Demons: A Novel in Three Parts (Vintage Classics) Paperback – August 1, 1995

A wonderful introduction to 19th Century Russian history by a masterful story writer, and an accomplished translator who in this edition is anonymous. I won’t forget this entertaining account of a society that is ready to crumble and morph into what became the Soviet Union and today is again only Russia.

Dostoevsky’s Demons contains, for a nineteenth century novel, something surprisingly relevant to present day issues.For those who don’t know the plot, it is a quintessentially Dostoevskean tale of saintly atheists and monks with deep understandings of human passions together with a large crew of rapscallions. The theme is primarily that of a need for Russia to return to a deep love of the Russian soil, the Russian Church and the “Russian” Christ to preserve it from descending into violent chaos. It’s heralded by some as prophetic of the coming of communism, but I would note that many of the “prophesied” activities of socialists and anarchists could be torn from the pages of a late nineteenth century newspaper and hardly needed a prophetic vision.The theme I found most interesting, and it may be entirely personal, is that Dostoevsky sees classic liberalism, a la John Stuart Mill, as naturally leading to totalitarianism and autocracy. It’s an old view, Plato says much the same in the Republic, but it seems particularly relevant today.How many institutions are forgoing the public marketplace of ideas for a liberal or conservative orthodoxy? Can human beings be motivated by a commitment to intellectual freedom or do we need some deeper cause to align ourselves to?While I’m deeply distrustful of utopian ideas, it does seem like Dostoevsky may have hit upon a basic phenomena of the modern condition. Men and women will use political freedom to gravitate to a cause which gives greater meaning than freedom from intrusion, itself.By all means read Demons for its nineteenth century theological/political dilemmas. But keep in mind that it may have something to say beyond its most self-evident ideas.

Most of these reviews are about the ideas and politics of Demons (aka The Possessed), or how it compares to Dostoevski's other novels and its place among the "great" books. But you probably know what the book is about already and prefer to make up your own mind about its position in the canon--after you read it.What you really want to know is "will I like it?" The answer is emphatically YES! If you like Dostoevski, Turganev or Tolstoy, you love it. If you read Henry James, Thomas Hardy or George Eliot, you'll love it. If you have a taste for historical fiction, ideas and politics, you'll love it.The great strength of Devils is its characters. Each person is motivated by an `ism (liberalism, feudalism, atheism, nihilism, socialism, etc) which posses him or her like a demon, but they are not flat types or puppets. All the main players are fully drawn flesh and blood people. They have quirks and contradictions that make them completely real. You may not like these people, but they will fascinate you.There's not much plot in Demons. But so do a lot of superb novels: Zorba the Greek, Pale Fire, and David Copperfield, for example. Mark Twain admits Huck Finn has no plot, it's a series of escapades. Jake goes fishing, Brett picks bad men--that's The Sun Also Rises.The dramatic momentum of Demons comes from your own attempts to find a plot in the tensions between the characters (and literally in plotting of the plodding conspirators). Something is definitely going on, you're just never sure what. Part One feels very much like a typical Victorian novel. Men talk at their club. Women jockey for social gain. Rumors fly about linking and relinking the young people into love affairs and scandals. And then just below the surface, the (rather thick) narrator suddenly and nonchalantly exposes a mirroring network of links more sinister than social and anarchic than romantic. As these develop the machinations of the story move from marriage to murder. In this Dostoevski cleverly captures the reader in the same web of dread and paranoia that grips the characters. So it is the interplay of forces, the murkiness and dread that make Demons a page-turner. It's marvelous to experienceHere's something else rarely mentioned: Dostoevski had a great sense of humor. There are a number of great comic scenes, gags and zippy one-liners. It's not his popular image, but old Teddy D was a funny guy. This translation (Pavear & Volokhonsky) is very successful at bringing out the humor and rendering into English the zestiness of the dialogue.