Footnote 54:
This is how the chapter is numbered in the original.
THE reading lasted for about an hour. Tikhon read slowly, and, possibly,
read certain passages twice over. All the time Stavrogin had sat silent
and motionless.[55] Tikhon took off his glasses, paused, and, looking up
at him, was the first to begin to speak rather guardedly.
Footnote 55:
After “motionless” the following is struck out: “It is strange that
the signs of impatience, absentmindedness, and even of delirium, that
had been in his face all that morning, almost disappeared, and gave
place to calmness and a kind of sincerity, that gave him an air almost
of dignity.”
“Can’t certain corrections be made in this document?”
“Why should there? I wrote sincerely,” Stavrogin replied.
“Some corrections in the style should....”
“I forgot to warn you,” he said quickly and peremptorily, pulling
himself up, “that all you say will be useless; I shall not postpone my
intention; don’t try to dissuade me. I shall publish it.”
“You did not forget to tell me that, before I began to read.”
“Never mind,” Stavrogin interrupted peremptorily, “I repeat it again:
however great the force of your objections may be, I shall not give up
my intention. And observe that, by this clumsy or clever phrase—think of
it what you like—I am not trying to get you at once to start arguing and
coaxing me.”[56]
Footnote 56:
After “coaxing” is struck out: “he added, as though he could no longer
keep it up, and suddenly fell again for a moment into his former tone,
but he immediately smiled sadly at his words.”
“I shall not argue with you, still less coax you, to give up your
intention, nor could I do it either. Your idea is a great idea, and it
would be impossible to express more perfectly a Christian idea.
Repentance cannot go further than the wonderful deed which you have
conceived, if only....”
“If only what?”
“If it were indeed repentance and indeed a Christian idea.”
“I wrote sincerely.”[57]
Footnote 57:
Before the words “I wrote sincerely” there is struck out: “This seems
to me a subtlety; does this really matter....”
“You seem deliberately to wish to make yourself out coarser than your
heart would desire....” Tikhon gradually became bolder. Evidently “the
document” made a strong impression on him.
“‘Make myself out’? I repeat to you, I did not ‘make myself out,’ still
less did I ‘pose.’”[58]
Footnote 58:
The phrase “Make myself out, etc.,” is struck out.
Tikhon quickly cast his eyes down.
“This document comes straight from the needs of a heart which is
mortally wounded,—am I not right in this?” he said emphatically and with
extraordinary earnestness. “Yes, it is repentance and natural need of
repentance that has overcome you, and you have taken the great way, the
rarest way. But you, it seems, already hate and despise beforehand all
those who will read what is written here, and you challenge them. You
were not ashamed of admitting your crime; why are you ashamed of
repentance?”
“Ashamed?”
“You are ashamed and afraid!”
“Afraid?”
“Mortally. Let them look at me, you say; well, and you, how will you
look at them? Certain passages in your statement are emphasized; you
seem to be luxuriating in your own psychology and clutch at each detail,
in order to surprise the reader by a callousness which is not really in
you. What is this but a haughty defiance of the judge by the accused?”
“Where is the defiance? I kept out all personal discussion.”
Tikhon was silent. His pale cheeks flushed.
“Let us leave that,” Stavrogin said peremptorily. “Allow me to put to
you a question on my side: we have now been talking for five minutes
since you read that” (he nodded at the pages), “and I do not see in you
any expression of aversion or shame.... You don’t seem to be
squeamish....”
He did not finish.[59]
Footnote 59:
After “he did not finish” is struck out: “You mean you would like me
immediately to express to you my contempt,” Tikhon said firmly.
“I shall not conceal anything from you: I was horrified at the great
idle force that had been deliberately wasted in abomination. As for the
crime itself, many people sin like that, but they live in peace and
quiet with their conscience, even considering it to be the inevitable
delinquency of youth. There are old men, too, who sin in the same
way—yes, lightly and indulgently. The world is full of these horrors.
But you have felt the whole depth to a degree which is extremely rare.”
“Have you come to respect me after these pages?” Stavrogin said, with a
wry smile.
“I am not going to answer that straight off. But there certainly is not,
nor can there be, a greater and more terrible crime than your behaviour
towards the girl.”
“Let us stop this measuring by the yard.[60] Perhaps I do not suffer so
much as I have made out, and perhaps I have even told many lies against
myself,” he added suddenly.
Footnote 60:
There is struck out: “I am somewhat surprised at your opinion about
other people and about the ordinariness of such a crime.”
Tikhon once more let this pass in silence.[61]
Footnote 61:
After the sentence “Tikhon, etc.,” is struck out: “Stavrogin had no
thought of going away; on the contrary he began again for some minutes
to fall into a reverie.”
“And the young lady,”[62] Tikhon began again, “with whom you broke off
in Switzerland; where, if I may ask, is she ... at this moment?”
Footnote 62:
After “lady” is struck out: “very timidly.”
“Here.”
There was silence again.
“Perhaps I did lie much against myself,” Stavrogin persisted once more.
“Well, what does it matter that I challenge them by the coarseness of my
confession, if you noticed the challenge? I shall make them hate me
still more, that’s all. Surely that will make it easier for me.”[63]
Footnote 63:
All this passage, from “Well” to “easier for me,” is struck out.
“That is, anger in you will rouse responsive anger in them, and, in
hating, you will feel easier than if you accepted their pity.”
“You are right. You understand.” He laughed suddenly. “They may perhaps
call me a Jesuit and sanctimonious hypocrite after the document, ha, ha,
ha! Yes?”
“Certainly there is sure to be some such opinion. And do you expect to
carry out your intention soon?”
“To-day, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, how do I know? But very
soon. You are right: I think, indeed, it will in the end happen that I
shall publish it unexpectedly, and, indeed, in a revengeful, hateful
moment, when I hate them most.”
“Answer me one question, but sincerely, to me alone, only to me,” Tikhon
said in quite a different voice; “if some one forgave you for this”
(Tikhon pointed at the pages), “and not one of those whom you respect or
fear, but a stranger, a man whom you will never know, if, reading your
terrible confession, he forgave you, in the privacy of his heart—would
you feel relieved, or would it be just the same to you?”
“I should feel easier,” Stavrogin said in an undertone. “If you forgave
me, I should feel very much relieved,” he added, casting his eyes down.
“Provided that you forgive me too,” Tikhon murmured in a penetrating
voice.[64]
Footnote 64:
After the words “Tikhon murmured, etc.,” there is struck out: “For
what? What have you done to me? Ah, yes, it is the monastic
formula!”—“For voluntary and involuntary sin. Every man who commits a
sin has already sinned against all, and every man is in some way
guilty for another’s sin. There is no solitary sin. As for me I am a
great sinner, and perhaps worse than you.”
“It is false humility. All these monastic formulas, you know, are not
fine in the least. I will tell you the whole truth: I want you to
forgive me. And besides you—one or two more, but as for the rest—let the
rest rather hate me. But I want this, so that I may bear it with
humility....”
“And universal pity for you—could you not bear it with the same
humility?”
“Perhaps I could not.[65] Why do you....”[66]
Footnote 65:
After “I could not” is struck out: “You understand very finely,
but....”
Footnote 66:
After “Why do you” is struck out: “do this.”
“I feel the extent of your sincerity and am, of course, very much to
blame, but I am not good at approaching people. I have always felt it a
great fault in myself,” Tikhon said sincerely and intimately, looking
straight into Stavrogin’s eyes. “I just say this, because I am afraid
for you,” he added; “there is an almost impassable abyss before you.”
“That I shan’t be able to bear it? Not able to endure[67] their hatred?”
Stavrogin gave a start.
Footnote 67:
After “endure” is struck out: “with humility.”
“Not their hatred alone.”
“What else?”
“Their laughter.” Tikhon half whispered these words, as if it were more
than he had strength for.
Stavrogin blushed; his face expressed alarm.
“I foresaw it,” he said; “I must have appeared to you a very comic
character after your reading of my ‘document.’[68] Don’t be
uncomfortable. Don’t look disconcerted. I expected it.”
Footnote 68:
After the word “document” is struck out: “in spite of all the
tragedy.”
“The horror will be universal and, of course, more false than sincere.
