Verzamelde werken 7 : Boze geesten

This is my second Dostoyevsky novel, after the Brothers Karamazov. Like that work, I was engaged by Dostoyevsky's narrative voice, which always has a hint of ironic humor, even when he is discussing truly terrible things - and there are a lot of them in this book. In the end, it descends into a

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maelstrom of nihilism (OK - that's a bit overdone, but you get in that mood after reading this author.) The book isn't as good as the Brothers Karamazov because the events and characters are even more inexplicable. I guess my problem with Dostoyevsky is that I'm not Russian. His characters do and say things that just don't seem very logical to me - but obviously THEY feel very deeply about what they are doing. I don't know if it is the "19th century"-ness or the Russian-ness of the novel that creates the most problems. Still, I'm intrigued, and the next time I'm heading out for a vacation and want to take a book I can be sure I won't finish in two weeks, I may pick up another one of his. There is considerable pleasure to be found spending a few disoriented weeks in his company and that of his fascinating, if ultimately tragic, characters.

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As with all books by Dostoyevsky, the characters are what makes it. He takes one plot incident and builds around it, circling like an eagle, then jumps on his prey, which is you the reader.

I started this about a week ago, and it has been slow going (as evidence, I bought and read [Farewell My Lovely] in the interim). In Doestoyesvksy, we are always on the edge of horrendous behaviour. All we need to do is will it, and we can betray our family, abuse an old man, cover ourselves

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irretrievably in shame. Chilling. (3.3.07)

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The appended chapter, which was apparently too strong for the first publisher, should really be put back in the place where Dostoevsky wanted it. The reader is supposed to compare Kirillov's behaviour with Stavrogin's, and you only get the contrast when you see the reasons for Stavrogin's behaviour

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in the appended chapter.

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better the 2nd time through... can hardly stand the whole russian tendency to stereotype themselves, or their continual rebelling against their government.... but yeah, decent.

I read it about 35 years ago, but include it here to go with other more recently read Dostoyevsky books. The emphasis was mainly on the cynical and, from Dostoyevsky's point of view, misguided activities of political radicals in Russia at that time. There are some interesting portraits, such as

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that of Stavrogin, but the book is not as compelling as Crime and Punishment, which I also read at that time.

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: Another really good book by what is becoming my favourite author behind Charles Dickens. The way he presents philosophic ideas and then takes them to their disastrous conclusions makes for very powerful reading. The one thing disappointing about this novel is the removal of Stavorgin's Confession

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to the back of the book. The chapter, probably the best in the book, would have given a better understanding of Stavrogin's actions later in the book. The description of pedophilia though makes it understandable why it wasn't included in the main canon, but surely in these immoral days it could be included in the book.

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Have decided not to continue with this (p175/700). It is going nowhere and the characters are uniformly irritating. I accept this is probably the author's intention, but it doesn't help. Life is too short and there are too many other books to read. No rating.

I like this novel better than most of the rest of Dostoevsky's work - things actually *happen,* and they're interesting, to boot.

That being said, I'm not super-fond of this translation (Pevear and Volokhonsky) I think it's miles better than their translation of The Idiot - this novel, for example,

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doesn't have any instances of very awkward and/or confusing word choice - but their treatment of the French phrases really grates on me. I feel like there should have been a smoother way to integrate them. I'm not a French speaker, and there is a character who speaks half his dialogue in French - it was very frustrating to have to refer back to the translation every sentence or so. It was this that made me positively *hate* the character Stepan Trofimovich, though I think the author meant me to feel sympathy towards him.

