Devils (Oxford World's Classics)

Sensational novel - does take nearly 100 pages to gather momentum, but then takes off like a shot. Peter Stepanovich Verkhovensky is one of literature's great villains, a character you wish you could grab by the scruff of the neck and shake him senseless, then turn him over to the police. But "Devils" is packed with memorable characters and, of course, Dostoyevsky's philosophy. And some humor, actually. Right off we are introduced to Stepan Trofimiovich, a washed up intellectual, Peter's father, who has been sponging off Varvara Petrovna, Stavrogin's mother. He affects more influence than he's ever had, yet is a good friend of the "narrator." "Yet he was a very intelligent and talented man, even, so to say, a scholar, although, in fact, his scholarship...well, in a word, his scholarship had accomplished very little, in fact, it seems, it had accomplished nothing at all. But then that happens all the time with men of learning in Russia." Later, one Russian man wakes up following a bout with vodka, in "the heavy, oppressed, hazy condition of a man who's suddenly awaken after a long drinking-bout. He looked as though a couple of slaps on the back and he'd be drunk again immediately." There is, as always with Dostoyevsky, some implausible developments a reader just has to accept. Dostoyevsky loves to have scenes where two guys meet in a St. Petersburg bar, and they look at each other as if they recognize some deep connection. One will say something like, "I've just come back from Nova Scotia," and the other will cry, "Do you know, I had a feeling you were going to say you'd just gone to Nova Scotia." Ridiculous, but it's a familiar device with him. But all that pales before his monumental theme, that nihilism and socialism are tearing the society apart, that revolutionaries inevitable destroy but don't build, and that life divorced from a Christian sense of ethics leads to violence and chaos. D. famously took a real event, where a nihilist group led by the criminal Nechaev, murdered one of their own. "It was a peculiar time; something new was in the air, quite unlike the previous tranquility, something very peculiar indeed, and it was perceived everywhere..." Peter Stepanovich (Nechaev) first comes to our attention via nasty letters to his old man, who asks, "why is it all these desperate socialists and communists are also so incredibly miserly, acquisitive, and proprietorial? In fact, the more socialist someone is, the further he's gone in that direction, the stronger his proprietorial instinct." When we finally meet Peter, in a section "The wise serpent," he is described in satanic terms: "No one could say he was unattractive, yet no one liked his face. His head was elongated at the back, and seemed flattened at the sides, so his face appeared pointed. His forehead was high and narrow, but his features were small; his eyes were sharp, his nose small and pointed, his lips long and thin." Time and again, Peter Stepanovich has "an obvious desire to provoke by a naivete that was arrogant, premediated and intentionally rude." He is patently insincere with most everyone, a despicable man on most every level. The tortured soul Stavrogin, who Peter wants to use as a figurehead for his absurd dreams of revolution, sees through Peter repeatedly. Nevertheless, Peter's plans, which he sets in motion with his handful of accomplices, rip the town apart, leaving at least four people murdered and a good section of the town in smoldering, charred ruins. He is explicit in one passage where he lays out his infamous thinking to Stavrogin, in what was an eerie presentiment of Lenin's actual program. Peter is referring to the writings of another member of the group, Shigaylov: "The great intellects have always seized the power and been despots. The great intellects cannot help being despots and they’ve always done more harm than good. They will be banished or put to death. Cicero will have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, Shakespeare will be stoned - that’s Shivagolism. Slaves are bound to be equal. There has never been freedom or equality without despotism, but in the herd there is bound to be equality, and that’s Shigalovism!” “...Down with culture. We’ve had enough science! Without science we have material enough to go on for a thousand years, but one must have discipline. The one thing wanting in the world is discipline. The thirst for culture is an aristocratic thirst. The moment you have family ties or love you get the desire for property. We will destroy that desire; we’ll make use of drunkenness, slander, spying; we’ll make use of incredible corruption; we’ll stifle every genius in his infancy. We’ll reduce all to a common denominator! Complete equality!...Only the necessary is necessary, that’s the motto of the whole world henceforward. But it needs a shock. That’s for us, the directors, to look after. Slaves must have directors. Absolute submission, absolute loss of the individuality, but once in thirty years Shigalov would let them have a shock and they would all suddenly begin eating one another up, to a certain point, simply as a precaution against boredom...Shigalovism is for the slaves.” In the end, he gets his group to murder Shatov who, in one of those improbable Dostoyevskian turn of events, is unexpected joined by his pregnant wife the night before he is to be clipped. It changes his outlook, of course, and Dostoyevsky has a wonderful passage when the child is born and how it impacts Shatov. From that point on, Shatov seems to speak for Dostoyevsky. He has split from the socialist group. "But who was it I deserted? Enemies of real life; antiquated little liberals afraid of their own independence; lackeys of thought, enemies of personality and freedom, decrepit preachers of death and decay! What do they have? Old age, the golden mean, base philistine mediocrity, envious equality, equality with no sense of dignity, equality as understood by lackeys or Frenchmen in 1793...But the main thing is, they're all scoundrels, scoundrels, scoundrels, and more scoundrels." Just who the narrator is of "Devils" is a topic scholars have pondered for decades. It seems to be different people, yet much of it is told in the first person. But most readers won't get tangled up in that. The whole is an amazing, powerful book that deserves rereading.

