is he now? (4, 52) From a Russian translationof the New Testament (a book that was not prohibited in the prison), the narrator (usually identified with Dostoyevsky himself) taught Aley to read Russian. In a few weeks he read excellently; and in two months or so learnt also to write excellently. Aley was deeply impressed by the Sermon on the Mount, by the 'words of God' uttered by the 'holy prophet Jesus': 'forgive, love, don't hurt others, love your enemies'. He conferred with his brothers, and then, with the 'dignified and gracious, purely Muslim smile, that I like so much, precisely for its dignity', they confirmed that Jesus was 'a prophet of God who performed great marvels, made a bird out of clay, breathed on it and it flew away' to the Quran,III, 49). (a reference Aley loved the narrator perhaps as much as he loved his brothers. 'I shall never forget when he left the prison ... He flung himself on my neck and wept. Never before had he kissed me or wept. "You have done so much for me, so much," he said, "my father and mother did not do so much; you have made me a man, God will repay you, and I shall never forget you." ' (4, 54). Later in the book, in chapter x, are mentioned Nurra's disgust at the convicts' Christmas drunkenness; and, in chapter xi, Aley's delight in the theatrical performances- 'all Muslims, Tatars and

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others, as I have noticed more than once, are passionatelyfond of all kinds of spectacles' (4, I23). Certainly, Notesfrom the Houseof the Dead is not straight autobiography; Dostoyevsky'screative imagination undoubtedly worked on his prison memories. But the assumption that actual encounters and experiences underlie the portrayals of Nurra and Aley is strengthened by the requests to his brother Michael for the Quran when he was releasedfromprison.Writingfrom Omsk on 22 February I854, he asks for the Quran, as well as Kant and Hegel; and writing from Semipalatinsk on 27 March he asks not only for historians, economists, Christian, classical and scientific literature, but also again for the Quran.5 It seems doubtful whether Dostoyevskyreceived the Quran at that time. Four years of imprisonment at Omsk were followed by more than five years of military service at Semipalatinsk; and then Dostoyevskyspent four months at Tver' before finally being allowed to return to St Petersburg at the end of I859. His friend A. P. Milyukov records having sent to him at Tver' (at Dostoyevsky's request), among other books, the Quran in the French translation of Kasimirski.6It was indeed the French translation of the Quran by M. Kasimirskithat was subsequently in Dostoyevsky'slibrary.7 However, shortly after Dostoyevsky's release from the Omsk prison, at about the same time as he was writing to his brotherfor the Quran, he made the acquaintance of a remarkable Asiatic who became a close friend, about whom - unlike the originals of Nurra
and Aley
-

a good deal is known.

Chokan Chingisovich Valikhanov (as his names were, and are, russified by Russian writers) was a Kazakh, born about I837, grandson of the last Khan of the Middle Horde.8 Valikhanov was
5 F. M. Dostoyevsky, Pis'ma, ed. A. S. Dolinin, vol.
pp. 139, I45.
i,

Moscow-Leningrad,

z928,

sovremennikov, ed. A. Dolinin, Moscow, I964, 6 F. M Dostoyevskyv vospominaniyakh vol. I, p. 195. 7 Grossman, Seminariy p. 44. po Dostoyevskomu, 8 The most extensive account of Valikhanov in English is by Thomas G. Winner, The Oral Art and Literature of the Kazakhs of RussianCentralAsia, Durham, N. Carolina, 1958, pp. 101-107. The most useful study in Russian is a careful article by V. A. Manuylov, bibliotechnogo 'Drug F. M. Dostoyevskogo Chokan Valikhanov' (Trudy Leningradskogo instituta,v, Leningrad, 1959, pp. 343-69). The Russophile requirements of official nationalities policy are reflected in most recent Soviet presentations, such as those of K. Beysembiyev, Iz istorii obshchestvennoy mvsli Kazakhstana vtoroypoloviny XIX veka (Ch. Valikhanov,I. vzglyady Altynsarin),Alma-Ata, I957, or S. Z. Zimanov and A. A. Atishev, Politicheskiye Chokana Valikhanova,Alma-Ata, 1965; an opposite orientation is represented in the publications of Baymirza Hayit, which include 'Geistesleben Turkestans in XIX. und XX. Jahrhundert' in Der Orientin der Forschung:Festschrift fur Otto Spies, ed. Wilhelm Hoenerbach, Wiesbaden, I967, pp. 279-93, and TurkestanzwischenRusslandund China, Amsterdam, 1971. The political, social and cultural background has been studied in several recent works which contain comments on various aspects of Valikhanov's manyof RussianRule, ed. Edward Allworth, New sided life, including: CentralAsia: A Century York and London, I967, especially chapters iv, v and vi, all by Helene Carrere