People fear only what directly threatens their personal interests. I am
not talking of pure souls: they will be horrified in themselves and will
blame themselves, but no notice will be taken of them—besides they will
keep silent. But the laughter will be universal.”[69]
Footnote 69:
After “the laughter will be universal” is struck out: “and add to it
the remark of the philosopher that in other people’s misfortune there
is always something gratifying to us.”—“That is true.”—“Yet ... you
... yourself.”
“I am surprised what a low opinion you have of people and how they
disgust you.” Stavrogin spoke with some show of anger.
“Believe me, I judged rather by myself than by other people!” Tikhon
exclaimed.
“Indeed? but is there also something in your soul that makes you amused
at my misery?”
“Who knows, perhaps there is? oh, perhaps there is!”
“Enough. Tell me, then, where exactly am I ridiculous in my manuscript?
I know myself, but I want you to put your finger on it. And tell it as
cynically as possible, tell me with all the sincerity of which you are
capable. And I repeat to you again that you are a terribly queer
fellow.”
“In the very form of this great penance there is something ridiculous.
Oh, don’t let yourself think that you won’t conquer!” he suddenly
exclaimed, almost in ecstasy. “Even this form will conquer” (he pointed
to the pages), “if only you sincerely accept the blows and the spitting.
It always ended in the most ignominious cross becoming a great glory and
a great strength, if the humility of the deed was sincere. Perhaps even
in your lifetime you will be comforted!...”
“So you find something ridiculous in the form itself?”[70] Stavrogin
insisted.
Footnote 70:
After “form” is struck out: “in the style.”
“And in the substance. The ugliness of it will kill it,” Tikhon said in
a whisper, looking down.
“Ugliness! what ugliness?”
“Of the crime. There are truly ugly crimes. Crimes, whatever they be,
the more blood, the more horror in them, the more imposing they are, so
to say, more picturesque. But there are crimes shameful, disgraceful,
past all horror, they are, so to say, almost too inelegant....”
Tikhon did not finish.
“You mean to say,” Stavrogin caught him up in agitation, “you find me a
very ridiculous figure when I kissed the hands of the dirty little
girl....[71] I understand you very well, and that is why you despair for
me, that it is ugly, revolting—not precisely revolting, but shameful,
ridiculous, and you think that that is what I shall least of all be able
to bear.”
Footnote 71:
After “dirty little girl” is struck out: “and all that I said about my
temperament and, well, all the rest ... I see.”
Tikhon was silent.[72]
Footnote 72:
After “Tikhon was silent” is struck out: “Yes, you know people, that
is, you know that I shan’t bear this.”
“I understand why you asked about the young lady from Switzerland,
whether she was here.”
“You are not prepared, not hardened,” Tikhon said timidly in a whisper,
casting his eyes down; “you are uprooted, you do not believe.”
“Listen, Father Tikhon: I want to forgive myself, and that is my object,
my whole object!” Stavrogin suddenly said with gloomy ecstasy in his
eyes. “Then only, I know, that vision will disappear. That is why I seek
boundless suffering. I seek it myself. Don’t make me afraid, or I shall
die in anger.”
The sincerity was so unexpected that Tikhon got up.
“If you believe that you can forgive yourself and attain that
forgiveness in this world through your suffering; if you set that object
before you with faith, then you already believe completely!” Tikhon
exclaimed rapturously. “Why did you say, then, that you did not believe
in God?”
Stavrogin made no answer.
“For your unbelief God will forgive you, for you respect the Holy Spirit
without knowing Him.”
“Christ will forgive too?” asked Stavrogin, with a wry smile and in a
quickly changed tone; and in the tone of his question a suspicion of
irony could be heard.
“It says in the Book: ‘And whosoever shall offend one of these little
ones,’ you remember. According to the Gospel there is no greater
crime....”[73]
Footnote 73:
The fourteenth proof-sheet ends here—there appears to be something
missing.
“Quite plainly, you don’t want a row, and you are laying a trap for me,
venerable Father Tikhon,” Stavrogin muttered scornfully and with
annoyance, making as if to get up; “in a word, you want me to settle
down, to marry, perhaps, and end my life as a member of the local club,
and visit your monastery on holidays. Why, that’s penance! isn’t it so?
though as a reader of hearts you, perhaps, foresee that it will
certainly be so, and all that is needed now is for me to be nicely
wheedled into it for form’s sake, since I am only too eager for
that,—isn’t it so?”
He gave a wry smile.
“No, not that penance, I am preparing another for you!” Tikhon went on
earnestly, without taking the least notice of Stavrogin’s smile and
remark.
“I know an old man, a hermit and ascetic, not here, but not far from
here, of such great Christian wisdom that he is even beyond your and my
understanding. He will listen to my request. I will tell him about you.
Go to him, into retreat, as a novice under his guidance, for five years,
for seven, for as many as you find necessary. Make a vow to yourself,
and by this great sacrifice you will acquire all that you long for and
don’t even expect, for you cannot possibly realize now what you will
obtain.”
Stavrogin listened gravely.
“You suggest that I enter the monastery as a monk.”[74]
Footnote 74:
After the word “monk” is struck out: “However much I respect you, I
ought to have expected this. Well, I must confess to you, that in
moments of cowardice this idea has occurred to me—once having made
these pages universally known, to hide from people in a monastery, be
it only for a time. But I blushed at the meanness of it. But to take
orders as a monk, that did not occur to me even in moments of most
cowardly fear.”
“You must not be in the monastery, nor take orders as a monk; be only a
lay-brother, a secret, not an open one; it may be that, even living
altogether in society....”
“Enough, Father Tikhon.” Stavrogin interrupted him with aversion and
rose from his chair. Tikhon also rose.
“What is the matter with you?” he suddenly exclaimed almost in fear,
staring at Tikhon. Tikhon stood before him, with his hands clasped, and
a painful convulsion seemed to pass for a moment across his face as if
from the greatest fear.
“What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter?” Stavrogin repeated,
rushing to him in order to support him. It seemed to him that Tikhon was
going to fall.
“I see ... I see, as if it stood before me,” Tikhon exclaimed in a voice
which penetrated the soul and with an expression of the most violent
grief, “that you, poor, lost youth, have never been so near another and
a still greater crime than you are at this moment.”
“Calm yourself!” pleaded Stavrogin, decidedly alarmed for him. “Perhaps
I shall still postpone it.... You are right....”
“No, not after the publication, but before it, a day, an hour, perhaps,
before the great step, you will throw yourself on a new crime, as a way
out, and you will commit it solely in order to avoid the publication of
these pages.”
Stavrogin shuddered with anger and almost with fear.[75] “You cursed
psychologist!”—he suddenly cut him short in fury and, without looking
round, left the cell.
Footnote 75:
The words “Stavrogin, etc.,” are struck out and several variants
substituted, none of which, evidently, satisfied Dostoevsky.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PLAN OF THE NOVEL
_THE LIFE OF A GREAT SINNER_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE LIFE OF A GREAT SINNER_
Page 8.
20/8 December.
—Accumulation of wealth.
—The birth of strong passions.
—Strengthening of the will and of the inner powers.
—Measureless pride and struggle with ambition.
—The prose of life and a passionate belief that incessantly overcomes
it.
—That all should plead; I only demand.
—Not to be afraid of anything. The sacrifices of life.
—The influence of vice; the horror and coldness from it.
—A desire to defile every one.
—The romance of the years of childhood. Maccary.[76]
Footnote 76:
This is in Roman letters in Dostoevsky’s MS.
—Schooling and first ideals.
—Gets to know everything secretly.
—Alone, to prepare himself for anything.
(He is incessantly preparing himself for something, although he does not
know for what, and—what is strange—he does not care about _the what_, as
though perfectly sure that it will come of itself.)
—Either slavery or domination. He believes. And that only. Unbelief for
the first time—strangely springing up and taking shape only in the
monastery. The little lame girl. Katya. Brother Misha. The Stolen Money.
Underwent punishment. Fearlessness. A Cornfield. Do not kill me, Uncle.
Love of Kulikov. John. Brutilov. The Frenchman Pougot. Upbraids
Brutilov. Goes on with his studies. The diver. _Albert._[77] Shibo.
