Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

He was one of those idealistic Russian beings who are suddenly struck by some powerful idea and immediately, then and there, seem to be crushed by it, even sometimes permanently. They are never equipped to deal with it, and instead come to believe in it passionately, and so their entire life from then on passes in its final throes, as it were, under the stone that has fallen upon them and already crushed them half to death.

Without heads on our shoulders there is no way we can organize anything, despite the fact that it is our heads that are the greatest impediment to our understanding of things.’

She hadn’t slept all night and even went early in the morning to consult with Stepan Trofimovich and burst into tears at his lodgings, which had never before happened to her in anyone’s presence. She was hopeful that Nicolas would at least say something to her, deign, for instance, to explain himself. Nicolas, who was always so courteous and respectful towards his mother, listened to her for a time, frowning but very serious. Suddenly he got up, without having uttered a word in reply, kissed her hand and walked out.

in the second place, we Russians don’t know how to say anything in our own language… At least, we haven’t said anything so far…’

He suddenly dropped a tiny bag that he had been holding in his left hand. Actually, it wasn’t a bag, but a box of some kind, or, more accurately, a small portfolio of some kind, or, rather, a small reticule,6 like an old-fashioned lady’s reticule. Actually, I don’t know what it was, but I do know that I seem to have rushed to pick it up. I am utterly convinced that I didn’t pick it up, but my initial movement was unmistakable; I could not conceal it, and I blushed like an idiot. The crafty fellow promptly extracted everything from the situation that he possibly could. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll get it myself,’ he said charmingly, that is, when he finally realized that I wouldn’t pick up his reticule for him, he picked it up, as if anticipating me, nodded his head again, and set out on his way, leaving me looking like an idiot. It was the same as if I had picked it up myself. For a good five minutes I thought I had been completely and permanently disgraced; but as I walked up to Stepan Trofimovich’s house, I suddenly burst out laughing. The encounter seemed so funny to me that I immediately decided to amuse Stepan Trofimovich with an account of it, and even act out the whole scene for him.

‘Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.’

‘Life is pain, life is fear and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. And that’s how he’s been made. Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that’s the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will be a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn’t care whether he lives or doesn’t live, he will be the new man. Whoever conquers pain and fear, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.’

‘So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?’ ‘He doesn’t exist, but he does exist. In the stone there’s no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God. Then a new life, then a new man, everything new… Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God to…’ ‘To the gorilla?’ ‘… to the change of the earth and of man, physically. Man will be God and will change physically. And the world will change, and deeds will change, and thoughts, and all feelings. What do you think, will man change physically then?’

‘There’s also hatred here,’ he stated, after a minute of silence, ‘they’d be the first to be dreadfully unhappy if Russia should somehow rebuild itself, even the way they want it, and should somehow become boundlessly rich and happy. Then there would be no one for them to hate, no one to spit on, nothing to make fun of! What we have here is nothing but a boundless animal hatred for Russia which has eaten into their organism…

‘Oh, well, God be with you, I let you get in and didn’t say nothin”bout the cost,’ the cabbie waved dismissively, and looked at her as if thinking: ‘Why, ’twould be a sin to offend you’,

‘I didn’t answer your “why”? You expect an answer to “why”?’ The captain tossed the question back with a wink. ‘This tiny little word “why” has been spread throughout the entire universe from the very first day of creation, madam, and all of nature at every moment cries out to its creator: “Why?” And for seven thousand years now it has received no answer. Is it really up to Captain Lebyadkin alone to provide an answer, and is that fair, madam?’

‘Not a single people,’ he began, as if reading line for line and at the same time continuing to look threateningly at Stavrogin, ‘not one people has ever yet organized itself according to the principles of science and reason. Never has there been a single example of that, except only for a brief moment, out of stupidity. Socialism, by its very nature, must be atheism, for it has specifically proclaimed, from its very first words, that it is an atheistic construct and is intentionally organized exclusively according to the principles of science and reason. Reason and science in the life of peoples always, now and from the beginning of time, have fulfilled merely a secondary and auxiliary function; and that will be their function until the end of time. Peoples are formed and moved by another force that rules and dominates them, but whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end. This is the force of a ceaseless and tireless affirmation of its own being and the denial of death. It is the spirit of life, as the Scriptures say, “of living water”, the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse.25 It is the aesthetic principle, as the philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. “The search for God”, as I call it more simply. The goal of all movements of peoples, in every people and in every period of its existence, is nothing but a search for God, ...

There has never yet been a people without religion, that is, without the concept of evil and good. Each people has its own concept of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many different peoples begin to hold concepts of evil and good in common, then the peoples die out, and then the very difference between evil and good begins to blur and disappear.

Reason has never had the power of defining evil and good or separating evil from good, even approximately. On the contrary, it has always mixed them up in a shameful and pitiful fashion, whereas science has found solutions by sheer force.

Listen, acquire God through work. That’s it in a nutshell, otherwise you’ll disappear, like some nasty mould; acquire him through work.’ ‘God through work? What kind of work?’ ‘Muzhik’s work. Go and get rid of your riches…

‘Evidently it’s true that the entire second half of a man’s life is usually composed solely of the habits accumulated during the first half.’

