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.
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 Chapter IX. corresponds to the “serene” Stavrogin who does not appear in the novel, and of whom a few hints are preserved in the rough draft which no doubt issue from the idea of The Life.
The hesitation and vacillation as to the plan of the novel spread over so long a time that, when he was finishing the second part of the novel (Chapter IX.), Dostoevsky was even nearer to the plan of The Life of a Great Sinner than to the form which The Possessed finally took. He still meant to represent his great sinner, Stavrogin, in the light of Grace. But, as he worked on the last chapter of the novel and approached the catastrophe in the third part, Dostoevsky evidently realized that it was impossible to carry out the religious and artistic objects which he had in view. Dostoevsky did not find himself possessed of the artistic powers needed to convert the Great Sinner, and everything that was leading up to the expected conversion (Chapter IX.) was abandoned. Only an echo of his original intention is left—not in the novel even, but on the first page, in the quotation from the Gospels of the promise to the sinner that he shall find salvation at the feet of Christ. The crimes of the hero appeared to the writer at the end of his work suddenly, and against his expectation, like a stronghold, enduring and self-sufficient.
And in this sketch of the evolution of the significant idea of The Possessed is shown, I think, the usual course of Dostoevsky’s artistic problems and their solution. The Idiot, The Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov had all, like The Possessed, been meant originally to reveal that desire for “universal harmony” cherished by Dostoevsky, the universal Hosannah which Dostoevsky, the thinker, had visualized as the hidden essence of the universe, clouded, but only accidentally, by the phantom of sin. But each time, in the finished work of Dostoevsky, the artist, there triumphed a sterner, but for all that a more religious, conception of the world as a world subject to sin, beyond the Grace of the Spirit, which is granted it as a gift, but not hidden in the substance of nature.
Stavrogin’s Confession, as it echoed Dostoevsky’s optimistic view, had inevitably to disappear in his masterpiece.