------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE UNPUBLISHED CHAPTER OF _THE POSSESSED_ THE chapter of _The Possessed_, Stavrogin’s confession of his terrible crime, excluded from the completed novel, first became known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.