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MICHAEL

FUTRELL

'the first Kazakh geographer, ethnographer, linguist, and historian ... one of the foremost interpreters of his own culture to the Russians';9 Dostoyevsky's staunch friend and confidant in Semipalatinsk, Baron A. E. Wrangel, considered Valikhanov 'most charming ... well-bred, clever and educated'.10 After graduating from the Omsk Cadet School, where he read not only Russian but also English literature, as an officer in the Russian army the young Valikhanov travelled extensively in Central Asia during the second half of the I850s, combining military intelligence and exploration with pioneering investigation of Turkic folklore and culture; his abilities attracted attention, and on the recommendation of the great geographer P. P. Semyonov-TyanShansky he was elected a member of the Russian Geographical Society, which published some of his reports. Spending the year i86o in St Petersburg attached to the Asiatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he took part in the intellectual, literary and social life of the capital; but his health was already undermined by tuberculosis, and after returning to his native regions he died there in i865. In his attitude to the peoples of Central Asia, Valikhanov was a Westernizer, critical of the influence of Islam. The ethnographer N. M. Yadrintsevis quoted as saying that, for Valikhanov, European civilization represented'the new Quran of his life'." However, in his last years he became increasingly distressed by Russian military ruthlessness. Personally, Valikhanov was conspicuous for his elegance, even dandyism, and ironic wit; his captivating charm included a penchant for the 'hussar conversations' of Dostoyevsky's more dissolute Petersburgfriends.12 In earlyjottings for the novel A Raw routhmade in I874, Dostoyevsky has a note: 'terrible simple-heartedness, Valikhanov, fascination.'13 It was to this unusual twenty-year-old (approximately- the exact date of Valikhanov's birth is unknown) that the thirty-five-year-old
d'Encausse; Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union, New York and London, I967; Nora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky, Oral Epicsof Central Asia, Cambridge, I969; Lawrence Krader, Peoplesof Central Asia, Bloomington, Ind. and The Hague, i966; Richard A. Pierce, Russian CentralAsia 1867-1917, Berkeley and Los Angeles, I960; Geoffrey Wheeler, The ModernHistory of SovietCentral Asia, New York and London, I964; and Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkismand Islam in Russia, Cambridge, Mass., I960.
10 F. M. Dostoyevsky v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov, I, p. 259.

9 Winner, p. ioi.

11 Beysembiyev, P. 79. Recollections of Yadrintsev, quoted by Manuylov, p. 354, and in Literaturnoye vol. 77, Moscow, i965, pp. 464-65. nasledstvo, 13 Literaturnoye nasledstvo,vol. 77, p. 92; The Notebooks for A Raw routh, ed. Edward Wasiolek, Chicago and London, I969, p. 74.
12

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DOSTOYEVSKY

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2I

Dostoyevsky wrote from Semipalatinsk on I4 December I856 one of his most enthusiastic letters ever: You write me that you love me. I will tell you without ceremony that I have fallen in love with you. Never, to anybody, not even to my own brother, have I felt such attraction as I do to you, and God knows how this has come about. One could say much in explanation, but why should I praise you! And you will believe in my sincerity even without proof, my dear Vali-khan, and even if one were to write ten books on this theme, one would write nothing: feeling and attraction are inexplicable ... Dostoyevsky then urges Valikhanov to study and write, to apply for a year's leave to go to Russia, and then if possible to travel in Europe for a couple of years. Is it not a great aim, a holy task, to be just about the first of your people to explain in Russia what the steppes are and their significance and about your people with regard to Russia, and at the same time to serve your native land by enlightened intercession for it with the Russians. Remember that you are the first Kirgiz14 completely educated in the European way. . . Don't laugh at my utopian ideas and prophecies about your destiny, my dear Vali-khan. I love you so, that I have dreamt about you and your destiny for days at a time . . .15 The deep impression made on Dostoyevsky by Valikhanov is confirmed by his second wife's account of an auspicious turningpoint in his (and her) life - his proposal of marriage to the twentyyear-old stenographer in the year after Valikhanov's death: 'The eighth of November, i866, was one of the great days of my life. That was the day Fyodor Mikhaylovich told me that he loved me and asked me to be his wife.' Dostoyevsky told her: Last night I had a marvellous dream ... I attribute great meaning to dreams. My dreams are always prophetic ... Do you see that big rosewood box? That is a gift from my Siberian friend Chokan Valikhanov and I value it very much. I keep my manuscripts and letters in it, and other things that are precious to me for their memories. And so this is my dream: I was sitting in front of that box and rearranging the papers in it. Suddenly something sparkled among them, some kind of bright little star. I was leafing through the papers and the star kept appearing and disappearing. And this was intriguing to me. I started slowly putting all the papers to one side. And there among them I found a little diamond, a tiny one, but very sparkling and brilliant.'6
14

