The biographical parallels of Versilov and Chaadaev are even more striking, and in fact, during the earliest stages of his work on The Adolescent , Dostoevsky gave the name of Chaadaev to his protagonist. Chaadaev was a friend and slightly older contemporary of Pushkins, a Guards officer of the high nobility, a handsome, intelligent, and spirited man, who took part in the Napoleonic campaigns of 1812 and the occupation of Paris, resigned his commission in 1821, and wandered in Europe before returning to Russia. In 1836, the publication of the first of his Philosophical Letters Written to a Lady (there were eight letters in all, written in French) caused an enormous scandal by its sharp criticism of Russias backwardness and isolation among the nations of Europe, which he blamed partly on the Orthodox Church. The shock was so great that the emperor Nicholas I had Chaadaev declared mad, forbade the publication of the remaining letters, and kept their author under permanent surveillance until his death. But the Letters circulated in manuscript, and in 1862 the first three were published in Paris, where Dostoevsky bought and read them. Dostoevsky also knew Herzens admiring portrait of Chaadaev in his book of reflections and reminiscences, My Past and Thoughts (1852 55). In Dostoevsky and the Process of Literary Creation , Jacques Catteau lists the convergent details of Chaadaevs and Versilovs biographies:
Both are handsome and are pampered by women who admire them, protect them, and try to curb their prodigality. Both are inordinately proud, unconsciously egotistical, and of a wounding casualness. Both are remarkably intelligent and witty, profound and ironic. They have the same manners of the spoiled aristocrat, and the refined elegance of the dandy. They served in the same Guards regiment, haughtily refused to fight a duel, wandered for a long time in Europe, and underwent the fascination of Catholicism. Both fell in love with a whimsical and sick young girl . . . before becoming infatuated with a woman who reminds them of a world that is nobler and less empty than their own . . .
We might add that Chaadaevs Philosophical Letters are addressed to a lady, while Versilov is referred to ironically at one point as a womens prophet. Versilov is a complex and original figure, not simply an amalgam of his prototypes, but he is one deeply rooted in the intellectual and spiritual life of the Russian intelligentsia.
The gradual emergence of Versilov in Arkadys consciousness is the overarching story of The Adolescent . It is varied by a number of inset stories, a technique that Dostoevsky would use even more extensively in The Brothers Karamazov. These are all spoken stories, each in a voice quite distinct from Arkadys written notes: the tragic story of the young student Olya told by her mother; the comic story of the big stone told by Arkadys landlord, Pyotr Ippolitovich; the three stories told by Makar Dolgoruky; and Versilovs account of his dream of the golden age and the last days of mankind. Coming from experiences very different from Arkadys, they form a counterpoint and something of a corrective to his first person adolescent point of view, as does the epilogue written by Arkadys former tutor, Nikolai Semyonovich.
Makar Dolgoruky, the wanderer, is himself an inset figure in the novel. He appeared suddenly and as if fully formed in Dostoevskys early notes, and he also appears suddenly in Arkadys life, to die just as Arkady resurrects. He is Dostoevskys only full-length
portrait of a Russian peasant, a slightly idealized figure out of the past of Holy Russia, an image of peasant piety and strength, of mirth, and of spiritual beauty. In his notes, Dostoevsky worked especially on his voice, filling several pages with characteristic phrases and expressions, full of scriptural sweetness and cast in the half-chanting cadences of peasant speech. Makar Dolgoruky is the antithesis of Versilov. Arkady bears his name only by chance, but the old man becomes a spiritual father for him. After meeting him for the first time and talking with him only briefly, the adolescent bursts out feverishly: Im glad of you. Maybe Ive been waiting for you a long time. I dont love any of them; they have no seemliness . . . I wont go after them, I dont know where Ill go, Ill go with you . . . But later he makes the same declaration to Versilov, when the latter finally seems to welcome him as his son: Now I have no need for dreams and reveries, now you are enough for me! I will follow you! I said, giving myself to him with all my soul. Arkady stands between these two fathers, these embodiments of two very different Russias. He loses one and in the end saves the life of the other.
In the beginning, Arkady says of Versilov: I absolutely had to find out the whole truth in the very shortest time, for I had come to judge this man. He learns in the course of the novel that it is very difficult to judge something as complex, as many-storied, as another person, that what he and we, too, of course would have considered a moral failing may in fact be a higher kind of virtue. At one point, for instance, Versilov advises him: My friend, always let a man lie a little its innocent. Even let him lie a lot. First, it will show your delicacy, and second, youll also be allowed to lie in return two enormous profits at once. Que diable! one must love ones neighbor! The moral condemnation of lying is unexpectedly displaced by Christs second commandment, and Versilovs ironic tone is only a cover for his sincerity. Again, Arkady thinks as most of us do that honesty implies speaking everything out, but when he asks Versilov to explain something during one of their conversations, Versilov demurs: