Name: Les Possédés
ISBN: 9782253018254

Georges Philippenko

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Les Possédés

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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 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

An interesting read whose historical depth and scope is surely too large for just about any living reader to fully grasp (and I cannot imagine how few people at the time of release could fully understand this book, either). I suppose this can encourage rereads, research, and discussions -- but for an "average", layman reader like myself, I think reading "Demons" was honestly a bad choice for leisure, and I should not have (unknowingly, until it was too late) plunged right into the deep end of Dostoevsky's literature.

This is my first and likely only reading of "Demons", so on a surface level, I think the world Dostoevsky built is extremely detailed and without a doubt has a pulse. Our Russian setting is unnamed but is given enough lively characters inside of it that it feels very real, and I think is the book's greatest strength. I believed in every character outside of a couple absurd ones, namely Shatov and Kirillov. Compared to everyone else in town, these two felt props among people, even though the endnotes make it clear that many people are real-world representatives.

Stepan was my favorite, he was such a shitty person (who'd birth an even worse son) who felt very real if you know any narcissists, yet he'd find a way to make you smile. The narrator had a great and very real relationship with Stepan, I enjoyed their conversations together greatly; the narrator was a close second favorite.

This book has so much going on, so much historical subtext that even with the many pages of researched endnotes, I knew I wasn't close to getting everything. This work of literature is certainly an important thing, but also a bloated one if you're just some guy trying to read a "classic". Despite a lot of life, this book felt very dry at times, and I was not terribly happy with its ending.

Without knowing too much about Dostoevsky -- though I intend to read more of his -- from what I saw here in the novel and in his own words quoted in endnotes, I'm worried the guy really just said "God is the answer" to a lot of life's problems. Considering how much depth he was capable of, I'm worried about this shallow response in planned future readings.

I sort of recommend "Demons". This book would have really, really affected me if I was an ultra-well-read Christian Russian political science student in the 1880s. For an American idiot in 2025, I think it was a enjoyable ride with merit but also its fair share of bumps and slogs.

An interesting read whose historical depth and scope is surely too large for just about any living reader to fully grasp (and I cannot imagine how few people at the time of release could fully understand this book, either). I suppose this can encourage rereads, research, and discussions -- but for an "average", layman reader like myself, I think reading "Demons" was honestly a bad choice for leisure, and I should not have (unknowingly, until it was too late) plunged right into the deep end of Dostoevsky's literature.

This is my first and likely only reading of "Demons", so on a surface level, I think the world Dostoevsky built is extremely detailed and without a doubt has a pulse. Our Russian setting is unnamed but is given enough lively characters inside of it that it feels very real, and I think is the book's greatest strength. I believed in every character outside of a couple absurd ones, namely Shatov and Kirillov. Compared to everyone else in town, these two felt props among people, even though the endnotes make it clear that many people are real-world representatives.
Stepan was my favorite, he was such a shitty person (who'd birth an even worse son) who felt very real if you know any narcissists, yet he'd find a way to make you smile. The narrator had a great and very real relationship with Stepan, I enjoyed their conversations together greatly; the narrator was a close second favorite.

This book has so much going on, so much historical subtext that even with the many pages of researched endnotes, I knew I wasn't close to getting everything. This work of literature is certainly an important thing, but also a bloated one if you're just some guy trying to read a "classic". Despite a lot of life, this book felt very dry at times, and I was not terribly happy with its ending.

Without knowing too much about Dostoevsky -- though I intend to read more of his -- from what I saw here in the novel and in his own words quoted in endnotes, I'm worried the guy really just said "God is the answer" to a lot of life's problems. Considering how much depth he was capable of, I'm worried about this shallow response in planned future readings.

I sort of recommend "Demons". This book would have really, really affected me if I was an ultra-well-read Christian Russian political science student in the 1880s. For an American idiot in 2025, I think it was a enjoyable ride with merit but also its fair share of bumps and slogs.

A grim prophecy of the Russian Revolution

'What I am writing now is a tendentious thing', Dostoyevsky wrote to a friend in connection with his first outline for The Devils. 'I feel like saying everything as passionately as possible. (Let nihilists and the Westerners scream that I am reactionary!) To hell with them. I shall say everything ot the last word.'

As Dostoyevsky predicted, The Devils or The Possessed, was indeed denounced by radical critics as the work of a reactionary renegade. But radicals aside, it enjoyed great success both for its literary power and for its explicit and provocative politics; and for its story of Russian terrorists plotting violence and destruction, only to murder one of their own number.