Went from not finishing the P&V translation to being maybe my favorite Dostoevsky novel.

A must have for any antiquated literary collector.

peter verkhovensky the best ragebaiter in fiction

Reading Dostoevsky, you get a sense of what the allure of reality TV might be--he puts characters on display with all their extremity and horror and hypocrisy intact. The events of this novel are filled with the horrors on man--psychological scheming to twist loyalties, love/hate relationships, building up to murder and rape, but at the same time with a level of humor that reality TV sorely misses (the ability to make us laugh WITH of course, not AT), for Dostoevsky makes his characters utterly recognizable rather than unsympathetic freakshow and persists in holding up that mirror as his characters act stupidly, or courageously, or horrifically. The tale begins with the twisted relationship between Varvara Petrovna, a widowed woman of means who has been housing Stepan Trofimovich, an out-of-touch academic. The two hate each other but stand to be apart, and their sons concoct a scheme in the name of revolution that will throw the community into turmoil. As opposed to Brothers K or Crime & Punishment, Devils looks at community as a character, and the stupidity of crowds, and does so in a way that is educational and soulful, showing us what he can't get from reality TV. Also, my strongest recommendation is of this particular translation, the Michael R. Katz. While I have much preferred Pevear and Volokhonsky for most of the other Dostoevsky novels, I found their translations (Demons) a little too think and much less pleasurable to read. And less funny. For as horrific as the events of the novel are, Dostoevsky nicely lampoons his characters, exposing them for all their failings is recognizable ways.

This book is the most humorous of Dostoevskys' novels, but it is a dark humour with a serious philosophy underneath. While the author was given a death sentence (later commuted and replaced with 10 years of exile and public servitude) for belonging to a literary discussion group which reviewed works that were critical of the tsar. He was not an encourager of violent insurrection. He was a religious man who revered Saint Augustine and saw the anti-religious and violent approach to overthrowing the present regime as a threat to the Russian philosophy and culture which he revered. The "devils" are pre-bolshivik movements of his time which he hoped would be cast out as Jesus cast out the demons at Gadarene. Like many Russian novels, this one will refer to a character with three given names with three combinations of those names and in some occasions an added nickname, so there can be 4 different ways to refer to the same person. Fortunately there is a brief description of characters on a separate page early in the book. Refer to it often! I gave 4 stars out of 5. The novel itself I would give 5 but the way to publisher chose to present the footnotes is extremely poor. Most of the footnotes at the bottom of the page are translations from French which was a language that all literate people of the time were expected to know, but there are numerous clarifications of events in Russian history and mentions of Russian statesmen, philosophers et al. that have only an asterisk and nothing at the bottom of the page. At the end of the book these are all numbered (not on the page with the asterisk) but not by chapter. Unless you refer to every one in order you cannot find an answer while you are reading the book. What was the publisher thinking? This is the fourth novel by this author that I have read and I would say that it is equal to "crime and punishment" and "the brothers Karimozov" The author is an intuative psychologist as Freud also recognized. He gets into the mind of his charachters like no other author I know

