Dostoyevsky's “Peasant Marey”

Dostoevsky has been the subject of numerous psychoanalytic studies, including commentaries by Freud (1). Agreement has been general on his powerful parricidal trends and their root in the Oedipus complex. Special interest has been shown in his epilepsy and the role of his illness in his personality make-up. The commonly accepted psychological picture of Dostoevsky is that of a man with strongly repressed violent drives which erupt spasmodically. He is depicted as a dual personality, a politically conservative and deeply religious family man whose career has nevertheless embraced participation in revolutionary activities, imprisonment in Siberia, morbid gambling periods and quixotic impulses of varied description. His reputation, of course, rests fundamentally on his amazing insight into the deepest emotional conflicts, especially in relationship to crime. He delineates characters whose interest for psychologists is rivalled only by Shakespeare's. His works as well as his own character make Dostoevsky an case “inevitable history”.

One of his stories is a brief tale, “The Peasant Marey”, which is an avowedly autobiographical sketch. Writing in the first person, Dostoevsky describes an experience in a Siberian prison camp when he was twenty nine years old. During Easter week, the convicts had been granted a holiday. “There were numbers of men drunk …. hideous, disgusting songs and card parties abuse and quarrelling was springing up in every corner”. The prison officials kept out of sight “understanding that they must allow even these outcasts to enjoy themselves once a year, and that things would be even worse if they did not”. As diversion, several of the convicts had been beaten by their comrades until they were half dead. Dostoevsky was seized with a sudden fury and words muttered by another prisoner, “I hate these brigands” echoed in his ears. He lay down