"I Pis'ma, vol. I, pp. 200-2. 16 A. G. Dostoyevskaya, Vospominaniya, Moscow, 1971, Beatrice Stillman, New York, 1975, p. 42.

That is, in modern terminology, Kazakh.

pp. 74-75; Reminiscences, trans.

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For Dostoyevsky, his second wife was indeed a bright star and a diamond. Besidespassagesin TheIdiotand TheDevilswhich will be consideredlater, the most strikingevidenceof Dostoyevsky's concern with Muhammadoccursin the memoirsof Sof'ya Kovalevskaya. Born in I850, she was one of the outstandingintellectualsamong Russiansof the time, becomingan internationally famousmathein Stockholm matician,and was appointedprofessor in 1884,where includea vividaccountof the abortive shediedin I 89 I. Hermemoirs of her eldersisterAnna Korvin-Krukovcourtshipby Dostoyevsky skaya,also an intellectualand writer,earlyin i865. Once, to their surprise, Dostoyevsky begantellingthe youngsistersaboutwhat he said was his first epileptic fit. In Siberia after his imprisonment, Dostoyevsky said, one EasterEve, he was absorbedin passionate of religionwith an atheistfriend: discussion
at last, beside himselfwith 'God exists, He does!' cried Dostoyevsky excitement.At that moment the bells of a nearby church began to The wholeatmosphere roaredandshuddered. ringforthe EasterService. 'And I felt,' relatedFyodorMikhaylovich, 'that heavencame down to earth and swallowedme. I reallyknew God and was penetratedby Him. "Yes, God exists,"I cried, and I remember nothingmore.' 'All you healthypeople,'he continued,'haveno idea what happiness which we epilepticsexperience, a momentbeforethe is, that happiness fit. Muhammaddeclaresin his Quran that he had seen paradiseand All you cleverfoolsare convincedthat he was simplya been in paradise. liar and impostor.But no! He does not lie! He really was in paradise in the fit of epilepsy,which he sufferedfrom, like I do. I don't know whetherthat blisslastsfor seconds,or hours,or months,but believeme, I wouldn'ttake all the joys that life can offerin exchangefor it !'17

this exaltation,it may be worthcitingsomeother To complement whichshowa contrasting little-known sideof Dostoyevsky. memoirs, The nextyear, i 866,just beforemeetinghissecondwife,Dostoyevsky spent the summer in the country with his marriedsister Vera Ivanovaand her familyand a large numberof high-spirited young friends.Dostoyevskywas workingon the fifth part of Crime and but took a leading part in the fun and games of the Punishment, summervacation.The memoirsof Vera'sseconddaughterMariya Ivanova, then eighteen years old, provide unique glimpses of Dostoyevsky (inhismid-forties) asjester, improviser ofcomicverse, and masterof revels,forexampleactingthe roleof polar bearin a skit.18
S. V. Kovalevskaya, Vospominaniya i pis'ma, Moscow, I951, pp. 106-7. It has often been assumed that this atmosphere of gaiety invigorated by some sharpness contributed much to the scenes of sometimes multi-layered merrymaking in Dostoyevsky's story The EternalHusband(I870).
17 18

