The Birth of Man: Makar Devushkin’s Self-Fabrication Through Blind Rhetoric

Sydney Shiller

The degree to which existentialism is a product of either humility of self-vilification is a question of cognizance. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel, which is as much an analysis of the urban poor as it is a nugatory mission of self-discovery for the lovelorn, addled protagonist, concerns itself with such finesse. In Poor Folk, Makar Devushkin alludes to Russian literary giants such as Gogol and Pushkin, feels his disposition depracatorily, and consistently divulges detailed accounts of his life in letters to Varvara Dobrosyolova. Though Devushkin is known to be a clerk and copyist and presents himself clearly through his dialogue with Varvara, it becomes evident that he is a product only of his own literary imagination as the novel winds on. Instances of Devushkin’s self-identification with the subjects of Varvara’s writing, feelings of extreme marginality, and literary allusion all suggest the protagonist’s lack of true ethos and undermine any accessibility to his version of reality. In Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk, the reader’s only source of context is the contents of the letters exchanged by Devushkin and Varvara. The novel immediately involves only the dialogue between the two main characters, and it is from dialogue alone that the reader gains insight as to the thoughts, feelings, and personalities of the protagonist and his counterpart. As the novel advances, Devushkin’s dependency on Varvara for self-definition becomes apparent. Evidentiary of this phenomenon is Devushkin’s letter to Varvara on April 12th, “You express the desire, my dear, that I should tell you in some detail about my everyday life and its circumstances. It gives me joy to carry out your desire without delay.”(1). This excerpt indicates that Devushkin invents himself for and from Varvara, a pattern common to his letters. Varvara’s presence is directly correlated, according to Devushkin, to having provided him some definition: “Once I had got to know you, I began [...] to know myself better [...] Before I knew you, I was lonely and spent my life asleep,” (108). This August 21st passage indicates that Devushkin not only acknowledges the considerable number of qualities inherited from his interaction with Varvara, but requires it as an alternative to erasure. The final testament to Devushkin’s one-dimensionality is his reaction to Varvara’s marriage to Bykov: Devushkin simply ceases to exist altogether. Not only does the novel end with his final letter to Varvara, but he expresses his devastation at her inexorable fate in terms of how she affects him, suggesting she was the sole creator of his substance. “I lived for you alone! The reason I worked, and copied out documents [...] was always you, dearest, were living there,” (143). Devushkin’s character primarily comes from his dialogue with Varvara because of the characteristics assigned to him throughout and the fact that he tasked her with his sustenance. Common phenomena in Devushkin’s letters to Varvara are self-deprecation and comparison of himself to others. Devushkin’s feelings of extreme marginality drive him to question whether he truly exists. Of Ratazyayev, Devushkin only says praise, however he compares himself to Ratazyayev in the following way: “What am I compared to him? Nothing. He’s someone, he’s known, and what am I? I simply don’t exist,” (65). Devushkin recurrently expresses the same sort of existential dread concerning his own successes sized against the successes of others, particularly relating to literary prowess. In Devushkin’s eyes, his status as a copyist for little remuneration is particularly scathing because of his

ambition for literary success. When Devushkin inserts excerpts from Ratazyayev’s stories Italian Passions and Yermak and Zyuleika (67), he does so enviously, but maintains that in such a position, “I wouldn’t show myself on the Nevsky!” (69) as he connects his unrefinedness to an inability to command dignity. He is particularly caught up in the opinions of others, particularly regarding his poverty. “[A poor man] listens to what others are saying and wonders if he’s being talked about, if they might be saying how unprepossessing he is [...] A poor man is worse than an old rag,” (89). Devushkin essentially likens himself to scum and self-fabricates based on that very image. Devushkin is marginal enough to wonder if he really exists, and simultaneously holds himself in low enough esteem to figure that his existence is only a product of others’ perceptions of him. “And what a fine thing literature is, Varvara [...] It strengthens and instructs the heart [...] It’s a sort of picture and mirror,” (66). In Poor Folk, literature seems to be the single most definitive quality about Devushkin - and it is, in a way, albeit only because he self-fashions through intentional (and perhaps delusional) identification with the literature he has read. Devushkin, to a degree, tries to apply literature to his real life in an attempt to understand it. However, he does so misguidedly by interpreting short stories as reflections of his own life. Varvara repeatedly sends literature to Devushkin in order to exert a good influence, however, as a reader for whom sympathy is paramount, Devushkin continuously identifies with the stories’ main characters and reads them as if he had chronicled his life therein. After Varvara encouraged Devushkin to read Pushkin, he had to say of The Stationmaster that “When you read this one, you feel as if you’d written it yourself- I felt as if I’d taken my own heart and turned it inside out for people to see,” (77). Devushkin directly identifies himself with Samson Vyrin and believes that “it’s going on in people’s lives all around me” (77), as if the tale happened in real life, and not in writing. Devushkin’s later reading of Gogol’s The Overcoat hits slightly too close to home due to his identification with the main character. “It would be fine if he eventually mended his ways, made a few adjustments, softened it a little [...] evil would be punished and virtue would triumph [...] It’s just an empty example from vile, everyday life,” (82). After reading Gogol, Devushkin read it as a personal attack, as if every passerby knew then that his boots were worn through and saw him for his poverty. Through literature, Devushkin convinced himself that he’d successfully find meaning, but in reality these readings reinforced his lack of substance. Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk, while a fantastic analysis of the urban power, also documents the Sisyphean task of Makar Devushkin to give himself definition. Throughout the novel, Devushkin iterates and reiterates his love for literature and Varvara through writing, but only to the end that the reader comes to understand his dejectedness. In Poor Folk, Devushkin enters a man of no true character and, throughout the novel, fabricates himself by his own literary imagination, feelings of extreme marginality, and identification with the early greats of Russian literature. This self-fashioning was, however, unsuccessful in the end and Varvara’s departure promptly restored his shapelessness.