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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE UNFULFILLED IDEA INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO _THE LIFE OF A GREAT SINNER_ BY N. BRODSKY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE UNFULFILLED IDEA