And you know it all comes from that same half-bakedness, that sentimentality. They are fascinated, not by realism, but by the emotional ideal side of socialism, by the religious note in it, so to say, by the poetry of it… second-hand, of course. 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). 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 ] 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]

Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.”

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Going into his last pilgrimage, Stepan Trofimovich dies in a peasant hut on the hands of a rushed to him Varvara Petrovna. Before his death, a random fellow traveler, whom he tells of his entire life, reads him the Gospel, and he compares the possessed, from whom Christ cast out demons entered into the pigs, with Russia. This passage from the Gospel is taken by he reporter as one of the epigraphs to the novel. 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." [9] 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. Maguire died of cancer having completed the first round of revisions of his translation. He had charged editor Ronald Meyer with the responsibility of helping the manuscript into print should he be unable to see the project through to the end himself, so Meyer sorted out the remaining loose ends. Demons is what you get when you mix a writer who is a philosopher on par with the thinking greats + a writer who is a psychologist on par with the behavioral greats + a writer who is a preacher on par with the moral greats. Oh, and you better make damn sure this writer is hypergraphic.

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.

In the aftermath, Pyotr Stepanovich (who was mysteriously absent from the reading) seeks to persuade a traumatized Julia Mikhaylovna that it wasn't as bad as she thinks and that it is essential for her to attend the ball. He also lets her know that the town is ringing with the news of another scandal: Lizaveta Nikolaevna has left her home and fiancé and gone off to Skvoreshniki with Stavrogin.