Chapter IX

. where Tikhon humbly lowers himself before Stavrogin, asks to be forgiven, confesses his love for Stavrogin, while Stavrogin is haughty and mocking.... “The boy has at times a low opinion of Tikhon, he is so funny, he does not know things, he is weak and helpless, comes to me for advice; but at last he realizes that Tikhon is strong in mind, as a babe is pure, and that he cannot have an evil thought.”

This note appears already as a simple sketch of the dialogue between Stavrogin and Tikhon, in which the relations of the sinner and the ascetic are depicted in this double way by vacillations between suspicious mockery and adoration.

The close correspondence between Stavrogin’s Confession and the plan of _The Life_ can be explained by the history of the logical construction of _The Possessed_. That novel grew from the complicated re-fashioning of the originally simple idea which, as it grew larger and broader, drew into itself fragments of _The Life_, which had been conceived at the same time, but had not yet been executed. Stavrogin’s appearance in _The Possessed_ in the part of the principal hero marks a comparatively late stage in the conception of that novel, which coincides with Dostoevsky’s determination not to write _The Life_. Stavrogin’s character introduced into the novel the broad religious and artistic problems of _The Life of a Great Sinner_. The Great Sinner’s meeting with Tikhon and his confession was an organic part of _The Life_, foreseen by Dostoevsky even in the first moments of inspiration.[94]

Footnote 94:

See Dostoevsky’s _Biography_, _Letters_, etc., pp. 202, 233, etc., in the original.

In so far as Stavrogin is the Great Sinner, his meeting with Tikhon and confession (_i.e._ our Chapter IX .) are a necessary part of _The Possessed_. This conclusion is justified by Dostoevsky’s direct evidence. There is no doubt that Dostoevsky had