Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Gloomy dunderheads”,23 as you once were pleased to express it.’

Footnote to this is great

‘I know just how much it costs,’ Stavrogin grumbled under his breath, but restrained himself and said nothing. ‘How much? What did you say?’ Pyotr Stepanovich gave a start. ‘I said the Devil with you and your secret!

Such a suspicious moment. Remember this

All that’s just bureaucracy and sentimentality — all that’s good glue, but there’s something that’s even better: put four members of a circle up to bumping off a fifth, on the pretext that he’s going to inform, and the blood that’s been spilled will immediately bind them together in a single knot. They will become your slaves, they won’t dare to rebel or ask for an accounting. Ha, ha, ha!’ ‘However, you… however, you will have to pay for those words,’ Pyotr Stepanovich thought,

Well that was fucking prophetic by Stavrogin. I guess he somehow foretold the fate of this circle. it makes sense; he has so much control over three main figures of the circle. Also, great [quote] monologue by Stavrogin.

by ridiculing ‘all that was holy’, and precisely at those moments when the ‘holy’ might have been the most useful.

Reminded me of when Shatov had his baby. Also, nihilists mocking something as sacred as childbirth is obviously telling. It is also characterstic that they should be ignrorant of name-days, which are days for celebration of a certain saint. Just an overall disdain for anything holy.

the long-eared Shigalyov (Mrs Virginskaya’s brother),

Shigalyov being decribed as long-eared is just as telling as Verkhovensky being described as long-tongued in the beginning. Long ears are associated with imps.

Verkhovensky had absolutely no desire to satisfy their legitimate curiosity and never told them anything they didn’t need to know.

Essentially he proves to be a shit leader. Nice small detail.

Member Shigalyov was already egging the others on to ‘demand an accounting’,

Stavrogin: …the blood they have spilled will immediately bind them together in a single knot. They will become your slaves and will not dare to ask for an accounting. (Paraphrased, but this was what Stavogin was talking about).

the result being that in the final analysis, all those assembled suspected one another, and struck various poses before one another, which gave the entire gathering a very confused and even partly romantic look.

The discord within the organisation is such a good little detail to me. Of course a group of revolutionary atheists and nihilists following the thread of one man's ideas in their attempts to be original would hate each other. Stavrogin was very right in saying that the only way they could be united was by tying them in a knot of spilled blood.

‘No one is taking away your right to speak out,’ the hostess herself now broke in sharply, ‘you are only being asked not to drone on, because no one can understand you.’

LMAOOOO ah the words of that genius Dostoyevsky ring true to this very day.

Without men they would die like flies — that’s my opinion.

[he's talking about women] without woman, man would be awfully lonely and savage, and not to mention, die out. It's true this girl is speaking bullshit but cmon don't generalise all women like that :P

‘Specifically, I was just saying to you that we were all taught, according to the catechism: “If you honour your father and your parents,4 then you will live a long life and riches will be given to you.” That is in the Ten Commandments. If God found it necessary to offer a reward for love, it follows that your God is immoral.

HAHAHAHAHA THE WAY SHE TWISTS THE BIBLE IS SO ACCURATE TO HOW SOME ATHEISTS ARGUE. It's been almost two hundred years and some atheists still resort to twisting Scripture, attacking their own version of Scripture, and thinking they said something intelligent.

‘How stupid! The reason I didn’t raise mine was that I made the proposal.

HAHAHAHAHA THE WHOLE VOTING SCENE IS RIDICULOUS AND SO CHARACTERISTIC

‘But what is a meeting?’ a voice cried. No one answered it.

LMAO?

Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, aluminium columns5 — all that is fit only for sparrows, and not for human society.

Lmao I did not even need the footnote to see how ironic this was. He is a utopian (the revolution as of a utopian theology) yet names authors of utopian social theory, claiming that they knew nothing about society.

I propose my own system for structuring the world.

Oh gosh, Shigalyovism

He proposes, as a final solution to the question, the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One-tenth is to receive personal freedom and unlimited rights over the remaining nine-tenths.

