Dostoevsky's letter to Alexander Wrangel, 02/18/1866

a translation from the Russian

Notes on the text: The letter below was written in 1866 to Alexander Yegorevich Wrangel, the uncle of Pyotr Wrangel. His mother was second cousins with Alexander Pushkin. Alexander Wrangel worked for the Ministry of Justice as a diplomat. He met Dostoevsky during their simultaneous travels through Kazakhstan. In this letter, Dostoevsky outlines his financial situation, his poor health, and his progress regarding the writing of his famed novel “Crime and Punishment.” Footnotes contain helpful elaborations.

---

Petersburg February 18th/66.

My kindest and oldest friend, Alexander Yegorovich, I am guilty before You for my long silence, but I am guilty without fault. It would be difficult for me now to describe to You my entire current life and all the circumstances, in order to give You a clear understanding of all the reasons for my long silence. The reasons are complex and numerous, and therefore I will not describe them, but I will mention something. First, I’m at work like a penal laborer. It’s that novel for the Russian Herald. A big novel in 6 parts. At the end of November there was much written and completed; I burned it all; now it is safe to confess this. I myself was not pleased with it. A new structure, a new plan fascinated me, and I began anew. I work day and night, and yet I work too little. According to the calculations it comes out that every month I have to deliver to the Russian Herald up to 6 printed sheets.¹ This is terrible; but I would deliver them, if I had freedom of spirit. A novel is a poetic affair, it requires calmness of mind and of imagination to fulfill. But my creditors torment me, that is, they threaten to imprison me. I haven’t settled with them yet, and I don’t know yet whether I will. — Although many of them are reasonable and accept my offer to install their payment over 5 years; but with some of them I have not been able to settle yet. Understand how troubled I am. This tears the spirit and the heart, upsets for a few days, and yet I have to sit down and write. Sometimes it’s impossible. And that’s why it’s hard to find a quiet moment to talk to an old friend. By God! Finally, my illnesses. At first, upon my arrival, I was terribly disturbed by falling sickness; it seemed to want to make up for my three months abroad, when it hadn’t been around. And now I have been tormented with hemorrhoids for a month. You, probably, have no idea of this disease, and how its attacks can be. For the third year in a row it has been tormenting me two months a year — in February and March. And how it goes: for fifteen days (!) I had to lie on my couch and for 15 days I couldn’t pick up a pen. Now during the remaining 15 days I have to write five sheets! And I have to lie here, with my body in perfect health, because I could neither stand nor sit because of the cramps that were starting just as soon as I got up from the couch! I feel much better now for the last three days. I was treated by Besser. I now rush to any spare minute to talk to my friends. How it tortured me that I didn’t answer You! But I did not answer You nor any others, who are all entitled to my heart. Having mentioned to You my troublesome squabbles, I have not said a word about family troubles, about the innumerable hassles in the affairs of my late brother and his family, and in the affairs of our late magazine. I have become nervous, irritable, my disposition has deteriorated. I don’t know what this will come to. All winter I did not visit anyone, did not see anyone or anything, was in the theater only once at the first performance of the Rogneda.² And so shall this continue until my completion of the novel — if they do not put me in the debtor’s ward.