Receiving the communion. _Albert_ does not believe in God. The old
people. Loves a great many things secretly and keeps them to himself.
They call him a brute and thus he behaves like a brute. Passionate
desire to surprise all by unexpectedly impertinent tricks? But not from
ambition. By himself. The old people. Songs, Therese-Philosophe John,
Brin, Brutilov—Brother, _Albert_. Friends, and yet they torture a
friend; disgusting. A meek, good and pure friend before whom he blushes.
Training himself by hardships and accumulating money. _Humboldt._
Footnote 77:
Throughout the MS. Dostoevsky writes this name and Lambert (see below)
in Roman characters.
They immediately inform him that he is not their brother.
He makes friends with Kulikov. The lady doctor. He sees her in a halo. A
passionate desire to foul himself, to degrade himself in her eyes, but
not to please her. A theft took place. They accuse him, he exculpates
himself, but the affair becomes clear. The step-brother committed the
theft.
Page 7.
[Sidenote: A strong and permanent trait.]
Disrespect for the people round him, but this is not yet based on
reason, but solely on a repulsion for them. Much repulsion. I eat
grapes. He is beaten and flogged for his repulsion. He only shuts
himself up in himself and hates still more. Haughty contempt for his
persecutors, and rapidity of judgment. Extraordinary quickness of
judgment signifies a strong passionate individuality. He begins to feel
that he ought not to make quick judgments and for this he must
strengthen his will.
[Sidenote: First signs of expansiveness.]
[Sidenote: The mother’s boys are at Sushar’s and at Chermak’s. (Their
repulsion comes from stupidity.)]
—It is a lie, mon Mushvar.
Arkashka and French conversations.
Arkashka, Brutilov and himself keep together.
At Sushar’s—only Brutilov and his history; altogether two chapters—
All up. Because he slapped Sushar. The beginning of _Albert_.
The boarding-school. An unjust punishment takes place in the house.
Exams. In the country. Self-renunciation. Katya. In the town and in the
boarding-school he surprises by his brutality. _Lambert._ Heroic acts—to
run away with Katya. Kulikov, with him. Murder. He does not forgive any
lie or falsehood and without reasoning instantly rushes into a fight.
For a long time he does not believe Katya, then he put her to the test
and at last intimidated her with the disgrace.
—Strength of will—this he set before himself as the chief thing.
—After Kulikov, he immediately goes to ask about the lame girl.
Just here they caught him.
—In the country the lady doctor falls in love with him.
He caught her with a lover.
The lady doctor. Mr. Alfonsky—characters.
Page 9.
At the house of the old people. With the old man—reading Karamzin,
Arabian tales—On Suvorov, etc. On interest on money. He offended the
younger old lady. Ask pardon, I do not want to. He locked them in.
Death. Anna and Vasilissa ran away. They sold Vasilissa. The last
communion. The first confession. Repulsion. Is there a God? Bible and
reading.
January 2.
He smashed the mirror deliberately.
He decides to keep silent and not to say a single word—
—St. mother: why do you make a show of yourself as a sacrifice? (An
ideal and strange creature.)
Alfonsky, the father. (His speeches to his son and aspirations.)
—A feeling of destruction.
[Sidenote: How many sciences must one know (his conversation with
Vanka).]
—Voluptuousness (he wants to remain in this state until he has money).
—And the enormous idea of domination (a direct feeling) is hidden so
deep in him that he does not feel able, by himself, to adjust himself to
these people.
He is surprised at himself, puts himself to the test, and loves to
plunge into the abyss—
—The running away with the little girl and the murderer Kulikov
immediately after his removal from Sushar’s to Chermak’s. (The fact
which produces an overwhelming effect on him and which has even somewhat
unsettled him so that he feels a natural need to contract inwardly and
to reflect so as to lean on something.) He leans after all on money.
[Sidenote: Of God meanwhile he does not think.]
[Sidenote: His silence ends after a year and a half by his confession
about Kulikov.]
After Kulikov, he is humble at home and in the boarding-school in order
to reflect and
find himself,
to concentrate.
—But he is unsociable and uncommunicative, nor could it be otherwise,
remembering and knowing such a horror, and looking at all the other
children, for instance, as at something perfectly alien to him, from
which he had fled away into another path, into a good path or a bad one—
The blood at times torments him. But the _chief thing_:
[Sidenote: (He is violently carried away by something, by _Hamlet_, for
instance.)
The Inhabitants of the Moon.]
It is not this alone that isolates him from everybody, but really his
dreams of power and his enormous height above everything.
From that height he is kept back by science, poetry, etc., _i.e._ in the
sense that these are higher things and that it is therefore necessary
that he should be higher and better in them too.
Only to prepare oneself, but he is strangely _certain_ that it will all
come by itself. Money will solve _all_ questions.
_The chief thing._ The meaning of the first part—Hesitation, insatiable
desire for the ideal, instinctive consciousness of superiority, power
and strength. Looking for a fixed point to rest upon. But at any rate an
unusual man.
Page 11.[78]
Footnote 78:
At the top of page 11 is the sentence: “Scenes (cows, tigers, horses,
etc.).”
or better:—Not a single dream of what to be and what’s his vocation
prevented him from amassing money.
—But doubt is always solved by the necessity of money and the chance of
amassing a fortune (he sells himself to the men-servants).
[Sidenote: Concerning a horse that went mad, or a fire.]
The father gave him a flogging—a rupture between them—I do not consider
you my father.
—He sells himself to the men-servants, and for this he is held in
general contempt, but
—Finds a pocket-book—the infatuation that possessed him finally on
account of his exam.—he nearly yields.
But after this the history of Katya’s disgrace, and then the hellish
debauchery with _Albert_, crime and blasphemy and denouncing himself as
accessory to the murder with Kulikov—_straight into the abyss_. The
Monastery.
—Although money concentrates him terribly on a certain _firm_ point and
solves _all_ questions, at times the _point_ wavers (poetry and many
other things) and he cannot find a way out. This state of _wavering_
forms the novel.
—Strengthening of his will, wounds and burns—feed his pride. He wishes
to be ready for anything.
—He made up his mind to make money in an honest way. His hesitation with
regard to the pocket-book.
—Since a great many things at times _move_ him sincerely, in a terrible
fit of spite and pride he plunges into debauchery.
(_This is the chief thing._)
—His estrangement from people was furthered by the fact that they all
looked upon him as an eccentric and laughed or feared him.
—A broken head (pantalons en haut), he is ill.
Then Chermak left him alone. (Mango.)
—By the process of thinking he arrived at the conclusion, for instance,
that it is not necessary to act _dishonestly_, because acting _honestly_
he would make money even _better_, since to the rich all privileges for
any evil are granted even without that.
—_Albert_ and he steal a star from the crown and escape successfully
(_he_ incited), but when _Albert_ began to blaspheme, he began beating
him. And then he declared himself before the court as an atheist.
—Idea: that he could gain a still greater power by flattery, like Von
Brin.
But no—he thinks—I want to reach the same end without flattery.
Page 12.
I myself am God, and he makes Katya worship him. (God knows what he does
with her. “I shall love you then when you can do everything.”)
—In the vagaries of his imagination he has endless dreams, up to the
overthrow of God and putting himself in the place of God. (Kulikov had a
strong influence.)
_Problem._ Memento.
To find the mean │Act 1. Early Childhood, the old man and
proportional. │ woman.
│" 2. The family, Sushar, the running
│ away and Kulikov—
│" 3. Chermak—exams.
│" 4. The Country and Katya, debauchery
│ with _Albert_.
20 Childhood.
20 Monastery.
40 Before deportation.
20 Woman and Satan.
40 Heroic Acts.
—Repulsion for people from the very first consciousness as a child
(through the passion of a proud and domineering nature). Out of
contempt:
—“I will carry it with a high hand, shan’t degrade myself with the
flattery and dexterity of a Brin.”
—And this too is from repulsion for people and from contempt for them
from the earliest years of childhood—
—“Oh, if I only took upon myself the rôle of a flatterer like Brin,—what
could I not achieve!”
—And begins at times to reason: “Shall I not become a flatterer? (he
consults the lame girl about it). This too is a power of the spirit—to
_endure oneself as a flatterer_. But no, I do not want it, it is
foul—besides I shall have an instrument—money, so that they,
willy-nilly, whether they choose or not, will all come to me and bow to
me.”