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One of the strongest impressions I get from reading this and other Russian books from the 19th Century, is that of a closed society. Censorship of the press, restriction on free association of individuals, conformity to norms dictated by superiors, and severe punishment of dissent.
Revolutionaries

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always seem to be up against impossible odds when they battle against the state. I am almost sure that they are going to die trying. And this is why I admire them all the more. In my own rational smug assurance that I can protect myself, there is the biggest contrast with revolutionaries that don't care about the risks (e.g.: Nikolai Stavrogin ), or, if they do, they are successful at quashing their doubts and just go ahead with their daring acts.
Is it true that there are some heroic revolutionaries or dissidents who have no fear? The superstars of civil disobedience? I think so. Is this just another way of saying that the best way to be a revolutionary is to be crazy to begin with? Probably not.
When we think now about all the things that happened 20 and 30 years after the death of Dostoyevsky, he seems awfully fore-knowing. Of course, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on March 13, 1881 was scarcely a month after Dostoyevsky's own death. What would he have made of this event? One can only guess.

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I've read this great political novel, but in a crappy old translation with no footnotes. The Pevear / Volokhonsky translation of Karamazov was such an improvement that I'm now working on going back and reading all of the great Russians in their versions.

Certainly an underappreciated work of Dostoevsky's, but also not the place to begin reading. Demons is better crafted, as regards plot, than The Idiot but lacks a lot of the latter's charm. The first section of the book is terribly dull -- things begin to pick up when we return to the present and

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Pyotr Stepanovich arrives. Stavrogin is fascinating. It's frustrating that he doesn't get a real conclusion.
Demons might actually be more heartbreaking than the average novel of Dostoevsky, in part because F.M. doesn't get around to fleshing out a couple of the most sympathetic characters until their fates have caught up with them. Worth readings -- but only after reading several of his other novels.

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I liked The Demons, mostly its characters, though sometimes the dialogue devolves in such funny ways. The translation may be a bit uneven. This is not the translation I read, actually, but the one by Magarshack.

Part two of my grand 'I should read Dostoevsky's big 3' plan, and much more successful than part 1, Brothers K. Demons was *way* funnier, ultimately much darker, and less mind-numbingly repetitive than K; in fact, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's baggy as hell; but it's tighter than K. It has all

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the tricks and gadgets you'd expect, but they're less intrusive. The strangest gadget by far is the indeterminate narrator. He's a character... who knows what other characters are thinking, even when he wasn't present while they were doing whatever it was they were doing. Is this okay? I really can't tell. It definitely makes it harder to suspend disbelief. But if you're not a big one for suspending disbelief, I'm sure you can come up with some justification for this technique, for instance, it's a really great novel! Or perhaps something involving much more French theory.

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Demons is a very political novel about extreme political views and the ineptitude of the conservative status quo to control them. The book centers around Pyotr Verkhovensky, who is a nihilist and a bit of an opportunist, whose political views lead to death and destruction. Also present is

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Shigalovism, which is kind of a twisted sort of Communism, and the conservatism of the local governor, Lembke. Meanwhile, the reader is left to make sense of Pyotr's intellectual father, Stepan, who seems to be muddled in his beliefs, and there is also the enigmatic Nickolay Stavrogin, who seems to lack any real convictions at all. This interplay of different characters and their beliefs, both harmless and destructive, lie at the heart of the novel and tell us a lot about Dostoyevsky's view of Russia at this time.

While I found the characters and the politics interesting, I was a bit put off by this book. For one thing, it took Dostoyevsky way too long to get past basic characterization and get to the plot of the novel. For this reason, I thought that this was not nearly as well crafted as the other three Dostoyevsky novels that I have read. Additionally, the use of first person narrator who was a confidante of Stepan was off-putting as well. There were several scenes that seemed to drift into third person as the narrator could not have possibly have known about what was happening. An example of this would be a conversation between two people who would not live long enough to share their conversation with anyone else. However, just when I thought that Dostoyevsky had switched narrative styles, the narrator would start telling you things that had happened in the first person. It was very jarring and made it difficult for me to enjoy the novel. For these reasons, while this is a decent novel, I didn't find it to be nearly as good as the other three Dostoyevsky novels that I haver read.

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I've loved many Dostoyevsky novels before. I appreciated this novel, especially once I finished it and let it turn over a bit in my mind, but it is definitively more time-consuming and less immediately rewarding than classics like [Crime and Punishment]. While that book started off with a bang,

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this one has what I would consider to be an inordinate amount of set-up.