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Dostoyevsky'sfavourite butt in the company was a solemn young doctor, A. P. Karepin. He assured Karepin that being a doctor was unworthy of his talents; he should rather proclaim himselfMuhammad II. As punishment for a sharp retort, Karepin was hung up in a tree, suspended on towels.19 The sardonic Svidrigaylov would have appreciated this playful caricature by Dostoyevsky of the conception of Muhammad as a potentate. In Raskol'nikov's discussion with Porfiriy (Crimeand Punishment, part 3, chapter v) of his theory of the exceptional man the who has right 'to permit his conscience to step over certain obstacles ... if it is necessary for the fulfilment of his idea on which possibly the welfare of all mankind may depend' (6, i99), Muhammad occurs three times, linked first with Lycurgus, Solon, and Napoleon, then with Lycurgus, and finally again with Napoleon. Another nuance of the conception of Muhammad as a wielder of power over men appeared nearly ten years later at the end of the first chapter of the second part of A Raw routh(i875), where Versilov tells his son Arkadiy: 'It's impossible to love people such as they are. And yet we must ... People are vile by nature and they'd rather love out of fear. Don't give in to such love: despise it always. There's a passagein the Quran where Allah bids the Prophet look upon those troublesomecreaturesas upon mice, do them good and pass them by. It may sound rather haughty but it's the right way . ..' (I 3, I 74-75) . The sombre climax of part 2, chapter v of The Idiot (i868) is formed by Myshkin'sepileptic fit, precipitated by his encounter with the armed Rogozhin in demonic mood: 'Rogozhin's eyes glittered and a frenzied smile contorted his face. He raised his right hand and something flashed in it' (8, 95). Rogozhin was lurking in a niche of the thick central column of the dark, narrow, spiral stone staircase up which Myshkin had rushed after him. ' "Everything will be decided now!" said Myshkin to himself, with strange conviction' (8, I94). Struck not by Rogozhin's knife but by the epileptic fit, Myshkin, 'shaking and writhing in convulsions', rolls down fifteen steps from the first landing to the bottom of the staircase and lies there in a pool of blood. This abortive attempt of the 'holy fool' (as Rogozhin had called Myshkin in the first chapter of the novel) to ascend the spiral in pursuit of his demon is preceded by several pages of elaborately accumulated foreboding, in which Dostoyevsky included a muchquoted section, almost an essay, on the immediately pre-epileptic state of consciousness: 'an extraordinary light ... harmony and

19 F. M. Dostoyevsky v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov, vol. I, pp. 362-70.

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beauty in the highest degree ... a feeling, unknown and undivined till then, of completeness, proportion, reconciliation and an ecstatic and prayerful fusion with the highest synthesis of life . . . an extraordinary heightening of awareness- if this condition had to be expressed in one word - of awareness and at the same time of the
most direct sensation . .. Yes, one could give one's whole life for

this moment' (8, I88). But this is presented as Myshkin's thoughts while sitting 'under a tree in the Summer Garden. It was about seven o'clock. The garden was deserted; a shadow passed over the setting sun for a moment. It was close; it seemed like the distant presage of a thunderstorm' (8, I89). Despite this ominous setting, the climax of the essay-likesection is the direct quotation of something Myshkin had said to Rogozhin during one of their previous meetings in Moscow: ' "At that moment the extraordinary saying that there shall be time no longerbecomes somehow comprehensible to me. I suppose," he added, smiling, "this is the very second in which there was not time for the overturnedjug of water of the epileptic Muhammad to spill, while he had plenty of time in that very second to behold all the dwellings of Allah."' And now, in the Summer Garden in St Petersburgon the summer evening, Myshkin realizes: 'Rogozhin said just now that I had been a brother to him then today was the first time he said it.' (8, i89) Thus, the transcendenceof time in the pre-epileptic state is linked both with the canonical Christian apocalypse ('there should be time no longer', Revelation, I1, 6)20 and with a major mystical experience of Muhammad (Quran, xvii, i, the Night Journey). The Quranic reference recurs in part 3, chapter v, section 5 of The Devils (i87V-72), where Kirillov describes to Shatov his 'seconds of eternal harmony', similar to Myshkin's pre-epileptic bliss, though denying that he is an epileptic. Shatov replies: 'Take care, Kirillov, I've heard that's how epilepsy begins... jug that didn't have time to spill while he RememberMuhammad's flew roundparadiseon his horse... It's too much like your harmony, was an epileptic.Take care, Kirillov- it's epilepsy!' and Muhammad 'Therewon't be time,' Kirillovlaughedsoftly. (IO, 451) These passages in The Idiot and The Devils should by considered together with Dostoyevsky'simpassioned comparison in i865 of his experience and Muhammad's, recorded by Sof'ya Kovalevskaya. It has been suggested by a recent editor that Dostoyevsky's source

20 The importance in nheIdiotof the book of Revelation has been elucidated by Roger L. and the Meaningof ChristianTragedy Cox, BetweenEarthandHeaven: Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, New York, I969, chapter vIII.

