Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It seems I’m ready to work, the materials have all been collected, yet the work doesn’t come! Nothing gets done!”

Shatov had radically changed some of his former socialist convictions and leaped to the opposite extreme. He was one of those ideal Russian beings who can suddenly be so struck by some strong idea that it seems to crush them then and there, sometimes even forever. They are never strong enough to master it, but they are passionate believers, and so their whole life afterwards is spent in some last writhings, as it were, under the stone that has fallen on them and already half crushed them.

Stepan Trofimovich managed to touch the deepest strings in his friend’s heart and to call forth in him the first, still uncertain sensation of that age-old, sacred anguish which the chosen soul, having once tasted and known it, will never exchange for any cheap satisfaction. (There are lovers of this anguish who cherish it more than the most radical satisfaction, if that were even possible.)

I was also struck by his face: his hair was somehow too black, his light eyes were somehow too calm and clear, his complexion was somehow too delicate and white, his color somehow too bright and clean, his teeth like pearls, his lips like coral—the very image of beauty, it would seem, and at the same time repulsive, as it were. People said his face resembled a mask;

“Why is it, as I’ve noticed,” Stepan Trofimovich once whispered to me at the time, “why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible misers, acquirers, property-lovers, so much so that the more socialist a man is, the further he goes, the more he loves property . . . why is it? Can that, too, come from sentimentality?”

Generally speaking, if I dare express my own opinion in such a ticklish matter, all these gentlemen talents of the average sort, who are usually taken almost for geniuses in their lifetime, not only vanish from people’s memory almost without a trace and somehow suddenly when they die, but it happens that even in their lifetime, as soon as a new generation grows up to replace the one in whose time they were active—they are forgotten and scorned by everyone inconceivably quickly. This happens somehow suddenly with us, like a change of sets in the theater. Oh, it is quite another matter than with the Pushkins, Gogols, Molières, Voltaires,2 with all these figures who came to speak their new word! It is also true that these gentlemen talents of the average sort, in the decline of their venerable age, usually write themselves out in a most pathetic way, without even noticing it at all. Not infrequently it turns out that a writer to whom an extreme profundity of ideas had long been attributed, and from whom an extreme and serious influence upon the movement of society was expected, in the end displays such thinness and puniness in his basic little idea that no one is even sorry that he has managed to write himself out so quickly. But the old graybeards do not notice this and get angry. Their vanity, precisely towards the end of their career, sometimes takes on proportions worthy of wonder. God knows who they begin to think they are—gods, at the least.

He described the wreck of a steamer somewhere on the English coast, of which he himself had been a witness and had seen how the perishing were being saved and the drowned dragged out. The whole article, quite a long and verbose one, was written with the sole purpose of self-display. One could simply read it between the lines: “Pay attention to me, look at how I was in those moments. What do you need the sea, the storm, the rocks, the splintered planks of the ship for? I’ve described it all well enough for you with my mighty pen. Why look at this drowned woman with her dead baby in her dead arms? Better look at me, at how I could not bear the sight and turned away. Here I am turning my back; here I am horrified and unable to look again; I’ve shut my eyes—interesting, is it not?”

Some sort of power told itself in the burning look of her dark eyes; she appeared “as a conqueror, and to conquer.” She seemed proud, and sometimes even bold; I do not know if she succeeded in being kind; but I know that she wanted terribly and suffered over forcing herself to be a little bit kind. In her nature there were, of course, many beautiful yearnings and very just undertakings; but it was as if everything in her were eternally seeking its level without finding it, everything was chaos, restlessness, agitation. Perhaps she made too severe demands on herself, never finding herself strong enough to satisfy them.

“There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.”

“Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That’s how they’ve made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.”

There is no pain in the stone, but there is pain in the fear of the stone. God is the pain of the fear of death. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself become God. Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything new . . .

Whoever wants the main freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself knows the secret of the deceit. There is no further freedom; here is everything; and there is nothing further. He who dares to kill himself, is God.

I am a whimsical child, with all the egoism of a child, but with none of the innocence.

Well, now I, too, am prepared to overcome myself and am getting married, and yet what am I conquering in place of the whole world? Oh, my friend, marriage is the moral death of any proud soul, of any independence. Married life will corrupt me, will rob me of my energy, my courage in serving the cause; there will be children, perhaps not even mine, that is, certainly not mine—a wise man is not afraid to face the truth . . .

“They’d be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia somehow suddenly got reconstructed, even if it was in their own way, and somehow suddenly became boundlessly rich and happy. They’d have no one to hate then, no one to spit on, nothing to jeer at!

It’s like with religion: the worse a man’s life is, or the more downtrodden and poor a whole people is, the more stubbornly they dream of a reward in paradise,

“Then you will understand the impulse with which, in this blindness of nobility, one suddenly takes a man in all respects even unworthy of one, profoundly lacking in understanding of one, who is ready to torment one at the first opportunity, and, contrary to everything, makes such a man into some sort of ideal, one’s dream, concentrates on him all one’s hopes, worships him, loves him all one’s life, absolutely without knowing why, perhaps precisely because he is unworthy of it . . .

