26
PARTISAN REVIEW
the last century into the nihilism and socialism of the sixties and seven–
ties; but Dostoevsky encountered such difficulties in its writing that he
finally fused it with
his
projected
Life of a Great Sinner,
which was
to be
his
major effort on the subject of atheism. For that reason
The
Possessed
has two distinct sets of characters, one sacred and one pro–
fane, one metaphysical and one empirical- the group around Stavro–
gin, the great sinner, and the group around the Verhovenskys, father
and son, who are defined politically. While one set commits sins, the
other commits crimes. Externally-in his melodramatic, sinister attrac–
tiveness and in the Byronic stress given to his personal relations- Stav–
rogin derives from early European Romanticism, but in his moral
sensuality, in his craving for remorse and martyrdom, he is an authen–
tic member of the Karamazov family. He is doubled within himself
as well as through Shatov and Kirillov, his satellites in the story.
Shatov represents his Russian, national-messianic side, and Kirillov
his experiments with God.
However, although this scheme allows sin and crime, religion and
politics, to engage in a mutual criticism of each other, it is too ab–
stractly conceived to solve successfully the problem of unifying the
two themes. Stavrogin is for the most part gratuitously introduced into
the younger Verhovensky's political maneuvers; the linK between them
is often artificial, giving rise to superfluous intricacies of structure and
episode.
In its Verhovensky parts the novel reminds us of the most recent
political phenomena. It is not by chance that on the occasion of the
Moscow trials the world press unanimously recalled to its readers the
name of Dostoevsky, the great nay-sayer to the revolution. This oc–
curred twenty years after Dostoevsky's Russia-that realm of wood
and dark, furious souls- had been ostensibly demolished and a new
harmonious society erected on its ruins. The principles of science and
reason had triumphed, we were told. But now the creations of a writer
who considered these same principles to be the spawn of Satan were
invoked to explain events which science and reason had apparently
found inexplicable.
It is not worthwhile, however, to examine
The Possessed
in order
to echo the insinuations of the Stalin apologists who have suddenly
rediscovered Dostoevsky and the "Slav soul." The "Slav soul" never
explained anything. That swollen concept is the product of the psy–
chological romanticism of the Slavophile movement, which substi–
tued brooding about history for making it. Dostoevsky, too, "brooded"
in the Slavophile fashion, but that by no means exhausts his contribu–
tion to letters.
As
for those "sympathizers" of Stalin who use the
"Slav soul" to prove the innocence of the G.P.U. and the guilt of its
