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Demons

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It's hard for the modern mind or the casual reader to make sense of Dostoevsky's narrative at times. However, Dostoevsky does reward perseverance, especially if you follow the necessary footnotes to keep tabs on his purpose. This is the first of Dostoevsky's work that I've read in the trendy Volokhonsky/Pevear translation - it's quite readable but I don't know that I'm overwhelmed by its superiority to other translators I've read (making exception of course for the stuffy Constance Garnett).

The story is quite dark overall, although Dostoevsky does provide unexpected comic relief, sometimes in very absurd places. Of course, the saddest thing about this novel is that Dostoevsky's hunch that the revolutionary ideas fulminating in Russia were leading towards mass murder - that the murderers would take charge and not be a radical fringe - turned out to be far too correct.

I recently read this Dostoyevski in a French traduction of the 1960's. They titled it 'The possessed', but one can also buy it in the bookshops as 'The demons'. I definitely liked 'The possessed' more as a title. Until I strolled down in a local library in Gouda, where the Dutch translation read 'Evil ghosts'. Which to me entirely captures the spirit of the book. It was a fascinating read, but none of the characters were likeable and a good many seemed possessed by evil ghosts indeed.

What struck the previous reviews was that they blamed the ideologies, the '-isms', for the terrible acts they fomented. I thoroughly disagree. All the characters seemed more driven by the weaknesses of their character than by a genuine ideological drive. Piotr Stepanovitch is a dark manipulator; Piotr's entire entourage a bunch of mindless - though evil - followers; Stepan Tropimovitch a pathetic old loser; Varvara Petrovna a murky and greedy old lady, while the most fascinating character of them all, Nicolai Vsevolodovitch had every characteristic of a deeply insane and charismatic seducer.

The book stresses more than anything else that human nature will only use an ideology to push forward personal ambtions, and not be driven by them.

Dostoevsky's tackling political novel is given new life in this fresh translation. This work has been unilaterally been praised for capturing Dostoevsky's power and subtlety. This story is about the political and philosophical ideas that swept Russia in the second half of the 19th century. These demons, then, are ideas, that legion of -isms that came to Russia from the West: idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and, underlying them all, atheism.'' Dostoevsky, taking as his starting point the political chaos around him at the time, constructs an elaborate morality tale in which the people of a provincial town turn against one another because they are convinced of the infallibility of their ideas. Stepan Trofimovich, an affable thinker who does little to turn his liberal ideas into action, creates a monster in his student, Nikolai Stavrogin, who takes his spiritual father's teaching to heart, joining a circle of other nihilists who will justify any and all violent excesses for the sake of their ideas. Stavrogin aims for a systematic corrupting of society and all its principles so that out of the resulting destruction he may raise the banner of rebellion. A chilling foreshadowing of Stalinist years. This is a work of art in literature!

After reading Pevear & Volokhonsky's masterful translation of Crime & Punishment, I immediately moved on to their version of Demons, and I am happy to say that I was not disappointed. Demons expands twentyfold on Dostoevsky's analysis of how ideologies can drive people to unnatural & absurd acts. In fact, with Demons, Dostoevsky has written the definitive book on the subject, and at a time when his critical view must have been highly unpopular with Russia's young "intelligentsia" (of which Dostoevsky was once a member).

Certainly the book verges on chaos, and Dostoevsky often digresses far from his central plot - but I thoroughly enjoyed this unpredictability, and his writing is always entertaining. Dostoevsky's vivid & varied characters and his masterful way of veering between seemingly contradictory emotions & tones - sometimes within a single sentence - make reading this book a constant joy.

I have also read Pevear & Volokhonsky's translation of The Brothers Karamazov and highly recommend it as well. They have done a terrific job of representing Dostoevsky in the English language, rendering his works highly readable and wholly entertaining.

Nabokov, in his Lectures on Russian Literature, suggested that Dostoevsky be knocked off the canon of Russian writers, especially in favor of Turgenev, whom Dostoevsky hated. The reason was that Nabokov was against the "novel of ideas" because, he would say, it managed to achieve neither.

Demons is, of Dostoevsky's novels, the most ideological, yet still it is masterfully pulled off. Let it be known, however, that at times, the plot suffers at the expense of ideology, just as one has to expect, BUT THE IDEAS!

