Roman demons about what. Dostoevsky "Demons" - analysis. Dostoevsky - intransigence to violence

Year of publication of the book: 1872

The novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky "Demons" was duly appreciated by the writer's contemporaries and later generations. What is worth only five adaptations of this work. Moreover, he was appreciated not only in our country, but also abroad. So the Nobel laureate in literature Albert Camus, based on Dostoevsky's book "Demons", created the play "The Possessed", which was staged more than once in theaters around the world. It is thanks to such works that Fedor Mikhailovich is still in the top 100 most widely read writers in our country.

Roman "Demons" summary

In Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" in a summary, you will learn about the events that took place in one provincial town. They are told by a certain Anton Lavrentievich G-va, who himself took a direct part in them. The story begins with the fate of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and his difficult relationship with Varvara Nikolaevna Stavrogina. Stepan Trofimych was married twice. From his first marriage he has a son, Peter. At one time he tried to write, but nothing came of it. Sometimes he suffers from the futility of his life, like the main character, but then consoles himself with champagne and a game of cards.

The main events in the book "Demons" by Dostoevsky begin to develop in connection with the arrival of the son of Varvara Nikolaevna - Nikolai Vsevolodovich. Once he was a pupil of Stepan Trofimovich. Then he entered the military service and suddenly turned into a reveler. For this he was demoted to the ranks, but then he curried. During his last visit to the city, he first made a favorable impression on everyone, but then "the beast let out its claws." He uttered insolence to the respected members of the club, and generally stretched his elder Gaganov around the hall by the nose, publicly kissed someone else's wife, and then completely bit the then governor on the ear. It was possible to fix everything only after two and a half months of treatment for delirium tremens. After that, Nikolas went abroad.

In connection with the arrival of the protagonist of the novel "Demons" by Dostoevsky, his mother was worried about the fate of her pupil Dasha Shakhova. After all, Nikolai showed increased attention to her. In this regard, she offered to marry a girl to Stepan Trofimych, who was more than thirty years older. And Verkhovensky, although he was dissatisfied with this proposal and complained to our narrator about the need to take "other people's sins" upon himself, agreed. By the way, the unexpectedly appeared engineer Liputi considered this marriage an attempt to cover up the noble sins of Nikolasa.

Further in Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" you can read about the events taking place on Sunday. It is on this day that the matchmaking of Stepan Trofimych is scheduled. He is very worried, but he arrived at Stavrogina's house. Varvara Nikolaevna herself at this time returns from the church. On the way, Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, nicknamed Khromonozhka, asks for alms from her. Varvara Nikolaevna is intrigued, because just recently she received an anonymous letter saying that a lame woman will play an important role in her life. Therefore, she invites Khromonozhka and Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina, a childhood friend of Nikolai Stavrogin and a pupil of Stepan Trofimovich, to her home.

Further, in the summary of the book "Demons" by Dostoevsky, you can read about the events developing in Stavrogina's house. The limp behaves defiantly - she calls Varvara Nikolaevna "aunty", and accuses Dasha Shatova of not giving 300 rubles to her brother, Captain Lebyadkin. This money was allegedly transferred to her brother Nikolai Stavrogin. Stepan Trofimovich brings Khromonozhka's brother and he assures that the girl is not herself. At the same time, confusedly, he begins to hint that he has rights in this house. In the meantime, a month earlier than planned, "Prince Harry" arrives - Nikolai Stavrogin, who enters immediately after Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky. To a direct question from his mother who he is related to, he keeps silent and takes her to the carriage. And Pyotr Stepanovich explains that Nikolai helped the Lebyadkins in Switzerland, so much so that Khromonozhka imagined herself to be Nikolai's wife. Captain Lebyadnikov confirms this story. Nevertheless, Liza Tushina throws a tantrum. And when Ivan Pavlovich Shatov gave Nikolai Stavrogin a slap in the face, she generally fainted.