This strikes me as a similar philosophy to Raskolnikov's splitting of humanity into two types (after reading the footnote I see I awas right). Anyway, it just demonstrates how dangerous Shiglyovism can be because from Shigalyov's pov as factory-owner it gives a justification for slavery, and in Raskolnikov's pov it allowed him to justify his murder.

‘What I’m proposing is not something unconscionable but paradise, earthly paradise, and there can be no other kind on earth,’ Shigalyov concluded imperiously.

Well that's the big issue! The Idiot is huge case study as to why heaven on earth is impossible, and Demons is what happens when people destroy heaven altogether and try to build it up themselves

Shigalyovism — they’re all like novels, which can be written in the hundreds of thousands.

Now, my friend, a new religion is coming to replace the old one,

a tortoise-like procession in the swamp, or crossing the swamp under full sail?’

‘If each of us knew about a political assassination that was being planned, would he go and inform, foreseeing all the consequences, or would he remain at home and wait for things to happen?

There ya go. He's planted it

‘But it does you some good, as a spy and a scoundrel!’ Shatov shouted from the doorway and went out.

Something in him was completely out of kilter;

The intonation of the voice was different: Verkhovensky was begging and entreating. This was a man who hadn’t yet regained his senses, a man whose most precious thing was being taken away or had already been taken.

Each belongs to all, and all to each. All are slaves, and are equal in their slavery. In extreme cases, there’s slander and murder, but the main thing is equality.

FUCKING LOVE THIS QUOTE

Cicero had his tongue cut out, Copernicus had his eyes put out, Shakespeare2 was stoned — that’s Shigalyovism!

2 out of 3 never happened

Stavrogin tried to quicken his pace and get home as quickly as possible. ‘If this man is drunk, then when in the world did he have time to get drunk?’

LMAO???

We will kill desire: we will foster drunkenness, gossip, denunciation; we will foster unheard-of depravity; we will stifle every genius in its infancy.

I’ve been thinking of handing the world over to the pope.

Somehow brought Catholicism into this (Dostoyevsky was anti-Catholic; it makes sense that he would imply Catholicism to be despotism).

Listen: the pope will be in the West, and we will have — we will have you!’

So his revolution is more than just social order; thats why he was so irritated and nonchalant earlier in the meeting. This is aout shaking the foundations of the earth - what God built.

‘Stavrogin, you’re a beauty!’ exclaimed Pyotr Stepanovich almost in ecstasy.

Oh gosh…

I love beauty. I’m a nihilist, but I love beauty.

Earlier he said that Stavrogin is a beauty. He's subtextually saying 'I believe in nothing but I love you.'

Do nihilists really not love beauty? It’s only idols they don’t love; well, I love idols! You are my idol!

'You are my idol' indeed. He's almost praying for Stavrogin to be with him and he alrady implied raising him up to a status as high as the despot pope.

I don’t know anyone except you. You are a leader, you are the sun, and I’m your worm…’

'I'm king, I'm slave, I'm worm, I'm God.'

Rus will plunge into darkness, the earth will begin to weep for its old gods… Well now, at this point we’ll trot out… who?’ ‘Who?’ ‘Ivan the Tsarevich.’ 6 ‘Who-o-o?’ ‘Ivan the Tsarevich: you, you!’ Stavrogin reflected for a moment. ‘The Pretender?’ 7 he asked, looking at this overwrought man in profound astonishment. ‘Oho! So there’s your plan at last.’

HOLY SHIT. LOL I HAD THE SAME REACTION AS STAVROGIN. Pyotr's revoluton is to bring in the new religion, to bring in the new god. Stavrogin rightly knows that this god is a Pretender - a false king. His kingdom will have no order.

‘So you really were seriously counting on me?’ Stavrogin asked with a malicious smile. ‘Why are you laughing, and so maliciously? Don’t try to frighten me. I’m like a child now, and I can be frightened to death by just such a smile.

