Demons
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Read between March 18 - April 30, 2023
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‘A frost is coming,’ Semyon Yakovlevich intoned.
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‘please do get down, I really want to see you kneeling. If you don’t get down, then don’t come to visit me any more. I really want it, I really do want it!’
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Mavriky Nikolayevich would interpret these capricious outbursts of hers, which had become particularly frequent of late, as flare-ups of blind hatred towards him, not because of malice — on the contrary, she esteemed, loved and respected him, and he knew it himself — but because of a particular kind of morbid, unconscious hatred that she couldn’t control at times.
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‘Get up, get up!’ she was screaming like a woman possessed.
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‘Comelylooks, comelylooks!’ Semyon Yakovlevich repeated once again.
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Thus ended our trip to Semyon Yakovlevich.
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chère, chère, look at the mess of pottage you’ve sold your freedom to them for!’ 15
sonya
It makes sense that they got Varvara, since they have Yuliya and Varvara wants to outdo her. I see it's out of jealousy; Varvara still wants to be the grand lady of the town.
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Alea jacta est!’18
sonya
Bro thinks he's Caesar (jk I love this move)
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Filled with love so true, True to a delicious dream…
sonya
It's the poem that was so important in The Idiot, the one Aglaya recited somewhere in Part 2 after Myshkin recovered from his seizure to say that Myshkin is in love with Nastasya. Stepan Trofimovich seems to think that he's the poor knight - he isn't, though he may venture to be now. Stepan had
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The poor lady immediately became the plaything of all sorts of different kinds of influences, while at the same time imagining herself to be entirely original.
sonya
That's why she was so easy for Pyotr to manipulate. She is those people who want so badly to be original and independent, and choose nihilism in their path.
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And the utter chaos that resulted in the guise of independence!
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she kept on hoping that he would indicate to her the existence of a real conspiracy against the state!
sonya
?lmao. I guess she was right, but Pyotr was the conspiracy against the state.
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Pyotr Stepanovich helped this strange idea lodge itself firmly in her mind.
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she was the one who had saved Pyotr Stepanovich, the one who had won him over (of this she didn’t have the slightest doubt), and she would save others as well.
sonya
Yikes (Remember that Yuliya Mikahilovna is a bit delulu)
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he threw two of his landlady’s icons out of his apartment and chopped one of them up with an axe;
sonya
Yikes. Icon mutilation with an axe is major schismatic symbolism
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the director of the Shpigulin factory had delivered to the police two or three bundles of leaflets that were identical to those found on the second lieutenant, which had been dropped at the factory at night. The bundles hadn’t even been opened, and none of the workers had had a chance to read a single one.
sonya
Remember that the seedy, cholera-stricken Shpigulin factory is now in possession of manifestoes that they hid from their slavelike workers :3
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it’s all these unpleasant things,’ he grumbled
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an axe was drawn on top.
sonya
Axes - revolution symbol
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I saw abroad I already explained to someone upon my return, and my explanations were found to be satisfactory, otherwise I would not have gladdened this town with my presence.
sonya
I LOVE HIS SASS LMAO
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this “radiant personality”, this “student” —it’s Shatov…
sonya
Pyotr is framing Shatov as the one who created the manifestoes which give them an advantage over him. Moreover it will not necessarily be untrue because he wiill pressure Shatov to print manifestoes.
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this poem is his, his own creation and it was printed abroad through him.
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‘Why Kirillov, of course, he’s the one; the note was written abroad to Kirillov…
sonya
Dragging Kirillov in too lol
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but promise me Shatov, and I’ll hand them all to you on a platter. I’ll be of use, Andrey Antonovich!
sonya
THIS was Pyotr's ultimate goal in manipulating von Lembke during this conversation. He wants Shatov dead.
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still, no one there has yet ordered me to look into your character, and I’ve not yet taken on myself any such orders from there.
sonya
'Abroad' is probably how they (Pyotr and Lembke) insinuate the revolutionary circle whether or not the insinuation was intentional
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you must have enough bloodhounds and all sorts of other sleuths of your own in reserve,
sonya
Pyotr says this and Lembke denies it - I think Pyotr is being ironic. He has bloodhounds.
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‘I know nothing, I know nothing, nothing at all. Adieu. Avis au lecteur!’
sonya
Pyotr clams up when asked about Stavrogin. He probably truly is uncertain about where he and Stavrogin stand with each other now. By the way, now the narrative has switched to showing the story through Pyotr's eys and the setting has just altogether switched back to the one we saw in Part I. Stavrogin's point of view was a jarring change of setting from the high society to the underground, where he spent all of his time.
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Your Excellency’s desperate servant.     Who falls at your feet, The Repentant Freethinker Incognito.
sonya
Idk I should probably remember this weird ass letter
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‘You know what, why don’t you leave it with me? I’ll be sure to find out for you. I’ll find out sooner than those people will.’
sonya
Okay so Pyotr now wants to go after the ones sending the letters. Does he want to recruit them?