In the second part of Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" you can read about the events unfolding eight days after the events described. Nikolai Stavrogin lived as a recluse, and rumors about him and Lisa Tushina spread around the city. Meanwhile, Peter Verkhovensky comes to Nikolai. He informs Nikolai that his things have arrived and offers to go together to a secret meeting. Nikolai goes to the engineer Kirillov. He invites him to become his second. Kirillov shows Nikolai two pistols from which he wanted to shoot himself. After all, by committing suicide, according to Kirillov, one can become a “man-god”. Having received consent, Nikolai goes up to Shatov, who lives in the same house, and confesses to him his marriage to Khromonozhka. According to Stavrogin's story, the case was "on drunkenness" and on a bet. Shatov, on the other hand, shares with Nikolai his idea of ​​a God-fighting people. Offers to give up everything and a peasant life to approach God. When asked by Nikolai whether Shatov himself believes in God, he can only answer what he believes. Nikolai warns Shatov that he could be killed for such ideas.

Further, the protagonist of the novel "Demons" by F. M. Dostoevsky went to Captain Lebyadkin. But on the way he met Fedka the convict. It was sent by Peter Verkhovensky. Fedka offered to fulfill any will of the "master", but Nikolai drove him away. At the Lebyadkins' house, Nikolai said that he would soon announce his marriage. After all, he does not intend to pay the captain for silence. He enters the room to the Limp, who is sleeping. But she sleepily does not recognize him and shouts that he is Grishka Otrepyev, and also declares that he has a knife in his pocket. On the way back, Nikolai is again met by Fedka Katorzhny. He proposes to solve the problem with the Lebyadkins. Nikolay just laughs at this and throws all the cash into the dirt.

Further, in the summary of Dostoevsky's book "Demons" you can read about the duel that took place the next day. Artemy Gaganov believes that Nikolai insulted his father and offers to shoot himself three times. All three times he misses, only the first time catching Nikolai's little finger. Stavrogin, with the words that he will not kill anyone else, deliberately shoots past, insulting his opponent even more. This raises him greatly in the eyes of the public. Well, Nikolai himself explains with Dasha Shatova, offering not to approach him. But Dasha is sure that she will soon stay with him. Meanwhile, Pyotr Verkhovensky informs his father that Varvara Nikolaevna is outraged by his words about "other people's sins." Therefore, she announced a break and appointed him a pension. The son and father swear strongly on this basis, and Peter declares that he will not come again.

Meanwhile, Pyotr Verkhovensky begins to exert increasing influence on the wife of the governor, Yulia Mikhailovna, and Andrei Antonovich von Lembke himself. With his help, Yulia Mikhailovna hoped to expose the state conspiracy. Moreover, discontent in the province and the city grew. The Shpigulin factory was closed, cholera was raging, proclamations began to appear in the city, calling for a riot. But all this did not prevent Yulia Mikhailovna from preparing a holiday in favor of the governesses. Meanwhile, Vera Nikolaevna and Stepan Trofimovich are explaining themselves. And Stepan Trofimovich admits that for twenty years he lived only in dreams. And Pyotr Verkhovensky betrays Shatov and Kirillov to Yulia Mikhailovna as conspirators. And then he goes to them and reminds them of the need to get together. Liza Tushina's fiancé, Mavriky Nikolaevich, comes to Nikolai Stavrogin. He invites Nikolai to marry Lisa, because she loves him. But Nikolai confesses to him that he is already married and leaves with Peter to the meeting.

Further in the book "Demons" by Dostoevsky, you can read about the meeting, which takes place under the guise of celebrating a name day. The gloomy Shpigalev proposes to divide society into two unequal parts. One tenth will govern nine tenths of society. After this report, Pyotr Verkhovensky asks the question: “Did anyone from the audience inform if he knew about the impending murder?” One after another, voices begin to be heard that someone would not have informed. But Shatov calls Peter a spy and a scoundrel and leaves the meeting. Following him, Stavrogin leaves the meeting, who said that he would not compromise himself by answering such questions. Kirillov goes with him. Pyotr Verkhovensky also goes after them. He catches up with Kirillov and Stavrogin. But Stavrogin says that he does not want to participate in this "five" because Peter wants to seal it with a crime. And indeed, Peter has even outlined the victim - this is Shatov. Trying to convince Stavrogin, Peter told about his plans. He wants to rock Russia so that the earth itself weeps for the old gods. And then Stavrogin will come - Ivan Tsarevich, who is now needed by the country. And for this, Peter will kill Lameleg for free and bring Liza to him.

