Demons: A Novel in Three Parts

Most of these reviews are about the ideas and politics of Demons (aka The Possessed), or how it compares to Dostoevski's other novels and its place among the "great" books. But you probably know what the book is about already and prefer to make up your own mind about its position in the canon--after you read it. What you really want to know is "will I like it?" The answer is emphatically YES! If you like Dostoevski, Turganev or Tolstoy, you love it. If you read Henry James, Thomas Hardy or George Eliot, you'll love it. If you have a taste for historical fiction, ideas and politics, you'll love it. The great strength of Devils is its characters. Each person is motivated by an `ism (liberalism, feudalism, atheism, nihilism, socialism, etc) which posses him or her like a demon, but they are not flat types or puppets. All the main players are fully drawn flesh and blood people. They have quirks and contradictions that make them completely real. You may not like these people, but they will fascinate you. There's not much plot in Demons. But so do a lot of superb novels: Zorba the Greek, Pale Fire, and David Copperfield, for example. Mark Twain admits Huck Finn has no plot, it's a series of escapades. Jake goes fishing, Brett picks bad men--that's The Sun Also Rises. The dramatic momentum of Demons comes from your own attempts to find a plot in the tensions between the characters (and literally in plotting of the plodding conspirators). Something is definitely going on, you're just never sure what. Part One feels very much like a typical Victorian novel. Men talk at their club. Women jockey for social gain. Rumors fly about linking and relinking the young people into love affairs and scandals. And then just below the surface, the (rather thick) narrator suddenly and nonchalantly exposes a mirroring network of links more sinister than social and anarchic than romantic. As these develop the machinations of the story move from marriage to murder. In this Dostoevski cleverly captures the reader in the same web of dread and paranoia that grips the characters. So it is the interplay of forces, the murkiness and dread that make Demons a page-turner. It's marvelous to experience Here's something else rarely mentioned: Dostoevski had a great sense of humor. There are a number of great comic scenes, gags and zippy one-liners. It's not his popular image, but old Teddy D was a funny guy. This translation (Pavear & Volokhonsky) is very successful at bringing out the humor and rendering into English the zestiness of the dialogue.

A very thought provoking portrait of combating and extreme personalities. As in all Dostoevsky's works, there is a very clear message; it is spelled out by his portrayal of different characters and made convincing by how the reader identifies with and understands both the evil and good present in the characters. I bought the Pevear and Volokhonsky version. The translation itself I thought was better than other Dostoevsky works I've read from other translators (The Brothers K by Garnett and Borders Classic's version of C&P), because I thought that it had fewer awkward and repetitive phrases when describing people. It also had many helpful historical notes lending extra context (needed for the author's then contemporary references). The intro was very helpful as well, giving some interpretive guidance for reading this, as well as other, Dostoevsky works. I've read that some folks find the revolutionary characters in the book unrealistic, a fabrication of the author's mind. However, I would suggest that all who hold this opinion read The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. You will see that his characters are actually quite reasonable compared to the real-life leaders in Stalin's Russia. The P&V version also contains helpful footnotes that point out some events in the book that may seem unbelievable were actually based on real events; including the climax. I think one of my favorite traits about this work is how well explained and logical all the evil ideas seem, but that which is pure and beautiful does not answer this attack with a logical discourse; goodness is beheld in a sort-of silence, a response to truth deeper than a dissertation can express. The main characters always give a convincing why as to their murders and abuses (the real evil characters usually commit wrong from philosophical motives and not from lust), but the one would-be redemptive moment in the book is accompanied by no wordy explanation, only the description of joy and tenderness in the characters participating. Perhaps a hint that the good in humanity is more deeply rooted and hidden than the corruption. This hints at the Orthodox conception of man after the fall, which contrasts with the Calvinistic vision of total depravity that often taints Western thought.

