Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yes… Wait, do you ever have moments of eternal harmony, Shatov?’

Eternal harmony like Myshkin's reveries (separate, perhaps, from his epilepsy) and Alyosha's experience during 'Cana of Galillee.' But Kirillov only has them for fleeting moments. Maybe these moments are enough to make him hesitate when Pyotr comes to him tomorrow.

If it lasts longer than five seconds, your soul can’t endure it and must disappear. In these five seconds I live an entire lifetime, and for them I will give my entire life, because it’s worth it.

Poetic quote. Also, sounds like Myshkin's 'five seconds of eternity' before he gets his seizures

In the Gospels it is said that in the resurrection there will be no childbirth, but all will be like God’s angels.5 It’s a hint. Is your wife giving birth?’

That's a hint of what the baby symbolises in all this

‘The mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great and inexplicable mystery, Arina Prokhorovna, and what a pity you don’t understand it!’

This baby is the first bit of hope and brightness, and a pure image of God, since all this chaos started in Part II. Shatov is changed immediately when he is born. Man it is gonna be hard to see him killed

‘Are you adopting him?’ ‘He is my son.’

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Her lips were quivering, she was trying to hold back, but suddenly she raised herself and, with flashing eyes, said: ‘Nikolay Stavrogin is a scoundrel!’

HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT THE FUCK.

He talked to her about Kirillov, about their beginning to live now ‘again and forever’, about the existence of God, about how everyone is good…

‘But,’ he shouted in ecstasy, ‘this is now absolutely the last step! And then a new path, and we shall never ever again think of the old horror!’

Oh my gosh Shatov… I feel so bad

You can always find some fool who’s frightened and at the last minute runs off and shouts: “Oh, forgive me, I’ll betray them all!”

But when the stones were tied on and Pyotr Stepanovich stood up, Virginsky began to quiver all over, clasped his hands, and shouted mournfully at the top of his voice: ‘This isn’t right, it isn’t right! No, it’s absolutely not right!’

Virginsky saw the baby and how it affected Shatov

Your every step now should be taken in order to bring about the collapse of everything, both the state and its moral code. Only we shall remain, we who have destined ourselves to take power; we shall join the intelligent ones to ourselves and ride roughshod over the fools.

Their goal. Pyotr has the knot tied with blood now though. But it seems that the men's morality is overpowering that bind.

‘So, there’s one! I just knew it!’ Liputin exclaimed. ‘I knew all the time, all along, that there was only one.’

I wonder what that can drive him to do now

Pyotr Stepanovich could have had business somewhere else besides our town, and could actually have received some information. I’m even convinced, despite Liputin’s cynical and despairing doubts, that he could actually have had two or three other groups of five besides ours, for example, in the two capitals, and if not groups, then ties and connections, and perhaps even very curious ones.

‘No, you put it well; let it be comfort. God is necessary, and therefore he must exist.’ ‘Now, that’s splendid.’ ‘But I know that he doesn’t exist and cannot exist.’ ‘That’s more likely.’ ‘Don’t you really understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?’

Is that why Stavrogin offs himself? [Later]

‘If God exists, then all will is his, and I can’t escape his will. If he does not exist, then all will is mine, and I am obliged to proclaim self-will.’

This idea is the core of atheism and it never changed. Most atheists cannot articulate it but they worship this same idea of self-will; they worship the idea and deify themselves.

It follows that the very laws of the planet are a lie and a farce put on by the Devil. What’s there to live for, answer me, if you are a man?’

What a deception he has invented for himself.

‘Give me the pen!’ Kirillov suddenly cried completely unexpectedly, in a burst of resolute inspiration.

Well, the devil's got him (in this case, Pyotr)

‘Bravo!’ Kirillov almost howled in ecstasy. ‘“Vive la république démocratique, sociale et universelle ou la mort!” … No, no, that’s not right. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort!”

Lmao, fitting

‘Pyotr Stepanovich, even if you were to go abroad, I would certainly understand. I would understand because you have to look after your person, because you are everything, and we are nothing. I would understand, Pyotr Stepanovich.’

Holy shit Erkel's got it bad. Verkhovensky is his Stavrogin.

He returned home very sad. It was not that he was afraid that Pyotr Stepanovich had suddenly abandoned them, but… but he had turned away from him so quickly when he was called by the young fop, and… he could have said something else to him besides ‘till we meet’, or… or at least shaken his hand more warmly.

Erkel :(

And here he was leaving her on his own and raising ‘the banner of a great idea’ and walking along the high road to die for it!

He's a lofty Kirillov; he's a Verhovensky running away from a Stavrogin.

Pyotr Ilych

Tchaikovsky? Lawl

‘Yes, that happens in this Russia of ours… and in general we Russians… well, yes, it happens,’ Stepan Trofimovich didn’t finish.

Omg I just realised the importance of this chapter (which I've so dreaded to reread because I just remember it as having been awfully boring). This is the first time Stepan is amongst real Russian people. This is his first time in 'the real life.'

He looked around him sadly; the village scene seemed strange and somehow terribly foreign to him.

That's what happens when you make yourself a foreigner in your own country

‘What’s that? Are those blini? Mais… c’est charmant.’