This book, although in my opinion it has the nuance of neither, is a perfect bridge between Notes From the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov. The intelligentsia, you suspect, are trying to build the positivistic paradise that the Underground man railed against, but as the novel progresses, you realize that the idealist vision has already been lost by Stepan Trofimovich, that all that remains is his desire to feel alive, even if that means inflicting every sort of pain. This is the same type of monster that Ivan warns against, and identifies himself with--if he were to act--in the Grand Inquisitor.

Also, please note, I tried once to read it in an older translation, and gave up somewhere in the 100s. This one I plunged through with little trouble.

Reviewers usually mention the social & political commentary at the core of this novel, how it anticipated the Russian Revolution & Stalinism and so forth. Actually the book is more expansive than that, in that it's largely a comedy of manners, set out in a breathless narrative style that breaks all the rules of "novel writing" as taught in our schools.

DEMONS was initially published as a serial, and it reads that way. Each of its several parts seems designed to be read in one sitting. The multiplicity of characters & intricacies of the plot are less formidable the more rapidly the book is read (provided the reader is always attentive, of course).

In DEMONS Dostoevsky pokes fun at the naivete of Russian nobility, "intellectuals" and petty officials who seek "enlightenment" and wind up the pawns & victims of "very trashy people," a.k.a. "scum." There's murder, romance, plotting & intrigue of all kinds, and there are some "big scenes" resembling comic-operatic finales, with characters arriving one after another, each serving to push disorder over the edge, finally, into utter chaos. Dostoevsky is a master of this sort of writing and his storytelling (and plotting) talent is what makes his "novels of ideas" so much fun to read.

Dostoevsky's contempt for Jews is unfortunate, and some of his "messages" are less agreeable & consistent than they might seem while you're immersed in his novels. But the man was certainly sincere, and few great writers are so plainly enthusiastic. DEMONS is an excellent specimen of Dostoevsky's art.

"I also know that it was not you who ate the idea, but the idea who ate you..." from Part III, Chapter 4.

This quotation from the novel indicates why I think "Demons" makes a far better title than "The Possessed" or "The Devils". This is a novel more about ideas than about people -- the ideas surrounding the Russian radicalism of the 1860s (atheism, nihilism, utilitarianism, socialism, and so on). The title, of course, comes directly from the story in the gospel of Luke where demons possess a herd of swine, impelling them to run down a hill into a lake where they drown themselves. To call the novel "The Possessed" is to essentially make it about a herd of swine, when it is truly of a bigger scope than that. "The Devils", on the other hand, gives too great a quality of personification to the faceless, unseen ideas infecting the characters. "Demons", however, seems to best capture the author's intention in naming the novel.

The only thing that I have to add is that this book is also funny. For example, the vanity of writers is brilliantly lampooned in the character Karmazinov(Turgenev). Political correctness is not new, and what Dostoyevsky satirizes in nineteenth century Russia will not be lost on modern readers.

Dostoyevsky himself is a victim of youthful frenzy, of revolution's dangerous freedom, and of radicals' ruthless betrayal. A powerful work of dark messages, Demons also known as The Possessed, crowns Dostoyevsky literature before the brilliance and magnitude of The Brothers Karamazov. Written more of severe historical recounts than a lighter fiction work such as The Idiot, Dostoyevsky gained the permanent abhorrence of contemporary radicals whose presence was lushly painted with angry strokes of danger and of depravity. Base on an actual accident that took place in 1869, Demons retells the story of an ailing radical, Shatov, whose emerging faith makes him an obstacle in the way of one obscure town's intellectual circle. The murder of Shatov is by no means a beginning of Dostoyevsky's lustrous characterization going deep into the dark psyche of revolution; instead, it is marked as an ending to a period of great turmoil and of intellectual unrest that wake blinded followers as well as the observant surrounding to the painful truth of progress. At the beginning, the readers are introduced to a Nihilist father Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, a retired lecturer and educator who has been under the patronage of a local aristocrat Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin. Stepan Trofimovich's mind of uncertainty leaves behind a tremendous mess of doubts and of hatred in his son, Pyotr Stepanovich, head of the local secret society.

