Demons (Penguin Classics)

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Originally employed as a tutor to Stavrogina's son Nikolai Vsevolodovich, Stepan Trofimovich has been there for almost twenty years in an intimate but platonic relationship with his noble patroness. Influenced by gossip, he begins to suspect that he is being married off to cover up "another man's sins" and writes "noble" letters to his fiancée and Nikolai Vsevolodovich.

Already have a favorite translation of Demons? Let us know which one and why in the comments! More Dostoevsky They are a husband-and-wife translation team. Pevear was born in the US and Volokhonsky in Russia. Together they have translated works by Bulgakov, Gogol, Pasternak, Chekhov, Turgenev, and Pushkin as well as Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, The Master and Margarita, and War and Peace. Separately, Pevear has also translated works in French, Italian, Spanish, and Greek, including The Three Musketeers. A troubled Varvara Petrovna has just returned from Switzerland where she has been visiting Nikolai Vsevolodovich.

PART II

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? French cleverness …” he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever …“that’s false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It’s it was all so honourable. Suppose that something really happened … en Suisse… or was beginning. I was bound to question their hearts Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky is a refined and high-minded intellectual who unintentionally contributes to the development of nihilistic forces, centering on his son Pyotr Stepanovich and former pupil Nikolai Stavrogin, that ultimately bring local society to the brink of collapse. The character is Dostoevsky's rendering of an archetypal liberal idealist of the 1840s Russian intelligentsia, and is based partly on Timofey Granovsky and Alexander Herzen. [21]

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. First of all, a little note. I’ve read the book in Russian, and normally I would review it in Russian as well. But I think the Demons are unjustifiably overshadowed in the West by other Dostoevsky novels. So I wanted to write something to change the situation a bit. There comes a long-awaited day of the festival. The highlight of the program is a reading of a famous writer Karmazinov his farewell "Merci", and then diatribe of Stepan Trofimovich. He passionately defends Raphael and Shakespeare from nihilists. His is booed and proudly removes from the scene. It becomes known that Lisa Tushino in daylight suddenly moved from her carriage, leaving Mauritius alone, into the Stavrogin’s carriage and drove off to his estate. Highlight of the second part of the festival is "quadrille of literature," ugly, grotesque allegorical action. The governor and his wife are beside themselves with indignation. Here is reported that the district is burning, allegedly set on fire by spies, later became known about murder of Captain Lebyadkin, his sister and the maid. Governor goes to the fire, where the log falls on him. 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… El principal personaje por el que giran la mayoría de los acontecimientos es Piotr Stepanovich Verjovenski. Con poco sentido de la sensibilidad y bastante inhumano por momentos, su único motivo en la vida es lograr poner en funcionamiento "su causa", su revolución y para ello utilizará todos los recursos y que tenga a mano. Su idea de la revolución está formada hace mucho y la tiene muy estudiada. Para él es tan clara como el agua. Creo que todo el meollo de su doctrina hace eclosión en un capítulo clave, al final de la segunda parte en donde Verjovenski le expone a Stavroguin lo que persigue para poner en marcha su golpe revolucionario:Julia Mikhaylovna von Lembke is the Governor's wife. Her vanity and liberal ambition are exploited by Pyotr Stepanovich for his revolutionary aims. The conspirators succeed in transforming her Literary Fête for the benefit of poor governesses into a scandalous farce. Dostoevsky's depiction of the relationship between Pyotr Stepanovich and Julia Mikhaylovna had its origins in a passage from Nechayev's Catechism where revolutionaries are instructed to consort with liberals "on the basis of their own program, pretending to follow them blindly" but with the purpose of compromising them so that they can be "used to provoke disturbances." [35] Open Culture: “Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapting Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed for the Theatre, 1959” by Mike Springer

The narrator's voice is intelligent, frequently ironic and psychologically perceptive, but it is only periodically the dominant voice, and often seems to disappear altogether. Much of the narrative unfolds dialogically, implied and explicated through the interactions of the characters, the internal dialogue of a single character, or through a combination of the two, rather than through the narrator's story-telling or description. In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin describes Dostoevsky's literary style as polyphonic, with the cast of individual characters being a multiplicity of " voice-ideas", restlessly asserting and defining themselves in relation to each other. The narrator in this sense is present merely as an agent for recording the synchronisation of multiple autonomous narratives, with his own voice weaving in and out of the contrapuntal texture. [19] [20] Characters [ edit ] Major characters [ edit ] I think of Demons/Devils/Possessed and BK as offering the two possibilities for Russia then, with BK offering the hopeful alternative, centered in Alyosha and the lads; and Demons showing the other (with the burning of the village). Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina is a wealthy and influential landowner, residing on the magnificent estate of Skvoreshniki where much of the action of the novel takes place. Peace, Richard Arthur (1971). Dostoyevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels (1sted.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521079112. Fed'ka the Convict is an escaped convict who is suspected of several thefts and murders in the town. He was originally a serf belonging to Stepan Trofimovich, but was sold into the army to help pay his master's gambling debts. It is Fed'ka who murders Stavrogin's wife and her brother, at the instigation of Pyotr Stepanovich. Stavrogin himself initially opposes the murder, but his later actions suggest a kind of passive consent.Robert Maguire was a professor of Slavic languages. He produced translations from Polish and Russian. He was an expert on Gogol. After an almost illustrious but prematurely curtailed academic career Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky is residing with the wealthy landowner Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina at her estate, Skvoreshniki, in a provincial Russian town.