A Classic Short
Story Examines the
Relation Between
Pain and Transcendence
Feodor Dostoevsky
[1]
A 2017 Editorial Note:
Born in 1821, Feodor
Dostoevsky is one of the greatest writers of all time. He suffered from a lack
of optimism, and studied the roots of human psychological pain. His anguished art
teaches universal togetherness and
compassion.
In 1889, some eight years after his death, Helena
Blavatsky wrote:
“What the European world now needs is a dozen writers
such as Dostoevsky, the Russian author, whose works, though terra incognita for most, are still well
known on the Continent, as also in England and America among the cultured
classes. And what the Russian novelist has done is this: - he spoke boldly and
fearlessly the most unwelcome truths to the higher and even to the official classes - the latter a far more dangerous
proceeding than the former. And yet, behold, most of the administrative reforms
during the last twenty years [2] are
due to the silent and unwelcome
influence of his pen. As one of his critics remarks, the great truths uttered
by him were felt by all classes so vividly and so strongly that people whose
views were most diametrically opposed to his own could not but feel the warmest
sympathy for this bold writer and even expressed it to him.” [3]
The following narrative is reproduced from the volume “Short
Stories”, by Fiodor Dostoievski, The World’s Popular Classics, Books Inc. Publishers,
New York / Boston, 1900, 248 pp., see pp. 151-155.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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The Heavenly Christmas Tree
Feodor Dostoevsky
I am a novelist,
and I suppose I have made up this story. I write “I suppose”, though I know for
a fact that I have made it up, but yet I keep fancying that it must have
happened somewhere at some time, that it must have happened on Christmas Eve in
some great town in a time of terrible frost.
I have a vision of a boy, a little boy, six years old
or even younger. This boy woke up that morning in a cold damp cellar. He was
dressed in a sort of little dressing-gown and was shivering with cold. There
was a cloud of white steam from his breath, and sitting on a box in the corner,
he blew the steam out of his mouth and amused himself in his dullness watching
it float away. But he was terribly hungry. Several times that morning he went
up to the plank bed where his sick mother was lying on a mattress as thin as a
pancake, with some sort of bundle under her head for a pillow. How had she come
here? She must have come with her boy from some other town and suddenly fallen
ill. The landlady who let the “corners” had been taken two days before to the
police station, the lodgers were out and about as the holiday was so near, and
the only one left had been lying for the last twenty-four hours dead drunk, not
having waited for Christmas. In another corner of the room a wretched old woman
of eighty, who had once been a children’s nurse but was now left to die
friendless, was moaning and groaning with rheumatism, scolding and grumbling at
the boy so that he was afraid to go near her corner. He had got a drink of
water in the outer room, but could not find a crust anywhere, and had been on
the point of waking his mother a dozen times. He felt frightened at last in the
darkness: it had long been dusk, but no light was kindled. Touching his
mother’s face, he was surprised that she did not move at all, and that she was
as cold as the wall. “It is very cold here”, he thought. He stood a little,
unconsciously letting his hands rest on the dead woman’s shoulders, then he
breathed on his fingers to warm them, and then quietly fumbling for his cap on
the bed, he went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but was afraid
of the big dog which had been howling all day at the neighbour’s door at the
top of the stairs. But the dog was not there now, and he went out into the
street.
Mercy on us, what a town! He had never seen anything
like it before. In the town from which he had come, it was always such black
darkness at night. There was one lamp for the whole street, the little,
low-pitched, wooden houses were closed up with shutters, there was no one to be
seen in the street after dusk, all the people shut themselves up in their
houses, and there was nothing but the howling of packs of dogs, hundreds and
thousands of them barking and howling all night. But there it was so warm and
he was given food, while here - oh, dear, if he only had something to eat! And
what a noise and rattle here, what light and what people, horses and carriages,
and what a frost! The frozen steam hung in clouds over the horses, over their
warmly breathing mouths; their hoofs clanged against the stones through the
powdery snow, and everyone pushed so, and - oh, dear, how he longed for some
morsel to eat, and how wretched he suddenly felt. A policeman walked by and
turned away to avoid seeing the boy.
Here was another street - oh, what a wide one, here he
would be run over for certain; how everyone was shouting, racing and driving
along, and the light, the light! And what was this? A huge glass window, and
through the window a tree reaching up to the ceiling; it was a fir tree, and on
it were ever so many lights, gold papers and apples and little dolls and
horses; and there were children clean and dressed in their best running about the
room, laughing and playing and eating and drinking something. And then a little
girl began dancing with one of the boys, what a pretty little girl! And he
could hear the music through the window. The boy looked and wondered and
laughed, though his toes were aching with the cold and his fingers were red and
stiff so that it hurt him to move them. And all at once the boy remembered how
his toes and fingers hurt him, and began crying, and ran on; and again through
another window-pane he saw another Christmas tree, and on a table cakes of all
sorts - almond cakes, red cakes and yellow cakes, and three grand young ladies
were sitting there, and they gave the cakes to any one who went up to them, and
the door kept opening, lots of gentlemen and ladies went in from the street. The
boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Oh, how they shouted at him
and waved him back! One lady went up to him hurriedly and slipped a kopeck [4] into his hand, and with her own
hands opened the door into the street for him! How frightened he was. And the
kopeck rolled away and clinked upon the steps; he could not bend his red
fingers to hold it tight. The boy ran away and went on, where he did not know.
