Demons (pre-reform Russian: Бѣсы; post-reform Russian: Бесы, romanized: Bésy, IPA: [ˈbʲe.sɨ]; sometimes also called The Possessed or The Devils) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871–72.
It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large-scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as «Dostoevsky’s most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily ‘tragic’ work.» According to Ronald Hingley, it is Dostoevsky’s «greatest onslaught on Nihilism», and «one of humanity’s most impressive achievements—perhaps even its supreme achievement—in the art of prose fiction.»
Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s. A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky. The mysterious aristocratic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin—Verkhovensky’s counterpart in the moral sphere—dominates the book, exercising an extraordinary influence over the hearts and minds of almost all the other characters. The idealistic, Western-influenced intellectuals of the 1840s, epitomized in the character of Stepan Verkhovensky (who is both Pyotr Verkhovensky’s father and Nikolai Stavrogin’s childhood teacher), are presented as the unconscious progenitors and helpless accomplices of the «demonic» forces that take possession of the town.
Title of the novel
The original Russian title is Bésy (‹See Tfd›Russian: Бесы, singular Бес, bés), which means «demons». There are three English translations: The Possessed, The Devils, and Demons. Constance Garnett’s 1916 translation popularized the novel and gained it notoriety as The Possessed, but this title has been disputed by later translators. They argue that «The Possessed» points in the wrong direction because Bésy refers to active subjects rather than passive objects—»possessors» rather than «the possessed.» «Demons» in this sense refer not so much to individuals as to the ideas that possess them. For Dostoevsky, ‘ideas’ are living cultural forces that have the capacity to seduce and subordinate the individual consciousness, and the individual who has become alienated from his own concrete national traditions is particularly susceptible. According to translator Richard Pevear, the demons are «that legion of isms that came to Russia from the West: idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and, underlying them all, atheism.» The counter-ideal (expressed in the novel through the character of Ivan Shatov) is that of an authentically Russian culture growing out of the people’s inherent spirituality and faith, but even this—as mere idealization and an attempt to reassert something that has been lost—is another idea and lacks real force.
In a letter to his friend Apollon Maykov, Dostoevsky alludes to the episode of the Exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac in the Gospel of Luke as the inspiration for the title: «Exactly the same thing happened in our country: the devils went out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine… These are drowned or will be drowned, and the healed man, from whom the devils have departed, sits at the feet of Jesus.» Part of the passage is used as an epigraph, and Dostoevsky’s thoughts on its relevance to Russia are given voice by Stepan Verkhovensky on his deathbed near the end of the novel.
Background
In late 1860s Russia there was an unusual level of political unrest caused by student groups influenced by liberal, socialist, and revolutionary ideas. In 1869, Dostoevsky conceived the idea of a ‘pamphlet novel’ directed against the radicals. He focused on the group organized by young agitator Sergey Nechayev, particularly their murder of a former comrade—Ivan Ivanov [ru]—at the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in Moscow. Dostoevsky had first heard of Ivanov from his brother-in-law, who was a student at the academy, and had been much interested in his rejection of radicalism and exhortation of the Russian Orthodox Church and the House of Romanov as the true custodians of Russia’s destiny. He was horrified to hear of Ivanov’s murder by the Nechayevists, and vowed to write a political novel about what he called «the most important problem of our time.» Prior to this Dostoevsky had been working on a philosophical novel (entitled ‘The Life of a Great Sinner’) examining the psychological and moral implications of atheism. The political polemic and parts of the philosophical novel were merged into a single larger scale project, which became Demons. As work progressed, the liberal and nihilistic characters began to take on a secondary role as Dostoevsky focused more on the amoralism of a charismatic aristocratic figure—Nikolai Stavrogin.
Although a merciless satirical attack on various forms of radical thought and action, Demons does not bear much resemblance to the typical anti-nihilist novels of the era (as found in the work of Nikolai Leskov for example), which tended to present the nihilists as deceitful and utterly selfish villains in an essentially black and white moral world. Dostoevsky’s nihilists are portrayed in their ordinary human weakness, drawn into the world of destructive ideas through vanity, naïveté, idealism, and the susceptibility of youth. In re-imagining Nechayev’s orchestration of the murder, Dostoevsky was attempting to «depict those diverse and multifarious motives by which even the purest of hearts and the most innocent of people can be drawn in to committing such a monstrous offence.» In A Writer’s Diary, he discusses the relationship of the ideas of his own generation to those of the current generation, and suggests that in his youth he too could have become a follower of someone like Nechayev. As a young man Dostoevsky himself was a member of a radical organisation (the Petrashevsky Circle), for which he was arrested and exiled to a Siberian prison camp. Dostoevsky was an active participant in a secret revolutionary society formed from among the members of the Petrashevsky Circle. The cell’s founder and leader, the aristocrat Nikolay Speshnev, is thought by many commentators to be the principal inspiration for the character of Stavrogin.
Narration of the novel Demons
The first person narrator is a minor character, Anton Lavrentyevich G—v, who is a close friend and confidant of Stepan Verkhovensky. Young, educated, upright, and sensible, Anton Lavrentyevich is a local civil servant who has decided to write a chronicle of the strange events that have recently occurred in his town. Despite being a secondary character, he has a surprisingly intimate knowledge of all the characters and events, such that the narrative often seems to metamorphose into that of the omniscient third person. According to Joseph Frank, this unusual narrative point-of-view enables Dostoevsky «to portray his main figures against a background of rumor, opinion and scandal-mongering that serves somewhat the function of a Greek chorus in relation to the central action.»
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.
Major characters
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.
The novel begins with the narrator’s affectionate but ironic description of Stepan Trofimovich’s character and early career. He had the beginnings of a career as a lecturer at the University, and for a short time was a prominent figure among the exponents of the ‘new ideas’ that were beginning to influence Russian cultural life. He claims that government officials viewed him as a dangerous thinker, forcing him out of academia and into exile in the provinces, but in reality, it was more likely that no one of note in the government even knew who he was. In any case, his anxiety prompted him to accept Varvara Stavrogina’s proposal that he take upon himself «the education and the entire intellectual development of her only son in the capacity of a superior pedagogue and friend, not to mention a generous remuneration.»
A chaste, idealistic but fraught relationship between Stepan Trofimovich and Varvara Stavrogina continues long after the tuition has ceased. In a cynical but not entirely inaccurate critique of his father, Pyotr Stepanovich describes their mutual dependence thus: «she provided the capital, and you were her sentimental buffoon.»
Though very conscious of his own erudition, higher ideals and superior aesthetic sensibilities, Stepan Trofimovich doesn’t actually seem to do anything at all in the scholarly sense. He is utterly dependent on Varvara Petrovna financially and she frequently rescues him from the consequences of his irresponsibility. When he perceives that he has been unjust or irresponsible in relation to her, he is overcome with shame to the point of physical illness.
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.
She supports Stepan Trofimovich financially
