Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am capable nonetheless of discerning falsehood and stupidity when I come across them. Lembke is falsehood, and Praskovya is stupidity.

HAHAHAHAHA

‘Charmante enfant!’

'A charming child' They say this a lot too

it’s only the Lembke woman who’s been scheming. He had great respect for Nicolas.

'He' is mr lembke

it’s only the Lembke woman who is doing the intriguing, and Praskovya’s just blind.

Probably remember

She tried to use Nicolas to ingratiate herself with Count K., she wanted to separate a son from his mother.

[Mlle Lembke]

Do you know that Karmazinov is a relative of hers?’

of [Mlle. Lembke]

‘Mais, ma chère…’

'but, my dear…' he says this a lot as well

‘That you and I aren’t smarter than everybody else in the world, and that there are people who are smarter than we are.’

MLLE STAVROGINA UNKNOWINGLY ECHOING HER SON

Stepan Trofimovich protested meekly.

He really is very pathetic. Pyotr must've hated that more than anyone else

he became fearful; he began to take his dreams very seriously.

he was troubled by something in particular, something that he very likely couldn’t put into words himself.

Is that connected to 'only ma cher Pierre can save me now'?

he went up to the mirror and stood before it for a long time. Finally, he turned away from the mirror towards me and said with a strange sense of despair: ‘Mon cher, je suis un26 man who’s let himself go!’

I do feel bad for the man. I can vaguely guess how this played into his desperation with Pyotr but let's see.

Did he have a premonition that evening of the colossal test that was being prepared for him in the very near future?

Oh gosh

some falling-out indeed had occurred between Liza and Nicolas, but as for the kind of falling-out, Praskovya Ivanovna obviously could form no definite idea.

the falling-out began because of Liza’s ‘stubborn and sarcastic nature’; ‘and the proud Nikolay Vsevolodovich, although he was deeply in love, could not bear the sarcastic remarks and began to be sarcastic himself.’

So both their prides clashed

Liza proceeded to act badly; she deliberately became friendly with the young man with an eye to making Nikolay Vsevolodovich jealous.

LIZA BECAME FRIENDLY WITH PYOTR STEPANOVICH VERKHOVENSKY TO MAKE NIKOLAY FUCKING STAVROGIN JEALOUS? Damn i don't remember that and now I should

Nikolay Vsevolodovich, instead of getting jealous, did the opposite; he himself made friends with the young man,

oh LMAOOOO

(he was very much in a hurry to get somewhere),

Huh!

‘Nicolas is not the kind of person to run away because of some silly young girl’s sarcastic remarks. There’s something else going on here,

Remember

‘don’t you have something special you would like to tell me?’ ‘No, nothing,’ Darya said after a moment’s thought, and glanced at Varvara Petrovna with her bright eyes.

Suspicious as hell

Besides, he’s still a handsome man… In a word, Stepan Trofimovich, for whom you’ve always had respect.

WHAT THE FUCK VARVARA PETROVNA? SHE'S ACTUALLY SETTING HER UP TO BE MARRIED TO STEPAN

Make him obey;

…

‘So, you agree! Stop, be quiet,

Varvara is talking about the money side of this theoretical marriage betweeen Dasha and Stepan. May be nice to remember

Poor Stepan Trofimovich was sitting by himself with no premonition of anything. Sad and pensive, he had been glancing out of the window for quite some time to see whether any of his acquaintances was coming. But no one wanted to come near the house. It was drizzling outside and turning cold; the stove should have been lighted; he gave a sigh.

He's so pathetic I really do feel bad for him lmao

Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going!’ ‘I’ll be… right back,’ Stepan Trofimovich shouted from the next room, ‘here I am again!’ ‘Ah, you’ve changed clothes!’ she said derisively as she looked him over. (He had thrown a frock-coat over his dressing jacket.)

THIS SHIT IS SO VIVID AND FUNNY AS SHIT LMAO

I could never have imagined that you would venture to marry me off… to another… woman!’ ‘You’re not a young girl, Stepan Trofimovich; only young girls are married off, but you yourself are getting married,’

HAHAHHAHAHAH

‘Lord! Why, he’s fainted!

HAHAHAHAHAHA WTF THIS IS HYSTERICAL

Stepan Trofimovich’s estate (about fifty souls according to the old method of reckoning, and adjacent to Skvoreshniki) was not his at all, but had belonged to his first wife, and consequently, was now his son’s.

Are we finally meeting Petrushka?? :3 also probably remember that the guy is a landowner

without Varvara Petrovna’s knowledge, selling its woods, that is, its principal asset, for timber.