He was ready to cry again but he was afraid, and ran on and on and blew his
fingers. And he was miserable because he felt suddenly so lonely and terrified,
and all at once, mercy on us! What was this again? People were standing in a
crowd admiring. Behind a glass window there were three little dolls, dressed in
red and green dresses, and exactly, exactly as though they were alive. One was
a little old man sitting and playing a big violin, the two others were standing
close by and playing little violins and nodding in time, and looking at one
another, and their lips moved, they were speaking, actually speaking, only one couldn’t hear
through the glass. And at first the boy thought they were alive, and when he
grasped that they were dolls he laughed. He had never seen such dolls before,
and had no idea there were such dolls! And he wanted to cry, but he felt
amused, amused by the dolls. All at once he fancied that some one caught at his
smock behind: a wicked big boy was standing beside him and suddenly hit him on
the head, snatched off his cap and tripped him up. The boy fell down on the
ground, at once there was a shout, he was numb with fright, he jumped up and
ran away. He ran, and not knowing where he was going, ran in at the gate of
some one’s courtyard, and sat down behind a stack of wood: “They won’t find me
here, besides it’s dark!”
He sat huddled up and was breathless from fright, and
all at once, quite suddenly, he felt so happy: his hands and feet suddenly left
off aching and grew so warm, as warm as though he were on a stove; then he
shivered all over, then he gave a start, why, he must have been asleep. How
nice to have a sleep here! “I’ll sit here a little and go and look at the dolls
again”, said the boy, and smiled thinking of them. “Just as though they were
alive! ...” And suddenly he heard his mother singing over him. “Mammy, I am
asleep; how nice it is to sleep here!”
“Come to my Christmas tree, little one”, a soft voice
suddenly whispered over his head.
He thought that this was still his mother, but no, it
was not she. Who it was calling him, he could not see, but some one bent over
and embraced him in the darkness; and he stretched out his hands to him, and …
and all at once - oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree! And yet
it was not a fir tree, he had never seen a tree like that! Where was he now?
Everything was bright and shining, and all round him were dolls; but no, they
were not dolls, they were little boys and girls, only so bright and shining.
They all came flying round him, they all kissed him, took him and carried him
along with them, and he was flying himself, and he saw that his mother was
looking at him and laughing joyfully. “Mammy, Mammy; oh, how nice it is here,
Mammy!” And again he kissed the children and wanted to tell them at once of those
dolls in the shop window. “Who are you, boys? Who are you, girls?” he asked, laughing and admiring them.
“This is Christ’s Christmas tree”, they answered.
“Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day, for the little children who
have no tree of their own…” And he found out that all these little boys and
girls were children just like himself; that some had been frozen in the baskets
in which they had as babies been laid on the doorsteps of well-to-do Petersburg
people, others had been boarded out with Finnish women by the Foundling and had
been suffocated, others had died at their starved mother’s breasts (in the
Samara famine), others had died in the third-class railway carriages from the
foul air; and yet they were all here, they were all like angels about Christ,
and He was in the midst of them and held out His hands to them and blessed them
and their sinful mothers…. And the mothers of these children stood on one side
weeping; each one knew her boy or girl, and the children flew up to them and
kissed them and wiped away their tears with their little hands, and begged them
not to weep because they were so happy.
And down below in the morning the porter found the
little dead body of the frozen child on the wood stack; they sought out his
mother too…. She had died before him. They met before the Lord God in heaven.
Why have I made up such a story, so out of keeping
with an ordinary diary, and a writer’s above all? And I promised two stories
dealing with real events! But that is just it, I keep fancying that all this
may have happened really - that is, what took place in the cellar and on the
wood stack; but as for Christ’s Christmas tree, I cannot tell you whether that
could have happened or not.
NOTES:
[1] His name is spelled in various ways in Western
languages, including “Fiodor Dostoievski”. (CCA)
[2] After a few preparatory measures, the serfdom of
peasants was abolished in 1861 under Alexander II. This was the most important
liberal reform of that epoch. There was also an educational reform, with the
creation of many new schools; a judicial reform, which established the
independence of Judges; and the freedom of thought started to be officially
promoted. (CCA)
[3] Reproduced from the article “The Tidal Wave”, published
at “Collected Writings”, H.P. Blavatsky, TPH, USA, volume XII, see pp. 6-7. (CCA)
[4] Kopeck - a coin of small value. (CCA)
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Regarding the
theosophical dimension in the works of Dostoevsky, see also the article “If Christ Comes Back This Christmas”,
which is available in our associated websites.
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