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I take pleasure in reading lesser-known works—whether by writers who are themselves little-known, or by well-known writers whose minor works are overshadowed by major ones. Dostoevsky being my favorite writer, I could fill the pages of this blog with commentary on his fiction (all of which, over the course of several years, I have read). And, over time, I probably will. For now, however, I would like to discuss The Crocodile, a relatively long short story that was first published in the last issue of Epoch—the magazine that Dostoevsky published together with his brother Mikhail from 1864 to 1865. The most significant writing to appear in that magazine was Notes from Underground, which was published across the first four issues. That The Crocodile holds only a small spot in the Dostoevskian oeuvre is evidenced by the fact that Joseph Frank, in his authoritative biography of Dostoevsky, refers to The Crocodile just once, in passing, as the "unfinished satirical story" that the writer produced while under the immense stress of trying to keep the financially failing magazine afloat.
Frank's comment is the only reference that I have found to the story being unfinished. In the edition that I have (see link below), there is no mention of the story's unfinished status; but, if I wasn't already inclined to take Frank's word on it, then the ending to the story itself surely bespeaks its unfinished nature. It has that makeshift-ending-awaiting-another-installment feel to it. Be that as it may, Dostoevsky never added to it, so what we have is what we've got.
“Truly, our beginnings never know our ends.”
In The Crocodile, a civil servant named Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna visit a shopping arcade—on the latter's insistence—because a crocodile is on display in one of the exhibitions. The married couple, along with an unnamed friend who is also the narrator of the story, spend some time with the crocodile (whose name is Karlchen—he is owned by a fussy and acquisitive German). At one point, Ivan Matveich, in an attempt to show off, tickles the crocodile's nose with his glove, after which the crocodile proceeds to swallow him up. Miraculously, he doesn't die—he is simply stuck inside the crocodile, which turns out to be hollow and surprisingly roomy. Since the owner refuses to harm the crocodile—his livelihood—in order to free Ivan Matveich, the civil servant soon comes to appreciate his new home, to the point where he even begins to form grand plans from within. His coquettish wife, in turn, quickly moves on from her imprisoned husband.
The Crocodile is at times hilarious; readers of the later works of Dostoevsky may marvel that it was written by the same author. Yet Dostoevsky could be playful and lighthearted, as this story shows. The surreal, satirical nature of the story owes much to Nikolai Gogol. In Dostoevsky's early work especially, the influence of Gogol is palpable. Particularly in his shorter pieces, Dostoevsky experimented with the ridiculous and the eerie, which mark many of Gogol's tales—from The Nose to the stories that make up Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. This makes sense, because Gogol's style lends itself more to the short story than to the novel. So we find Gogol's influence not just in The Crocodile, but also in other early stories. In Bobok, for instance, which is an underrated yet significant story in which a frustrated writer attends an acquaintance's funeral one day and begins to hear the voices and conversations of the dead (which turn out to be terribly mundane—lots of talk about political scandals). Or in A Nasty Anecdote, where a civil servant gets very drunk and, in an attempt to enact his philosophy of being kind and understanding to social inferiors, ends up ruining the wedding celebrations of a subordinate. Or in the early novella The Double, where a government clerk begins to see a much more successful doppelgänger of himself and goes mad. These works all contain elements of the fantastic and the uncanny (Das Unheimliche, as Freud would use the term to refer to the psychological experience of the 'strangely familiar' in his study of, among other things, E.T.A. Hoffmann's work). Interestingly, in Dostoevsky's longer early works, the clearest influence (at least it seems so to me) is Charles Dickens. Poor Folks, and especially The Humiliated and Insulted, are tragic and romantic tales involving the struggles of impoverished characters. There you find Dostoevsky experimenting with another writer he admired—now in long form, to which Dickensian tales are clearly more amenable. In the manner of a true artist, however, these obvious early influences and references—stylistically and thematically—soon disappear, or at least become much more subtle, when Dostoevsky fully grows into his own and leaves everyone else behind.
Back to The Crocodile. The press at the time took the story as a parody of the philosopher and socialist Nikolai Chernyshevsky's being locked up in St. Peter and Paul Fortress, from where he kept up and distributed his writing. There is something to be said for this. Chernyshevsky wrote the influential novel What Is to Be Done? (in response to Turgenev's Fathers and Sons), was at the forefront of Russian populism ('Narodism' and its supporters 'The Narodniks', from the Russian 'narod': 'people' or 'folk'), and sought to overthrow the reigning autocracy and exchange it for a peasant commune. Dostoevsky hated all of this, and wrote Notes from Underground largely in response to Chernyshevsky and those who thought like him (especially through the image of 'The Crystal Palace'). Dostoevsky denied that he parodied Chernyshevsky in The Crocodile, and I am inclined to believe that he did not explicitly do so. The confinement of Ivan in the crocodile—the central scene and image—provides a thin parallel to being in prison, and the circumstances of how and why Ivan got in there, do not seem to match Chernyshevsky's. However, the fact that Ivan Matveich becomes inspired from within the crocodile to "invent an entire social system," which is oh so easy because all you have to do is "get off by yourself in some corner—or, for that matter, get into a crocodile—close your eyes, and immediately you invent a complete paradise for all mankind," does bring the whole thing awfully close to the image of Chernyshevsky writing about socialist utopias from prison. More than that, it attacks those who claim to know what is best for mankind from their remote little corners—especially those social reformers who have never actually 'lived among the people', and do more harm than good in their ignorance—like the drunken protagonist in A Nasty Anecdote.
