Demons (Penguin Classics)

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The missing chapter is commonly included in modern editions, sometimes in the novel and sometimes as an appendix. There is a public-domain English translation of the text by S.S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf freely available online. The following morning, Pytor goes to Kirillov's house but Kirillov has had a change of heart about committing suicide and the two have a standoff with guns aimed at each other. Eventually, Kirillov relents and signs the note taking responsibility for Ivan's murder before going into the next room and shooting himself. Julia Mikhaylovna von Lembke is the Governor's wife. Her vanity and liberal ambition are exploited by Pyotr Stepanovich for his revolutionary aims. The conspirators succeed in transforming her Literary Fête for the benefit of poor governesses into a scandalous farce. Dostoevsky's depiction of the relationship between Pyotr Stepanovich and Julia Mikhaylovna had its origins in a passage from Nechayev's Catechism where revolutionaries are instructed to consort with liberals "on the basis of their own program, pretending to follow them blindly" but with the purpose of compromising them so that they can be "used to provoke disturbances." [35] 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 ]

Dostoevsky wrote to Maykov that the chief theme of his novel was "the very one over which, consciously and unconsciously, I have been tormented all my life: it is the existence of God." [56] Much of the plot develops out of the tension between belief and non-belief, and the words and actions of most of the characters seem to be intimately bound to the position they take up within this struggle.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. 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. The gala takes place the next day with many of societies most influential and wealthy people in attendance. Things begin to go wrong almost immediately. Pytor's associates, Lyamshin and Liputin act as stewards and allow many low class people in for free. Captain Lebyadkin, hopelessly drunk, gets onto the stage and reads aloud some of his poetry. Liputin realizes how drunk the Captain is and decides to read the poem himself, which turns out to be a poorly written and insulting piece. Yet Stavrogin’s original gravitational attraction sprang as much from noble passion as outrageous license, as when he accidentally shook Marya’s innocent heart by throwing a clerk who was mistreating her out a second-story window. His earliest and most dedicated followers were Darya’s brother Shatov (also Varvara’s former serf) and the engineer Kirillov. Both traveled to America to work as laborers, and so experience “the condition of man in his hardest social position.” To these ardent and big-hearted men, Stavrogin seemed to promise new births of goodness and happiness: for Shatov, the moral and spiritual regeneration of the Russian nation; for Kirillov, the disappearance of time in human experience through its willful, proto-Nietzschean transformation into eternity. France, Peter (2000). "Dostoevsky". In Peter France (ed.). The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford University Press. p.598.

Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky - a former professor who believes that he was fired as a result of a government interference, which is, in reality, most likely not true. Stepan is the father of the head of the revolutionary society, Pytor. Stepan suffers much guilt over his neglect of Pytor when he was growing into adulthood. Stephan has lived with Varvara for two decades, originally moving in to tutor her son Nikolai and staying on long after Nikolai moved away.

Hingley, Ronald (1978). Dostoyevsky His Life and Work (1sted.). London: Paul Elek Limited. ISBN 9780236401215. Dostoevsky’s characters, too, squirm with wild thoughts and uncontrollable passions. But what are the novel’s demons—the ones that drive an entire town to madness and finally lure the troika of Russia itself onto the frozen wast

But the “worm” Verkhovensky is merely the imitator of another wise serpent, his “main half”: the Siegfried of his Russian Götterdämmerung fantasy, the “sun” he needs and envies and plans to eclipse. Dostoevsky wrote in a note to himself that “ Stavrogin is everything.” As Vyacheslav Ivanov makes clear in his brilliant book Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky (Noonday Press, 1959), this must be understood not just socially and psychologically, but religiously and metaphysically. Stavrogin is the most charismatic and complete of Dostoevsky’s Antichrists. His name comes from stauros, the Ancient Greek word for “cross.” But the image of the cross is inverted in him, as when his follower Shatov rebukes him for “boldly fly[ing] down headfirst” into the abyss of sensuality. He appears to his followers in the guise of a savior, a man-god who could achieve by towering will what the Christian God-man could not by incarnational love. “Only love can say ‘Thou art,’ ” Ivanov writes; in Demons, Dostoevsky explores the general insanity and destruction that ensues when a gifted and captivating personality says to God “Thou art not.” When in Petersburg Stavrogin had secretly married the mentally and physically disabled Marya Lebyadkina. He shows signs of caring for her, but ultimately becomes complicit in her murder. The extent to which he himself is responsible for the murder is unclear, but he is aware that it is being plotted and does nothing to prevent it. In a letter to Darya Pavlovna near the end of the novel, he affirms that he is guilty in his own conscience for the death of his wife. [32] In 1839, his father died of a stroke. Dostoyevsky soon attained the rank of engineer cadet and then lieutenant engineer. It was during this time that he began writing his own works and his first work, a translation of the French novel "Eugenie Grandet" was published in 1843. He completed several other translations but did not receive much money for them. Open Culture: “Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapting Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed for the Theatre, 1959” by Mike Springer The fire dwindles overnight and a rain washes away the rest of it. News spreads that it was started when a Captain, his sister and their maid were stabbed to death and their house set on fire. Liza and Nikolai wake together and hear the news of the fire. Liza is sure that this scandal will effectively end her life and prepares to leave Nikolai. Pytor stops by to tell them of the Lebyadkins' murder. He claims that Fedka killed them and that he was not involved.After they leave, chaos ensues among the people leftover in the room. Pytor begs Varvara to listen to his account of what has happened. He tells her that Nikolai befriended the Lebyadkins when he was living in Petersburg five years earlier. The crippled, mentally disturbed Marya had fallen in love with Nikolai instantly and he had responded by treating her kindly and letting her have her fantasy in her own mind. BBC mini-series The Possessed adapted by Lennox Phillips starring Keith Bell; also broadcast on PBS television in 1972. Maguire’s language seems a bit more formal, or ‘fussier’ than Katz’s; I believe both translators are American; at any rate their careers are. 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. Andrey Antonovich von Lembke is the Governor of the province and one of the principal targets of Pyotr Stepanovich in his quest for societal breakdown. Although a good and conscientious man he is completely incapable of responding effectively to Pyotr Stepanovich's machinations. Estranged from his wife, who has unwittingly become a pawn in the conspirators' game, he descends into a mental breakdown as events get increasingly out of control.