And a real, undoubted grief is sometimes capable of making a solid and steadfast man even out of a phenomenally light-minded one, if only for a short time; moreover, real and true grief has sometimes even made fools more intelligent, also only for a time, of course; grief has this property.

He would shoot his adversary in a duel, and go against a bear if need be, and fight off a robber in the forest—all as successfully and fearlessly as L—n, yet without any sense of enjoyment, but solely out of unpleasant necessity, listlessly, lazily, even with boredom. Anger, of course, constituted a progress over L—n, even over Lermontov.12 There was perhaps more anger in Nikolai Vsevolodovich than in those two together, but this anger was cold, calm, and, if one may put it so, reasonable, and therefore the most repulsive and terrible that can be.

“My friend, the real truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it’s absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it.

But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it’s for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!

But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness!

Incidentally, here’s an example for you: I always speak a lot, I mean, a lot of words, and I rush, and it always comes out wrong. And why is it that I speak a lot of words and it comes out wrong? Because I don’t know how to speak. Those who know how to speak well, speak briefly. So, there you have my giftlessness—isn’t it true? But since this gift of giftlessness is natural to me, why shouldn’t I use it artificially? And so I do. True, as I was preparing to come here, I first had the thought of being silent; but to be silent is a great talent, and is therefore not fitting for me, and, second, it’s dangerous to be silent, after all; well, so I finally decided that it would be best to talk, but precisely in a giftless way, I mean, a lot, a lot, a lot, to be in a great rush to prove something, and towards the end to get tangled up in one’s own proofs, so that the listener throws up his hands, or, best of all, just spits and walks away without any end. The result will be, first, that you’ve convinced him of your simpleheartedness, have been very tiresome, and haven’t been understood—all three profits at once! For pity’s sake, who is going to start suspecting you of mysterious designs after that? No, there’s not one of them who wouldn’t be personally offended with anybody who said I had mysterious designs. And, what’s more, I sometimes make them laugh—and that is priceless. No, they’ll forgive me everything for this alone, that the wise man who published tracts there has turned...

Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy; only because of that. It’s everything, everything! Whoever learns will at once immediately become happy, that same moment.

“Not one nation,” he began, as if reciting line by line, and at the same time still looking menacingly at Stavrogin, “not one nation has ever set itself up on the principles of science and reason; there has never been an example of it, unless perhaps only for a moment, out of foolishness. Socialism by its very essence must be atheism, because it has precisely declared, from the very first line, that it is an atheistic order, and intends to set itself up on the principles of science and reason exclusively. Reason and science always, now, and from the beginning of the ages, have performed only a secondary and auxiliary task in the life of nations; and so they will to the end of the ages. Nations are formed and moved by another ruling and dominating force, whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of the unquenchable desire to get to the end, while at the same time denying the end. It is the force of a ceaseless and tireless confirmation of its own being and a denial of death. The Spirit of life, as Scripture says, the ‘rivers of living water,’ whose running dry is so threatened in the Apocalypse.18 The aesthetic principle, as philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. ‘Seeking for God’—as I call it in the simplest way. The aim of all movements of nations, of every nation and in every period of its existence, is solely the seeking for God, its own God, entirely its own, and faith in him as the only true one. God is the synthetic p...

Any nation is a nation only as long as it has its own particular God and rules out all other gods in the world with no conciliation; as long as it believes that through its God it will be victorious and will drive all other gods from the world. Thus all have believed from the beginning of time, all great nations at least, all that were marked out to any extent, all that have stood at the head of mankind. There is no going against the fact. The Jews lived only to wait for the true God, and left the true God to the world. The Greeks deified nature, and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the nation in the state, and bequeathed the state to the nations. France, throughout her whole long history, has simply been the embodiment and development of the idea of the Roman God, and if she has finally flung her Roman God down into the abyss and plunged into atheism, which for the time being they call socialism, that is solely because atheism is, after all, healthier than Roman Catholicism. If a great nation does not believe that the truth is in it alone (precisely in it alone, and that exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is able and called to resurrect and save everyone with its truth, then it at once ceases to be a great nation, and at once turns into ethnographic material and not a great nation. A truly great nation can never be reconciled with a secondary role in mankind, or even with a primary, but inevitably and exclusive...

With him, once he says a man is a scoundrel, then except from the scoundrel he knows nothing about him. And if it’s a fool, then he’s got no other title for him except fool. But maybe I’m only a fool on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and on Thursdays I’m smarter than he is.

“It must be true that the whole second half of a man’s life is most often made up only of habits accumulated during the first half.”

‘One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense.’

Russia is a freak of nature, but not of mind.

“No, I never could discover what you wanted; it seems to me that you’re interested in me in the same way as certain antiquated sick-nurses for some reason take an interest in some one patient as opposed to all the others, or, better still, the way certain pious old women who hang about at funerals prefer certain nice little corpses that are comelier than the others.

Generally, in every misfortune of one’s neighbor there is always something that gladdens the outsider’s eye—and that even no matter who you are.