'Stavrogin's Confession', the section omitted when the novel first appeared, is included as an appendix to this volume.
--back cover

(The Possessed)

The Devils

Based on the true story of the Russian nihilist Sergei Nechaev, who assassinated one of his comrades for defecting, 

 is Dostoevsky’s most on-the-nose political commentary. It narrates the ways that cosmopolitan liberalism gave birth to anarcho-communism in Russia (portrayed in the father-son duo of Stepan and Pyotr Verkhovensky). Maybe the only hero in the story, the victim Ivan Shatov, recants his nihilism and reluctantly discovers that religion, family, and place are the only way back to moral sanity. For the Orthodox Dostoevsky, the demons that haunted Russia turn out to be literal, not merely metaphors for natural human tendencies. The novel was prophetic in its own historical context and may well be for our own as well. In a climactic moment, Stepan declares, “The enthusiasm of the younger generation is as pure and bright as it ever was, and...is perishing only for being mistaken about the forms of the beautiful.” As such, it serves as a fair warning to any would-be revolutionaries today: Don’t just tear down. Build something beautiful.

Luke Stamps

Based on the true story of the Russian nihilist Sergei Nechaev, who assassinated one of his comrades for defecting, Demons is Dostoevsky’s most on-the-nose political commentary. It narrates the ways that cosmopolitan liberalism gave birth to anarcho-communism in Russia (portrayed in the father-son duo of Stepan and Pyotr Verkhovensky). Maybe the only hero in the story, the victim Ivan Shatov, recants his nihilism and reluctantly discovers that religion, family, and place are the only way back to moral sanity. For the Orthodox Dostoevsky, the demons that haunted Russia turn out to be literal, not merely metaphors for natural human tendencies. The novel was prophetic in its own historical context and may well be for our own as well. In a climactic moment, Stepan declares, “The enthusiasm of the younger generation is as pure and bright as it ever was, and...is perishing only for being mistaken about the forms of the beautiful.” As such, it serves as a fair warning to any would-be revolutionaries today: Don’t just tear down. Build something beautiful.

 so i can make summer double feature read jokes about it and le guin’s 

i also should have reviewed it much closer to when i finished but i mostly just clocked out of existence for a straight week after bc this might have easily become my new favourite dostoevsky. no shame in admitting i was a raskolnikov initiate in the same way everyone who read

 the year it came out thought they could scratch the boris itch by reading 

 has a texture that the other dostoevsky novels are too polished (?) to completely attain and in achieving that has ironically resulted in a read that struck me as chilling when i least expected it the way that the neatness of sophoclean endings is always so eerie and purgatorial. it’s like hearing your own footsteps in a dark, empty alley and every now and then you’ll catch the sound of water splashing under your shoe but you can’t see puddles anywhere and don’t know when it will happen next. that’s 

too many of the johan lieberts of the world fall prey to becoming a vessel for the conclusion paragraph of their respective story’s thesis, and stavrogin is no different, but perhaps bc of the real life ties, dostoevsky was devastatingly razor-sharp about going all in when he needed to and holding back when he didn’t, and the result saves characters from being forgettable even as unapologetic caricatures or mere embodied ideology. i was scared, though. like, you’re all realistic and great and i loved reading your perspectives but respectfully, i want to go home, we live in a society, etc.

is certainly nowhere close to dethroning dostoevsky’s masterpieces on a traditional basis (which i suppose is something of a moot point anyway); it has something of a zigzag narrative, and the structuring at times (only at times!) feels like a “well… this will do” fix to give such big birds eye view storytelling some corralling it didn’t need. but god, was it enjoyable. and so horrific. it’s got range. and it’s well-deservedly thick. 

that first section was insane of dostoevsky to open with. 

it did make me genuinely contemplate ending it all :) not a novel to read when you don’t want your already immense general nihilism and misanthropy affirmed. but that’s more a reflection on the current state of the world and the ways we continue to define connection to both things bigger than us and each other and lack thereof vs. the state of the world 

 in the end, did i really need any convincing about things i believed to be unchanging about other people anyway? probably not. 

