Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

(Lyamshin had no idea of Pyotr Stepanovich’s cherished and highly amusing hopes for Stavrogin.)

NARRATOR LMAO 'cherished and highly amusing'

In Russia I’m not tied by anything; here everything is just as foreign as everywhere else. True enough, I haven’t liked living in it any more than in any other place, but even here I can’t bring myself to hate anything!

Like Shatov predicted. Stavrogin has lost everything native and, most importanntly, has lost God

I am still, as I have always been, capable of wanting to do a good deed and I take pleasure in this; at the same time I want evil as well, and I also feel pleasure. But both feelings are too shallow, as always before, and they are never enough.

But if I’d had more malice and envy towards them, then maybe I would have gone with them.

Not even negativity has poured forth from me. Everything is always shallow and flaccid.

Dostoyevsky describes Stavrogin best: a degenerate out of ennui. This is the truest of nihilists and the most honest of atheists. This + his moral carnality explains his note and his actions quite well

There can never be indignation and shame in me; and therefore, no despair either.

it.’ Also lying on the table were a hammer, a piece of soap and a large nail,

The hammer and nail are there lest the ceiling give out, he has a new place to hang the rope. The soap is there so the rope slides quickly and is harder to undo once he's hanging from it.

After the autopsy, our medical men rejected insanity completely and resolutely.

This is what happens when you believe in the Devil but not in God. He cast himself out, the demon, but the man wanted no solace in Christ. There is no insanity - only a deliberate giving up of the soul. Plus, he was the lukewarm water that the Lord cast out. Also, this leaves half of the novel's cast dead.

Nikolay Vsevolodovich didn’t sleep that night and spent it sitting on the sofa, often staring at one point in the corner by the chest of drawers. His lamp burned all night long.

This is right after Stavrogin walks away from Verkhovensky in the Ivan Tsarevich chapter.

‘I have been looking at you and recalling the features of your mother’s face. For all the lack of outward similarity, there is much inner, spiritual similarity.’

He's so right

he sometimes saw or felt some sort of evil being beside him, mocking and ‘rational’, ‘in various guises and with various personalities, but always one and the same, and I always get angry…’

He's haunted by the same thing as Ivan Karamazov's Devil. When this was casted out from him he, he could not take it (we may see why later); he killed himself. I do not think this chapter necessary to make a conclusion about why Stavrogin committed suicide because Dostoyevsky has written the rest of the novel in accommodation for this missing chapter. Still, it gives a lot of insight into Stavrogin.

‘The complete atheist stands on the next-to-last highest rung leading to the fullest and most complete faith (he may take that step, or he may not), but the indifferent man has no faith at all, except an ugly fear.’

Quote. It's very true. Kirillov was faithful as a monk in his man-god. Stavrogin is insane due to indifference; degenerate out of ennui.

‘Do you remember “Unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write”?’

Dostoyevsky really wanted that verse to be in here. This was the verse Sofya Matveyevna read to Stepan. But it describes Stavrogin perfectly.

‘You were struck by the fact that the Lamb has greater love for the cold man than for one who is merely lukewarm,’ he said, ‘and you don’t want to be merely lukewarm. I have an inkling that some extraordinary resolve, perhaps a dreadful one, is locked in a struggle with you.

He understands Stavrogin completely

Every situation in my life in which I have ever happened to find myself, however unspeakably shameful, utterly degrading, vile and, most importantly, ridiculous, has always aroused both boundless anger and unbelievable pleasure in me.

It was not vileness that I loved (here my reason remained fully intact), but rather, the ecstasy I derived from the tormenting awareness of having fallen so low that was so gratifying.

Love of depravity, and the shame of having that love. That is his moral carnality, which nobody including the reader never truly came to know until now. Stavrogin is in equal parts a sadist and a masochist. (Mitya Karamazov has a similar affliction, though without the sadism. Pyotr Verkhovensky has no such affliction - he's an atheist like Kirillov and his gods are Ivan Tsarevich and the revolution. That, and general disconnect from society, which is a similarity he has with the older Verkhovensky in spirit.)

But suppressing my anger on those occasions would heighten the pleasure beyond anything you could imagine. I never spoke about this to anyone or even hinted at it, and hid it as a shame and a disgrace.

He hides it really well. In that duel and when he was slapped in the face, neither the chronicler nor the reader could see any signs of ecstasy.

the vice that Jean-Jacques Rousseau confessed to.

The vice is masturbation. Soviet censors did not allow the word to be written, which struck me as strange. They observe Christian-like prudery but themselves are strongly anti-god. Atheism does indeed stand on the precipice of the strongest faith.

that same time, I wanted to kill myself, because I was suffering from the disease of indifference; however, I don’t really know if that was the reason.

Just like when he really did kill himself.

Matryosha was sitting in her tiny room, on a small bench, with her back to me, and was doing something with a needle. Then she suddenly began to sing softly, very softly; she did that occasionally.

She is the same character as The Meek One.

the girl threw her arms around my neck and suddenly began kissing me furiously. Her face wore an expression of utter rapture.

The same thing happened with Liza and Dasha.

the Petersburg Side9

I'm kinda proud that I've read so much Russian literature that I knew where the Petersburg Side is without having to consult the footnotes.

I remember everything to the very last moment.

He keeps adding these little details and confirming that he remembers everything to the last moment to dispell any notion of insanity or illness.

Matryosha had hanged herself.

Of course he chose to kill himself the same way she did.

I don’t know precisely what I dreamed, but the rocks and the sea and the slanting rays of the setting sun — all this I still seemed to see when I woke up and opened my eyes, which for the first time in my life were literally wet with tears. A feeling of happiness, as yet unknown to me, passed through my heart until it hurt.