When I read previous translations of Demons, the titles always were The Possessed, so in each case the translators obscured the novel's meaning. Now, I think, after reading Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation, I have been set straight. The demons, in part, are Puskin's goblins and witches, but in a much greater sense they are the lies (rationalism, materialism, anarchism, nihilism, atheism) that enter a man and woman's soul, and like the demons that came out of the man and entered the swine in Luke's Gospel, they drive the man or woman to destruction. Dostoyevsky connects the liberal idealists and freethinkers of 1840's Russia (they are the fathers and mothers) with the Nihilist Revolutionaries of the 1860's. He predicted the Bolshevik Revolution forty years before it happened, because he understood the essence of the revolutionary movement was not social Christianity but Nihilist destruction, from "unlimited freedom it would turn into unlimited despotism." Nikolai Stavrogin stands at the center of the novel, a sensualist, both good and evil, but more evil than good, because evil gives more pleasure. His demon is the thrill some find in danger, sadism, and moral depravity. Stavrogin is strikingly handsome and a taciturn aristocrat, so he is not without glamor. He is mentor to Ivan Shatov, a reformed Nihilist revolutionary, to Pyotr Verkhovensky, the Nihilist revolutionary leader, and to Kirillov, the man-godhead. The novel begins with Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky's story, he a liberal of the `40's who continues his rant under the sponsorship of Varvara Petrovna, Stravogin's mother, in a Russian provincial town, where Pyotr Verkhovensky, Stepan Trofimovich's abandoned son, decides to test his Nihilist theories. I never paid much attention to Stepan Trofimovich's story before, but I did this time, as I did to the point of view of the novel's narrator-chronicler, a settler in the provincial town. I read the novel as a coherent whole, not a shipshod piece like before. Memorable female characters include Marya Ignatievna, a cripple half-wit, married to Stravogin on a whim, Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushin, infatuated with Stavrogin, and Darya Pavlovna (Dasha) Shatov, devoted to Stavrogin. The Foreward and End Notes to the novel are excellent. Humor comes from such unexpected people as Fedka the Convict, an evil soul Dostoyevsky knew well, having spent ten years in a Siberian prison and in exile for his "revolutionary activities." Demons affected me tremendously. Its intellectual power enveloped me in realization after realization

Well. That took me a disappointingly long time to read. My life got flipped upside down at some point after starting this, and the density of the work really requires a pretty clear mind to make sense of the words on the page. I finally did it though, and I am no longer disappointed. While, for me, Demons lacks the accessibility of Crime and Punishment (Everyman's Library) , the poignancy of The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) The Brothers Karamazov , or the emotion of Notes from Underground (Everyman's Library) Dostoevsky still managed to turn a highly political, extremely cerebral, and academically dense novel into something that, in the end, managed to pull me into the novel for more than simple academic curiosity. I am not a student a Russian history, political or otherwise. I am not Russian. It felt like much of the novel was so mired in the history of Russian thought and identity that I became lost and distant from the characters early on. Making my way through Part 1 was a chore. I found it difficult to relate to the characters, difficult to understand, and difficult to keep track of everyone moving in and out of the story. I knew that I wouldn't, but I nearly wanted to give up - hence my foray into the playful sadness of Italo Calvino and the personal narrative of Ham on Rye: A Novel . Once I was able to return to this book and made it to Part II the story finally began to gell, and the characters began to come into their own for me. While this may just make it clear that I was reading this for the wrong reasons, an emotional connection is what I desired and Demons eventually delivered. I can't pretend to understand all of the symbolism, historical touchstones, or philosophical debates that this novel endeavors to bring to the forefront of my mind. I found few passages concise enough that I could even underline - a rarity for me with Dostoevsky. I am, obviously, not the target audience for this book. Nor could I pretend to truly understand the depth of the generational and idealistic clash that was truly the centerpiece of this novel. I felt it... underneath... but it rarely struck me as the raison d'etre for this book. (if he can throw French around incessantly, then surely I get one!) Dostoevsky, however, is a Master and how anyone could walk away from this without gaining something is beyond me. Philosophically, while I found the earlier conversations around the necessity of God for the existence of a great nation, it was Kirillov who finally grabbed my attention and pulled me in. If there is no God then, certainly, I am God. Perhaps this is because I'm still stuck on Albert Camus, but this - to the best of my memory - was one of the first (if not *the* first) things to truly resonate with me. Seen in juxtaposition with Trofimovich's revelations toward the end of the novel these two ideas are the bookends of the piece for me. "My immortality is necessary if only because God will not want to do an injustice and extinguish the fire of love for him once it is kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than Love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and is it possible for being not to bow before it? If I have come to love him and rejoice in my love - is it possible that he should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us to naught? If there is God, I am immortal!" Emotionally... I was afraid this was going to leave me dry. I was taken aback when Liza entered the crowd, but I couldn't tell if I was more surprised by what happened to her or that I found myself caring. The murders covered up by the fire did not shock me - surprising as I kept seeing unrequited love everywhere I looked yet could not empathize Maria Timofeevna. If I was taken aback by my feelings for Liza, I was completely shocked by my care for Shatov. Looking back, it is easy to see why I felt for him more than the others (up to that point), but the story was woven so well and so tightly that I did not even realize I was becoming involved. I felt like a frog in a pot of water with ever-increasing temperature, and once the water boiled, it was too late. Shatov's happiness is my own. My own as I see it. I knew this was fleeting and temporal... Pyotr wouldn't have let it be any other way. Yet still I hoped - and was devastated by the inevitable conclusion. The final fate of his wife and "son" was, I suppose, just as inevitable, but it still felt like a twist of a knife that had already delivered its fatal blow. The way in which Dostoevsky set me up to care about these characters was absolutely brilliant, and I feel he must be wringing his hands and laughing at me as hammer blow after hammer blow fell on the hopes for happiness that he instilled in me for these characters. And then there's Trofimovich... Ever the fool for love. Ever hopeful yet always accepting that this hope could never be realized. Tragic. And, like Shatov, finally finding that for which he was searching only as his story comes to an end. I have to stop reading these types of books because this is just making me setup my own life to end in a similar way, but the feelings evoked in those final scenes were magical. "Enough! Twenty years are gone, there's no bringing them back; I'm a fool, too." That single sentence drove me nearly to tears as if reading a tome like this at the bar wasn't already fool enough. As I said, I suppose I always knew that I would only be let down by the time this story had finished, but I had no idea I would care quite so much. Even for Nikolai... love... happiness, perhaps, was on its way to him. Would it have assuaged his guilt enough to prevent his actions? I do not know. Neither for him nor for myself nor for anyone left in the bloody wake of this story that ripped apart this small town. I wavered on my rating for this... I wanted to give it 3 stars based just on how difficult I felt it was to get into the book at the beginning. Given how much that I know I didn't get and given how much I was eventually affected by the events that unfolded that seemed extremely unfair. This is another one that, given enough time, I'd really like to reread as I think I would get much more out of it. Maybe if I manage to get old I will one day have time to revisit the sins of these little demons.

