L ike characters in a Kafka story, the oligarchs and conspirators of Demons tremble before distant centers of authority and power from which they expect to receive some final judgment. The filaments of imagination that bind them to these mysterious centers are vanishingly thin, spun from their own slavish instincts and fantastic desires—that is, from nothing—but strong enough to make them feel “caught like flies in the web of a huge spider.” That spider is Verkhovensky, who is everywhere and nowhere in Demons (Joyce Carol Oates aptly compares him to the chaos-dealing Dionysus of Euripides’ Bacchae), and who vanishes into thin air on the Petersburg train once his bloody work is done. A “wise serpent” whose tongue the narrator imagines to be “unusually long and thin, terribly red, and with an extremely sharp, constantly and involuntarily wriggling tip,” Verkhovensky has “dropped from the moon.” Dostoevsky makes him both a fully realized human character and the embodiment of a mythical specter—one that haunts us to this day and that cannot be exorcised, as Marx observed in the Communist Manifesto, by any holy alliance of earthly powers. BBC mini-series The Possessed adapted by Lennox Phillips starring Keith Bell; also broadcast on PBS television in 1972.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1995). Demons: A Novel in Three Parts. Translated by Larissa Volokhonsky; Richard Pevear. Foreword by Richard Pevear (1sted.). Vintage Classics. ISBN 9780679734512. Gladkov, Alexander (1977). Meetings with Pasternak: A memoir. Edited, translated and with an introduction by Max Hayward. San Diego CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p.34. ISBN 9780151585908. Crushed by Stavrogin “but not crushed to death,” Shatov is left writhing in spiritual agony. Yet in the end he breaks free of his former master. While spilling his heart and “dancing naked” before Stavrogin, Shatov remarks that he could not tear himself away “from what I had grown fast to since childhood, to which I had given all the raptures of my hopes and the tears of my hatred . . . . It is hard to change gods.” But the point is that he does dance, like the mad Gadarene who danced in his chains before Jesus. He spews his demons from his mouth in a last outpouring of love and hatred. Little wonder that he tells Stavrogin to visit the retired bishop Tikhon. He has changed gods. Pyotr Stepanovich claims to be connected to the central committee of a vast, organized conspiracy to overthrow the government and establish socialism. He manages to convince his small group of co-conspirators that they are just one revolutionary cell among many, and that their part in the scheme will help set off a nationwide revolt. Pyotr Stepanovich is enamored of Stavrogin, and he tries desperately, through a combination of ensnarement and persuasion, to recruit him to the cause. The revolution he envisages will ultimately require a despotic leader, and he thinks that Stavrogin's strong will, personal charisma and "unusual aptitude for crime" [37] are the necessary qualities for such a leader. Pyotr Verkhovensky, according to Stavrogin, is "an enthusiast". [38] At every opportunity he uses his prodigious verbal abilities to sow discord and manipulate people for his own political ends. His greatest success is with the Governor's wife, and he manages to gain an extraordinary influence over her and her social circle. This influence, in conjunction with constant undermining of authority figures like his father and the Governor, is ruthlessly exploited to bring about a breakdown of standards in society.Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina is a wealthy and influential landowner, residing on the magnificent estate of Skvoreshniki where much of the action of the novel takes place. In 1855, Dostoyevsky met a woman named Maria Dmitrievna and fell in love. Dostoyevsky was given leave to marry her although, as a convict he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. The marriage was an unhappy one and the couple lived apart for most of it. Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s. [3] A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky. The mysterious aristocratic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin—Verkhovensky's counterpart in the moral sphere—dominates the book, exercising an extraordinary influence over the hearts and minds of almost all the other characters. The idealistic, Western-influenced intellectuals of the 1840s, epitomized in the character of Stepan Verkhovensky (who is both Pyotr Verkhovensky's father and Nikolai Stavrogin's childhood teacher), are presented as the unconscious progenitors and helpless accomplices of the "demonic" forces that take possession of the town. Burnett, Leon (2000). "Dostoevskii". In Olive Classe (ed.). Encyclopedia of Literary Translation Into English. Vol.A–L. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. p.66. Almost all of the principal characters, or at least their individual guiding ideas, had actually existing contemporary prototypes. Stavrogin was partly based on Dostoevsky's comrade from the Petrashevsky Circle, Nikolay Speshnev, and represented an imagined extreme in practice of an amoral, atheistic philosophy like that of Max Stirner. [71] The darkness of Stavrogin is confronted by the radiance of Bishop Tikhon, a character inspired by Tikhon of Zadonsk.