The true hero of the story is Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, son of Varvara Petrovna, a troubled young man whose dubious past haunts his present in the small town. Like other heroes of Dostoyevsky, Stavrogin is handsome, rich, and dashing; unlike Raskolnikov or Dimitri Karamazov, Stavrogin commits himself to worldly evils unawarely as if in a state of dreams. The heart of Demons is the possession of unguarded intellect turning into a possessive spirit, and at the center of the dark confusions of ideas, of theories, and of rebellions, Stavrogin is chosen to unveil the face of the demons. Pyotr Stepanovich, on the other hand, is characterized by his pretentious presence in front of the weak and obsequious malice facing the powerful. His real-life counterpart being Nechaev who led his political society against Ivan Ivanov's (Shatov) struggle to break free, Pyotr is portrayed with care, shrouded in shadow, and hidden in intellectualism.

With some of the most provocative suggestions on revolution, Demons seems to challenge the rigid intellect that is obsessed with replacing the old with something revolutionary. DO READ WITH AN OPEN MIND.

Most readers probably know that the character of the amoral nihilist Peter Verkhovensky is based--not too loosely, either--on the real-life figure of Sergei Nechayev (pronounced neech-aye-eff), who collaborated with the anarchist Bakunin while they were both hiding out in Western Europe. (Bakunin finally learned that Nechayev was a total fanatic who'd stop at nothing--even blackmail, betrayal, and murder--and disassociated himself with Nechayev, warning friends against him.) Nechayev murdered a member of his conspiratorial group, suspecting the victim of betrayal, a scene portrayed in the novel.

What most readers may not know is that Lenin was fascinated with the career of Nechayev (who was eventually caught for the murder and extradited to Russia, where he died in prison), called him a "titanic revolutionary," and said that Bolsheviks should try to find everything Nechayev had ever written, and study it. If Peter Verkhovensky was a caricature, he turned out to be a caricature that came to life in Lenin and Hitler and Stalin. Yet it is important to remember that these men were not, and could not be, dangerous all by themselves. It is only the possession of an ideology that makes them dangerous, ESPECIALLY if it is one that claims to be supremely moral and virtuous. Why is this so? Because self-righteous people who believe themselves to following a supremely moral path would almost certainly conclude that anyone who OPPOSES this supreme virtue must therefore be supremely IMMORAL--and what should be done with immoral people? Dostoevsky tells us something very important here: ideology kills, especially if it's the kind that exudes proclamations of goodness and virtue. In CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, he has the policeman Porfiry Petrovich tell the murderer Raskolnikov: "You know, it's just as well you only killed the old woman. Because if you'd come up with another THEORY, that would have been a thousand times MORE hideous."

In THE DEMONS, Dostoevsky has Peter Verkhovensky admit to Stavrogin that he is a rogue, not a socialist. But he had socialism to use as a foundation--a rationale--and he used it. Without it, a rogue would just be a rogue, no different than an ordinary criminal. But Peter Verkhovensky is far from ordinary.

Dostoevsky knew he'd be called a "reactionary" for implying that ends-justify-means fanaticism--terror and immorality in the name of a "better world" to come--must end in utter destruction. But he nevertheless went ahead and wrote this novel to illustrate this theme. And Lenin, admiring Nechayev, did exactly what the great novelist foresaw--he created a monstrous tyranny that destroyed Russia, perhaps (as we are now seeing) even beyond repair.

We admire Orwell's 1984 for its insights and innovative ideas, but THE DEMONS turned out to be the more accurate and prophetic book of the two. Russian novels tend to be long on characterization and short on plot--as well as very lengthy--but don't let that deter you from reading this masterpiece.

Incidentally, I once queried the companies who write student guides for novels (i.e., Cliff's Notes; Monarch Notes) about why no such guide had EVER been written for this book (even though they do exist for Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT), and even though the collapse of Communism should have produced a renewed academic interest in THE DEMONS. The reply was that professors assign Dostoevsky as class reading less and less, and that very few assign this book, so there wouldn't be enough of a market for such a guide. Class reading, hell -- the profs know full well how devastating this novel would be to their own efforts to instill their own utopian political beliefs in their students. As Malcolm Muggeridge once said, everything that happened in 20th century Russia was predicted in this novel. This was what originally inspired me to read it, and he was right.