But it is to this character that Dostoevsky gives the right to reveal the essence of the epigraph of the work, to show the way of salvation for Russia. The Gospel parable of the exiled demons in the epilogue shows Dostoevsky's conviction that the heroes of his novel will be thrown out of the public and political life of the country. Dostoevsky’s “Demons” remains relevant more than a century after it was written as it invites readers to a melancholy symphony of self-reflection. The novel’s flailing revolutionaries are not caricatures of archaic belief systems but embody the very structure of human conflict. In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed—amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.

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 died in 1881 following a series of pulmonary hemorrhages. Many thousands of mourners attended his funeral. His epitaph reads: 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.What is the purpose of Peter? He himself admits that the revolutionary idea is only a means. The main thing is power. Verkhovensky seeks to control people, their minds and souls, but he understands that he is too small for the "ruler of thoughts" and therefore he relies on Nikolai Stavrogin. 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. However, he soon begins to suspect that he is being married off to Dasha to cover up an illegitimate pregnancy from Nikolai. He begins writing letters to Nikolai and Dasha asking them about the rumors. 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.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1947). Stavrogin's Confession. Translated by Virginia Woolf; S. S. Koteliansky. In the afterword a psychoanalytic study of the author by Sigmund Freud. Lear Publishers. ASIN B000LDS1TI. 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

CHAPTER X. FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING

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] The novel is in three parts. There are two epigraphs, the first from Pushkin's poem "Demons" and the second from Luke 8:32–36. 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.

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. In the delirious ideas of Kirillov it is difficult to find common sense. But Shatov is quite logical, although it is also contradictory. The ardent adherent of atheism and socialism suddenly becomes a zealous supporter of the idea of God's chosen by Russian people. But Shatov does not believe in God, but only wants to believe. He hates everyone who does not share his new convictions. Frank, Joseph (2010). Dostoevsky A Writer in his Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691128191.

CHAPTER IX. A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH’S

Oates, Joyce Carol (January 1978). "The tragic vision of The Possesed". The Georgia Review. 32 (4 - Winter 1978): 868. See also in Celestial Timepiece Blog. In 1845, he completed his first novel, "Poor Folk" and the novel was a commercial success, being described as Russia's first "social novel". After resigning his military career, Dostoyevsky began writing full time and published his second novel, "The Double" in 1846. It was during this time that he discovered and became involved in socialism. "The Double" was not as well received in the press and Dostoyevsky began suffering from frequent health issues. 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.

His moral counterpart, Nikolai Stavrogin is the other dominant figure in the story. An aristocratic man who has recently returned to the town with a new wife and a dark secret. Along with Pytor's father, Stepan, Nikolai ends up being an unwitting conspirator in the revolution and eventually hangs himself after his lover is killed. 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. 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.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] Nikolai leaves to pay a call to the Lebyadkins at their new home and bumps into an escaped convict named Fedka on the way. Fedka, who had been waiting for Nikolai on the bridge, tells Nikolai that Pytor sent him to help with the Lebyadkins. Nikolai turns him down, knowing that Fedka's help would only mean murder. He tells Fedka that he is not paying him a cent and that if he sees him again he will go to the police. In the aftermath, Pyotr Stepanovich (who was mysteriously absent from the reading) seeks to persuade a traumatized Julia Mikhaylovna that it wasn't as bad as she thinks and that it is essential for her to attend the ball. He also lets her know that the town is ringing with the news of another scandal: Lizaveta Nikolaevna has left her home and fiancé and gone off to Skvoreshniki with Stavrogin. Kjetsaa claims that Dostoevsky did not regard Revelation as "merely a consolatory epistle to first century Christians during the persecution they suffered", but as a "prophecy being fulfilled in his own time". [78] Dostoevsky wrote that "Communism will conquer one day, irrespective of whether the Communists are right or wrong. But this triumph will stand very far from the Kingdom of Heaven. All the same, we must accept that this triumph will come one day, even though none of those who at present steer the world's fate have any idea about it at all." [79] Kjetsaa, Geir (1987). Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Translated by David McDuff; Siri Hustvedt (1sted.). Viking Adult. ISBN 9780670819140.