With Kulikov he displays his
spiritual power.
Kulikov does not kill him; but
the murderer, the runaway
soldier, they killed together.
13
2
27
12
3
5
—
35 years ago
born in 1835.
If any one overheard his dreams, he believes he would die; but he
confesses himself in everything to the lame girl.
—Whatever he reads, he tells in a peculiar way of his own to the lame
girl.
—“A slap in the face is the greatest offence.” With blood.—
—The first organized dream of the significance of money.
—The lame girl keeps everything _he_ is telling her secret—she does it
without thinking, without his command, having subtly realized it for
herself, so that in most cases he does not remind her of the necessity
of keeping things secret.
The lame girl does not agree to become an atheist.
He does not beat her for that.
Page 13.
—A single, but detailed psychological analysis of how writers, for
instance, “The Hero of Our Time” (Lermontov), affect a child.
—The indignation of a child at the guests as they arrive; at the
frankness and impertinence which they allow themselves. (Uvar) “How dare
they?”—the child thinks.
—The fall of the old couple.
—The theatre. Sit on my knees—
—They flog him for his repulsion.
—When he and the little girl come to live with the Alfonskys, he tells
her not to say a word about Gogol or about what concerns us, about
travels. She should not say a word.—
—He has read an immense amount (Walter Scott, etc.).
—At the Alfonskys—not brothers. He is made to feel it.
—He pretends to be rude, undeveloped, and a fool.
—With the men-servants.
—Mrs. Alfonsky suggests the idea that they should not mix with the
children.
—At Sushar’s. Alfonsky flogs him. It turns out to be for no fault.
—Mrs. Alfonsky has invented, the running away. With Kulikov—Caught.
—A guest: they call him. They examine him. Candid thoughts.
The guest is surprised.—The house is set on fire, or something—illness.
—_Alfonsky delivers speeches._
—At Chermak’s. Progress in studies, reading. Exam.
—After Exam. Alfonsky makes some one fall in love with—Alfonsky
questions.
For the lame girl. With Katya. A cornfield.—Family scenes—Alfonsky, his
friend, a box on the ear.
In Moscow, _Lambert_—
About classical education at Chermak’s (Herr Teider).
--------------
Jan. 27
He is astonished that all these (grown up) people completely believe in
their nonsense, and are much more stupid and insignificant than they
seem from the outside.
(One of the _scholarly_ guests, falls down intoxicated and goes with
gypsies in the Maryin Woods.)
A period of unbelief in God. Essential to write how the New Testament
had affected him. He agrees with the Gospel.
The chief thing meantime is his own _I_ and his interests. Philosophical
questions engage him in so far as they touch him.
Page 14.[79]
Footnote 79:
On this sheet Dostoevsky noted: _To begin to send out on Feb. 22, Jan.
27._ Under the name of _Lambert_ stands the name of the author. On the
top are several dates—Feb. 10, 15, 22.
_Lambert._
The lame girl: and I will tell how you said that you will be a king (or
something ludicrous).
—He wounds her for this—
_Lambert_ and _he_—a complete Of what does he speak with the
picture of depravity. But lame girl? Of all his dreams—
_Lambert_ is intoxicated with
it and finds nothing higher
than this. National levity.
But _he_ plunges into When I am grown up, I shall
debauchery with an marry not you. So that it is
irresistible desire, but also not necessary to say he dreamt
with fear. The hollowness, of this or that, but he went
dirt, and absurdity of to the lame girl and said to
immorality astonish him. He her this or that. Of what he
gives it all up and after will be and of money. _He beat
terrible crimes he denounces her_ _because the money did
himself with bitterness. not increase._
He talked to her about the
reading of Karamzin, tales,
etc. He was taught French and
German by the young lady, the
old, etc. They went for their
lessons to other children
(there they made fun of him).
Because the lame girl did not
flare into a passion for
Karamzin—he beat her.
He knew the whole Bible—he
told her.
—The history of the world—but
was weak in geography.
(Dreams of travels, Kul and He meets Umnov who proves that
the lame girl.) They read he knows more than he. Coming
novels.—He is highly developed home he tells the lame girl
and knows a great deal about that Umnov is a fool and knows
many things. He knows Gogol nothing and gave the lame girl
and Pushkin. He never pretends a slight beating; after that
tenderness for the lame girl he pays great attention to
until the time when he carried Umnov.
her in his arms.—
―――――――――――――――
Do it—cut me off, I don’t want you to study together with my children.
—When the old couple used to be very drunk and roll about, the lame girl
used to cry over them. At first he beat her, but then ceased.
—They killed a goose.—
—The Bible. Jacob bowed three times. He gets muddled with the Bible. The
lame girl laughs.
—The habit of beating her; he did not want to kiss her.
(The lame girl was not frozen
to death.
They found her. But she
disappeared from the house of
the Alfonskys.)
His incessant thinking. From the time he began to remember himself: What
shall I be and how shall I do it all?
Then doubt: is power alone worth everything and could one not be the
slave of all the strongest.
He began training his will power. He is stung by passions.
--------------
Page 16.
That in each line should be heard: I know what I am writing and I am not
writing in vain.
1. _The First Pages._—(1) The tone, (2) ideas to be artistically and
concisely fitted in.
THE FIRST N.B.—_The Tone_ (the story is a _life_—_i.e._ although from
the author, it must be concise, without being meagre in explanations,
but also representing by means of scenes. In this harmony is needed).
The concision of the story is at times that of Gil Blas. As though no
importance is attached (by the author) to dramatic and scenic passages.
But the dominating idea of the Life should be seen,—_i.e._ although the
whole dominating idea is not explained and is always left vague, the
reader should always realize that the idea is religious, that the Life
is of such importance that it is worth while to begin even from the
years of extreme childhood—also, in the selection of that in which the
_story_ consists, of all facts, there is continuously displayed
(_something_) and the man to be is constantly exhibited and set on a
pedestal.
_Chief Nota Bene_: He began saving money from a vague idea, but that
idea was all the time becoming solid, and showing itself to him in the
further development of the affair.
But the chief impulse was his coming to live at Alfonsky’s.
(1) Caught a mouse.
The lame girl.
The old couple.
│The nurse, bathing, the badge,
│ and retirement.
│Anna and Vasilissa ran away.
│The last communion (the
│ Italian, money from pocket)—
When I shall be grown up.│The first idea.
│The teacher (drunk).
│The first confession, what has
│ he got there in the little
│ boxes, and in the cup? Is
│ there a God?
│To convert the Devil.
The beating of the lame girl. The corpse by the hedge.
Kilyan.
Vasilissa was sold—
Interest on money and
conversations with the
guest.
Readings. On Suvorov. Arabian
tales.
Dreams.—Umnov and Gogol—(the
lame girl laughs).
—The old couple grow weaker
and weaker.
He locked them in. He got
drunk.
Stole with the boy. Thrashed
him.
Fighting with older boys.
—Complete depravity.
He beats the lame girl to make
her fight the boys.
She would like to come out,
but she was thrashed and she
cried—
Dreams of power and will.
Umnov (looks at naked girls,
tries to assault the lame
girl).
When the old couple died—he is eleven years old, and the lame girl is
ten,—Alfonsky—The old man and woman. Death. He makes a speech to the
lame girl upon how to behave.
—Before that: They teased the lady—fell on her, they were dragged home,
flogging—He was afraid to complain.
The first fight, he rushed to beat the gentleman with the badge.
I shall never play the coward.
—I’ll learn not to play the coward. (He was afraid, but thrashed the
boy.)
—He cut himself for a test.
—Instruction from the boy as to fornic...on (Therese-Philosophe gave him
a beating for it).
But the book she took away from him.
He began to save money.
To amass (he tells the lame girl).
The lame girl was taken into the Alfonsky family before.[80]
Footnote 80:
On the left-hand margin Dostoevsky wrote, beginning at the words “They
caught a mouse” and continuing to this point, “To squeeze all this
into four folios (maximum).”
He, directly he arrived, puts her through an examination. (Advice to
her: do not speak of Gogol and of nothing of ours.)
First part. The boy is wild, but thinks a tremendous lot of himself.
