ABSTRACT
A novelist has conceived the fundamental idea of a character; he can develop it in either of two very different ways: he can stress its complexity, or he can emphasize its coherence. Either he can choose to reproduce all that is obscure in the being he is about to beget, or he can elect to conceal it from the reader. With great precision, Andre Gide defined the reasons why Dostoevsky met with so much incomprehension in France. People feel that Dostoevsky was most impressed by something to which he wanted to remain faithful throughout his work: the cohabitation, in every consciousness, of instincts that are contradictory as well as irreducible. For in the end, the human being, however unusual he may be, never escapes from a certain deep-rooted logic. He finds himself first in one deed and then in another; he can act incessantly against reason and still obey certain logic.