From behind her ceaseless, genuine, and most complete hatred for you, love flashes every moment, and . . . madness . . . the most genuine and boundless love and—madness! On the contrary, from behind the love she feels for me, also genuinely, hatred flashes every moment—the greatest hatred!

Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.

They’re not such fools; nowadays nobody’s mind is his own. Nowadays there are terribly few distinct minds.

“He’s got spying. He’s got each member of society watching the others and obliged to inform. Each belongs to all, and all to each. They’re all slaves and equal in their slavery. Slander and murder in extreme cases, but above all—equality. First, the level of education, science, and talents is lowered. A high level of science and talents is accessible only to higher abilities—no need for higher abilities! Higher abilities have always seized power and become despots. Higher abilities cannot fail to be despots and have always corrupted rather than been of use; they are to be banished or executed. Cicero’s tongue is cut off, Copernicus’s eyes are put out, Shakespeare is stoned—this is Shigalyovism! Slaves must be equal: there has never yet been either freedom or equality without despotism, but within a herd there must be equality, and this is Shigalyovism! Ha, ha, ha, so you find it strange? I’m for Shigalyovism!”

“Listen, Stavrogin: to level the mountains is a good idea, not a ridiculous one. I’m for Shigalyov! No need for education, enough of science! There’s sufficient material even without science for a thousand years to come, but obedience must be set up. Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience. The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there’s just a tiny bit of family or love, there’s a desire for property. We’ll extinguish desire: we’ll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going; we’ll get unheard-of depravity going; we’ll stifle every genius in infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality.1 ‘We’ve learned a trade, and we’re honest people, we don’t need anything else’—that was the recent response of the English workers. Only the necessary is necessary—henceforth that is the motto of the whole globe. But there is also a need for convulsion; this will be taken care of by us, the rulers. Slaves must have rulers. Complete obedience, complete impersonality, but once every thirty years Shigalyov gets a convulsion going, and they all suddenly start devouring each other, up to a certain point, simply so as not to be bored. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation; in Shigalyovism there will be no desires. Desire and suffering are for us; and for the slaves—Shigalyovism.”

You insult no one, yet everyone hates you; you have the air of being everyone’s equal, yet everyone is afraid of you—this is good.

It was like coasting down a hill at the winter carnival; can a sled that is already going down stop in the middle of the hillside? As ill luck would have it, Andrei Antonovich had been distinguished all his life by the serenity of his character and had never shouted or stamped his feet at anyone; and such men are far more dangerous if it once happens that their sled for some reason shoots off downhill.

I have already hinted at the fact that various trashy sorts of people had appeared among us. Always and everywhere, in a troubled time of hesitation or transition, various trashy sorts appear. I am not speaking of the so-called “vanguard,” who always rush ahead of everyone else (their chief concern) and whose goal, though very often quite stupid, is still more or less definite. No, I am speaking only of scum. This scum, which exists in every society, rises to the surface in any transitional time, and not only has no goal, but has not even the inkling of an idea, and itself merely expresses anxiety and impatience with all its might. And yet this scum, without knowing it, almost always falls under the command of that small group of the “vanguard” which acts with a definite goal, and which directs all this rabble wherever it pleases, provided it does not consist of perfect idiots itself—which, incidentally, also happens.

A big fire at night always produces a stirring and exhilarating impression; fireworks are based on that, but there the fire is disposed along graceful, regular lines and, with all its safety, produces a playful and light impression, as after a glass of champagne. A real fire is another matter: here horror and, after all, some sense of personal danger, as it were—combined with the well-known exhilarating impression of a fire at night—produce in the spectator (not, of course, in the burnt-out inhabitant) a sort of brain concussion and a challenge, as it were, to his own destructive instincts, which, alas! lie hidden in every soul,

though there was no longer anything to be astonished at, still manifest reality always has something shocking about it.

little fanatics like Erkel simply cannot understand service to an idea otherwise than by merging it with the very person who, in their understanding, expresses this idea.

There are strong moments of fear, for instance, when a man will suddenly cry out in a voice not his own, but such as one could not even have supposed him to have before then, and the effect is sometimes even quite frightful.

God is necessary, and therefore must exist.” “Well, that’s wonderful.” “But I know that he does not and cannot exist.” “That’s more like it.” “Don’t you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?”

“If there is God, then the will is all his, and I cannot get out of his will. If not, the will is all mine, and it is my duty to proclaim self-will.”

“It is my duty to shoot myself because the fullest point of my self-will is—for me to kill myself.”

Man has done nothing but invent God, so as to live without killing himself; in that lies the whole of world history up to now.

Ask a peasant to do something for you, and, if he can and wants to, he will serve you diligently and cordially; but ask him to fetch a little vodka—and his usual calm cordiality suddenly transforms into a sort of hasty, joyful obligingness, almost a family solicitude for you. Someone going to get vodka—though only you are going to drink it, not he, and he knows it beforehand—feels all the same, as it were, some part of your future gratification . . .

“My friend, I’ve been lying all my life. Even when I was telling the truth. I never spoke for the truth, but only for myself, I knew that before, but only now do I see . . .