--------------
Page 18.
—The man-servant Osip—at first he was taken into the house to amuse them
by telling stories, by his jovial character. _Alfonsky_ had whipped
Osip’s brother to death, then he took Osip and pressed him for the army.
Immediately Osip escaped (he is also Kulikov). They killed Orlov. They
part. Kulikov (Osip) let him off.
—In a year and a half’s time the hero’s step-mother weeps at Alfonsky’s
betrayal of her. He keeps a mistress openly. Osip’s sister (for that
reason he whipped Osip’s brother to death). Alfonsky is killed by the
peasants (?).
_The Canvas of the Novel._—The hero’s step-mother, Alfonsky’s wife (a
society lady), when she pined, becoming an old maid, had a fiancé (an
officer or some one—teacher).
But she married Alfonsky. Unhappy and offended by Alfonsky (she slapped
his mistress in the face) she renewed relations with her first lover who
happened to turn up at that time. The boy saw them kissing. “You may
report it to your father,” and then begged him not to tell. The boy kept
silence; but Alfonsky knows that his son knows that he has horns and
that the step-mother has a lover.
He made a row in the village on account of the lame girl. He mocked
Katya. The mother was beside herself because of Katya. In town with
_Lambert_—and so on.
_Here_ (Al——y) who made a row in the village, the peasants _might_ have
killed him, which the boy might witness,—and—
(I may make up about the
step-mother and her lover, and
to what extent and degree the
boy is _involved_ in that
liaison.)
—Alfonsky has a benefactor—and indeed his chief enemy, because he is a
benefactor. All the benefactor’s favours humiliate his pride. The
benefactor does not like to live unless he can act the part of
benefactor, but for one inch of favour demands three yards of gratitude.
Both humiliate themselves, humiliate each other, and hate each other to
the verge of illness.
--------------
Page 17.
—The extraordinary pride of the boy has the result that he can neither
pity nor despise these men.
Nor can he be very indignant with them. He cannot sympathize either with
his father or mother. At the exam, he distinguished himself
unexpectedly,—he wanted to appear an imbecile. He despises himself
greatly because he could not restrain himself and distinguished himself.
—The dangerous and uncommon idea that he is to become an extraordinary
man possessed him from his first childhood. He thinks of it incessantly.
Cleverness, skill, learning—all these he wishes to acquire as a means to
being extraordinary in the future.
Again money seems to him at least not unnecessary, a power useful on all
occasions, and he decides on money:
Knowledge appears to him terribly difficult.
Now again it seems to him that even if he is not to be an extraordinary
man, but most ordinary, money will give him everything,—_i.e._ power and
the right to despise—
And at last he repents and is tormented in his conscience because he
wishes so basely to be extraordinary.
But he himself does not know what he will be.
The pure ideal of a free man flashes across him at times; all this when
at the boarding school.
―――――――――――――――――
—He made friends with Osip, about the Khlysti, they almost sleep
together.
—Umnov; he knows Gogol by heart.
--------------
Page 70.
Monastery—God give us and all animals a good night—(To make a study of
Humboldt’s description of animals, Buffon and the Russians.)
—Science as worship.
—About the bear.
—Of his first love and how he became a monk—(chastity).
—On the nature of Satan?
—Anikita goes to Chaadaev to exhort him. He calls Tikhon: the latter
comes, argues, and then asks to be forgiven.
—On little insects and the universal joy of _Living Life_, Tikhon’s
inspiriting stories.
—His friendship with the boy, who allows himself to torment Tikhon by
pranks. (The devil is in him.)
—Tikhon learns of Therese-Philosophe—He blesses him in his downfall and
revolt.
—Tikhon’s clear stories about life and happiness on earth. Of his
family, father, mother, brothers. Extraordinarily simple and therefore
moving stories from Tikhon of his transgressions against his people, of
pride, ambition, mockery (I wish I could unmake all this again now,
Tikhon says).
This alone is in itself moving, that he has become friends with the boy.
Tikhon’s story of his first love, of children, it is lower to live as a
Monk; one must have children, and it is _higher_ when one has a
vocation.
—Therese-Philosophe disturbed Tikhon. And I thought that he had already
been hardened. He vowed obedience to the boy. He obeys him.
(Loftily, vigorously, and movingly.)
Tikhon says to a certain lady that she is a traitor to Russia as well as
a malefactor towards her children; of how they are deprived of childish
visions even from their very childhood. The study of them (by Leo
Tolstoi and Turgenev), although they are exact, reveals an alien life.
Pushkin alone is a real Russian.
The boy has at times a low opinion of Tikhon: he is so funny, he does
not know things, he is so weak and helpless, he comes to me for advice,
but at last he perceives that Tikhon’s mind is as strong as a babe is
pure; that he cannot have an evil thought, cannot be tempted, and
therefore all his acts are clear and beautiful.
--------------
Page 71.
Tikhon. On humility (how mighty humility is).
All about humility and free will.
—Of forgiving the unforgivable sinner (that this torment is the most
tormenting).
Page 19.
The Main Idea.
May 3/15.
After the Monastery and Tikhon the Great Sinner comes out into the world
in order to be _the greatest of men_. He is sure that he will be the
greatest of men. And in that way he behaves: he is the proudest of the
proud and behaves with the greatest haughtiness towards people. The
vagueness as to the form of his future greatness coincides perfectly
with his youth. But he (and this is cardinal) has _through Tikhon_ got
hold of the idea (conviction) that in order to conquer the whole world
one must conquer oneself only. Conquer thyself and thou shalt conquer
the world. Does not choose a career, but neither has he the time: he
begins to watch himself profoundly. But along with this there are also
certain contradictions:
(1) Gold (amassing) (a family on his hands); amassing money was
suggested to him by a usurer, a terrible man, the antithesis of Tikhon.
(2) Education (Comte—Atheism—Friends). Education—He is tormented by
ideas and philosophy but he masters that which is essential.
Suddenly youth and debauchery. A martyr’s act and terrible crimes.
Self-renunciation. But out of mad pride he becomes an ascetic and
pilgrim. Travels in Russia. (Romance of love. Thirst for humiliation),
etc., etc., and so on.
(The canvas is rich.)
Fallings and risings.
Extraordinary man—but what has he done and achieved.
_Traits._—Out of pride and infinite haughtiness towards people he
becomes meek and charitable to all because he is already higher than
all.
He wanted to shoot himself (a child was exposed at his door).
He ends with establishing a Foundling Hospital and becomes a Haase.[81]
Everything is becoming clear.
He dies confessing a crime.
Footnote 81:
F. M. Dostoevsky had evidently in mind the famous Russian doctor and
philanthropist Haase.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
STAVROGIN’S MEETING WITH TIKHON
BY
V. FRICHE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
STAVROGIN’S MEETING WITH TIKHON
FROM DOSTOEVSKY’S NOTE-BOOKS
BISHOP TIKHON, to whom Stavrogin makes his “Confession,” was conceived
by Dostoevsky as one of the principal characters in the
great—unnamed—novel in five books, the plan of which he communicated in
1870 to A. N. Maikov. The action of the second book, on which Dostoevsky
rested all his hopes, was to take place in a monastery to which a boy,
who had committed a criminal offence, had been sent by his parents. He
was “fully developed and depraved” (a type, as Dostoevsky says, well
known to him), “a little wolf and a nihilist,” who comes in the end to
feel the beneficent influence of Bishop Tikhon. “I want to make Tikhon
Sadonsky in the second book the central figure,” Dostoevsky wrote, “of
course under a different name, but he is also a bishop and will live in
a monastery in retirement.... It is no longer a Konstanjhoglo, nor the
German (I forget his name) in _Oblomov_, nor the Lopukhovs and
Rakhmetovs. True, I shall not create anything, but shall only reveal the
actual Tikhon whom I have long since taken to my heart with rapture.”
When Dostoevsky later conceived the idea of _The Life of a Great
Sinner_, the hero of _The Life_, “sometimes a believer, sometimes an
atheist,” had indeed to be spiritually reborn in a monastery under the
influence of the “holy and grand” figure of Tikhon, and to issue into
life as “the greatest of men.”
