Demons (Penguin Classics)

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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. point of it. There’s something about some sort of ‘sins in Switzerland.’‘I’m getting married,’ he says, ‘for my sins or on account of the ‘sins’

It takes eight days. Stavrogin accepts no one, and when his retreat ends to him immediately slips Peter Verkhovenskii. He expresses the willingness to do anything for Stavrogin and reports about a secret society, where they should appear together. Shortly after his visit Stavrogin goes to engineer Kirillov. He engineer, for whom Stavrogin means a lot, says that still professes his idea. Its essence - the need to get rid of God, which is none other than the "pain of the fear of death," and say willfulness, killing himself and thus becoming the man-god. Stepan Trofimovich also has a son from a previous marriage but he has grown up elsewhere without his father's involvement. As I am slowly working my way through Dostoyevsky’s works, starting with the whisperings of a man taking notes from the underground, moving to the murderer Raskolnikov who manages to get my sympathy even though I loathe his actions and motives, and and then over to a holy fool like Myshkin, who enrages me completely with his ignorant arrogance and destructive power, I have now made the acquaintance of the Devils. Hingley, Ronald (1978). Dostoyevsky His Life and Work (1sted.). London: Paul Elek Limited. ISBN 9780236401215. Reading Dostoyevsky is a bit like spending time with close family members with a diametrically opposed worldview: I love them dearly, unconditionally, but I don’t LIKE them at all.Going into his last pilgrimage, Stepan Trofimovich dies in a peasant hut on the hands of a rushed to him Varvara Petrovna. Before his death, a random fellow traveler, whom he tells of his entire life, reads him the Gospel, and he compares the possessed, from whom Christ cast out demons entered into the pigs, with Russia. This passage from the Gospel is taken by he reporter as one of the epigraphs to the novel. 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.” Why is it called ‘The Possessed’, ‘The Devils’, ‘Devils’, and ‘Demons’?

Escuche. Para empezar provocamos una revuelta —Verjovenski siguió diciendo nerviosamente, agarrando continuamente a Stavroguin de la manga izquierda—. Ya se lo he dicho: llegaremos hasta la plebe. ¿Sabe que ya tenemos una fuerza enorme? Nuestra gente no es sólo la que mata e incendia, la que emplea armas de fuego al estilo clásico o muerde a sus superiores. Ésos sólo son un estorbo. Sin obediencia, las cosas no tienen sentido para mí. Ya ve que soy un pillo y no un socialista. ¡Ja, ja! Escuche, los tengo a todos ya contados: el maestro que se ríe con los niños del Dios de ellos y de su cuna es ya de los nuestros. El abogado que defiende a un asesino educado porque éste tiene más cultura que sus víctimas y tuvo necesariamente que asesinarlas para agenciarse dinero también es de los nuestros. Los escolares que matan a un campesino por el escalofrío de matar son nuestros. Los jurados que absuelven a todo delincuente, sin distinción, son nuestros. El fiscal que tiembla en la sala de juicio porque teme no ser bastante liberal es nuestro, nuestro. Los funcionarios, los literatos, ¡oh, muchos de ellos son nuestros, muchísimos, y ni siquiera lo saben! Además, la docilidad de los escolares y de los tontos ha llegado al más alto nivel; los maestros rezuman rencor y bilis. Por todas partes vemos que la vanidad alcanza dimensiones pasmosas, los apetitos son incr By the time of the events in the novel Shatov has completely rejected his former convictions and become a passionate defender of Russia's Christian heritage. Shatov's reformed ideas resemble those of the contemporary philosophy Pochvennichestvo (roughly: "return to the soil"), with which Dostoevsky was sympathetic. Like the broader Slavophile movement, Pochvennichestvo asserted the paramount importance of Slavic traditions in Russia, as opposed to cultural influences originating in Western Europe, and particularly emphasized the unique mission of the Russian Orthodox Church. Shatov goes further by describing that mission as universal rather than merely Russian. [39] Generally awkward, gloomy and taciturn, Shatov becomes emotional and loquacious when aroused by an affront to his convictions. [40] In the chapter 'Night' he engages in a heated discussion with Stavrogin about God, Russia and morality. As a younger man Shatov had idolized Stavrogin, but having seen through him and guessed the secret of his marriage, he seeks to tear down the idol in a withering critique. [41] Stavrogin, though affected, is certainly not withered, and answers by drawing attention to the inadequacy of Shatov's own faith, something Shatov himself recognizes. [42] Shatov's relationship with Pyotr Verkhovensky is one of mutual hatred. Verkhovensky conceives the idea of having the group murder him as a traitor to the cause, thereby binding them closer together by the blood they have shed.Demons is what you get when you mix a writer who is a philosopher on par with the thinking greats + a writer who is a psychologist on par with the behavioral greats + a writer who is a preacher on par with the moral greats. Oh, and you better make damn sure this writer is hypergraphic. General commotion ensued; then suddenly an extraordinary event occurred that no one could have anticipated.” Men made of paper! It all comes from flunkeyism of thought. There's hatred in it, too. They'd be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia could be suddenly reformed, even to suit their own ideas, and became extraordinarily prosperous and happy. They'd have no one to hate then, no one to curse, nothing to find fault with. There is nothing in it but an immense animal hatred for Russia which has eaten into their organism…