“All one has to do is to be wise and virtuous, and one is certain to be put on a pedestal. If not Socrates, then Diogenes - or perhaps the two of them together. There you have my future role among mankind.”
The story is, at its core, one of pettiness and greediness. The German owner of the crocodile is concerned only with his crocodile—and that only because it brings him money. The first thing that the narrator thinks when Ivan Matveich is apparently consumed by the crocodile is, "What … if all this were happening to me? How very unpleasant it would be for me." Yelena Ivanovna is initially very upset when her husband is swallowed up, but is almost immediately over it (quickly realizing that her tears are very becoming to her). She does not even come back to visit Ivan Matveich in his crocodile-prison, and takes on a new over instead. The elderly man whom the narrator visits, on Ivan Matveich's insistence, in order to ask for assistance, only musters up a bit of sympathy after he is paid back the seven roubles that Ivan Matveich lost to him at cards the other night. The slogan that is repeated several times throughout the story—"the economic principle first!"—reflects the talk in Russia at the time of bringing in foreign investments in order to build up the Russian economy and create a middle class, as in other parts of the Western world. Dostoevsky, as much as he disliked this idea (he was, of course, a staunch Russophile), also appears to me to vent some of his frustrations at the time in this manner. For his magazine, Epoch, was a financial failure, and here—as in many other moments throughout his life—he needed money badly. That the economic rather than the aesthetic principle should come first is tragic; Ivan Matveich has just been gobbled up by a crocodile, yet he is the first to agree with the German that the economic principle comes first—that the crocodile should not be cut open because then it cannot bring in any money.
Interestingly, like in Chekhov's The Death of a Clerk, social anxiety—the worry of how other will perceive one—is lampooned in The Crocodile as well (see my post about Chekhov here). Immediately after Ivan Matveich affirms that he is alive and well inside the crocodile, he admits: "I'm only worried about one thing, and that is how my superiors will view this episode." He was supposed to travel abroad, but he is instead stuck inside a crocodile, which is bound to be perceived as "not very clever."
One cannot help but think of Kafka's Metamorphosis when reading The Crocodile. There are important differences between the two tales—in the former, one is transformed, metamorphosed, into a creature, while in the latter one is eaten by a creature. There is an ontological difference there, even though Ivan Matveich appears to function from within the crocodile almost as if he were the crocodile. Yet the passive acceptance of something that should be very frightening—becoming or being consumed by a creature—is present in both tales. Both characters are dehumanized and simply accept the situation as it is; they certainly do not question it in the way that we feel that they ought to.
A final aspect of the story to which I want to draw attention is the way in which the events of that day are reported in the media. The narrator, toward the end of the story, is handed some newspapers that give accounts of what happened. (The entire story, in a sense, can be read as a kind of kaleidoscope of perspectives.) The reports grossly misrepresent Ivan Matveich's misfortune, and they do so in ways that match their overall outlooks. So we have Hair, a progressive paper, which reminds its readers that "we are progressive and humanitarian and want to catch up with Europe in this respect," and proceeds to recount that a good-natured foreign entrepreneur came to their capital, which should be a welcome event applauded by all, but then can-you-believe-it a corpulent and drunk individual jumps into the crocodile's maw and refuses to leave—all testifying to the recklessness and backwardness of the Russian temperament. Another paper, Leaflet, tells its readers that a certain Mr. X, "a well-known gourmet of high society," went into the arcade and demanded that the crocodile be prepared for dinner, and when he settled the sum with the owner, promptly began to eat the animal while it was still alive. The paper continues to express to its readers the hope that this cuisine catches on, for it will bring a nice new branch of industry to the fatherland.
Dostoevsky story, then, is as much a piece of social criticism as it is an indictment of the truth-looseness that characterizes the press in his time. They cannot even get the details of such an extraordinary event straight. I doubt that I need to point out that, in that department, nothing has changed—but I will.
Affiliate Link(s)
If you want to read The Crocodile, I recommend the Oneworld Classics edition. You can buy it here from The Book Depository (free shipping and worldwide delivery).
You can find the abridged edition of Joseph Frank’s magnificent biography here. Essential for Dostoevsky fans.
If you want to read other stories by Dostoevsky, I recommend this edition, which includes A Nasty Anecdote and Bobok.
(Note: if you buy any book(s) using the above link, or any book from The Book Depository via this link, I will receive a small commission. It won’t cost you anything extra, and you’ll help me maintain this blog.)