When Dostoevsky finally decided on his conception of _The Possessed_,
his intention was to give a conspicuous place to Tikhon, to whom
Stavrogin (the prince) was to give his Confession, and this Confession
adds considerably to Peter Stepanovich Verkhovensky’s story about the
Petersburg period of Nikolai Vsevolodovich’s life (_The Possessed_, Part
I. chap. v.).
In the notes published by L. P. Grossman in his book on Dostoevsky
(notes taken from the Dostoevsky Note-books in the Historical Museum),
there are hints as to Stavrogin’s (prince) meeting with Tikhon, and also
as to the subject of their conversation and the crime of which Stavrogin
repents in his Confession.
Thus Dostoevsky intended the following words to appear in Stavrogin’s
“document”: “And I did all this as an aristocrat, an idler, a man
uprooted from the ground. I admit, though, that the chief factor was my
own wicked will, and had nothing to do with my environment; of course
nobody commits such crimes. But all, who are uprooted from the ground,
do the same kind of things, although more feeble and watery. Many people
do not even notice their nasty acts and think themselves honest.”
Tikhon, who in the note appears under the name of “Bishop,” advises that
this passage shall be struck out, and Stavrogin replies in a grumbling
tone: “I am not a man of letters.”
This passage is not in Stavrogin’s Confession. The idea that many people
sin in the same way, yet go on living (“in peace and quiet with their
conscience”), is expressed there not by Stavrogin, but by Tikhon. And it
is Tikhon, not Stavrogin, who says that the latter’s moral fall is a
result of his being uprooted from the ground (words inserted by
Dostoevsky in the text of the proofs while correcting them).
In these published notes there is also some indication of the motive
which decided Stavrogin to make his “document” public:
“Tikhon says: On earth people must be happy.
“(Prince): I am an idler and I am bored. I know that on earth one can be
happy (and must be happy) and that there is something which gives
happiness, but I do not know what it is. No, I am not one of the
disappointed. I think I am one of the corrupt and idle.
“The Prince says to him: I want to test my strength and I will tell you
about the little girl.”
As can be seen from Stavrogin’s Confession, he did commit his crime from
“boredom.” Not satisfied with Stavrogin’s admission of this in the text,
Dostoevsky tried to heighten the motive by adding the following words in
the margin: “I say frankly, I was sometimes by no means far from
thinking that I should be exiled to Siberia. The main thing is—I am
bored. I was so bored that I could have hanged myself, I think. I
remember, at that time I was much taken up with theology. That, it is
true, diverted me a bit, but later I felt still more bored.”
Finally, in one of the notes published by Grossman the reason is
indicated why Stavrogin, when it comes to the point, gives up the idea
of publishing his “document”: “the Bishop says that the confession of
faith is all right, but that faith without deeds is dead, and he demands
a still higher deed, a still more difficult act, a _moral labour_, as if
he said: ‘Well, Prince, are you capable of this?’ And the Prince admits
that he is a Prince, he confesses that he has lied and takes back his
words: in the end—Uri.”[82]
Footnote 82:
_I.e._ the idea of Stavrogin’s going away with Dasha to Switzerland
and living there as a Swiss citizen.
To these notes of Dostoevsky, which are already known, we are now able
to add a series of new notes taken from Dostoevsky’s Note-book which is
in the Central Archives (No. 15 in A. G. Dostoevsky’s list).
On page 30 we find:
“Lisa[83] pays attention to Nechaev.[84]
He kills Shatov.
Lisa is convinced that _he_ (Stavrogin) had killed him.
She hurries off to him.
(Meanwhile the Prince[85] and Tikhon; before that the Prince and
Shatov. Everything as before.)
Lisa runs away with Nechaev. St. Tr.[86] And the book-pedlar. He
dies. The Prince hanged himself. Everything as before.”
Footnote 83:
Lisa, _i.e._ Elisabeth Nikolaevna Drosdov.
Footnote 84:
Nechaev became Peter Verkhovensky.
Footnote 85:
Stavrogin.
Footnote 86:
Stepan Trofimovich, Peter Verkhovensky’s father.
This, clearly, is quite a different version of the end of the novel so
far as it relates to Lisa. Another indication as to the meeting of
Tikhon and Stavrogin is found on page 37:
“Sum total. Stavrogin as a character.
All noble impulses to a monstrous degree.
(Tikhon) and all passions (_with unfailing boredom_).
He throws himself on the girl[87] and on the beauty.[88]
He did not really love the beauty but despised her, but flared up
with passion (illusory and momentary, but infinite) and, as soon
as he has committed the crime, he is disappointed. He escaped
punishment, but hanged himself.”
Footnote 87:
Dasha or Darya Pavlovna.
Footnote 88:
Elisabeth Nikolaevna.
There is also a hint with regard to one detail in the supposed
conversation between Tikhon and Stavrogin. On page 38 we find: “He
confesses to Tikhon that he gets fun out of making game of the beauty.”
But actually Stavrogin does not make game of Elisabeth Nikolaevna, and
she is scarcely mentioned in the Confession and in the conversation with
Tikhon.
There is also a hint with regard to the crime committed by Stavrogin on
page 37: “No one knows the secret of the marriage[89] except Dasha and
the beauty. Only Tikhon knows about the little girl.”
Footnote 89:
Stavrogin’s marriage to the lame girl.
Finally, on page 36 there is a hint with regard to the passage in the
novel to which Stavrogin’s meeting must be referred: “Stavrogin advises
Dasha to give up S. T. and run away with him to Switzerland, to Uri. He
had already done this before. Here there is a misunderstanding with S.
T., who, to spite her, tells her he is a cuckold ... and Dasha goes to
her brother. At the same time (the beauty showed jealousy) she warns him
that Stavrogin is married to the lame girl. The beauty is in despair,
since all her hopes are lost (for she suspects that the prince is in
love with her, and she herself is madly in love with him); she laughs at
Dasha; she runs and gives herself to the prince. Immediately after this
the murder of the lame girl.
(He went to Tikhon).”[90]
Footnote 90:
Below is added: “The prince buries the lame girl, and Kuleshov (Fedka
the murderer) confesses that it was he who did it.... And the beauty
quickly went out of her mind.”
Such are the hints and notes out of which eventually grew the chapters
of “At Tikhon’s,” and we do not know the reason why they were not
included by Dostoevsky in _The Possessed_. Some details of Stavrogin’s
Confession were later used by Dostoevsky for the character of Versilov
in _The Raw Youth_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
TO THE UNPUBLISHED CHAPTER
OF
_THE POSSESSED_
BY
V. KOMAROVICH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNPUBLISHED CHAPTER
OF
_THE POSSESSED_
THE chapter of _The Possessed_, Stavrogin’s confession of his terrible
crime, excluded from the completed novel, first became known to
Merezhkovsky. Mrs. F. M. Dostoevsky (Anna Gregorievna Dostoevsky,
Dostoevsky’s widow) originally intended to invite Merezhkovsky to edit
the 1906 Jubilee Edition of Dostoevsky’s Works and showed him the
precious fragment in manuscript. In his book, _Tolstoi and Dostoevsky_,
M. preserved his first impression of that reading by saying that it
surpasses the bounds of the possible in its concentrated expression of
horror. A. G. Dostoevsky hesitated to publish the chapter in full, and
gave parts of it only in her edition of 1906 as a supplement to _The
Possessed_. Her hesitation is understandable: Stavrogin’s terrible
confession was not a complete secret even to Dostoevsky’s
contemporaries. Excluded from the novel at Katkov’s request, the
Confession became known by hearsay, and round these rumours grew up the
dark legend of Dostoevsky as a Marquis de Sade. It was the doing of his
enemies and of faithless friends.[91] But the feeling which kept the
author’s widow from publishing the fragment of _The Possessed_ must not
restrain the student of Dostoevsky. Indeed, the dark legend that
Dostoevsky was a sensualist is based (by N. Strakhov chiefly) either on
an obscure calumny, or on coarse and callous surmises as to the mystery
of that troubled and too exacting conscience which was the mark of
Dostoevsky’s character. And we believe that the surest way of freeing
Dostoevsky’s memory from those false accusations is by means of open
enquiry and the fullest understanding of Dostoevsky as an artist.