It amazes me how directly 19thC Russian and French literature speaks to America, as well as the western world, in 2021. Here are two examples from Dostoevsky’s, “Devils”: From page 524: “I’m not talking about the so-called “progressive” people, always in a rush (that’s their main concern), often with an absurd, but more or less defined aim. No, I’m talking only about the scum. This scum, which exists in every society and rises to the surface during any transitional period, lacking not only a purpose but any sign of rational activity, merely expresses unrest and impatience with all its might. Meanwhile, without even knowing it, this scum almost always falls under the control of a small group of “progressives” acting with definite aims; this group directs the scum wherever it likes, so long as the group isn’t composed of complete idiots, which, however, is sometimes the case.” From page 564: “They should have restrained those scoundrels and sluggards—because that’s what they were, scoundrels and sluggards, nothing more serious. There’s no kind of society anywhere where the police alone can maintain order. Everyone here demands a special policeman assigned to protect him wherever he goes. People don’t understand that society must protect itself. What do our heads of families do in comparable circumstances, our venerable elders, wives, and daughters? They keep silent and sulk. There’s not even enough social initiative to restrain the pranksters.”

If it were up to me there wouldn't be so many translations and so many publications of the old Russian classics. That's partially why I'm writing this review: to help you decide which version you want to purchase. Really, I think it can be narrowed down to two choices. If you want hardcover I suggest the luxurious Demons (Everyman's Library, 182) . It's the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, which has been highly praised by critics. I find that the P/V translations are able to better articulate ideas. In terms of style they be more accurate, but the prose seem awkward and quite ugly. I also think that according to the contemporary American vernacular that Demons is the best possible title for this book. It's the Katz's translation you'll be getting if you purchase Devils: The Possessed (Oxford World's Classics) . Here is a fine quality paperback. Paper, Ink, Binding are all satisfactory; they seem to last longer than most paperbacks do. Endnotes, Character list, Dostoevsky/Historical timelines are included--all that extra good stuff; perhaps even more of it (certainly no less) than the Hardcover Everyman's edition. Katz, unlike Pevear is a professor; it is for this reason that I attach more value to his introduction than I do that of Pevear. Of course, it's half the price. As a novel, I highly recommend Devils. Set in provincial Russia, the story is eerily prophetic of the Russian revolution that would take place some fifty years later. The story begins with a lengthy biographical sketch of two characters. Then, the focus shifts to those character's sons, who happen to be at the head of a group of pseudo-revolutionaries. Multiple scandals ensue. In Devils, Dostoevsky addresses his own concerns about the existence of god. He questions the merits of wholesale social/political reform and the Revolutionary groups who propose said reform. As always, Dostoevsky impressively displays the realistic psychological nuances of his characters. As an added bonus, there's also a parody of the Russian writer Turgenev. If you haven't read any Dostoevsky before this is a good a place as any to start, though you might try Crime and Punishment first.

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Excellent translation.

Great story and writing style

In Devils Dostoevsky mercilessly and adroitly "... depict[s] 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." This fierce allegorical tale is prophetic of the present bout of nihilism which also threatens a "... triumph [that] will stand very far from the Kingdom of Heaven". In the words of another writer – A fool's dream oft is a wise man's nightmare, Yet visions render saints and madmen joy; As wak'd all at accord desire the fair, Though some to tender, others to destroy. To reiterate some often trite advice, this book is essential reading for our times.

Very difficult to read