Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Stavrogin’s Confession And The Plan Of The Life Of A Great Sinner – Contents
< < < Stavrogin’s Confession. By F. M. Dostoevsky
Stavrogin’s Meeting with Tikhon. By V. Friche > > >
The Plan of The Life of a Great Sinner. By F. M. Dostoevsky
87THE 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]
—Schooling and first ideals.
—Gets to know everything secretly.
88—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. 89By 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.
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.
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 90not to make quick judgments and for this he must strengthen his will.
First signs of expansiveness.
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.
91—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.
How many sciences must one know (his conversation with Vanka). 92—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.
Of God meanwhile he does not think.
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 93and 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:
(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.
94Page 11.[78]
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).
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.
95—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.
96But 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 proportional. | Act 1. Early Childhood, the old man and 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. |
97—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. |
9813
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.
99Page 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.
100—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 101write 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]
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 picture of depravity. But Lambert is intoxicated with it and finds nothing higher than this. National levity. | Of what does he speak with the lame girl? Of all his dreams— |
| But he plunges into debauchery with an irresistible desire, but also with fear. The hollowness, dirt, and absurdity of immorality astonish him. He gives it all up and after terrible crimes he denounces himself with bitterness. | When I am grown up, I shall marry not you. So that it is not necessary to say he dreamt of this or that, but he went to the lame girl and said to her this or that. Of what he will be and of money. He beat her because the money did not increase. |
| 102 | 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 the lame girl.) They read novels.—He is highly developed and knows a great deal about many things. He knows Gogol and Pushkin. He never pretends tenderness for the lame girl until the time when he carried her in his arms.— | He meets Umnov who proves that he knows more than he. Coming home he tells the lame girl that Umnov is a fool and knows nothing and gave the lame girl a slight beating; after that he pays great attention to Umnov. |
―――――――――――――――
103Do 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.
104Page 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. 105
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— | |
| 106 | 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 107on 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]
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 108whipped 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, 109the 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 110he 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 111night—(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 112have 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.
113The 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. 114Travels 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.
< < < Stavrogin’s Confession. By F. M. Dostoevsky
Stavrogin’s Meeting with Tikhon. By V. Friche > > >
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Stavrogin’s Confession And The Plan Of The Life Of A Great Sinner – Contents
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