Footnote 91:
See Turgenev’s letter of Sept. 24, 1882, to Schedrin; also N. N.
Strakhov’s letter of Nov. 28, 1883, to Leo Tolstoi.
“The scene from Stavrogin (the rape, etc.),” of which Strakhov speaks in
the letter to Tolstoi, is preserved in the Dostoevsky Archives which
belong to the Pushkin Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[92]
It is a note-book of seventy-seven pages carefully executed in the
handwriting of A. G. Dostoevsky, a copy, although unfinished, of a
hitherto unknown manuscript of Dostoevsky. It is not difficult to
determine the place which had been intended for that fragment in _The
Possessed_. The manuscript is headed “Chapter IX. At Tikhon’s.” From the
contents it can be seen that the chapter so numbered must be referred to
Part Second of the novel. In our fragment the following incidents are
supposed to have already taken place: Shatov’s box on Stavrogin’s ear
(the last chapter of Part I.) and Stavrogin’s conversation with Shatov
in the night (the first chapter of Part II.). On the other hand
Stavrogin’s public declaration of his marriage with Maria Timofeevna
(Chapter X. Part II.) is only expected and is still being considered by
Stavrogin and Tikhon. Thus, our Chapter IX. ought to follow immediately
after Chapter VIII. of Part II. (“Ivan the Tsarevich”), where the
maddened Peter Verkhovensky confesses in a passionate whisper his
incredible love of Stavrogin, and where Stavrogin—in the highest state
of tension (as was ever the case with Dostoevsky)—reveals his true self.
(Stavrogin as Ivan Tsarevich, the unknown “he” of all Russia, is hiding
himself, the “beautiful” and “sun,” but through Verkhovensky’s wiles is
already enslaved by the demon of nihilism.) Yet Stavrogin has two ways
and two inclinations which constitute the basis and centre of the novel
so far as it affects the religious destinies of Russia. Apart from the
temptations of nihilism, he, like the future Aliosha Karamazov, knows
also the way to the monastery and to religious obedience. Thus after the
embraces of the devil—Verkhovensky (in Chapter VIII.)—there is the
confession to Tikhon (in our Chapter IX.).
Footnote 92:
The author of this article, published in _Builoe_, No. 18, 1922, seems
at the time of writing to have been ignorant of the version of
Stavrogin’s Confession published by the Central Archives.—TRANSLATORS.
The question which has to be answered first by the student of this
fragment is the question of its relation to the text of the finished
novel, _The Possessed_. Is this Chapter IX. a part of the artistic
whole, which, against the artist’s wish, has accidentally been omitted,
and which therefore must now be restored to its proper place in that
whole? Or is it one of those numerous fragments of Dostoevsky’s, which,
corresponding to some early but subsequently altered scheme of the
novel, have been detached from the finished novel, and have not been
included in the final text by the artist, but are now preserved only in
Dostoevsky’s rough manuscripts as curious examples of the complex origin
of his books? As to the first of these suppositions, the words of N.
Strakhov, which there is no reason to distrust, speak quite clearly.
“The scene from Stavrogin (the rape, etc.) Katkov did not want to
publish.” Thus the omission of the chapter “At Tikhon’s” from the novel
did not arise from the artist’s decision, but from an external cause,
the request of the editor of the _Russkìi Vèstnik_ where _The Possessed_
was appearing.
Strakhov’s evidence is confirmed by the connection which exists between
the omitted Chapter IX. and Dostoevsky’s creative activity generally,
and also with _The Possessed_ as an artistic whole.
The motif of a cruelly insulted little girl, developed in Stavrogin’s
Confession, is evidently one of Dostoevsky’s long-standing and enduring
ideas. In the year 1866, at the time of his friendship with the family
of the Korvin-Krukovskys, Dostoevsky told this idea of his as “a scene
from a novel planned by him in his youth.” The hero of the novel one
morning goes over all his recollections in memory, and “suddenly in the
very heat ... of pleasant dreams and bygone experiences begins to feel
an awkwardness—something like an inner pain, an alarm.... It appears to
him that he must recollect something, and he makes efforts, strains his
memory.... And suddenly, he actually called to mind, as vividly and
realistically as if it had happened yesterday ... whereas for all these
twenty years it had not worried him at all. He remembered how once,
after a night of debauchery and under provocation from his friends, he
had raped a little girl of ten.”[93]
Footnote 93:
_Reminiscences of Childhood_, by Sophie Kovalevsky.
The connection between this idea and Stavrogin’s Confession is
indisputable. The recollection of a sin after a long forgetfulness leads
straight to the closing scene of Stavrogin’s Confession and to the last
“vision.”
But there are several connecting links between that idea (which in 1866
he thought of as of long standing and remote) and Chapter IX. of _The
Possessed_. Putting aside _Crime and Punishment_, where Svidrigailov’s
vision before his death is also an echo of that idea, _The Life of a
Great Sinner_, which was conceived by him in the years 1869 and 1870,
was without doubt to have developed the theme of the injured girl.
The hero of _The Life_ was meant to show by the whole course of his
existence the religious consistency of life in general, and the
inevitability of the acceptance of God. _The Life_ in its first parts
was to tell the story of the constant and increasing immersion of man in
sin. To the artist this utter absorption of the hero in sin was a
necessity. Here Dostoevsky by artistic experiment tested one of his
dearest and most secret ideas—his belief that each personality and man’s
life on earth generally will not desert, nor can desert, the kingdom of
the Grace of the Spirit so long as it preserves itself entire; that sin
has nothing ontological in itself; that man’s soul is by its very nature
a “Christian.” If the notes of _The Life_ are read attentively, one sees
how Dostoevsky tries to bring the sin and downfall of his hero to the
utmost limits, to the last boundary—and this is in order that
Dostoevsky’s optimistic belief in the essential illumination of life
through Grace should be more strikingly justified, and should prevail in
the end of _The Life_ where “everything is becoming clear,” and the
(“great”) sinner turns to God and dies confessing his crime.
Sin, the deepest sin, is not innate in, but accidental to, man—this
belief of Dostoevsky’s dominated _The Life_, and led the artist to
contrive situations in which the extremes of sin could be shown. To
Dostoevsky the violation of the little girl was an extreme of this sort.
This theme was provided by the writer with a view to the religious
trials of the hero of _The Life_, for among the notes of the plan there
is the following: “He makes an attempt on the lame girl....”
It should be plain that Dostoevsky’s interest in this conception had
risen not from personal recollections, and was not maintained by them,
but by the artist’s desire to find some adequate way of expressing in
the plot his religious conception of the world.
But it is not only the conception of Chapter IX. that is anticipated by
the plan of _The Life_. There is a deeper and closer connection between
them.
The note, “he makes an attempt on the lame girl,” occurring in the plan,
is closely connected as a particular development of the general idea
with the other note, “straight into the abyss.” But this last is
intimately connected with another and quite different note, brief but of
great significance in the eyes of Dostoevsky, “The Monastery.” The Great
Sinner, the violator of the little girl, doing penance to Tikhon in the
monastery, was meant to form the second part of _The Life_, and in the
plan is sketched out by independent notes.
It is at the same time the artistic skeleton of our Chapter IX. of _The
Possessed_. The relations between Tikhon and the Great Sinner merely
anticipate the dialogue between Stavrogin and Tikhon. “He vowed
obedience to the boy” (_i.e._ Tikhon to the Great Sinner); “Friendship
with the boy who allowed himself to torture Tikhon by pranks (The devil
is in him).” These notes are closely related to those passages of the
dialogue of Chapter IX. where Tikhon humbly lowers himself before
Stavrogin, asks to be forgiven, confesses his love for Stavrogin, while
Stavrogin is haughty and mocking.... “The boy has at times a low opinion
of Tikhon, he is so funny, he does not know things, he is weak and
helpless, comes to me for advice; but at last he realizes that Tikhon is
strong in mind, as a babe is pure, and that he cannot have an evil
thought.”
This note appears already as a simple sketch of the dialogue between
Stavrogin and Tikhon, in which the relations of the sinner and the
ascetic are depicted in this double way by vacillations between
suspicious mockery and adoration.