“One has to be a truly great man in order to know how to hold out even against common sense.”

On the morning of the wedding, he sent her some verses. All this pleased her greatly, even the verses: forty years old is no laughing matter.

Generally speaking, in every misfortune that befalls one’s neighbour there is something that gladdens the eye of the onlooker, it doesn’t make any difference who you may be.

People look at them in bewilderment, because everyone is frightened by their form, but everyone nonetheless is convinced of their power, even if they don’t admit it to themselves. Everyone has been falling for a long time, and everyone has known for a long time that there is nothing to grab on to. I’m already convinced of the success of this mysterious propaganda, because Russia is now pre-eminently the one place in the whole world where anything you want can happen without the slightest resistance. I understand only too well why Russians with means have all made tracks abroad, and why with every passing year more and more of them dash off abroad. It’s simply instinct. If the ship is about to sink, the rats are the first to desert it.

There’s nothing more powerful than a uniform. I make a point of dreaming up ranks and offices: I have secretaries, secret agents, treasurers, chairmen, registrars, their colleagues — it’s a lot of fun and it has really caught on. After that, the second most powerful force is, of course, sentimentality. You know, socialism in Russia is spreading primarily out of sentimentality. But the trouble is all these second lieutenants who go around biting people; every once in a while you run across them. Then come the out-and-out crooks. Well, maybe they’re a good bunch of people, sometimes very useful, but a lot of time is spent on them, they require constant watching. Well then, finally there’s the most important force, the cement that binds everything: the shame of their own opinion. Now there’s a force for you! And who was it that worked so hard, who was this “sweetie-pie” 24 who toiled away so diligently that no one else has a single idea of his own left in his head! They would consider that shameful.’

After announcing that measures had been taken, von Lembke turned around sharply and began to walk quickly out of the room, but after two steps he tripped on the carpet, stumbled forward and nearly fell. He stopped for a moment, looked at the spot he had tripped against and, saying ‘Fix it’, walked out of the door.

The riff-raff that exists in every society rises to the surface in any time of transition, and is utterly devoid not only of any goal, but even the slightest indication of an idea, and merely gives expression to restlessness and impatience as forcefully as it can.

Narrow little people, what do you lack in order to understand? Do you know, do you know that mankind can still continue to live without the Englishman, can continue without Germany, can continue all too well without the Russian, can continue without science, can continue without bread — it is only without beauty that we cannot continue, for there will be nothing at all to do in the world! That’s where the whole secret lies, that’s where the whole of history lies! Science itself would not last a minute without beauty — do you know about that, you who are laughing now? —it would turn into loutishness, you wouldn’t even be able to invent the nail!…

It would have been difficult to imagine a more pitiful, more tasteless, more talentless and vapid allegory than this ‘literary quadrille’. No one could have devised anything less suitable for our public; and yet it was devised, they say, by Karmazinov.

Of course, that same admirer of a nighttime fire will throw himself into the fire to save a child or an old woman who is in danger; but that, after all, is an entirely different proposition.

then, are you trying to take everything away from me today? Do you know what it’s cost me, this fresh hope? I’ve paid for it with a life.’ ‘Yours or someone else’s?’ He stood up quickly. ‘What does that mean?’ he said, staring at her.

I heard later that you despised me for changing my convictions. But whom did I abandon? The enemies of living life — the outmoded little liberals who were afraid of their own independence, the lackeys of thought, the enemies of individuality and freedom, the decrepit proponents of everything dead and rotten! What did they have? Senility, the golden mean, the most philistine and vile mediocrity, envious equality, equality without personal dignity, equality as a lackey conceives it or as it was conceived by a Frenchman in 17933… But the main thing is the scoundrels, scoundrels and more scoundrels everywhere!’

‘There were two, and suddenly there’s a third person, a new spirit, whole and finished as human hands couldn’t make him, a new thought and a new love — it’s even terrifying… And there’s nothing higher in the world!’

‘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?’

‘I am obliged to proclaim disbelief,’ Kirillov was walking about the room. ‘For me there is no higher idea than the nonexistence of God. Human history is behind me. Man has done nothing but invent God in order to live without killing himself; that’s the essence of world history to this point. I am the only one in world history who hasn’t felt like inventing God for the first time. Let people find that out once and for all.’

‘How… how is it you’ve got a cow behind?’ he suddenly asked the wench. ‘What’s that, sir, ain’t you never seen one?’ The wench began to laugh heartily. ‘We bought her in town,’ the muzhik interjected. ‘Our own cattle, you see, went and died last spring — the plague. They was droppin’ all ’round us, all of ’em; no more than half was left, ’twas enough to make yer howl.’ And again he lashed the little horse, which had got stuck in a rut. ‘Yes, that happens in this Russia of ours… and in general we Russians… well, yes, it happens,’ Stepan Trofimovich didn’t finish.

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

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? If I have come to love him and have taken joy in my love, is it possible that he should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us into nothing? If God exists, then I am immortal too!