If you get through the set up, you're rewarded. This is a stunning philosophical treatise. The revelations about Stavrogin are especially dark given the period this was written, and the way he ends up raises numerous philosophical questions about the theory he averred and what was actually going on in his mind.

All that said, I wouldn't recommend this to Dostoyevsky newbies or those who don't care for ponderous Russian literature.

Finally, I should note that this novel is much more French-heavy than Dostoyevsky's other works. In college, I frequently said I know just enough French to read classic Russian literature, but this pushed my limits of comprehension a few times.

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Fantastic book. So subtly described, sensitive in almost every word, funny and at the same time tragic in almost every sentence.
Events are recorded thoroughly and a point is made based on a lifetime of personal experiences.

Probably my favorite work by Dostoyevsky, Demons discusses the implications of nihilism and the drive for destructive revolution. Built within are allegories to traditional Russian views of evil and devils, which can easily make the reader wonder if the antagonists are really just evil nihilist

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revolutionaries or something even more sinister.

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A protracted illustration of the moral etc. decay as shown by a small Russian town.

Not much of a story.

The first 350 pages were very tedious, but after that long build up, it did finally get good.

I finished this at a doctor's office, not my doctor's, but my wife's. She had the flu. When my wife was in the hospital a few years before that and on the door his name was posted adjacent to her's: Faith - Grief.

There's a great deal of both in this amazing novel. I should ask Dr. Grief if he

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likes Dostoevsky. I am afraid to as he looks as if he's only 15 years old.

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This was a decent novel, but I do not consider it among the finer of Dotoyevsky's works. There seemed to be a little distance, with the style of the writing, that enforced a certain reticence involving the reading. Although there were good parts, and great character development, overall it felt

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lacking.

3 stars.

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What is a “true” Russian? Why is “the real truth” always implausible. Is belief only ironic or is it real or both? These are just a few of the questions dealt with by Dostoevsky in Demons, his great novel that is predecessor to The Brothers Karamazov.

He questions whether atheism is a reason

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or a result of rebellion, and the saying that “An atheist cannot be Russian”. The result is a novel that compares favorably and provides an eloquent introduction to themes that will be dealt with at the family level in The Brothers Karamazov.

Liberalism and Socialism is contrasted by representative characters from two different generations. One is that of Herzen and the liberals, represented by Stepan Verkhovensky and others. While Stepan's son, Pyotr, is the reputed leader of the new generation of nihilist anarchists who are the precursors and somewhat participants in the rise of the Russian intelligentsia.

Demons does not only look forward, but also backward as can be seen in comparison with The Idiot which ends with Prince Myshkin in a Swiss Asylum; the silence of madness.
The Demons ends with the silence of suicide. (You have to read it to find out who, when, and why) The cabalists (the fivesome) are representatives of the central importance of ideology (nihilistic anarchism). The lives of the cabalists literally depend on the whims of their leader, Pyotr, and their own willingness to follow the ideology.

Through all of the novel there is in the background, Nikolai Stavrogin, son of Varvara Petrovna, spinning his web, better yet acting as a puppeteer while others speak and act for him and as his whim commands. Compared to The Underground Man, Stavrogin is relatively silent; he lets others speak for him: Pyotr, “you wrote the rules . . .); Shatov, “I was the pupil, you were the teacher”; Kirilov, “Go look at [Kirilov] now---he's your creation”.

The plot seems somewhat complex, but the organization can be seen more simply when one views the contrast between the two generations, Stepan and Varvara vs. Pyotr and Nikolai, and within that the detail maneuvering with the additional characters, especially the changing views within each generation and between the two.

Ultimately there is a coming together of characters and the ideas they represent in a sort of maelstrom of events at the end of Part Three of the novel. It concludes with an explosion of activity that is only hinted at in the long introduction in Part One. That is just one of the aspect of this novel that raises it to one of the best from the pen of Dostoevsky.

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