Awwww <3 He just needs to stop speaking French then he'll be fully home

she had been here before in the summer with a ‘very genteel lady, sir’ from the town, and they had also spent the night, waiting for the boat, and even two whole days after that, sir, and the grief they’d had to put up with was a dreadful memory.

…LISE?

As the story went on, the reason for such a state of affairs was now a blonde (if not Darya Pavlovna, then I have absolutely no idea whom Stepan Trofimovich had in mind).

HAHAHAHA THE NARRATOR

And so all three, pining away from mutual magnanimity, remained silent for twenty years, withdrawn into themselves.

Bro is DELUSIONAL (like his son)

he simply fell at her feet and kissed the hem of her dress. ‘Enough, sir, I’m not worthy, sir,’ she babbled, trying to lift him back on to the bed. ‘My saviour,’ he reverently folded his hands before her. ‘Vous êtes noble comme une marquise!33 I — I am a scoundrel! Oh, I have been dishonest my entire life…’

It's surprisingly like Raskolnikov (also her name is Sofya)

he would return to her (that is, to Varvara Petrovna). ‘We will go up to her front steps every day’ (that is, always with Sofya Matveyevna) ‘when she’s getting into her carriage for her morning drive, and we’ll watch very quietly…

Like Mavriky waiting outside while Stavrogin has Lise

Only now, only now have I understood what it means to turn the other cheek. I never understood that before!’

Hehehe broken men turning to God at the hem of a woman's dress. So very Dostoyevsky (it's beautiful)

The hardest thing in life is to live and not lie… and… and not to believe your own lies, yes, yes, that’s it precisely!

Father Zosima (TBK) had smth to say about that! [Later]

‘ “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write…” ’36

Omg ofc it's Revelations, and ofc it's the one about lukewarm faith

For you say, I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.”’

Literally all the high-society folk in this book

‘Now read me another passage… about the swine…’ he suddenly declared.

OUT OF THE WHOLE GOSPELS HE REMEMBERS THE SWINE

all the demons, large and small, who have accumulated in our great and beloved sick man, our Russia, over the course of centuries, centuries! Oui, cette Russie, que j’aimais toujours.

Aw now he loves Russia :>

just like that madman possessed by demons, and all these demons, all the uncleanness, all this filth that has festered on the surface… all this will beg to enter the swine. And perhaps they have already entered them! That’s us, us and them, and my son Petrusha…

OMG HE'S AWARE OF IT. Yes, this is very important; this passage in Luke, aside from its own independent importance, is directly speaking of Pyotr Stepanovich and the revolution. [Later]

It was none other than Varvara Petrovna,

Stavrogin dramaticism is genetic

She stood in silence for some time, scrutinizing his frightened face with a kind of predatory look.

The Stavrogins have this effect on the Verkhovenskies

‘I have learned about real Russian life… Et je prêcherai l’Évangile…’ 42 ‘Oh, shameless, ungrateful man!’ she shrieked suddenly, clasping her hands.

Well it's clear what has kept him from the Gospels for vingt ans

‘Je vous aimais toute ma vie… vingt ans!’45 She still said nothing — for a good two or three minutes. ‘Well, that didn’t prevent you from spraying yourself with perfume when you were getting ready to propose to Dasha,’ she said suddenly in a terrible whisper.

Oh NAH. They've all been fooling themselves. Stepan perfumed himself as he was getting ready to propose to Dasha because he believed Varvara was marrying him off 'to another's sins'. He would have gone even there for her.

‘He went on for a long time about some high-born, black-haired lady.’ Sofya Matveyevna blushed violently, having noticed, however, Varvara Petrovna’s blonde hair and her utter lack of resemblance to the ‘brunette’.

:SKULL_EMOJI:

‘About how this high-born lady was very much in love with him, ma’am, her whole life, twenty whole years, but she didn’t dare declare herself to him and was ashamed, because she was very plump, ma’am.’ ‘What a fool he is!’ Varvara Petrovna snapped thoughtfully, but decisively.

Oh that. Yea Stepan is cooked.

‘My friends,’ he announced, ‘God is necessary to me because he is the only being who is capable of eternal love…’

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And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than existence, love is the crown of being, and how is it possible that existence is not subordinate to it?

Quote

‘Oh, I would very much like to live again!’ he exclaimed with an extraordinary surge of energy.

The entire law of human existence consists merely in the fact that man has always been able to bow down before something immeasurably great. If people are deprived of what is immeasurably great, they will cease to live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite are just as necessary to man as is this small planet on which he lives…

Quote

‘I have no son!’ snapped Varvara Petrovna — and it was like a prophecy.

My GOODNESS dude

Towards midday she fell into an unconsciousness from which she never recovered, and about three days later she died. The baby, who had caught cold, died before her.

Oh what the hell. That was the only light in this novel, being snuffed out.

It’s hard to imagine what conclusions and what a chaos of hypotheses our utterly panic-stricken society would finally have reached if everything had not finally been explained all at once, the very next day, thanks to Lyamshin.

Oh ffs LYAMSHIN (tbf Pyotr's knot of blood would never have held but it is still frustrating)