The first time Stavrogin ever felt happy was when he dreamed of the sun's rays and saw beauty. It's very Dostoyevskian - the rays of sun and the notion that beauty can save the world. No doubt Stavrogin was irked about Verkhovensky calling him a beauty. This is beauty to him, and he sees no semblance of it in himself.

suddenly a tiny red spider appeared to me distinctly.

He's having 'dreams' like Rodya did after he committed murder. The spider is similar as well as hallucinating his victim. [Later]

Towards one woman I acted worse, and she died as a result. In duels I deprived two people of their lives, even though they had done nothing to me. On one occasion I was mortally insulted and I did not take revenge on my adversary. I have one poisoning to my credit, which was deliberate and successful and known to no one. (If need be, I’ll tell everything.)

Dude's a serial killer atp

I know that I could dismiss this little girl from my mind even now, whenever I feel like it. I have full mastery of my will, as before. But the whole point is that I never wanted to do so, that I don’t want to now and that I will not want to; that is something I do know. And so it will continue right up to the point where I lose my mind.

Ah so there's the explanation to his insanity

But for me there will remain those who will know everything and will look at me, and I at them.

He really revels in it. That he cannot be punished and will not face punishment, but he is agonising himself.

Strangely enough, the hint of impatience, distraction and something like delirium that had been on his face that entire morning had almost disappeared now, to be replaced by serenity and something resembling sincerity, which almost gave him an air of dignity.

Well, he's confessed now. That's usually a precursor to repentance.

Repentance can go no further than the astonishing heroic deed that you have contemplated, if only…’ ‘If only what?’ ‘If only it is truly repentance and truly a Christian idea.’

TIKHON SAID THE WHOLE POINT EXACTLY AND PERFECTLY I need not write any more notes on this

‘Yes, this is repentance and the natural need for it that has got the better of you, and you have entered upon a great path, an unprecedented path. But you already seem to hate everyone in advance who will read what has been described here, and you are challenging them to a fight. You have not been ashamed to admit a crime, why are you ashamed of repentance? Let them look at me, you say; well, and what about you, how will you look at them?

EXACTLY

The whole world is filled with such horrors. But you have felt all the depth of your sins, which happens very rarely to this degree.’

He's right. Honestly Stavrogn is not such a bad villain because of this fact. There are those in whom there is no image of God at all.

‘And this girl,’ Tikhon again began shyly, ‘with whom you broke off relations in Switzerland, if I may venture to ask, is… where, at this moment?’ ‘Here.’

It was Darya Pavlovna.

‘In other words, their hatred will evoke yours, and hating them will make it easier for you than if you accepted their pity?’

EXACTLY bro this monk is cooking

‘If you were to forgive me, I would find it much easier,’ he added unexpectedly and in a half-whisper. ‘Provided you also forgave me,’ Tikhon uttered in a voice full of emotion.

I FUCKING LOVE THIS. Rodya and Sonya achieved this perfectly. Tikhon is asking forgiveness for his disbelief.

In sinning, each person has already sinned against all, and each person is in some way guilty for another person’s sin. There is no isolated sin. I am truly a great sinner, and perhaps greater than you.’

I love sobornost

‘But universal compassion for you — you wouldn’t be able to bear that with the same humility?’ ‘Perhaps I wouldn’t.

Exactly with Stavrogin.

Oh, don’t believe that you won’t prevail!’ he exclaimed almost in ecstasy. ‘Even this form will prevail’ (he pointed at the pages) ‘if only you will sincerely accept being slapped and spat upon.

Stavrogin won't be a Raskolnikov unfortunately

‘Of the crime. There are crimes that are truly ugly. In crimes, of whatever kind, the more blood and horror there is, the more appealing they are, or, so to speak, picturesque. But there are shameful crimes, disgraceful ones that transcend any horror, so to speak, even too inelegant, actually…’

WHY IS HE SO RIGHT HE'S COOKING SO HARD. People sympathise more with murderers than child molesters (I know both crimes are equally despicable but I find myself doing the same very often).

I want to forgive myself, and that’s my main purpose, my entire purpose!’ Stavrogin suddenly said with a look of gloomy ecstasy in his eyes. ‘I know that only then will the apparition disappear. That’s precisely why I’m seeking boundless suffering, seeking it myself. So don’t try to frighten me.’

Tikhon's point still stands. He would achieve repentance, but only with Christ.

Even if you don’t achieve reconciliation with yourself and forgiveness of yourself, even then he will forgive you for your intention and for your great suffering… for there are neither words nor thought in human language to express all the ways and means of the Lamb, “until his ways are made manifest14 to us”. Who can embrace him, the unembraceable, who can understand all of him, the infinite!’

I don't agree with this. There is no sin greater than the forgiveness of Christ but you do have to accept the forgiveness. That is what repentance is. I don't take Tikhon a speaker of Dostoyevsky's beliefs. (Similar to the first monk we see in this book. All the monks we see in Demons seem to be a criticism on monks who lose their way. It's characteristic for even the monks of this novel to be a bit skewed.) Not even Father Zosimov (TBK) is, though he is definitely the closest. Because men of faith are still men and are flawed, especially this one (Tikhon) of flawed faith.

for five years, for seven, for as many as you should find necessary.

Rodya served seven years in hard labour for murder. Sure, this penance is unique but it honestly may work for Stavrogin.

you will throw yourself into a fresh crime as a way out, only to avoid making the pages public!’

And that was what he did to Liza. (This confession happened right before that.)