FYI

I am sorry - but maybe not real sorry - that I cannot do "comments" because neither of my computers will let me--something about the wrong Google account. I am tempted to get an account with someone else so I can bypass this. Any suggestions? In the meantime any replies with have to be included in my regular "formal" posts.

As to your question, Dennis, I mean the novel and not the play. As Camus would probably have to admit, the play is more of a homage to the very long novel: And the play captures well the attitudes and thoughts of Camus with none of the breadth of Dostoevsky.  The incidents of Chapter 7, Part III, are not found in the play nor in any commentaries I have ever read so far.  "Impending Doom LTD" is all that most people want from Dostoevsky--the suspense of observing and revelling in a constant parade of evil, with not a thought of what pilgrimages are going on in and around them.

The "Final Wanderings of Stephan Trofimovich" just precedes the conclusion in which Stavrogin ends his pilgrimage as well, in entirely the opposite direction i.e. he hangs himself. It seems improbable in the extreme that the author did not wants us to "compare and constrast" the two--something that all critics I have read simply refuse to do. The reason is both simple and embarrassing and almost openly stated by Dost.--people are either ashamed of Christ--or not. 

This would all be literary theory if it didn't hit so close to my home. Perhaps that's why secular critics are so tone-deaf to the Savior and any personal contact with God. (See today's facebook entries) They just don't get it, as they say--except that they in almost total ignorance simply dismiss scathingly any reference to the above concerns--their latest default position (W. Percy et.al.) is: "Moving right along....."

For myself, the difference between this blog and bassocontiuo is that I have realized that life is "moving right along", all right--At the Speed of Light. I have no idea how much time I may have left; but whatever it is, it's a pittance, not even a mite, in comparison to the width and length and height and timelessness of Christ. No time left to be ashamed or reticent or hint around or point to other men: except as "ensamples" of Grace Accepted, Grace Rejected, or most commonly among the living, "Grace-on-hold."  See Flannery quote on recent facebook entry.