Stromberg, David (2012). "The Enigmatic G--v: A Defense of Narrator-Chronicler in Dostoevsky's Demons". The Russian Review. 71 (3): 460–81. Frank, Joseph (2010). Dostoevsky A Writer in his Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691128191. The narrator's voice is intelligent, frequently ironic and psychologically perceptive, but it is only periodically the dominant voice, and often seems to disappear altogether. Much of the narrative unfolds dialogically, implied and explicated through the interactions of the characters, the internal dialogue of a single character, or through a combination of the two, rather than through the narrator's story-telling or description. In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin describes Dostoevsky's literary style as polyphonic, with the cast of individual characters being a multiplicity of " voice-ideas", restlessly asserting and defining themselves in relation to each other. The narrator in this sense is present merely as an agent for recording the synchronisation of multiple autonomous narratives, with his own voice weaving in and out of the contrapuntal texture. [19] [20] Characters [ edit ] Major characters [ edit ] Peter Rollberg (2014) Mastermind, Terrorist, Enigma: Dostoevsky's Nikolai Stavrogin, Perspectives on Political Science, 43:3, 143-152. This latest iteration of the hero’s journey epitomizes the double bind—two contradictory commands, which amount to a command to do the impossible. Demons captures this predicament in the figure of Nikolai Stavrogin, around whom the novel’s peripheral characters frantically orbit. Stavrogin ranks among the most willful and charismatic names in Dostoevsky’s oeuvre; great expectations follow his every move. No amount of talent, however, can break the spell. After fulfilling his duty and rejecting the aristocratic mores of his day, Stavrogin spends his days searching for something, anything, to take their place. A religious commitment to autonomy binds him ever-closer to the fashionable ideas of his time.

PART II

Much of the ideological content of Demons will be unfamiliar to the Western reader. Shatov, the resident Slavophile, champions a return to Russian tradition, bustling about town in ethnic dress. The plot unravels in the shadow of the abolition of serfdom, which lends credence to strange political and social programs. Still, many characters defy categorization. When Kirillov justifies suicide by declaring, “There is no God—I am God,” it is not at all clear that he is mad. As with much of Dostoevsky’s work, the most lucid voices in Demons teeter on the edge of sanity. The polyphony that results from their never-ending dialog is a brilliant muddle. Kirillov’s monomania is Christian eschatology refracted through the prism of German idealism. When individual self-consciousness appears in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, it effectively takes itself to be God. It is certain that it alone is essential and independent, and that all else, including the body to which it is attached, is inessential. It seeks to confirm this certainty by staking its life in mortal combat with another, equally certain self. Kirillov takes this idea to its logical conclusion: only in dying by my own hand can I truly prove my independence of everyone and everything else. Through suicide “without any reason, simply for self-will,” the man-god will triumph over the God-man. But Kirill News of the events at Skvoreshniki spreads through society surprisingly rapidly. The main participants seclude themselves, with the exception of Pyotr Stepanovich who actively insinuates himself into the social life of the town. After eight days, he calls on Stavrogin and the true nature of their relations begins to become apparent. There was not, as some suspect, an explicit understanding between them. Rather Pyotr Stepanovich is trying to involve Stavrogin in some radical political plans of his own, and is avidly seeking to be of use to him. Stavrogin, while he seems to accept Pyotr Stepanovich acting on his behalf, is largely unresponsive to these overtures and continues to pursue his own agenda. Semyon Yegorovich Karmazinov is Dostoevsky's literary caricature of his contemporary Ivan Turgenev, author of the proto-nihilist novel Fathers and Sons (1862). Of the same generation as Stepan Trofimovich, Karmazinov is a vain and pretentious literary has-been who shamelessly seeks to ingratiate himself with Pyotr Stepanovich and does much to promote the nihilists' legitimacy among the liberal establishment. [48] Dostoevsky, Fyodor (2008). Ronald Meyer (ed.). Demons. Translator Robert A. Maguire. Introduction by Robert L. Belknap. Penguin Classics. ISBN 9780141441412.

Demons ( pre-reform Russian: Бѣсы; post-reform Russian: Бесы, tr. Bésy, IPA: [ˈbʲe.sɨ]; sometimes also called The Possessed or The Devils) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871–72. It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large-scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoevsky's most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily 'tragic' work." [1] According to Ronald Hingley, it is Dostoevsky's "greatest onslaught on Nihilism", and "one of humanity's most impressive achievements—perhaps even its supreme achievement—in the art of prose fiction." [2] Dostoevsky was no stranger to this trap. In his youth, he fell under the sway of a charismatic radical, and his debut, Poor Folk, is regarded as somewhat of a liberal screed. Some consider it Russia’s first “social novel.” Demons thus bears the marks of its author’s run-in with the revolutionary fervor of a troubled century. As Mr. Pevear notes, it is an unplanned exploration, a “testing of truth by artistic embodiment.” Dostoevsky’s biting satire cannot cover up the fact that he, too, once numbered among the possessed.

