Chapter IX

. from the novel, we violate the characteristic grace of Dostoevsky’s construction. We violate Dostoevsky’s aesthetic principle, according to which the action in its early stages advances by motives concealed from the reader, and only when it approaches the catastrophe is the hidden cause immediately made clear by the hero’s lengthy confession. Such a “belated exposition” is Raskolnikov’s theory, communicated only after the murder. “The Revolt” and “The Legend of the Great Inquisitor”—Ivan Karamazov’s Confession—are communicated to the reader only after he already knows that Ivan has consented in his own mind to patricide (“Voluptuaries”). There is also the case of Versilov’s confession to his son—after the absurd letter to Madame Ahmakov and immediately before the catastrophe. Stavrogin’s confession before the catastrophe, together with events in the last chapter of the second part and the chapters of the third part, correspond perfectly to this obviously characteristic principle in the construction of Dostoevsky’s novels.

Such are the reasons for thinking that