kind of wish i knew this novel first as the possessed so i can make summer double feature read jokes about it and le guin’s the dispossessed (ᵕ • ᴗ •)

i also should have reviewed it much closer to when i finished but i mostly just clocked out of existence for a straight week after bc this might have easily become my new favourite dostoevsky. no shame in admitting i was a raskolnikov initiate in the same way everyone who read the goldfinch the year it came out thought they could scratch the boris itch by reading crime and punishment, but demons has a texture that the other dostoevsky novels are too polished (?) to completely attain and in achieving that has ironically resulted in a read that struck me as chilling when i least expected it the way that the neatness of sophoclean endings is always so eerie and purgatorial. it’s like hearing your own footsteps in a dark, empty alley and every now and then you’ll catch the sound of water splashing under your shoe but you can’t see puddles anywhere and don’t know when it will happen next. that’s demons. 

too many of the johan lieberts of the world fall prey to becoming a vessel for the conclusion paragraph of their respective story’s thesis, and stavrogin is no different, but perhaps bc of the real life ties, dostoevsky was devastatingly razor-sharp about going all in when he needed to and holding back when he didn’t, and the result saves characters from being forgettable even as unapologetic caricatures or mere embodied ideology. i was scared, though. like, you’re all realistic and great and i loved reading your perspectives but respectfully, i want to go home, we live in a society, etc.

demons is certainly nowhere close to dethroning dostoevsky’s masterpieces on a traditional basis (which i suppose is something of a moot point anyway); it has something of a zigzag narrative, and the structuring at times (only at times!) feels like a “well… this will do” fix to give such big birds eye view storytelling some corralling it didn’t need. but god, was it enjoyable. and so horrific. it’s got range. and it’s well-deservedly thick. and that first section was insane of dostoevsky to open with. 

it did make me genuinely contemplate ending it all :) not a novel to read when you don’t want your already immense general nihilism and misanthropy affirmed. but that’s more a reflection on the current state of the world and the ways we continue to define connection to both things bigger than us and each other and lack thereof vs. the state of the world then. in the end, did i really need any convincing about things i believed to be unchanging about other people anyway? probably not. 

One of Dostoyevsky’s most famous novels, this 1872 work utilizes five main characters and their philosophical ideas to describe the political chaos of Imperial Russia in the nineteenth century. Based on an actual event involving the murder of a revolutionary by his comrades, this novel depicts a band of ruthless radicals attempting to incite revolt in their small, rural community. At the center of “Demons” lies Dostoyevsky’s desire to protest the enthusiasm for revolution he saw all around him, as well as the conservative establishment’s inability to cope with those revolutionary ideas or their consequences. The author considered utopias unobtainable, and he depicts the radicals and the ideas they represent with a frightening savage intensity, as if they were possessed by demons rather than those unrealistic ideas. Perhaps the greatest political novel ever written, Dostoyevsky’s “Demons” fully displays his devastating condemnation of human manipulation through brilliant characterization, as well as his keen and seemingly clairvoyant insight into the hearts of men. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and follows the translation of Constance Garnett.
(back cover)

I’m not sure how I should feel after reading the final chapters. When I initially thought this novel was so boring that I put it down for over three months (which led to a serious reading slump), I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s Dostoevsky, after all—what else could I have expected? This new sensation, this intense mix of emotions, is dominated by both awe and disgust at the same time... And yes, I mean this in a completely fanatic way regarding the book. The narrative took a complete turn after diving into several political issues and introducing the ‘demons’. From that moment, I knew I would never regret picking up Dostoevsky again. His mastery is unmatched, and this time I can’t shake the feeling that 

 represents his ultimate literary peak which is quite incomparable to his other works. It’s enigmatic, unpredictable, and full of twists you’d never see coming. Truly, it feels like witchcraft.

🏹

I’m not sure how I should feel after reading the final chapters. When I initially thought this novel was so boring that I put it down for over three months (which led to a serious reading slump), I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s Dostoevsky, after all—what else could I have expected? This new sensation, this intense mix of emotions, is dominated by both awe and disgust at the same time... And yes, I mean this in a completely fanatic way regarding the book. The narrative took a complete turn after diving into several political issues and introducing the ‘demons’. From that moment, I knew I would never regret picking up Dostoevsky again. His mastery is unmatched, and this time I can’t shake the feeling that Demons represents his ultimate literary peak which is quite incomparable to his other works. It’s enigmatic, unpredictable, and full of twists you’d never see coming. Truly, it feels like witchcraft.