Great book!

Dostoevsky’s Demons contains, for a nineteenth century novel, something surprisingly relevant to present day issues. For those who don’t know the plot, it is a quintessentially Dostoevskean tale of saintly atheists and monks with deep understandings of human passions together with a large crew of rapscallions. The theme is primarily that of a need for Russia to return to a deep love of the Russian soil, the Russian Church and the “Russian” Christ to preserve it from descending into violent chaos. It’s heralded by some as prophetic of the coming of communism, but I would note that many of the “prophesied” activities of socialists and anarchists could be torn from the pages of a late nineteenth century newspaper and hardly needed a prophetic vision. The theme I found most interesting, and it may be entirely personal, is that Dostoevsky sees classic liberalism, a la John Stuart Mill, as naturally leading to totalitarianism and autocracy. It’s an old view, Plato says much the same in the Republic, but it seems particularly relevant today. How many institutions are forgoing the public marketplace of ideas for a liberal or conservative orthodoxy? Can human beings be motivated by a commitment to intellectual freedom or do we need some deeper cause to align ourselves to? While I’m deeply distrustful of utopian ideas, it does seem like Dostoevsky may have hit upon a basic phenomena of the modern condition. Men and women will use political freedom to gravitate to a cause which gives greater meaning than freedom from intrusion, itself. By all means read Demons for its nineteenth century theological/political dilemmas. But keep in mind that it may have something to say beyond its most self-evident ideas.

Difficult subject material, but excellent translation. I hadn’t read much Dostoevsky since I read Crime and Punishment in college. This was much darker and was based on the true story of a politically motivated murder in Russia in 1869. Knowing that it was based on a true story made it that much darker. It was a difficult book to read, but I don’t regret reading it.

I guess I am a Dostoevsky nerd since I first purchased the hard copy version and then recently the ebook version. As other reviewers have mentioned it is amazing how the author could predict the demons in our lives and the results they produced--not just in the short term but even up to the present. While not intended as a religious book (I think) he shows the results of taking God out of our lives -- it makes rooms for the demons. I enjoy the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky though by including the actual French in the text where appropriate they continually remind me of my poor French fortunately they include the english as footnotes at the bottom of the page. They also include footnotes in the back of the book explaining items that might not be familiar to a casual reader. There are alot of characters and the plot is a lot more involved than the current popular novels so this is certainly not a beach read. I enjoyed the book and it certainly makes you think and I believe it is well worth the effort to read. I highly recommend this book.

A compelling read that delves into the depths of the human psyche and ideological extremism.

I have struggled over the years to read this book in other translations. . In other translations this book appeared to be important and worthy but "hard work". I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this translation. It took a bit (but not much) attention to get into but once there it was by turns, thrilling, thought provoking and ,even at times funny. It reads as a thriller and I was able to get through the book at a pace i normally discover in less weighty novels (the sort you buy to read on long journeys when your attention span is not at its best). In addition it is a book that I will return to shortly as it left unsettling echoes. In fact it haunted me for a little while. I am so glad that I bought this book.

Great!!

Book is good but the fonts and the paper quality is despicable. Not something that can archived for a long time.

One of the greatest stories ever written