Demons is a devil of a read on Russian angst/nihilism by the master Dostoevsky

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	• Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky Vintage, 1995 - 768 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Dostoyevsky's toughest nut to crack

This is the best of the 'dynamic duo's' translations that I have read, and interestingly it's a translation of the novel by Dostoyevsky I find most difficult to love. I have read and re-read "Demons" or "The Devils" several times, and feel that this admittedly excellent book falls short of greatness when compared to his other three true masterpieces. "Demons" suffers from a less-than-gripping plot (not just a 'plot' to kill a revolutionary) that is barely sustained by some of the author's least interesting conversational set pieces, a cast of thoroughly unlikable characters, or caricatures, and a narrator whose befuddlement at events that transpire is matched only by his inabilty to influence these events.

In Nikolai Stavrogin, Dostoyevsky creates the pencil sketch of an intriguing individual (perhaps his most purely evil character) but the gradations of shade and light present in the author's best characters are all but absent. Stavrogin's nonchalant vileness may have been too much for even Dostoyevsky to explain, and the appended 'Stavrogin's Confession' omitted from the original publication, is very unpleasant with all it alludes to. If, as some have speculated, Stavrogin is the Prince of Darkness incarnate, the author gives the reader a shadow wrapped in an enigma.

In short I feel "Demons" pales somewhat compared to the other three acknowledged masterpieces.Structural deficiencies in "The Idiot" (my favorite) are more than compensated for by the wicked humor and pathos, as well as by more lovingly drawn characters, whilst both "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime and Punishment" are sustained by suspenseful narratives and again by terrific characters. "Demons" is polemic-as-novel, and whilst by no means a failure, is nonetheless a difficult love and is best left to the last by those wishing to read and come under the spell of this remarkable author.

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Not for casual reading...

Intense view into the soul of Russia before the revolution. Among countless other perceptions of a genius.

Great book if you are interested in the life of Russian provinces. Or, if you are interested in how evil men get their way. Or if you are interested in super intense psycho analytical mambo-jumbo. Dostoevsky has the ability to make anyone drop their jaw and hold on to their boots. This book brings on a lot of intense feelings, not too many of which are pleasant. It also has a lot of amazingly interesting outlooks on situations that are as real as the air you breathe.

Strongly recommend this particular translation:Demons
Other translations of this book have other names.

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Great Potential Never Realized: Too Diffuse and Too Fragmented.

As background information, I have read most of Dostoevsky's novels including some of his early works and all of his most popular 6 or 7 novels.

First of all, this is a good translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. My only complaint is that the characters have multiple names, i.e.: as an example the same character is called von Blum and Andrei Antonovich. It is all quite confusing, and it is compounded by 20 similar names and characters. In any case, Richard Pevear provides an excellent introduction to the novel without giving away the plot - so one can read the introduction first or go back and read it midway without spoiling the reading experience. Also, he provides a list of all the major characters with the duplicate names. That information is essential for reading the book; I found myself going back to look at that list every 25 pages or so to keep all the characters straight.

The question for Dostoevsky fans is the following, i.e.: is this a great novel or just too much? I think it is simply too much and too diffuse: it lacks strong characters and the plot is weak. Obviously, a lot of time and effort had gone into the novel but it does not quite work as a well balanced and entertaining piece of work. Yes, it is easy to read but the story is not compelling. It seems to wander and it takes forever. It takes at least 500 pages to get to any writing that could be classified as compelling.

Dostoevsky re-wrote the novel a number of times, and based it on a real life event in Russia. But that event does not appear until late in the novel. Most of the story is elaborate and slow moving. It is too diffuse and there is too much dialogue.

Instead of one or two key characters, we have a whole village full of characters, and each character seems to be missing a lot of detail. As Richard Pevear tells us, each character says a lot but we cannot determine what the character is like. It is as if a mask is speaking instead of a complete person, or persons.

Dostoevsky uses the Jane Austen technique of fitting different levels of speech to portray different social levels for different characters. Sometimes they speak in French. All of this seems to add more confusion.

So in summary, this is a long and elaborate novel that took Dostoevsky a number of years to write. He has all the ingredients for a great novel, so one might expect that it will be a great novel. He tries to interweave interesting non-fiction events with a long and elaborate fictional story about atheists or revolutionaries in a small Russian village. He does not quite pull it all off. The novel is very readable and there is lots of subtle humor in the first 150 pages, but after a while it is all a bit too much. The main result here is that it gives Dostoevsky the ideas and approach to write his last novel "The Brother Karamazov."

Readers will find it slow and fragmented, and most will think it too diffuse, lacking a clear plot and any literary punch.

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great

Better than the Brothers K. but you must get past the first 200 pages, which can be confusing.

Demons is a devil of a read on Russian angst/nihilism by the master Dostoevsky

Demons (also known as Possessed & The Devils) is a 1878 novel by literary genius Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). The novel is long, difficult and rife with Russian names easy to confuse. The novel is also a work of art of peerless genius.
The massive novel is set in the unimportant provincial Russian town of
Skvorishniki. The major characters are:
Vavara Stavrogin-She is the wealthy widow of a Russian general. Vavara is an aristocrat who is cultured and kind.
Stavrogin-A nihilist who is involved in the budding communist movement to overturn the Russian government. He is cruel, self-centered and self-loathing. An intellectual bored with life and love. He marries a crippled and ugly woman whom he later has murdered at his behest. He is Vavara's wastrel son.
Stepan-The old liberal of the 1840s who is a failed professor. He is the tutor to the young Stavrogin and is supported by the kindness of Vavara. He will later flee the town to die on the road. I found him to be a pathetic foolish character.
Lembke-The ridiculous head of the local town government. Dostoevsky did not like government officials and has fun with this pathetic creature. His wife seeks to climb society's slippery ladder by holding a literary fete in the town.
Lisa-The love interest of the novel who has suitors but is drawn to Stavrogin in a hopeless and tragic love.
The long novel is many books wrapped into one:
a. A mystery and suspense story about the conspirators and the destruction they perpetuate in the town. The town is a microcosm of Russian Tsarist society. These are the "demons" of the title based on Christ's driving out the demons from the Gerasene demoniac in the gospel accounts.
b. A philosophical/theological book exploring the issues of the existence of God; theodicy; the existence of good and evil. Not easy going for the casual reader!
c. A satire of the Russian literary world in which Dostoevsky makes fun of Turgenev who was too Westernized for the Slavophilic author.
d. A tragic love story.
The novel takes a long time getting into the exciting tale of the machinations of the conspirators. It will, however, reward the patient reader.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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.

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