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for his knowledge of Muhammad's supposed epilepsy and his Night Journey was Washington Irving's biography of Muhammad (I84950), a Russian translation of which appeared in I857.21 The surmise seems unnecessary. It has already been mentioned that Dostoyevsky's library in his later years included the French translation of the Quran by M. Kasimirski; and that this work had been supplied to him by A. P. Milyukov in I859. In his introductory biographical notes, Kasimirski wrote about the child Muhammad: 'La tradition raconte que celui-ci etait sujet a une maladie dont on ne pouvait pas se rendre compte, mais qu'on attribuait a l'action du demon', adding a footnote: 'Cette maladie pouvait etre l'epilepsie. En effet, le vulgaire en Orient croit que les 6pileptiques sont possedes du demon.'22 A vast edifice was erected around the Night Journey by Islamic tradition;23 the prime Quranic inspiration comprises just one verse (xvii: i), which reads as follows in Kasimirski's version: 'Gloire a celui qui a transport6, pendant la nuit, son serviteur du temple sacre de la Mecque au temple dloign6 de Jerusalem, dont nous avons b6ni l'enceinte, pour lui faire voir nos miracles. Dieu entend et voit tout.' But for Dostoyevsky's source, one need surely look no further than Kasimirski's footnote: II s'agit ici du voyage aerien que Mahomet aurait fait d'abord du temple de la Mecque au temple de Jerusalem, et ensuite a travers les sept cieux jusqu'au trone de Dieu. Mahomet aurait ete transporte dans les regions celestes par l'ange Gabriel, sur une monture nommee Borak, que la tradition represente comme un etre aile, a la figure de femme, au corps de cheval, a la queue de paon. On a longtemps dispute, dans les premiers temps de l'Islam, sur l'authenticite de ce fait; les uns soutenant que cette ascension nocturne eut lieu en vision seulement; d'autres, qu'elle fut effectuee par Mahomet reellement et corporellement ... C'est une des croyances universellement resues aujourd'hui chez les musulmans, que cette ascension a eu lieu en realite. On ajoute que ce voyage celeste, ou Mahomet a vu les sept cieux et s'est entretenu avec Dieu, s'est fait si rapidement, que le prophete trouva son lit qu'il avait quitte, tout chaud, et que, le pot oiu il chauffait de l'eau etant pres de se renverser a son depart, il revint assez a temps pour le relever sans qu'il y eut une goutte d'eau de repandue.24 The belief mentioned by Kasimirski that Muhammad may have been an epileptic, as Dostoyevsky was, has sometimes been
vol. 9, Leningrad, 1974, p. 442. Polnoyesobraniye sochineniy, Le Koran,transl. M. Kasimirski, Paris, n.d., p. vii. 23 See for example A. 28-30; Seyyed J. Arberry, Sufism, New York, I970, pp. 19-20, Hossein Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, Boston, I972, p. I33; Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chape lHill, N. Carolina, 1975, p. 220.
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24

Kasimirski, pp. 219-20.

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entertained, particularly by opponents of Islam; most authorities discount it.25It is not surprisingthat Dostoyevsky, fascinated by his own experience of pre-epileptic bliss, absorbed Kasimirski's note on Muhammad's time-transcending ascent to paradise and saw Muhammad as a fellow in epilepsy. Surveying the varied biographical and literary material, it appears likely that Dostoyevsky's interest in Muhammad and Islam was aroused by his close contact with Muslims during his years in the Omsk prison, which produced the figures of Nurra and Aley in Notesfrom the Houseof the Dead- incarnations of simple goodness, straightforward kindness, pure morality, noble dignity, innate intelligence, courage and beauty. With all that, there is a touch of condescension in his portrayals of them; but he was sufficiently impressed to want to read the Quran, which he eventually did, deriving from it (or, probably, from Kasimirski'scommentary) his awareness of the Night Journey to paradise and of the supposed epilepsy of the mystical voyager. Dostoyevsky's close friend for several years, the well-educated, talented and versatile Valikhanov, may have contributed to his knowledge and opinions of Islamic culture and tradition and of Central Asia. One must regret the scantiness of information about their intercourse,first in Siberia and then (in i 86o) in St Petersburg. Until Valikhanov's energies were sapped and finally extinguished by tuberculosis (and the end of his life darkened by revulsion at Russian militarism), his range of abilities and experiences, his combination of the exotic and the European, and not least his personal charm, made him unique among Dostoyevsky'sacquaintances. The notion of Muhammad as a ruthless wielder of power that and A Raw Youth andPunishment occurs in Crime was, and is, something of a commonplace (and certainly is inadequate and misleading from any sophisticated viewpoint, whether historical or religious), that Dostoyevsky could have acquired from many places in his wide reading. Although Valikhanov and Muhammad reappeared briefly in 1874-75 at the time of A Raw routh, respectively in early notes and in the final text, the general orientation of Dostoyevsky'sthought and writing in the I870s probably submerged these interests that had been more evident in the i 86os. His concern with Turkey and the Eastern Question became almost obsessive in the voluminous