�Est-il possible de croire? S�rieusement et effectivement? Tout est l�.� Stavroguine envo�te tous ceux qui l'approchent, hommes ou femmes. Il ne trouve de limite � son immense orgueil que dans l'existence de Dieu. Il la nie et tombe dans l'absurdit� de la libert� pour un homme seul et sans raison d'�tre. Tous les personnages de ce grand roman sont poss�d�s par un d�mon, le socialisme ath�e, le nihilisme r�volutionnaire ou la superstition religieuse. Ignorant les limites de notre condition, ces id�ologies sont incapables de rendre compte de l'homme et de la soci�t� et appellent un terrorisme destructeur. Sombre trag�die d'amour et de mort, �Les Poss�d�s� sont l'incarnation g�niale des doutes et des angoisses de Dosto�evski sur l'avenir de l'homme et de la Russie. D�s 1870, il avait pressenti les dangers du totalitarisme au XXe si�cle.

Un Roman de l'écrivain Russe Fyodor Dostoïevski (texte Intégral)

Safiya 

Alea jacta est !
Le drame poétique !
Ceci n'est pas une oeuvre esthétique, "vient ensuite, naturellement, la sentimentalité,qui chez nous est le plus efficace agent de la propagande socialiste."
Se non è vero è bene trovato...

Arden Kowalski

i do not believe society ever deserved dostoyevsky, but we are lucky enough to have had him anyway. this man was a master of commenting on societal convention, an affront to the rules of language and plot, and the most gifted writer i have ever had the pleasure of reading. demons is yet another unsurprisingly exceptional work. in addition to its literary value, i believe this book provides meaningful insight into the time period depicted in russia. while i do believe that dostoyevsky's religious zeal informed the portrayal of belief in this novel, i find the interpretation of atheism as meaningless to be more compelling when supplanted by a definition that means you cannot believe in others. the atheists in this novel are alone. nihilism produces an unnerving social solitude, even when surrounded by other people. i find an uncanny sadness in the deaths in this book that occur when the characters are walled off within themselves, and consider the deaths amidst purpose to be almost enlightening. a proper review will come soon, but i wanted to get out my initial thoughts on the book.

Бесы

Анастасия Розова

*Read for class.

2.75/5

It's a difficult novel to actually enjoy, plus I had to read it in like three days for class... So I can't say I liked it. But I appreciate it and am interested to see what we're going to discuss.

Motivado por um episódio verídico - o assassinato do estudante I. I. Ivanov pelo grupo niilista liderado por S. G. Nietcháiev em 1869 -, Os demônios, escrito no ano seguinte, é a única obra de Dostoiévski concebida com fins assumidamente panfletários. Entretanto, ao recriar ficcionalmente aquele evento, o escritor acabou compondo uma obra-prima à altura de Crime e castigo e Os irmãos Karamázov, que é também um estudo em profundidade do pensamento político, social, filosófico e religioso de seu tempo.
     Com incrível lucidez e rara compreensão da história, este romance - pela primeira vez traduzido a partir do original russo - chega a ser profético. Nele o leitor poderá vislumbrar, no drama intelectual de Kiríllov, a antecipação do Zaratustra de Nietzsche, e, nas ideias de Chigalióv e Piotr Stiepánovitch, os cruéis fanatismos de Hitler e Stálin. Numa época em que a violência, a ignorância, o terrorismo e a impostura ideológica - verdadeiros demônios que assolaram o século XX - continuam vivos sob novos disfarces, este é um livro de impressionante atualidade.

source: http://www.editora34.com.br/detalhe.asp?id=294&busca=9788573263053

Os demônios

Camila

Devils, also known in English as The Possessed and The Demons, was first published in 1871-2. The third of Dostoevsky's five major novels, it is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism, depicting the disarray which follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town. Dostoevsky compares infectious radicalism to the devils that drove the Gadarene swine over the precipice in his vision of a society possessed by demonic creatures that produce devastating delusions of rationality. Dostoevsky weaves suicide, rape, and a multiplicity of scandals into a compelling story of political evil, yet he is at his most humorous in Devils: the novel is full of buffoonery and a grotesque comedy.

This new translation also includes the chapter `Stavrogin's Confession', which was initially considered to be too shocking to print. In this edition it appears where the author originally intended it. 

--back cover

Devils

Jawad Abdulrazzaq

Ada Lu

The Devils By Fyodor Dostoyevsky stillness of his study, far from the immense burden of university work, it was always possible to devote himself to the service of science, and to enrich the literature of his country with erudite studies. These works did not appear. But on the other hand it did appear possible to spend the rest of his life, more than twenty years, "a reproach incarnate," so to speak, to his native country, in the words of a popular poet: We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Ismael Astorga

Vadim Varchenko 

Jonas Stinziano 

Counter Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horried Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia. 
--publisher's description

Les Possédés

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