Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

introduction to my proposed chronicle,

Here's the chronicler of the Society Novel

a stage actor,

That's what Pyotr called him

What is habit not capable of? Habit had brought Stepan Trofimovich to almost the same position too,

That is, in the position of Gulliver. I intend to remember characterisation of Stepan Trofimovich better because he is an important side character and I ignored him on my first read.

his name was uttered by many of the impetuous people of that time in practically the same breath with the names of Chaadayev, Belinsky, Granovsky and Herzen,

Stepan Trofimovich was originally named Granovsky in early drafts of the novel, after the liberal and socialist westerniser.

He himself sincerely believed, as long as he lived, that in certain circles he was constantly feared,

Nah what a loser. His son made the name Verkhovensky feared, though.

He also managed to defend a brilliant dissertation on the budding civic and Hanseatic significance of the small German town of Hanau,

An allusion to Granovsky

This dissertation was a deft and painful jab at the Slavophiles8

An allusion to all the four westenisers that Stepan was modelled after.

apparently on the reasons for the unusually moral sense of nobility of certain knights in a particular age,

Another allusion to Granovsky lmao. Dostoyevsky is drilling into him.

in Petersburg,

Btw this is the first Dostoyesky book since forever that we aren't in Petersburg

some vast, bizarre anti-government association, consisting of about thirteen members and practically shaking the foundations of the state, had been discovered.

Oohh

they were supposedly intending to translate none other than Fourier11 himself.

The fucking socialist utopian the Underground Man was obsessed with

The first scene opens with a chorus of women, then a chorus of men, then a chorus of spirits of some kind, and at the very end, a chorus of souls, which have never yet been alive, but would very much like to come to life.

The devils; the possessed

the scene suddenly changes and then there begins some sort of ‘Festival of Life’, in which even insects sing, a tortoise appears with some sacramental words in Latin,

The revolution starts with the idea; they want to bring heaven here (that's what the Latin is for; Dostoyevsky was anti-cathlioc and he thought the Church wanted to bring heaven down to earth).

since he feels an overabundance of life within himself, he seeks oblivion and finds it in the juices of these herbs, but that what he desires most of all is to lose his mind as quickly as possible

The chaos of the revolutionaries ('filibusters') woooo

an indescribably handsome youth suddenly rides in on a black steed, followed by a huge number of all the peoples of the world.

Ah the Black Horse on which Death rides (Book of Revelations), after which Hell proceeds

the Tower of Babel suddenly appears, and some athletes are busy bringing it to completion, with a song of fresh hope, and

I guess this means Hell; we were punished for trying to bring Heaven to earth and rightfully so. To the revolutionaries though, this is heaven; they have brought chaos and misynderstanding into the earth. Btw it's intriguing how Stepan Trofimovich wrote a prophetic poem about his son's revolution. The sins of the father.

the lord of — let’s say it’s Olympus14 — runs off in comical fashion,

There's an arrogance in the revolutionaries in how they think that the Lord will fear them. Like how the USSR shut down churches and thought that God would just leave.

mankind, which has grasped the situation, occupies his place, and immediately begins a new life with a new and deeper understanding of things.

The deification of man.

every day he expected a telegram to arrive from somewhere, he turned a haughty face to the world. No telegram ever arrived.

He really wants to be extraordinary lmao. His son does that.

ample testimony to the extraordinary kindness of his gentle and forgiving heart.

Part I Narrator is in love with Stepan Trofimovich

that he should take on himself the education and the entire intellectual development of her only son, in the capacity of a superior pedagogue and friend, not to mention a generous remuneration.

Oh hai STAVROGIN

Skvoreshniki, the magnificent estate of the Stavrogin family not far from our provincial town.

Somehow i never got the province of Skvoreshniki as well as SKOTOPRIGONIEVSK (tbk)

Reproach incarnate, grand, … You stood before your native land, A liberal and idealist.

A poem by a different poet but stil alluding to Granovsky and Belinski

As for our Stepan Trofimovich, if truth be told, he was just an imitator when compared with persons of that kind, and what’s more, he would grow tired of standing erect, and would very often just lie about.

