BBC Radio 4 mini-series Devils adapted by Melissa Murray starring Joseph Arkley, Jonathan Forbes, Georgia Henshaw and Jane Whittenshaw. [90] So, you want to read Dostoevsky’s darkest and most hilarious novel, a controversial political satire, the title of which has been variously rendered as The Possessed, The Devils, Devils, and Demons? By all accounts, it’s intense!

France, Peter (2000). "Dostoevsky". In Peter France (ed.). The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford University Press. p.598. The gala takes place the next day with many of societies most influential and wealthy people in attendance. Things begin to go wrong almost immediately. Pytor's associates, Lyamshin and Liputin act as stewards and allow many low class people in for free. Captain Lebyadkin, hopelessly drunk, gets onto the stage and reads aloud some of his poetry. Liputin realizes how drunk the Captain is and decides to read the poem himself, which turns out to be a poorly written and insulting piece. Robert Maguire was a professor of Slavic languages. He produced translations from Polish and Russian. He was an expert on Gogol. Hingley, Ronald (1978). Dostoyevsky His Life and Work (1sted.). London: Paul Elek Limited. ISBN 9780236401215. Nikolai leaves to pay a call to the Lebyadkins at their new home and bumps into an escaped convict named Fedka on the way. Fedka, who had been waiting for Nikolai on the bridge, tells Nikolai that Pytor sent him to help with the Lebyadkins. Nikolai turns him down, knowing that Fedka's help would only mean murder. He tells Fedka that he is not paying him a cent and that if he sees him again he will go to the police.

Dostoevsky died in 1881 following a series of pulmonary hemorrhages. Many thousands of mourners attended his funeral. His epitaph reads: After a week he visits Nikolai and the reader is let in on the true nature of their relationship. Pytor is trying to involve Nikolai in some of his political plans and Nikolai is not very interested. Nikolai leaves his mothers house late one night and walks over to his friend, Kirillov's house. Unfortunately, this is also the house where Ivan lives. Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky moves in with his wealthy friend Varvara at her estate, Skvoreshniki in Russia. Stepan is a prominent former teacher whose career was destroyed by government officials. Stepan originally moved into the house to work as a tutor for Varvara's son Nikolai but stayed on for twenty years. He is now close friends with Varvara. In the aftermath, Pyotr Stepanovich (who was mysteriously absent from the reading) seeks to persuade a traumatized Julia Mikhaylovna that it wasn't as bad as she thinks and that it is essential for her to attend the ball. He also lets her know that the town is ringing with the news of another scandal: Lizaveta Nikolaevna has left her home and fiancé and gone off to Skvoreshniki with Stavrogin. But the “worm” Verkhovensky is merely the imitator of another wise serpent, his “main half”: the Siegfried of his Russian Götterdämmerung fantasy, the “sun” he needs and envies and plans to eclipse. Dostoevsky wrote in a note to himself that “ Stavrogin is everything.” As Vyacheslav Ivanov makes clear in his brilliant book Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky (Noonday Press, 1959), this must be understood not just socially and psychologically, but religiously and metaphysically. Stavrogin is the most charismatic and complete of Dostoevsky’s Antichrists. His name comes from stauros, the Ancient Greek word for “cross.” But the image of the cross is inverted in him, as when his follower Shatov rebukes him for “boldly fly[ing] down headfirst” into the abyss of sensuality. He appears to his followers in the guise of a savior, a man-god who could achieve by towering will what the Christian God-man could not by incarnational love. “Only love can say ‘Thou art,’ ” Ivanov writes; in Demons, Dostoevsky explores the general insanity and destruction that ensues when a gifted and captivating personality says to God “Thou art not.”

In 1839, his father died of a stroke. Dostoyevsky soon attained the rank of engineer cadet and then lieutenant engineer. It was during this time that he began writing his own works and his first work, a translation of the French novel "Eugenie Grandet" was published in 1843. He completed several other translations but did not receive much money for them. In 1845, he completed his first novel, "Poor Folk" and the novel was a commercial success, being described as Russia's first "social novel". After resigning his military career, Dostoyevsky began writing full time and published his second novel, "The Double" in 1846. It was during this time that he discovered and became involved in socialism. "The Double" was not as well received in the press and Dostoyevsky began suffering from frequent health issues. The novel is in three parts. There are two epigraphs, the first from Pushkin's poem "Demons" and the second from Luke 8:32–36. Kjetsaa claims that Dostoevsky did not regard Revelation as "merely a consolatory epistle to first century Christians during the persecution they suffered", but as a "prophecy being fulfilled in his own time". [78] Dostoevsky wrote that "Communism will conquer one day, irrespective of whether the Communists are right or wrong. But this triumph will stand very far from the Kingdom of Heaven. All the same, we must accept that this triumph will come one day, even though none of those who at present steer the world's fate have any idea about it at all." [79] Already have a favorite translation of Demons? Let us know which one and why in the comments! More Dostoevsky