25 For example Alfred Guillaume, Islam, Harmondsworth, I956, p. 25; Tor Andrae, Mohammad: The Man and His Faith, New York, I96o, p. 5I; W. Montgomery Watt, at Mecca, Oxford, 1953, p. 57, and Muhammad:Prophetand Statesman, Oxford, Muhammad I96I, p. I9; Fazlur Rahman, Islam, London, I966, p. 13.

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appearing as Russian nationalism. journalism of TheDiaryof a Writer, At the same time, his concern with the Russian Orthodox Church Karamazov. deepened and became embodied in TheBrothers It remains to look more closely at the pre-epileptic experience of Myshkin (and Kirillov), associated by Dostoyevskywith his own and with Muhammad's Night Journey. The significant link seems to be the transcendence of time. The distinction between psychological and chronologicaltime may be noticed in some of Dostoyevsky's early works; the story White Nights (1848) ends with the cry: 'A whole minute of bliss! And is that really little even for a whole lifetime?' (2, I4I); and Netochka Nezvanova observesin chapter iII of the unfinished novel bearing her name (I849) that 'there are minutes in which one experiences in one's consciousnessfar more than in whole years' (2, I 79). In The Idiot, the epileptic Myshkin broods almost obsessively on time and death, pouring out to the Yepanchins' footman his excited account of an execution by guillotine (part i, chapter ii), then regaling Mrs Yepanchin and her daughters with his story (Dostoyevsky's own experience) of a political prisoner sentenced to be shot but reprieved at the last minute (part i, chapter v), then at once urging Adelaida (the artist among the Yepanchin daughters) to draw the face of a condemned man a minute before the blow of the guillotine, with another intense psychological disquisition.The theme recurs in Lebedev's story of the execution of the Countess du Barry (part 2, chapter ii). In the same sphere of time and death are the prolonged mental agonies of Ippolit, dying of tuberculosis, and the symbolic presence in Rogozhin's house of a copy of Holbein's painting of Christ's battered corpse (part 2, chapter iv) that sparks meditations by both Myshkin and Ippolit. In The Devils the theme is associated with the apparent epileptic Kirillov and his metaphysically motivated suicide. He imagines the fear of pain in waiting for death from a rock as big as a large house (or as a mountain) (part i, chapter iII, section 8). He declares to Stavrogin (part 2, chapter i, section 5) that 'there are minutes, you reach minutes, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal', to which Stavrogin replies: 'That's hardly possible in our time. In Revelation the angel swears that there will be no more time,' to which Kirillov assents, generalizing his conviction: 'That's very true ... When all mankind achieves happiness, there will be no more time, for there won't be any need for it. . . Time is not an object, but an idea. It will be extinguished in the mind' (io, i88). Subsequently, as previously mentioned, the comparison with Muhammad is made to Kirillov by Shatov, whereas in The Idiot it was made by Myshkin himself to Rogozhin.

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Dostoyevsky displayed keen intuition when he seized on Muhammad's Night Journey. One of the greatest modern scholars of Islam has written that, compared with Western thought, 'Islam has an entirely different vision of time ... not a continuous "duration", but a constellation, a "galaxy" of instants ... there exists only the instant'.26 In their pre-epileptic instants Myshkin ('harmony and beauty in the highest degree ... ecstatic and prayerfulfusion with the highest synthesis of life') and Kirillov ('eternal harmony') transcend time, as did Dostoyevsky('Heaven came down to earth and swallowed me. I really knew God and was penetrated by Him'). But what follows? In Dostoyevsky, eventually, there emerged the vision of Christiantheocracyin The BrothersKaramazov;but Myshkin, shattered by human beings with whom he cannot cope, relapsedinto idiocy, and the revolver-shot of Kirillov's suicide produced no metaphysicalrevolution, only 'splashesof blood and brains'. In them, the ecstasy is ultimately followed by involuntary dissolution of the personality or by its wilful destruction. An outstanding recent philosophical work provides a useful context here: But thereare also positiveforcesat workin the finiteformsof time and of lived experience. Thesepositiveforces space,enablingthe unification are most readily discerniblein the phenomenonof decision, which functionsas the existentialground of unity and continuity.Anxiety makes manifest the negativity of experience; decision occasions its positivity.It needsto be remembered, however,that decisionis not an isolatedact of will. Decisionrequiresa world,a contextof vectorsand whichenterinto the constituting livedintentionalities, of making process 'in the finite form of temporality choices... The positiveforces center
around the presentation of time as the opportune timefor decision ..