CHAPTER VII. A MEETING

Alexei Nilych Kirillov is an engineer who lives in the same house as Shatov. He also has a connection to Verkhovensky's revolutionary society, but of a very unusual kind: he is determined to kill himself and has agreed to do it at a time when it can be of use to the society's aims. After an almost illustrious but prematurely curtailed academic career Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky is residing with the wealthy landowner Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina at her estate, Skvoreshniki, in a provincial Russian town. Originally employed as a tutor to Stavrogina's son Nikolai Vsevolodovich, Stepan Trofimovich has been there for almost twenty years in an intimate but platonic relationship with his noble patroness. Stepan Trofimovich also has a son from a previous marriage but he has grown up elsewhere without his father's involvement. Perhaps that is why this novel remains relevant more than a century after it was written. Demons invites readers to a melancholy symphony of self-reflection. It would be a mistake to conclude that Dostoevsky has the solution to any of the issues facing an increasingly divided West. Yet as his furious dialogues reveal the true shape of the spirit of the times, it becomes that much easier to cast it out.

Many of the other characters are deeply affected by one or other of the two aspects of Stavrogin's psyche. The nihilist Pyotr Verkhovensky is in love with the cynical, amoral, power-seeking side, while Shatov is affected by the ardour of the feeling, spiritually-bereft side. Shatov "rose from the dead" after hearing Stavrogin's uncompromising exhortation of Christ as the supreme ideal (an assertion made in a futile effort to convince himself: he succeeds in convincing Shatov but not himself). [64] Conversely, Kirillov was convinced by Stavrogin's exhortation of atheism—the supremacy of Man's will, not God's—and forges a plan to sacrifice himself to free humanity from its bondage to mystical fear. But Stavrogin himself does not even believe in his own atheism, and as Shatov and Tikhon recognize, drives himself further into evil out of a desire to torture himself and avoid the truth. Kirillov sums up Stavrogin's dilemma thus: "If Stavrogin believes, then he doesn't believe that he believes. But if he doesn't believe, then he doesn't believe that he doesn't believe." [65] Suicide [ edit ] In 1833, he was sent away to a French boarding school and four years later his mother died of tuberculosis. Soon, he and his brother Nikolayev were conscripted into the military although Nikolayev was soon turned away due to poor health. Dostoyevsky was sent to Estonia to begin his military training. Though he did well in the military academy, Dostoyevsky disliked the regimented style of learning and spent most of his time alone, reading. In a letter to his friend Apollon Maykov, Dostoevsky alludes to the episode of the Exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac in the Gospel of Luke as the inspiration for the title: "Exactly the same thing happened in our country: the devils went out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine... These are drowned or will be drowned, and the healed man, from whom the devils have departed, sits at the feet of Jesus." [9] Part of the passage is used as an epigraph, and Dostoevsky's thoughts on its relevance to Russia are given voice by Stepan Verkhovensky on his deathbed near the end of the novel. In a fit of mental delusion, Marya accuses Nikolai of being an imposter who was sent to kill her. She demands that he tell her what he has done with her "Prince". In his anger, Nikolai pushes Marya before storming out of the house. Fedka stops Nikolai again and offers his help and Nikolai slams him against a wall before stopping and continuing on his way. Fedka follows and Nikolai stops abruptly, laughing as he empties the contents of his wallet onto the man's face and walks away.

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A common criticism of Demons, particularly from Dostoevsky's liberal and radical contemporaries, is that it is exaggerated and unrealistic, a result of the author's over-active imagination and excessive interest in the psycho-pathological. However, despite giving freedom to his imagination, Dostoevsky took great pains to derive the novel's characters and story from real people and real ideas of the time. According to Frank, "the book is almost a compressed encyclopedia of the Russian culture of the period it covers, filtered through a witheringly derisive and often grotesquely funny perspective, and it creates a remarkable 'myth' of the main conflicts of this culture reconstructed on a firm basis of historical personages and events." [70] The letter was so insulting that Nikolai decides that he must challenge Artemy to a duel. He asks his friend, Kirillov to be his second in the duel. Kirillov is fine with this as he is extremely depressed and has decided to commit suicide at some point in the near future. Nikolai talks to his friend about this decision and the philosophical complications it poses. Nikolai then speaks to Ivan and it is revealed that Nikolai and Marya are indeed married. Ivan is aware of this and this is the reason that he punched Nikolai at Skvoreshniki. Dark, funny, and frenetic, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons is a startlingly accurate portrayal of possession by ideology. Its biting prose tears into the many ‘isms’ that haunt the modern world. Yet while the novel is often billed as a work of political prophecy, politics may be the least interesting thing about it. Dostoevsky only intended to make Demons a short broadside against nihilism, but the plot ran away from him. The improvised masterpiece that emerged from three years of painful composition is as profound as it is unsettling. Fyodor Dostoevsky is credited as one of the world’s greatest novelists and literary psychologists. Born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor, Dostoevsky was educated first at home and then at a boarding school. When he was a young boy, his father sent him to the St. Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering, from which he graduated in 1843. Dostoevsky had long been interested in writing, and after graduation he immediately resigned from his minor military post to devote his time to his craft. His first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was immediately popular with critics.