Pyotr does not know that his madness has reduced him to a state similar to Marya Timofeyevna's. And many similarities can be drawn there too. Marya took Stavrogin for a Prince and a saviour. Here Pyotr supposes him to be a king. He was begging when he thought Stavrogin would leave him. Peculiarly, it seems now that the character closest to being Pyotr's double, is Stavrogin's fucking wife.

‘What for?’ Nikolay Vsevolodovich said in a serious and stern voice.

Remember Stavrogin's conversation with Shatov at the beginning of Part II. He believes in nothing. He will reject a kingdom because he sees no point in leading it.

There’s no one else on earth but you! I invented you while I was abroad; I invented it while I was watching you. If I hadn’t been watching you on the sly, none of it would have occurred to me!’

'I can't tear you out of my heart, Nikolay Vsyevolodovich!'

some officials had ‘made a search’, had come and taken some papers, and a soldier had tied them up in a bundle and ‘taken them away in a wheelbarrow’.

Ah so the officials must think Stepan Trofimovich has manifestoes or otherwise revolutionary literature. Guys you're searching the wrong Verkhovensky

mes ennemis… et puis àquoi bon ce procureur, ce cochon de notre procureur, qui deux fois m’a manqué de politesse et qu’on a rossé àplaisir l’autre année chez cette charmante et belle Natalya Pavlovna, quand il se cacha dans son boudoir.

My eye is twitching please stop speaking French

there had never been a lamp there before, and now one had suddenly appeared.

What caused Stepan to place a lamp an icon? Is he still concerned for another man's sins, this time his son's?

‘Quand on a de ces choses-là dans sa chambre et qu’on vient vous arrêter,

Oh… well anyway I still suspect that Stepan had some genuine reason to want a brightened icon. He doesn't altogether seem firm in his socialism, honestly.

He evidently believed as much in the ‘covered cart’ as he did in the fact that I was sitting beside him, and he expected it to come, that very morning, soon, this minute — and all because of the works of Herzen and some poem of his! Such a complete and utter ignorance of everyday reality was both moving and somehow disgusting.

'Both moving and utterly disguting' is perfect for Stepan's antics lmao.

Do you really suppose that I could be involved with those scoundrels, with those clandestine pamphleteers, with my beloved son Pyotr Stepanovich, avec ces esprits-forts de la lâcheté!

Ok so he does know what his son has been doing

if they really do find nothing, then so much the worse,’ he suddenly added unexpectedly.

He fears disgrace more tha exile, because he 'made himself up abroad' and he absolutely cannot lose himelf, but he will if there is nothing found by the authorities.

how is it that a nondescript, that is, ordinary crowd of petitioners — seventy men strong, to be sure — was nonetheless, from the very first, the very outset, transformed into a rebellion that threatened to shake society to its foundations?

Pyotr Stepanovich and his manifestoes ad other antics have aready been harrowing on von Lembke's mind, causing him to perhaps be paranoid. This is probably exacerbated by his wife; he wants to prove (to himself and his wife more than anyone else) that he has the same level of authority and power in the town as she does.

a woman is never fully repentant,

Wtf do mean by that Mr. Narrator

‘Our marriage has amounted to nothing more than you constantly and every hour of the day trying to prove to me that I am worthless, that I’m stupid and even despicable, and I’ve been forced, constantly and every hour of the day and humiliatingly, to try to prove to you that I am not worthless, that I’m anything but stupid and that I impress everyone with my noble nature.

:(

Are you aware that I know the names of four of those scoundrels, and that I’m losing my mind, I’m losing it for good and all!’

Seeing Andrey Antonovich's mental breakdown, especially knowing of how gentle and straight-laced of a character he is, and the absolute diregard his wife Yuliya Mikhailovna has for him is the best explanation for how he badly handles the rebellion

He ran into his study as fast as his legs would carry him, flung himself just as he was, fully dressed, face down on the bed that had been made up for him, in a frenzy wrapped himself, head and all, in a sheet, and lay there for the next two hours or so — not sleeping, not thinking, with a stone weighing on his heart and dull, unwavering despair in his soul.

Andrey Antonovich got it so rough he turned into Rodion Romanovich