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Pyotr Stepanovich was perhaps not a stupid man, but Fedka the Convict got it just right when he said of him that ‘he himself goes and invents a man and then lives with him’.
sonya
What the fuck I just connected it. 'I made you up myself abroad!' after Stavrogin refused to lead the revolution with him.
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‘although the Devil only knows what can happen with this “new generation” and the Devil only knows what’s going on with them!’
sonya
Realest
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No one is favourably disposed towards Mr Verkhovensky.
sonya
Ooh. But everyone likes Stavrogin.
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Whether he actually understood Andrey Antonovich’s last hysterical outburst as explicit permission to do what he was asking, or whether he had bent the truth in this case for the immediate good of his benefactor, utterly convinced that the end crowns the work — in any event, as we shall see later, this conversation between a superior and his subordinate gave rise to something totally unexpected, which made many people laugh, received publicity, stirred fierce anger in Yuliya Mikhaylovna, and in all these ways utterly disconcerted Andrey Antonovich, throwing him, at a most critical time, into a ...more
sonya
Remember the hissy fit Lembke threw at Blum
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he quickly hurried to Bogoyavlenskaya Street,
sonya
Where Shatov and Kirillov lives?
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even though Karmazinov was the one who sauntered up to exchange kisses, he merely offered his own cheek,
sonya
Dostoyevsky try not to shade Turgenev challenge
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‘Ah, you’re talking about “Bonjour”, I suppose…’ ‘ “Merci”.’ ‘Well, whatever.
sonya
HAHAHAHAHA
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Lunch was brought in. Pyotr Stepanovich attacked the cutlet with extraordinary appetite, consumed it in a flash, drank off the wine and gulped down the coffee. ‘This ignoramus,’
sonya
LMAO???
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Holy Russia is a country made of wood, poverty-stricken and… dangerous, the country of vainglorious paupers at its highest levels, and where the vast majority live in wretched little huts on hens’ legs.
sonya
Karmazinov's whole speech serves the purpose of speaking the thought of the Westerniser authors and thinkers of the time.
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‘Everyone’s afraid of them, therefore they’re powerful.
sonya
Good quote. Also such a significant idea from Dostoyevsky because this is exactly what happened in the 20th century.
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As far as I can see and as far as I can judge, the whole essence of the Russian revolutionary idea is contained in the denial of honour.
sonya
GOOD QUOTE. Also true as shit. Revolutionists embrace depravity and believe that it is their right.
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He can be carried away by an open “right to dishonour” 20 sooner than anything else.
sonya
(Dmitry Karamazov… Raskolnikov… Underground Man… Pavel Pavlovich of The Eternal Husband… Alexey of The Gambler… Husband of The Meek One)
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‘This ladies’ man,’ he said, giggling, ‘will probably be the first to be strung up on a branch if what’s being preached in those manifestos ever comes to pass.’ ‘Maybe even earlier,’ Pyotr Stepanovich suddenly said.
sonya
Probably remember. It sounds like foreshadowing about Stavrogin
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(He grinned.) ‘Hmm. And he’s really not stupid and… is nothing more than an emigrating rat. Someone like that will never inform on us!’
sonya
Pyotr's opinion of Karmazinov
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I could be useful if I killed myself, and that when you cook something up here and they start looking for the culprits, then I’ll suddenly shoot myself and leave a letter saying that I did it all, and so it’ll be a whole year before they can suspect you of anything.’
sonya
So that's been Pyotr's long-standing plan
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‘Damn it all, why you’ll convert him to the Christian faith!’
sonya
Lmao. Btw Pyotr has slipped into the underground very effortlessly, pulling his strings.
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And does Shatov know about Fedka?’
sonya
Remember this comment from Pyotr because not even the reader knows about Fedka. There must've been some reason he was pestering Nikolay.
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‘And I won’t give you anything against Stavrogin,’ Kirillov muttered after him, as he saw his visitor out.
sonya
Is Kirillov 'in love' with Stavrogin as Shatov is? Stavrogin saved Kirillov's life as well when he got him out of America.
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‘Just one word: is Kirillov all by himself now in his little house, without a servant?’
sonya
There is a reason Pyotr asks.
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if she were to be standing at the very altar under the crown, and you were to call her, she would abandon me and everyone else, and go to you.’
sonya
The crown in Orthodox weddings is very symbolic. This really ties in with Stavrogin's conversation with Dasha; he knew Liza would ruin herself for him and he is so depraved that he will want to see it. Feeding his moral carnality.
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Until now I could never have imagined all these “metamorphoses”.’
sonya
Metamorphosis is somewhat important to how these people progress within the narrative. The whole story is about a revolution; a turning; metamorphosis. It has been a pattern that Stavrogin is a catalyst for these metamorphoses: Shatov and Kirillov, Pyotr (he frames Stavrogin as the international founder of their revolution and very well may truly think of Stavrogin as that), and the three women Stavrogin has associated with.
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‘You? What can one extra splatter of blood mean to you?’
sonya
HOT DAMN.
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