The timber business becomes important later so remember

when Petrusha arrived, he would generously place upon the table the maximum price, that is, as much as fifteen thousand, without the slightest reference to the amounts that had been sent abroad, and would clasp ce cher fils32 firmly, ever so firmly to his breast, whereupon all accounts would be closed once and for all.

…he wanted to cheat his own son in business

he had taken part in composing some anonymous manifesto and had been implicated in the whole business. Then, that he had suddenly turned up abroad, in Switzerland, in Geneva — a fugitive, for all we knew.

Oh! Remember

They are captivated not by realism, but by the sentimental, idealistic side of socialism, so to speak, its religious tinge, its poetry… secondhand, naturally.

Interesting pov of his philosophy that may be good to remember. Pyotr is probably as much of a dreamer as his father is, and indeed the revolution stared with a bad dream (the poem from 1.1.1 - Part I Chapter I Section I).

He sprayed his handkerchief with scent, but only so slightly, and, as soon as he caught sight of Varvara Petrovna through the window, he hastily picked up another handkerchief, and hid the scented one under a pillow.

We all know he's vain but Varvara Petrovna suppresses that side of him because he's afraid of her. And we know by the next chapter that he is in terrible shame during all this time. Anyway it always comes out later in an outburst of eloquence and French with Stepan.

Je suis un forcat, un Badinguet, un34 man who’s been pressed to the wall!’

Dostoyevsky needs to stop with Napoleon! /j

It was something that he was more ashamed of than anything else and about which he didn’t wish to speak even with me;

It's about Petrusha isn't it

Can you believe that at that time she had ideas, her own ideas? Now everything has changed! She says that all that is nothing but ancient chatter! She has contempt for what once was… Now she is some sort of steward or housekeeper, an embittered person, and is angry all the time…’

They're two examples of adults who let their own ideas die wthout resolution. They're glamorous underground men. I bet it will turn out later on that Stepan Trofimovich has similarities to Ippolit Terentyev, or if not him, then his son.

He began talking about the town news, about the arrival of the governor’s wife ‘with fresh material for conversation’, about the opposition that had already built at the club, about the fact that everyone was shouting about new ideas and how this had infected everyone, and so on and so forth.

Oh no :). Liputin is kind of a 'spy' (the narrator calls him that) and very cemented in the Verkhovensky rlations - since 1.1.1.

It always seemed to me that his main character trait was envy.

Probably impotant characterisation of Liputin

I am convinced that not only is everything known to him about our situation in all its details, but that he knows a great deal more than that, something that neither you nor I know yet, and perhaps will never find out, or will find out when it is already too late, when there is no longer any turning back!’

I suspect so too; I suspect as early on as this Petrusha is already making his rounds around Petersburg and Skvoreshniki and may have ties or influence over Liputin.

Not infrequently it turns out that a writer whom people have long credited with an extraordinary depth of ideas and whom they have expected to exert an extraordinary and major influence on the direction of society, displays in the end such a watered-down and minuscule version of his basic little idea that no one is even sorry that he’s succeeded in writing himself out.

It seems that Dostoyevky is taking about his own class. I'm sure he expected to be one of those writers who will have been forgotten after their deaths, but hey it's over a century years later and we're reading his works

Heaven knows who it is they begin to take themselves for — for gods, at the very least.

Heheheheheh deification of man (which is so integral to socialist/anarchist philosophy)

He was describing a shipwreck somewhere on the coast of England, which he himself had witnessed, and he watched as drowning people were saved and dead bodies pulled out.

HAHAHAHAHAHA KARMAZINOV IS TURGENEV. DOSTOYEVSKY DOESN'T STOP FLAMING HIS ASS

Je m’en fiche et je proclame ma liberté. Au diable le Karmazinoff! Au diable la Lembke!

HAHAHAHA I NEVER LEARNED FRENCH BUT I UNDERSTAND HIS WORDS COMPLETELY

‘can you really suppose that I, Stepan Verkhovensky, am unable to find sufficient moral strength within myself to take up my box — my beggar’s box! —and hoisting it on to my weak shoulders, walk through the gate and disappear from here forever, when that is required by honour and the great principle of independence?

That's what he did in the end lmaooo

‘Perhaps you are bored with me, G—v,’

Govorov from govorit (Russian: to speak)

Mr Kirillov, a most remarkable civil engineer.

When I read this I actually pinched my nose

‘Aleksey Nilych

Of course his patronym is Nil (from Latin 'nihil' - nothing)

he will obtain a position on the construction of our railway bridge,

Of COURSE he works on railways.

When he went to bed, he would bow to the ground as he said his prayers and make the sign of the cross on his pillow, so that he wouldn’t die in the night …

Pyotr characterisation

Enfin, he had no feeling for the finer things at all, that is, for anything higher, anything fundamental, the tiniest germ of any future idea…

More Pyotr characterisation