In 1833, he was sent away to a French boarding school and four years later his mother died of tuberculosis. Soon, he and his brother Nikolayev were conscripted into the military although Nikolayev was soon turned away due to poor health. Dostoyevsky was sent to Estonia to begin his military training. Though he did well in the military academy, Dostoyevsky disliked the regimented style of learning and spent most of his time alone, reading. Dostoyevsky joined a socialist circle called "Petrashevsky Circle" which was later investigated by the police. Dostoyevsky was accused of reading banned books and circulating copies of these books. He and the other members of the circle were arrested in 1849 and sent to exile in a Siberian prison camp which was then followed by a term of compulsory military service. The conditions in the camp were so terrible and Dostoyevsky spent most of his time there ill. After being released in 1854, Dostoyevsky wrote a novel about his experience in the camp called "The House of the Dead" which became the first novel published about Russian prison camps.

Pyotr Stepanovich meanwhile is very active in society, forming relationships and cultivating conditions that he thinks will help his political aims. He is particularly focused on Julia Mikhaylovna Von Lembke, the Governor's wife. By flattery, surrounding her with a retinue and encouraging her exaggerated liberal ambition, he acquires a power over her and over the tone of her salon. He and his group of co-conspirators exploit their new-found legitimacy to generate an atmosphere of frivolity and cynicism in society. They indulge in tasteless escapades, clandestinely distribute revolutionary propaganda, and agitate workers at the local Spigulin factory. They are particularly active in promoting Julia Mikhaylovna's 'Literary Gala' to raise money for poor governesses, and it becomes a much anticipated event for the whole town. The Governor, Andrey Antonovich, is deeply troubled by Pyotr Stepanovich's success with his wife and casual disregard for his authority, but is painfully incapable of doing anything about it. Unable to cope with the strange events and mounting pressures, he begins to show signs of acute mental disturbance. Pyotr Stepanovich adopts a similarly destabilizing approach toward his father, driving Stepan Trofimovich into a frenzy by relentlessly ridiculing him and further undermining his disintegrating relationship with Varvara Petrovna. Kjetsaa, Geir (1987). Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Translated by David McDuff; Siri Hustvedt (1sted.). Viking Adult. ISBN 9780670819140. She was a prolific translator credited with popularizing many works in Russian, including Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. About the Garnett translation of Demons What is the purpose of Peter? He himself admits that the revolutionary idea is only a means. The main thing is power. Verkhovensky seeks to control people, their minds and souls, but he understands that he is too small for the "ruler of thoughts" and therefore he relies on Nikolai Stavrogin. The missing chapter is commonly included in modern editions, sometimes in the novel and sometimes as an appendix. There is a public-domain English translation of the text by S.S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf freely available online.

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Demons is a theater of societal decay. On the way to visit a notorious “holy fool,” some bored young ladies and gentlemen and their entourage of buffoonish low officials and petty clerks stop their horses at a hotel to gape at the corpse of a nineteen-year-old village boy who has shot himself. A jokester filches grapes from the dead boy’s plate; a lady insists that “there’s no need to be punctilious about entertainment, as long as it’s diverting.” (I quote from the 1994 Knopf translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.) Sent to town to buy items for his sister’s trousseau with money saved up for decades and entrusted to him with “exhortations, prayers, and crosses,” the boy had blown it all on gambling, Gypsies, cigars, and Château d’Yquem. In this he imitates the immediately preceding generations of educated and influential Russians, who have self-indulgently squandered the moral and spiritual inheritance of more than two millennia. As one reveler unpopularly observes, it’s “as if we’d jumped off our roots.” Kirillov has a very complex character. He loves life in all its manifestations, even is grateful to the spider that crawls on the wall. But Kirillov hates the world built on lies. The grim loneliness of this extraordinary person, the duality of his inner world, in which faith and unbelief are struggling, lead him to a paradoxical idea - God is dead, and a person can prove that he is free of faith in God only by committing suicide.