HAHAHAHAH REAL

that he had become flesh of her flesh,

Sort of an inversion of Genesis ('flesh of her flesh' is an allusion to Genesis)

And she was unbelievably unforgiving.

Characterisation I should probably remember

(he cried rather often).

THE PARENTHESIS? I laughed too hard at this

the depths of the female heart are unfathomable to this very day!

Dussy's narrators have been saying this since The Idiot lmao

‘I shall never forgive you for that!’

The first time was for ruining her connections to high society. This time, I don't understand. It's very characteristic for the high society characters of Part I to decidedly evade mentioning the problems they have in favour of keeping their glamour.

the rest of his life, he seemed to be expecting a continuation and, so to speak, a denouement of this incident.

Good for me to remember about their relationship

Varvara Petrovna preserved this engraving among her most cherished treasures, and that’s perhaps the only reason why she created a costume for Stepan Trofimovich that was somewhat similar to the costume depicted in the portrait.

They really are very high society. With them, life imitates art.

Moscow proved unsatisfactory.

Because Moscow was considered traditional and spiritual at the time while Petersburg was the 'Window to the West.'

a dream began to glow in his heart: of joining the new movement and demonstrating his powers.

He's one of the dreamer characters.

the ostensible reason for the journey was a meeting with her only son,

Oh gosh hi Stavrogin

Their dreams melted away, and the fog of confusion not only didn’t clear up, but became even more repellent.

It's funny how these parents are such losers and then their children practically embodied their dreams and the 'fog' simultaneously.

The next day the incident was reported in the press, and people began collecting signatures for a petition against the ‘outrageous conduct’ of Varvara Petrovna,

Ok so now they're known for scandal!

He expressed unconditional agreement with the uselessness and absurdity of the word ‘fatherland’; he agreed with the idea that religion was harmful;33 but he loudly and firmly asserted that boots were inferior to Pushkin,

Lmao he doesn't know what he believes in

had not finished paying Stepan Trofimovich the 400 roubles he owed for several desyatinas of forest he had bought for timber on the latter’s small estate (next to Skvoreshniki).

Gotta remember this for the drama about the timber business later on

we have almost Athenian evenings,41 but only with respect to refinement and elegance; everything is genteel: a great deal of music, Spanish motifs, dreams of the renewal of all mankind, the idea of eternal beauty, the Sistine Madonna,

Wtf are they doing there; Sistine Madonna doesn't belong in the same 'Athenian' night

‘If they’re holding Athenian evenings until dawn, then he’s certainly not sitting over his books twelve hours a day.

LMAOOO

He didn’t last more than four months, and dashed back to Skvoreshniki.

LMAOOO???

There are natures that are extremely attached to a house, like lapdogs.

NARRATOR CALLED HIM A LAPDOG IM CRYING

je suis simply a sponger, et rien de plus! Mais rien de plus!’44

I love how i understood this LMAO AND I NEVER STUDIED FRENCH (Demons taught me French)

Our former governor, the mild and unforgettable Ivan Osipovich, was a close relative of hers and had once been beholden to her.

Yea I gotta remember this

the senior member of the circle was Liputin, a provincial clerk, a man who was no longer young, a great liberal and reputed in town to be an atheist.

Oh hi (he was part of Pyotr's circle I think)

She didn’t like Shatov either, who had become a member of the circle only in the past year.

Oh so we ARE being introduced to the circle

In a couple of months the merchant dismissed her for ‘freethinking’.45 Shatov tagged along behind her, and hastily married her in Geneva.

So this 'freethinker' was Marya Shatova (DARYA Shatova is his sister)

While abroad Shatov radically revised certain of his former socialist convictions and jumped to the opposite extreme.

Ooh. Remember this Shatov characterisation.

under the stone that has fallen upon them and already crushed them half to death.

Reminded me of that Kirillov conversation with the stone

stood up, made a clumsy kind of sideways bow, felt crushed with shame, and in the process brushed against her expensive and fancy little work-table,46 sent it crashing to the floor, smashed to pieces, and walked out, nearly dead from humiliation.

The rest of the characters are so bad that i came to remember Shatov as sane and stable but he's a mess too