A sectarian of the old faith, who founded a printing-office in the ’60’s to print the books of the old faith; later embraced orthodoxy.
Editor of the journal of the old faith, _Istina_, in the ’60’s; embraced orthodoxy under the influence of the monk Pavel.
Author of the book in three volumes, _The Story of My Wanderings in Russia, Moldavia, Turkey, and the Holy Land_; Moscow, 1856.
Dostoevsky attributed to this novel the importance of a personal confession and final summing up. “This will be my last novel.” “I consider this novel as the last word in my literary career.” Six years had to be spent in work on it. Interrupted by the idea and plan of _The Possessed_, busily engaged in writing for the _Russkìi Vèstnik_, Dostoevsky was waiting the moment when he could sit down to his large canvas “with pleasure.” But the novel was only planned out with any distinctness in its first stage, in the rough draft of the syllabus; and the individual characters, ideas, and scenes have been dispersed in a series of subsequent novels.
Among Dostoevsky’s manuscripts, preserved by his widow, A. G. Dostoevsky, and handed over by her to the Russian Historical Museum, are Dostoevsky’s note-books, and in one of them is the detailed plan of a novel portraying the principal hero in the days of his childhood in the monastery and after he came out of the monastery. The plot of the novel changed in the course of writing; now the boy is with his family, now from the beginning he is with the Alfonsky family. The details of the novel were also erratic: its “canvas” could always be covered with new patterns. The novelist’s favourite word “invent” serves to indicate that the plan of the novel in question could by no means be considered fixed.[106]
The original draft gives the following characteristics of the hero:
—Germs of the most violent physical passions.
—Inclinations towards boundless power and unshakable belief in his authority. To move mountains. And is glad to test his power.
—Struggle—his second nature. But quiet, not stormy.
—Despises falsehood with all his strength.
We publish the _complete_ text of the plan of _The Life of a Great Sinner_, preserving all the peculiarities of the writing and punctuation of the original.