What It Is
Printed sheets circulate in the novel in two directions that never meet. On one side are the anonymous proclamations: of foreign printing, thrown at night into factories and houses, some with an ax drawn at the top, others in verse, which the governor has been collecting since 1859 and which the police receive in packages still sealed. On the other are three printed pamphlets that Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin takes to Bishop Tikhon and wants to have printed in three hundred copies: the confession of a crime, with his name at the bottom. The book makes two opposite gestures out of the same material. The proclamation works without being read, and the confession asks to be read by everyone and never circulates.
Where It Appears
In Chapter IV of Part Two, Andrei Antonovich von Lembke shows Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky the collection of proclamations he has gathered since 1859, hoping to disarm him with liberalism. Pyotr says that a single line of them is worth more than the governor's entire chancellery, and when Lembke observes that there is a call there to destroy churches and that it is too early, Pyotr traps him with the logic of his own liberalism.
Ведь вы же умный человек и, конечно, сами не веруете, а слишком хорошо понимаете, что вера вам нужна, чтобы народ абрютировать. Правда честнее лжи, after all, you are an intelligent man and, of course, you do not believe yourself, but you understand all too well that you need faith to brutalize the people. Truth is more honest than lies.
In Chapter VI of Part Two, a district lieutenant-sub, who had bitten the commander's shoulder, carried proclamations in his pockets, and the manager of the Chpigulin factory has just handed the police packages of the same sheets, thrown into the factory during the night. Pyotr recognizes the one with the ax as an old acquaintance and, to save Ivan Shatov, as he puts it, hands him over as the author of the poem "The Luminous Figure." Lembke deduces from this that Shatov is guilty of the proclamations with the ax.
То-то вот и есть, вы всегда подкосите вот этою вашею логикой, черт… ну, черт… эта «светлая личность», этот «студент» — это Шатов… вот вам и всё!, that is just it, you always knock me down with that logic of yours, damn it... well, damn it... this "luminous figure," this "student," is Shatov... there you have it, that's all!
In Chapter IX of Part Two, the clerk Blum takes two of the ten proclamations that had been thrown into the house of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. Stepan is offended at being placed among those scoundrels, among whom is his own son.
In Chapter I of Part Three, on the stage at the literary matinee, Stepan begins with the proclamations circulating through the town and says that the secret of their effect is stupidity in its purest essence, which no one believes to be so primitive and which is therefore sought in it for some secret. He toasts stupidity and is booed.
In Chapter IV of Part Three, Pyotr hands Liputin a handwritten proclamation and orders him to compose it and print it in Shatov's printing shop, to spread during the winter. Liputin finds the text foolish, asks whether Pyotr composed it himself, and says that perhaps there is only their quintet and no network at all.
In Chapter VI of Part Three, the note that Alexei Kirillov signs at dictation says that he and Shatov spread proclamations with the help of Fedka, who was hidden in their apartment. Pyotr warns that this point is the most important of all.
In Chapter VIII of Part Three, Liamshin hands the authorities the printed program of the society, of foreign printing, and a draft of an action, in Pyotr's own hand.
In "With Tikhon", Stavrogin takes the pamphlets out of his pocket and puts them on Tikhon's table: if a single man reads them, he says, he will not hide them any longer, and everyone will read them. What Tikhon foresees is the reception.
Их смеху, their laughter.
The chapter that contains these pamphlets was itself barred from circulation.
Dostoevsky wanted this chapter to come after Chapter VIII of Part Two, but the editor of the journal in which the novel was serialized, Mikhail Katkov, categorically refused it; the author read it to Pobedonostsev, the tsar's confidant, and to the critics Maikov and Strakhov, who found it too real, and he tried to rewrite it several times (the meeting with Tikhon alone had eight drafts) without departing from its essence, and the text was not published during his lifetime. For this reason, editions usually print it as an appendix, at the end of the book.
What It Means
The two families of paper operate on contrary principles. The anonymous proclamation acts through quantity and through the absence of a reader: the chronicler notes that no worker ever read the packages from Chpigulin, and it is enough that they exist for the governor to see a conspiracy in them, for Pyotr to indicate a culprit, and for Stepan to find himself included. The signed confession acts through the name. Stavrogin writes it believing that the readers' hatred will be lighter to bear than the penalty, and Tikhon points out what he has not measured, the laughter, and the form, which a challenge to everyone may spoil. One is made to have no author, the other is worth something only with one.
The novel puts into circulation what no one reads and withdraws from circulation what asks for a reader. The proclamations reach every house, every factory, and every drawer of the governor. The confession stays on a bishop's table, and the book never records that the confession, which Stavrogin said would be enough for one man to read for everyone to read, ever left there. Two readings fit this symmetry. In one, it is irony about the press: the anonymous and stupid writing is worth more in the town than the truth with a name. In the other, it is the same refusal Stavrogin gives Pyotr, not to offer himself as a leader seen by all, now turned against the wish to be seen at one's worst. The text supports both, and that is why the suppressed chapter changes what is read after it.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Revolution, Truth and lies, Guilt.
- Themes in the work: Revolution, Truth and lies, Guilt.
- Characters: Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, Tikhon, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, Andrei Antonovich von Lembke, Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, Ivan Shatov, Liputin, Alexei Kirillov, Fedka.
- Neighboring symbols: The fire at Zarechye, the other means of Pyotr's program.