in the creativemoment,unitingthe past and the Time can be affirmed futurewith the presentin the resoluteness of committedthoughtand the momentin choice and action ... Authenticexistenceapprehends commitment. . . The finitude of time may be transcended,but it cannot be annulled.27 Borrowing from the title of a book by Montgomery Watt, Muhammad was not only prophet, he was also statesman. But much more than that: fundamental to Islam is the belief that Muhammad was the perfect man: 'He marks the establishment of harmony and
equilibrium between all the tendencies present in man . .. His

spiritual way means to accept the human condition which is

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normalized and sanctified as the ground for the most lofty spiritual castle ... At once the prototype of human and spiritual perfection and a guide towards its realization.'28Or, as Schuon puts it with the utmost concentration: 'Imitation of the Prophet implies, first, strength as regards oneself, next, generosity as regards others and, thirdly, serenity in God and through God.'29 Another recent writer on Islamic mysticism has observed, with the sword-like incisiveness that sometimes distinguishes Sufis, that 'on the Night Journey the Prophet was first transported "horizontally" from Mecca to Jerusalem before he made his "vertical" ascent. . . Only from the centre of the earthly state, that is, from the degree of human perfection, is it possible to have access to the higher states of being.'30 Myshkin is a connoisseur of bliss, sucked into a vortex of human entanglements. He escapes Rogozhin's knife while ascending the spiral staircase only by igniting into epilepsy and falling to inertness in a pool of blood; his private ecstasies,like those of Kirillov, remain unintegrated. He does indeed act: but his actions - sublime, or ridiculous, or disastrous- too often represent erratic inspiration or quixotic impulse, they are not lived intentionalities; his non-action sometimes seems to express impotence or bewilderment, rather than self-mastery or serenity; when in despair, he does not turn to or seek what transcendshimself, but broods fruitlesslyon his isolation; his moments of brilliance dazzle, but do not create, his audience is impressed, not changed; his behaviour, in a word, is in the deepest sense inopportune. In a letter ofJanuary I868 about his conception that emerged as Myshkin, Dostoyevsky made oft-quoted associations with Christ, and with Don Quixote, Pickwick, and Hugo's Jean Valjean ;31 but the immense and profoundly relevant potentialities of Muhammad as 'perfect man' were not realized by the Russian Christian Dostoyevsky. For while Christ for the Christian is both God and man (whence many profundities, complexities and controversies of Christian theology), Muhammad's status for the Muslim is quite different: Muhammad is not God, just exemplary man - a concept related to that of Dostoyevsky that produced Myshkin. TheIdiot began with Myshkin's horizontal journey from Switzerland to Russia, a traditional platform for spiritual ascent - which turns into catastrophe. He had been successfully treated in the

Nasr, Ideals and Realitiesof Islam, p. 77. Frithjof Schuon, Understanding Islam, London, I963, p. 93. 30 Martin Lings, What is Sufism?,London, I975, p. 38. 31 Pis'ma, vol. II, 1930, p. 7I.
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29