‘Oh, I would very much like to live again!’ he exclaimed with an extraordinary surge of energy. ‘Every minute, every instant of life ought to be a blessing to man… they ought to be, they definitely ought to be! It is the duty of man himself to see to it; this is his law, which is hidden but which definitely exists…

‘Just the constant thought that something exists that is immeasurably more just and happier than I am already fills my entire being with immeasurable tenderness and — glory — oh, whoever I may be, whatever I might have done! It is much more necessary for man to know his own happiness and to believe, every moment, that perfect and serene happiness exists somewhere, for all people and for everything… 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… My friends, everyone, all of you: long live the Great Idea! The eternal, immeasurable Idea! Every man, whoever he is, needs to bow down before the Great Idea! Even the most stupid of men needs something great. Petrusha…Oh, how I yearn to see them all again! They don’t know, they don’t know that this same eternal Great Idea is contained within them!’

It’s best if you didn’t come. The fact that I’m summoning you is awfully vile of me. And why should you bury your life along with me? You’re dear to me, and in my misery, I felt good beside you; only with you, you alone, could I speak about myself out loud. But nothing comes of that. You defined it yourself — a ‘nurse’. That’s your expression. What’s the point of sacrificing so much? Understand, too, that I don’t feel sorry for you if I summon you, and I don’t respect you, if I’m waiting for you. And yet, I both summon and wait. In any case, I need your answer, because I must go very soon. In that case, I’ll leave by myself.

Dear friend, tender and magnanimous creation which I divined! Perhaps you dream of giving me so much love and pouring out on to me so much that is beautiful from your beautiful soul that you hope thereby to establish some goal for me at last? No, it’s best for you to be cautious: my love will be as shallow as I am myself, and you will be unhappy. Your brother told me that he who loses ties with his earth, also loses his gods, that is, all his goals. One can argue endlessly about everything, but from me only negativity has poured forth, without any magnanimity and without any strength. Not even negativity has poured forth from me. Everything is always shallow and flaccid. The magnanimous Kirillov couldn’t tolerate the idea and he shot himself; but I really do see that he was magnanimous because he was not in his right mind. I will never lose my mind and will never believe an idea to the same extent as he did. I can’t even devote myself to an idea to that extent. Never, never shall I shoot myself!

Towards evening I again experienced a sense of fear, now incomparably more intense. Of course, I could have denied everything, but they certainly could have found me out. I was haunted by the spectre of hard labour. I had never felt fear, and except for this one instance in my life, I was never afraid of anything, either before or after. And certainly not of Siberia in particular, although I could have been exiled there on more than one occasion. But this time I was frightened, and I really did feel fear — I don’t know why — for the first time in my life.

A fly was buzzing round my head and kept lighting on my face. I caught it, held it in my fingers and released it through the window.

‘This document comes straight from the need of a heart that has been mortally wounded — do I understand it correctly?’ He went on insistently and with unusual heat. ‘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? Some passages in your account are stylistically heightened, as if you’re admiring your own psychology and are grasping at every tiny detail, in order to astonish the reader with your insensitivity which is not a part of you. What is this if not the proud challenge of a guilty man to his judge?’

‘Answer one question, but sincerely, and to me alone, only to me: if someone should forgive you for this’ (Tikhon indicated the pages) ‘and not any of those whom you respect or fear, but some unknown person, a person whom you will never know, silently, while reading your terrible confession — would this thought make it easier for you, or wouldn’t it matter?’ ‘Easier,’ Stavrogin answered in a low voice, dropping his eyes. ‘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. ‘For what? What have you done to me? Ah yes, this is some monastic formula.’ ‘For my voluntary and involuntary sins.12 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.’

‘Even the form of a great act of repentance like this one does have something ridiculous about it. 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. The end result has always been that the most shameful cross becomes a great glory and a great power, if the great deed has been sincerely humble. Perhaps you will find consolation even in your lifetime!’

‘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…’

‘If you believe that you can forgive yourself and can achieve this forgiveness for yourself in this world, then you believe in everything!’ Tikhon exclaimed ecstatically. ‘How could you have said that you don’t believe in God?’

‘By the way, Christ won’t forgive me, will he?’ Stavrogin asked, and in the tone of his question could be heard a slight touch of irony. ‘For it is stated in the Book: “For whoso shall offend one of these little ones” 13 — you remember? According to the Gospel, there is no greater crime, nor can there be. It’s all there in this book!’ He pointed at the Gospel. ‘I bring you joyful news about this,’ Tikhon said with emotion, ‘even Christ will forgive you if only you can reach the point of forgiving yourself… Oh, no, no, don’t believe me, I have uttered blasphemy. 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!’

But instead of this heroic deed I propose to you another one, even greater than that, something that’s unmistakably great…’ Nikolay Vsevolodovich said nothing. ‘You are struggling with a desire for martyrdom and self-sacrifice. Subdue this desire of yours as well, lay aside these pages, and your intention — and then you will succeed in overcoming everything. You will put all your pride to shame, and your demon! You will end as a conqueror, you will attain freedom…’