Stavrogin's Confession and The Plan of The Life of a Great Sinner

Stavrogin's Confession and The Plan of The Life of a Great Sinner - With Introductory and Explanatory Notes

The chapter of The Possessed, Stavrogins confession of his terrible crime, excluded from the completed novel, first became known to Merezhkovsky. Mrs. F. M. Dostoevsky (Anna Gregorievna Dostoevsky, Dostoevskys widow) originally intended to invite Merezhkovsky to edit the 1906 Jubilee Edition of Dostoevskys 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: Stavrogins terrible confession was not a complete secret even to Dostoevskys contemporaries. Excluded 128from the novel at Katkovs 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 authors 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 Dostoevskys character. And we believe that the surest way of freeing Dostoevskys memory from those false accusations is by means of open enquiry and the fullest understanding of Dostoevsky as an artist. 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 129of 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 Tikhons. 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: Shatovs box on Stavrogins ear (the last chapter of Part I.) and Stavrogins conversation with Shatov in the night (the first chapter of Part II.). On the other hand Stavrogins 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 Stavroginin 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 Verkhovenskys wiles is 130already 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 devilVerkhovensky (in Chapter VIII.)there is the confession to Tikhon (in our Chapter IX.). 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 artists 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 Dostoevskys, 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 Dostoevskys 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 131Stavrogin (the rape, etc.) Katkov did not want to publish. Thus the omission of the chapter At Tikhons from the novel did not arise from the artists decision, but from an external cause, the request of the editor of the Russki Vstnik where The Possessed was appearing. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57050
Author: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Release Date: Apr 25, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Koteliansky, S. S. (Samuel Solomonovitch), 1880-1955, Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941