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but proves andunpsychically imperfect Swissclinicof Dr Schneider, the emergenceof the centredin the maelstromof St Petersburg; in the city seethingwith Swiss-treated 'holy fool' is overwhelmed capitalist materialismand corrupt egotism (Yepanchin,Ganya, Totsky) and with the demonic forces of ambiguityand self-will embeddedin the Russiantradition(Rogozhin,Lebedev,Nastas'ya on arrival with the intensecondensaobsessed Filippovna). Bizarrely of one awaitingdeathby bulletor guillotionof timeand experience then (or perhaps sappedand misled)by epilepsy,he tine, nourished time and with no NightJourneytranscending endsin St Petersburg space,but with a timelessnightof staticnegation,keepingvigil with as he the murderer Rogozhinby the corpseof Nastas'yaFilippovna relapsesinto idiocy. For Myshkin,as for the laceratedbody in the picture cherishedby Rogozhin, there seems little hope of rising backto the again; a merehuskof a humanbeing,he is transported neutral point of Schneider'sSwiss clinic, an object of despairing in evidence. pity for the few sane Russians Dostoyevskyhimself was able to integrate the experienceand significance(to him) of epilepsy into his ongoing life of literary he epilepticmetaphysicians creativity;but both of the unforgettable created- Myshkin and Kirillov- collapsed or blew up. His in TheBrothers is a parodist Karamazov, thirdepileptic,Smerdyakov and mockerof philosophy,hanger of cats and of himself,whose the Karamazov epilepsyprovidesan alibi for murder;in TheBrothers name of Muhammadoccurs-but likewise as parody (book IO, book, A chapter v), in the title of a scurrilousor pornographic or Healing Kinsman Folly,which Kolya says he had of Muhammad bedside(I4, exchangedfor the cannonthat he bringsto Ilyushka's 493). of the Omskprisonhad aroused such Althoughthe good Muslims in Dostoyevsky admiration and seeminglyinspiredhim to read the remainedfor him essentially an exemplarof a Quran,Muhammad certainkindof mysticalexperience similar and a ruthless conqueror to Napoleon.Dostoyevsky cannotbe reproached for not attaininga deeper comprehension of Islam, which was probablyeven rarer then than it is now; thoughone may speculateon amongChristians someone who the impacthe mighthavereceivedhad he encountered wouldhave combinedthe outstanding qualitiesof ChokanValikhaidentificanov with Islamicfaith.As it was,Dostoyevsky's increasing tion with Orthodox Christianityand with Russian nationalism, blocked facing the Islamic Turks,evidently,and not surprisingly, for him a theoretically of Islam and its possibledeeperpenetration founder- a possibility that one might deducefromthe potentially universalcomprehension proclaimedin his famousaddresson the

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Pushkin anniversary at the end of his life. In fact, in that address, what he mentioned of Islam (in connection with Pushkin's'Imitations of the Quran') was 'the very spirit of the Quran, its sword, the naive majesty of its creed and its threatening bloody power'.32 One might perhaps wish that at that time Dostoyevsky had remembered the Daghestan Tatar Aley, the meeting with whom the narrator of Notes from theHouseof theDead had described as 'one of the best meetings in my life. There are natures so innately good, so endowed by God, that the very idea of their ever changing for the worse seems impossible': that Aley who on leaving the prison 'flung himself on my neck and wept. Never before had he kissed me or wept. "You have done so much for me, so much," he said, "my father and mother did not do so much; you have made me a man, God will repay you, and I shall never forget you." ' It may be appropriate in conclusion to make more specific the attitude underlying this survey. Without asserting that Dostoyevsky must be regarded as philosopher as well as novelist, it is well known that his fiction has influenced a number of writers often considered philosophers, particularly some existentialists, and it is indisputable that his work has a place in the general history of ideas. The horizons of exploration in this latter area have lately been expanding rapidly through the pioneering researchesof a few scholars who have integrated Occidental and Oriental expertise (such as Herbert V. Guenther, Agehananda Bharati, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Edward Conze, and the late Richard H. Robinson, in Tibetan, Tantric, Islamic and Buddhist studies). From this point of view Dostoyevsky, like Tolstoy, deserves consideration from a wider angle than that merely of sources and influences, and it is hoped that this glance at Dostoyevskyand Islam may lead to more expert examination of such topics. As the Catholic Christian compiler of a remarkable recent anthology has observed, Western 'historiansof thought give one the feeling that the writings of its thinkers are the only fit expression of human ideas ... But we cannot permit the most ecumenical of civilizations both to enjoy the benefits of an informed and extensive curiosity in other cultures, and to indulge a flattering but parochial complacency about its own uniqueness ... Western thinkers may indeed have acquired some of these insights independently of Indic or other influence, but what they gained was previously unknown only to themselves, not to the human race as a whole - much as America was discoveredfor Europeansonly, not for its inhabitants, hence not for mankind'.33
32 The Diary of a Writerof i88o; in the translation by Boris Brasol (New York, I954, p. 978) the word 'bloody' of the original is omitted. 33 Jos6 Pereira, Hindu Theology:A Reader, New York, 1976, pP. 2I-22.

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