Demons (Penguin Classics)

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After a week he visits Nikolai and the reader is let in on the true nature of their relationship. Pytor is trying to involve Nikolai in some of his political plans and Nikolai is not very interested. Nikolai leaves his mothers house late one night and walks over to his friend, Kirillov's house. Unfortunately, this is also the house where Ivan lives. The book continues to be considered a classic of Russian literature to this day and has been adapted many times, including three plays and two film productions.

Stepan Verkhovensky began as a caricature of Granovsky, and retained the latter's neurotic susceptibilities, academic interests, and penchant for writing long confessional letters, but the character was grounded in the idealistic tendencies of many others from the generation of the 1840s, including Herzen, Belinsky, Chaadaev, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky himself. [73] Liberal figures like Stepan Trofimovich, Varvara Petrovna, Liputin, Karmazinov, and the Von Lembkes, and minor authority figures like the old Governor Osip Osipovich and the over-zealous policeman Flibusterov, are parodies of a variety of establishment types that Dostoevsky held partially responsible for the excesses of the radical generation. Karmazinov was an openly hostile parody of Turgenev—his personality and mannerisms, his perceived complicity with nihilism, and, in the Gala reading scene, the style of some of his later literary works. [74]Shigalyev is a historian and social theorist, the intellectual of Verkhovensky's revolutionary group, who has devised a system for the post-revolution organization of mankind. "My conclusion" he says, "stands in direct contradiction to the idea from which I started. Proceeding from unlimited freedom, I end with unlimited despotism." [49] Ninety percent of society is to be enslaved to the remaining ten percent. Equality of the herd is to be enforced by police state tactics, state terrorism, and destruction of intellectual, artistic, and cultural life. It is estimated that about a hundred million people will need to be killed on the way to the goal.

The gala takes place the next day with many of societies most influential and wealthy people in attendance. Things begin to go wrong almost immediately. Pytor's associates, Lyamshin and Liputin act as stewards and allow many low class people in for free. Captain Lebyadkin, hopelessly drunk, gets onto the stage and reads aloud some of his poetry. Liputin realizes how drunk the Captain is and decides to read the poem himself, which turns out to be a poorly written and insulting piece. Dostoevsky spent most of the 1860s in western Europe, immersing himself in the European culture that he believed was encroaching on Russia—an issue he explores in Notes from Underground. These years in Europe were a difficult time for Dostoevsky, as he struggled with poverty, epilepsy, and an addiction to gambling. The publication of Crime and Punishment (1866), however, brought him a reversal of fortune, earning him popular and critical success and rescuing him from financial disaster. His later novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) brought him further critical success. Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1947). Stavrogin's Confession. Translated by Virginia Woolf; S. S. Koteliansky. In the afterword a psychoanalytic study of the author by Sigmund Freud. Lear Publishers. ASIN B000LDS1TI.Alexei Nilych Kirillov is an engineer who lives in the same house as Shatov. He also has a connection to Verkhovensky's revolutionary society, but of a very unusual kind: he is determined to kill himself and has agreed to do it at a time when it can be of use to the society's aims.

In a fit of mental delusion, Marya accuses Nikolai of being an imposter who was sent to kill her. She demands that he tell her what he has done with her "Prince". In his anger, Nikolai pushes Marya before storming out of the house. Fedka stops Nikolai again and offers his help and Nikolai slams him against a wall before stopping and continuing on his way. Fedka follows and Nikolai stops abruptly, laughing as he empties the contents of his wallet onto the man's face and walks away. 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. [21] Humiliated and Insulted (aka The Insulted and Humiliated, The Insulted and the Injured, Injury and Insult)Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born on November 11th, 1821 in Moscow, Russia. The son of a doctor he was raised in a family home on the surrounding grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in a low class district in Moscow. Dostoyevsky learned to read at an early age and fell in love with literature and novels. Many of his childhood experiences living near the hospital and seeing the poor patients influenced his writing later in life. Fed'ka the Convict is an escaped convict who is suspected of several thefts and murders in the town. He was originally a serf belonging to Stepan Trofimovich, but was sold into the army to help pay his master's gambling debts. It is Fed'ka who murders Stavrogin's wife and her brother, at the instigation of Pyotr Stepanovich. Stavrogin himself initially opposes the murder, but his later actions suggest a kind of passive consent. France, Peter (2000). "Dostoevsky". In Peter France (ed.). The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford University Press. p.598.