Demons (Penguin Classics)

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something.…‘On the Way’ or ‘Away!’ or ‘At the Parting of the Ways’—something of the sort; I don’t remember.

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] Shigalyev is a historian and social theorist, the intellectual of Verkhovensky's revolutionary group, who has devised a system for the post-revolution organization of mankind. "My conclusion" he says, "stands in direct contradiction to the idea from which I started. Proceeding from unlimited freedom, I end with unlimited despotism." [49] Ninety percent of society is to be enslaved to the remaining ten percent. Equality of the herd is to be enforced by police state tactics, state terrorism, and destruction of intellectual, artistic, and cultural life. It is estimated that about a hundred million people will need to be killed on the way to the goal. 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.And the representative for the church, thrilled by the confession and completely without pity for the child, tells the murderer that he will be forgiven, if only he suffers enough to please god. First of all, what kind of a god is that, who encourages suffering, even finds delight and pleasure in it, but completely ignores the victim? What if I told my child that it is acceptable to brutally assault somebody as long as I see that he suffers afterwards - that the crime is actually laudable because it gives me a welcome opportunity to watch my child suffer duly? Where is the educational police to arrest me for such parenting?

seat. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘… yes, only that,’ he said, ‘cannot affect …’‘Affect what?’ He didn’t finish. Yes, and then he fell to thinking soMany 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 ] The action of the novel is set in a provincial town in the early autumn. The events are described by the reporter, who is also a participant of the events described. His story begins with the story of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovenskii, the idealist of the forties, and of his complex platonic relationship with Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin - a provincial noble lady, whose patronage he enjoyed.

Hingley, Ronald (1978). Dostoyevsky His Life and Work (1sted.). London: Paul Elek Limited. ISBN 9780236401215. Throughout reading Devils (in Michael R Katz’s translation from Oxford World Classics), I was constantly reminded of David Lindsay’s take on its author: It is not good. It just is. Period. Once I have dumped my connection between ethics and religion, and accepted the reality of the characters, I can read on.

CHAPTER III. THE DUEL

Dostoevsky, Fyodor (2009). A Writer's Diary. Edited and with an introduction by Gary Saul Morson. Translated by Kenneth Lantz. Northwestern University Press. p.65. ISBN 9780810125216. By that evening to Shatov arrives his wife Mary, who has left him after two weeks of marriage. She is pregnant and asks for a temporary shelter. A little later a young little officer Erkel comes to report of tomorrow's meeting. At night, his wife goes into labor. He is running for the midwife and then helps her. He is happy and denotes a new working life to his wife and the child. Exhausted Shatov falls asleep and wakes up in the late dark. For him comes Erkel, together they go to the Stavrogin park. There are already waiting Verkhovenskii, Virginskii, Liputin, Lyamshin, Tolkachenko and Shigalev, who suddenly categorically refuses to take part in the murder, because it is contrary to its program. If Raskolnikov hypnotised me, and Myshkin made me curse, the Devils have a slower, yet even more powerful impact on my mental equilibrium. While I was reading the previous novels in a frenzy, without any interruptions, I had to take a prolonged break in the middle of this one. I just could not stomach the account of the rape of a child, and the subsequent “confession” of the crime by Stavrogin to a monk. The position of the monk regarding the situation was of such evil that I felt I couldn’t read on. I thought I could deal with the Russian nationalist and orthodox mindset by now, but that was too much. The girl committed suicide out of a religious panic, believing she had “killed God” by being raped. 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.