Demons

Good paperback edition with large, readable text. Virtually no damage on arrival.

Can't comment its content yet, even htough I have no doubts it's great.But the copy arrived with significantly distorted cover on both sides.Still, arrived on time.

I lack of knowledge of Russian political and moral nihilism during the reign of Tsar Alexander II, but Demons is based on real fact happened on November 1869s which Dostoevsky got inspired and portrayed in this novel, first published in 1872 on the Russian Herald Journal.It is narrated by a close friend of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, his name is Anton Lavrentievich G— who tells not only the inner conflict of good and evil and the hypocrisy of high society but also the inevitable gap between two generations, father and sons, and the conflict between values and traditionalistsPyotr Venkhovensky, the son of Stephan Trofinovich Venkhovensky, an academic who contributed to the nihilistic forces, is the manipulative, anti-nihilistic young man based on the revolutionary Sergey Nechayev, leader of a small group of conspirators: indeed his character is the mastermind behind other characters' choices, enamoured of Nikolai Stavrogin, the main character of the novel, son of Varvara Patrovna, a wealthy landowner. Stavrogin is charming, handsome, fearless and self-centred but at the same time pensive, apathetic and tormented to death by something, like an evil entity eating him alive. He is constantly absent in the novel, Dostoevsky does it on purpose, describing perfectly his 'non-existence persona'. Pyotr sees in Stavrogin a symbolic leader for the revolutionary cell, whose members are also Ivan Shatov, a skeptical, generally taciturn and melancholic former intellectual, brother of Darya Pavlovna. His character was also based by a student murdered during Sergey Nechayev's propaganda - and Alexei Kirillov, an engineer who lives and spent a year in America working as farm worker with Shatov; atheist, reclusive and fanatic young man who fully depicts the Übermensch concept of Friedrich Nietzche to become God – or better the ‘Man-God’."Generally speaking, in every misfortune that befalls one's neighbour there is something that gladdens the eye of the onlooker, it doesn't make any difference who you may be."(Part II, Chapter 5)Dense, corrupt, dark - Dostoevsky has done a majestic job intersecting the lives of all its characters, and there are many, so as to create a continuity throughout the story. During the reading you have to be very careful not to leave out every little detail, in fact it took me two and a half months to read it, but it was totally worth it !

Always instructive and just an overall great read.

Demons or Devils or The Possessed, depending on which translation you pick up, is a complex book. Dostoyevsky himself admitted in a letter that he would sacrifice straightforward readability for the tendentiousness of the message(s) he transmits in this novel.As an example the narrator Gogonov shifts from being part of the narrative and observing events to being completely detached from the tale being told. At times the reader wonders how he knows so much of what he tells. He goes from describing the plot without judgment, to judging very acutely certain occurrences and characters being described.Demons takes on a smörgåsbord of very dense political, philosophical and religious issues. This is one of the high points of the novel, its 'inner stuffing,' standard Dostoyevsky fare. You may be forced to stop at times and re-read passages or discussions amongst the characters, to try to take them in, chew them and consider them seriously.Dostoyevsky intended for his audience to ponder the case in point. Many have hailed him prophetic in his prediction - through Shigalyov's political utopia - of the amount of people that would be slaughtered in the 20th century due to political ideologies that did for the most part tend to tilt to the side of 'ego trips', as Robert Belknap correctly observes in the introduction - Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and so on - the number being around 100 million.Most importantly, Dostoyevsky was worried about the influence of materialist, nihilistic and atheistic ideas, aggressively transmitted, which could 'infect' or spread through the inadvertent youth of the day - and did eventually lead to the disasters Russia underwent following its 1917 revolution - when he wrote Demons. Of no less importance is the religious side, with Kirillov and the monk Tikhon as the main proponents, as well as the holy fool Semyon Yakovlevich. There is much that is discussed regarding God, Christ, the church, etc. providing food for philosophical as well as religious thought.The story is divided into three parts, the first concerning itself chiefly with high society in a rural town in 1860's Russia - the 'Society Tale' -, followed by a second part - the Anti-Nihilist 'political tract', if you will - which details closely the workings of the main characters of the work as they plant the seeds of the havoc that will ensue in the third part of the novel, Belknap considering it to be the 'Psychological Novel' part, the invention of which is accredited to Dostoyevsky himself.Demons is profoundly moving. It is inevitable that you sympathize with the main 'villain' - clearly a troubled character - Stavrogin. This man, and his continuous bouts of clear consciousness and what one sees as kindness and magnanimity, make the analysis of his behavior on the other side of the spectrum harder. It is an unfortunate debacle, the state of affairs he ends up creating for himself.Dostoyevsky was clearly pointing the finger at the 'softer' radicals of the 1840's as being the root of the calamity. Their jabberings in support of what were considered 'new' ideas, all the nihilistic and atheistic propositions that were en vogue at the time, would lead to a more active radical next generation that would take it upon itself to 'shake the very foundations of society' and it's moral mores.In the end I gave the book 5 stars because this version is absolutely fantastic. The endnotes are comprehensive and give a much-needed overall guide to Russian cultural and other references throughout the work, as well as a splendid introduction which I read after completing the novel, a chronology, a dictionary of the terms and a list of the characters.A very fine edition from Penguin. If you want to read Dostoyevsky, maybe you could treat yourself to start with The Idiot or something softer, more accessible. But if you want to rush straight into one of his more problematic and intense works, look no further. Just the character Kirillov makes such a dramatic appearance. He is at once a rational, delusional, sympathetic and extreme person, who will keep you hooked to his speeches and actions.Highly recommended.