Fyodor Dostoevsky

Demons is a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871-2. It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoyevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoevsky's most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily 'tragic' work." According to Ronald Hingley, it is Dostoyevsky's "greatest onslaught on Nihilism", and "one of humanity's most impressive achievements-perhaps even its supreme achievement-in the art of prose fiction."Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s. A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky. The mysterious aristocratic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin-Verkhovensky's counterpart in the moral sphere-dominates the book, exercising an extraordinary influence over the hearts and minds of almost all the other characters. The idealistic, western-influenced generation of the 1840s, epitomized in the character of Stepan Verkhovensky (who is both Pyotr Verkhovensky's father and Nikolai Stavrogin's childhood teacher), are presented as the unconscious progenitors and helpless accomplices of the 'demonic' forces that take possession of the town.

The Possessed, the Devils

Demons

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“God is necessary, and therefore must exist... But I know that he does not and cannot exist... Don't you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?“

Stas

Om et skip går under, er rottene de første som forlater det. 

Evan

Stepan Trofimovich knew how to reach into his young friend's heart and pluck the deepest chords and evoke in him the first, still vague sense of that eternal, sacred anguish which some elected souls, once having tasted and known it, would never again exchange for some cheap gratification.

According to his wife, when Dostoyevsky was suffering from toothache, he insisted that the pain was caused by the proximity to Lake Geneva and that he had read about this somewhere.

A large fire at night always creates an exciting and exhilarating impression. That explains the appeal of fireworks; but there the fires are arranged in elegant, symmetrical patterns, and because they are completely harmless, they produce a playful and happy impression, like a glass of champagne. A real fire is another matter: here the horror and a certain sense of personal danger, coupled with the exhilarating impression created by a nighttime fire, produces in the onlooker (not, of course, in the householder who has been completely burnt out) a certain concussion of the brain, and a challenge, as it were, to his own destructive instincts, which - alas! - lurk in every heart, even in the heart of the meekest titular councillor with a loving family.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, if he weren't in love with you like a sheep, he wouldn't be running around the streets like a madman and wouldn't be stirring up all the dogs in town. He broke my window frame.

Demons quotes

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