The close correspondence between Stavrogin’s Confession and the plan of
_The Life_ can be explained by the history of the logical construction
of _The Possessed_. That novel grew from the complicated re-fashioning
of the originally simple idea which, as it grew larger and broader, drew
into itself fragments of _The Life_, which had been conceived at the
same time, but had not yet been executed. Stavrogin’s appearance in _The
Possessed_ in the part of the principal hero marks a comparatively late
stage in the conception of that novel, which coincides with Dostoevsky’s
determination not to write _The Life_. Stavrogin’s character introduced
into the novel the broad religious and artistic problems of _The Life of
a Great Sinner_. The Great Sinner’s meeting with Tikhon and his
confession was an organic part of _The Life_, foreseen by Dostoevsky
even in the first moments of inspiration.[94]
Footnote 94:
See Dostoevsky’s _Biography_, _Letters_, etc., pp. 202, 233, etc., in
the original.
In so far as Stavrogin is the Great Sinner, his meeting with Tikhon and
confession (_i.e._ our Chapter IX.) are a necessary part of _The
Possessed_. This conclusion is justified by Dostoevsky’s direct
evidence. There is no doubt that Dostoevsky had Chapter IX. (At
Tikhon’s) in view when he says to Katkov, in his letter of October 8,
1870, that in _The Possessed_, which was at that time being published in
the _Russkìi Vèstnik_, he “wants for the first time ... to deal with a
certain group of people which has as yet been little dealt with in
literature. I take Tikhon Sadonsky to be the ideal of such a character.
He too is a priest living in a monastery in retirement. With him I
confront the hero of my novel and bring them together for a time.”[95]
That is, up to the end of writing the novel, Dostoevsky himself
considered that Chapter IX. was a necessary, inseparable, and essential
part of it. The relationship between _The Life of a Great Sinner_ and
_The Possessed_ explains that necessity.
Footnote 95:
See “Dostoevsky as contributor to _Russkìi Vèstnik_” in _Builoe_, No.
14, 1919; F. M. D.’s unpublished letters from 1866 to 1873.
Turning to the completed text of _The Possessed_, we find signs of the
seemingly accidental disappearance of Chapter IX. Without that chapter
certain details of the novel appear to be incomplete. Stavrogin, when he
awoke “looking stubbornly and curiously at an object in the corner of
the room which had struck him, although there was nothing new or
particular there....”[96] Shatov, seeing Stavrogin out, says to him:
“Listen, go and see Tikhon ... Tikhon, the late Bishop, who through
ill-health lives in retirement in this city, in our Yefimev-Bogorodskii
Monastery.”[97] The first two details (we could indicate others) are,
without Chapter IX., superfluous and have no artistic foundation. And
only Stavrogin’s confession about the devil who persecutes him, only his
meeting and conversation with Tikhon, only Chapter IX., give to these
details the sense of that anticipation of motive which Dostoevsky was so
fond of using.
Footnote 96:
See _The Possessed_ (original), Edition 1888, vol. vii. pp. 212-213.
Footnote 97:
See _ibid._ p. 238.
Finally, by excluding Chapter IX. from the novel, we violate the
characteristic grace of Dostoevsky’s construction. We violate
Dostoevsky’s aesthetic principle, according to which the action in its
early stages advances by motives concealed from the reader, and only
when it approaches the catastrophe is the hidden cause immediately made
clear by the hero’s lengthy confession. Such a “belated exposition” is
Raskolnikov’s theory, communicated only after the murder. “The Revolt”
and “The Legend of the Great Inquisitor”—Ivan Karamazov’s Confession—are
communicated to the reader only after he already knows that Ivan has
consented in his own mind to patricide (“Voluptuaries”). There is also
the case of Versilov’s confession to his son—after the absurd letter to
Madame Ahmakov and immediately before the catastrophe. Stavrogin’s
confession before the catastrophe, together with events in the last
chapter of the second part and the chapters of the third part,
correspond perfectly to this obviously characteristic principle in the
construction of Dostoevsky’s novels.
Such are the reasons for thinking that Chapter IX. was accidentally
excluded and that it is necessary to restore it to its proper place in
the novel.
There are, however, reasons leading to an opposite solution of the
question, and they are the more convincing.
If we compare the character of Stavrogin, as he appears in the novel,
with the new material which our fragment (Chapter IX.) adds to that
character, important and deep-seated contradictions are at once
apparent. A pale mask concealing behind itself indifference to good and
evil—such is Stavrogin as we know him in the novel. Chapter IX.
ostensibly brings to life that dead inert force by means of his
religious experiences. Here Stavrogin’s Confession, however absurdly
expressed, is a penance, _i.e._ the act of a live religious will. “You
have discovered a great way, an unheard-of way,” Tikhon says to
Stavrogin, “to punish yourself in the eyes of the whole world by the
disgrace which you have deserved; you submitted to the judgment of the
whole church, without believing in the church.” There is also a true
humility in Stavrogin: “You ... speak to me exactly as to an equal,” he
says to Tikhon; and Tikhon replies: “Your saying that I speak to you as
to an equal, although involuntary, is a splendid saying.” And finally,
the last verdict of the confessor: “For your unbelief God will forgive
you, for you truly respect the Holy Spirit without knowing him.” If this
Confession were included in the novel, then Stavrogin’s end, his
callous—in a religious sense—suicide, would be perfectly impossible and
artistically unprepared for. A man who “truly respects the Holy Spirit”
could not have written the letters before his death to Darya Pavlovna;
Dostoevsky would have prepared a completely different end from the end
of Stavrogin for the elect of the Spirit: “the citizen of the canton of
Uri hanged here behind the door, etc.”
This inconsistency in the principal character of the novel, which arises
if Chapter IX. is included, clearly forbids any such inclusion. Besides,
there are direct proofs that at the time he finished work on _The
Possessed_, and also later, Dostoevsky considered that Chapter IX. was
excluded from the novel. The words of the Apocalypse, “And to the Angel
of the Laodicean Church,” would hardly have been repeated by Dostoevsky
at the end of the novel in the last talk of Stepan Trofimovich with the
“book-pedlar,” if he had not considered that Chapter IX. was finally
excluded from the text.
Although _The Possessed_ was published more than once after 1871,
Dostoevsky, though no longer bound by Katkov’s censorship, did not
include Chapter IX. And finally, the following fact gives us the
clearest evidence as to how Dostoevsky regarded the fragment in relation
to the text of _The Possessed_: a considerable part of Stavrogin’s
Confession was inserted by Dostoevsky almost without alteration in the
confession of Versilov (_The Raw Youth_), in 1874.[98] The artist might
have used for the new novel the material of the rough draft of the
preceding novel, but could not possibly have used a fragment of the
authentic text.
Footnote 98:
Compare the passage in Stavrogin’s Confession from “A year ago, in the
spring, going through Germany, I absentmindedly left the station
behind me,” to the words “A whole shaft of bright slanting rays from
the setting sun rushed out and poured their light over me,” with the
corresponding passage of Chapter VII., Part III., of _The Raw Youth_,
third edition, 1888, pp. 461-462.
Thus, both the completeness of Stavrogin’s character and the definitely
expressed wish of the author compel us to conclude that Chapter IX. was
not accidentally omitted, but did not belong to the novel. It is a
variant of the manuscript, but nothing more. How then are we to
reconcile this conclusion with the one which tells in favour of the
opposite solution? Surely Dostoevsky’s letter of October 8, 1870, to
Katkov clearly refers to our fragment as a necessary part of the novel.
The date, although it coincides with the beginning of the publication of
the novel, does not fix the final moment of the conception of _The
Possessed_. The autumn of 1870 is the time when the idea of _The
Possessed_ had become closely related in Dostoevsky’s mind with the idea
of _The Life of a Great Sinner_. Stavrogin is almost identified with the
hero of _The Life_. And since the crisis of that Life, as it was
planned, was the repentance of the sinner and his conversion to God with
Tikhon’s help, Dostoevsky had then planned the same conversion for
Stavrogin. At that moment (the final moment in the creation of the
novel, for the first part was already being published) Dostoevsky might,
indeed, have thought that Chapter IX.—the story of the meeting of the
sinner with Tikhon and the beginning of his repentance—was necessary.
The second part of the novel was evidently written by Dostoevsky with
the determination to show the “great sinner” (Stavrogin) converted. Our