It should be added that there are two different versions of the unpublished chapters of The Possessed in existence, and they have both been published for the first time this year. The second version, which is in the Pushkin Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was published in Builoe. We have not included it, since it appears to be an earlier version than that published by the Russian Government. It should be noted that M. Komarovich’s note refers to this version in the Academy of Sciences.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| Translators’ Note | [5] |
| New MSS. of F. M. Dostoevsky: Note by the Russian Government | [9] |
| Stavrogin’s Confession. By F. M. Dostoevsky | [17] |
| The Plan of The Life of a Great Sinner. By F. M. Dostoevsky | [85] |
| Stavrogin’s Meeting with Tikhon. By V. Friche | [115] |
| Introduction to the Unpublished Chapter of The Possessed. By V. Komarovich | [125] |
| The Unfulfilled Idea: Note on The Life of a Great Sinner. By N. Brodsky | [145] |
| Footnotes | [171] |
NEW MSS. OF F. M. DOSTOEVSKY
Note by the Russian Government
On November 12, 1921, in the presence of A. V. Lunacharsky, Commissar of Education, and M. N. Pokrovsky, Assistant Commissar of Education, in the Central Archive Department of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic there was opened a white tin case numbered 5038 from the State Archives containing F. M. Dostoevsky’s papers.
In the case were twenty-three articles: note-books, bags, and bundles of letters and other documents. On one of these note-books, which is bound (187 numbered pages), is written: “en cas de ma mort ou une maladie grave”; these are business papers and instructions of Anna Grigorevna Dostoevsky, the writer’s wife. On pages 53-55 she has written: “List of note-books in which Fedor Mikhailovich wrote the plans of his novels and also some biographical notes, copies of letters, etc.” Madame A. G. Dostoevsky gives a list of fifteen such note-books with a short description of their contents and disposal: Nos. 1 and 2, Crime and Punishment; No. 3, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot; Nos. 4-5, Journal, 1876; No. 6, Journal, 1881; Nos. 7 and 8, The Raw Youth; No. 9, Brothers Karamazov; No. 10, The Idiot; No. 11, The Eternal Husband; Nos. 12-15, The Possessed. Of these fifteen note-books enumerated by A. G. Dostoevsky the following were deposited on her instructions in the Historical Museum: No. 7, No. 12, and No. 13. Note-book No. 8 was in 1901 “transferred to Lubov Fedorovna Dostoevsky” (Dostoevsky’s daughter), and No. 9 was deposited elsewhere. The other note-books of Dostoevsky given in A. G. Dostoevsky’s list, with the exception of No. 11, i.e. Nos. 1-6, 10, 14, and 15, were found in the white case when it was opened on November 12 at the Central Archive Department.
On the first page of these note-books A. G. Dostoevsky has, in her own handwriting, given a brief list of their contents, as follows: