Demons (Penguin Classics)

If God is dead and we have killed Him, then this book is an astonishingly accurate portrait of what would happen. It's puzzling, chaotic, deep, and precise — a mental rollercoaster right up to the last word. Truly one of the best books I've ever 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.

First of all, I recommend getting the Maguire translation from Penguin, it's quite a bit more fluid than the P&V translation (which I've also read side by side).This is one of those books that you have to read twice.This book is very complex, kind of a dark Vanity Fair, with lots of characters coming and going. I wouldn't say that the characters are as colorful or enjoyable as Vanity Fair, however. But I don't read Fyodor for entertainment, I read him because William Faulkner cited him as an influence, and I place Faulkner on a pedestal, and nobody writes "human thought" better than Fyodor..What's interesting about this book is that the narrator starts out as someone who wants to write about "certain strange events that took place in our village..." yet he knows just a bit too much. In fact, there is no possible way that the young narrator could possibly know this much, which makes the narration "unreliable" and "unbelievable." As with other Dostoevsky novels, the story is uneasy and becomes more disturbing with each page turn. The theme appears to be that the members of this village become a herd of demonic swine, plunging into an abyss of hopelessness, suicidality, violence, lust... each person in their own way and with their own private pains and motivations. An excellent book. I think I'll have to read it again, because smarter people than I appear to be looking at this book as a kind of satire. I don't know. My interpretation of Dostoevsky is that he was fascinated with Christianity and trying to reconcile that despite observing criminal behavior. I have a feeling that every criminal psychologist needs to read his novels. In the end, if you are a bright, sunny person-- don't read this! This novel is a bummer and it is going to fill your head with some dark thoughts.Thanks for reading the review, I hope you enjoy whatever book you decide to read next!