Meanwhile, our narrator of Dostoevsky's The Possessed novel receives the news that Stepan Trofimovich has been described. Verkhovensky Sr. himself says that two proclamations and all papers were confiscated from him. And in order to resolve this issue, he will go straight to the "lion's mouth" to the governor Lembka. But the governor was not so lucky. Just before him, workers from Shpigulin's factory arrived, which Lembke took as a riot. And Verkhovensky senior and the mayor fell under the hot hand. Meanwhile, the governor's wife, in order to annoy her husband, began to flirt with Stepan Trofimovich. This infuriated him, and he declared that measures had been taken against the “filibusters”. Well, Lisa deliberately asked Stavrogin in a loud voice to protect her from Captain Lebyadkin, who is the brother of his wife. In this regard, Nikolai Vsevolodovich publicly recognized Khromonozhka as his wife and promised to talk to Lebyadkin. After that, he left for his Skvoreshniki estate.

In the third part of our summary of the novel "Demons" by Dostoevsky, you can read about the events unfolding during the holiday. Lisa made a splash on him and deserved a lot of admiring glances. In the first part of the holiday, the famous local writer Karmazinov read his work "Merci". It was devoted to the ideas of nihilism, which Stepan Trofimovich began to defend, but was booed. After that, he locked himself up and wrote a farewell letter to Dasha in which he asked to forgive him for everything bad connected with his name. Meanwhile, our narrator learns that Verkhovensky Jr. took Lisa to Stavrogin. "Literary quadrille", which was presented already in the morning, caused indignation among everyone. And then, as in, the main events begin to unfold. Those present were informed about the murder of Captain Lebyadkin and his sister, as well as about the fire in Zarechye. The governor personally went to the fire and wanted to save, but the fallen board deprived him of his senses.

Meanwhile morning dawned over Skvoreshniki. Stavrogin and Lisa spent the night together and are now trying to explain themselves. Stavrogin invites the girl to go with him to Switzerland, but Liza taunts and says that tonight was just a fantasy. Meanwhile, Pyotr Verkhovensky arrives and reports the details of Lebyadkin's death. Stavrogin says that he has nothing to do with this incident, but he knew about what was being prepared. Liza rushes to the District. Near Skvoreshnikov, her fiancé Mavriky Nikolaevich was waiting for her. He asks not to drive him away and goes with her. Along the way, they meet Stepan Trofimovich, who sets out to "search for Russia." Lisa asks to pray for her. She herself goes to the conflagration. The people have gathered here and it is recognized as "Stavrogin". There is no doubt that he and Lisa are behind the murder. Because the girl gets hit from the crowd. It becomes fatal for Lisa.

Meanwhile, Pyotr Verkhovensky in Dostoevsky's book "Demons" collects the "five". At the meeting, he announces that Shatov is preparing a denunciation. After a short debate, everyone decides that the common cause is more important than Shatov's life. Peter, together with Liputin, goes to Kirillov, who must take over the murder. Here they meet Fedka, who is drinking. Peter is outraged, because the convict was supposed to disappear from the city. He takes out a revolver, but Fedka manages to escape. Verkhovensky Jr. declares that Fedka drank vodka for the last time today. And indeed in the morning they find him with a broken head. Liputin, who was about to run away from the group, is now convinced of the power of Peter and stays.

Meanwhile, his wife returned to Shatov three years later. Already in his house she gives birth to a child. And Shatov decides to adopt him and start living a new life. To do this, he, along with officer Erkel, from "ours", goes to the park. Everyone has gathered here. Shatov is attacked and Pyotr shoots him in the forehead. The body is then thrown into the river. And Kirillov, though indignant, writes a suicide note under the dictation of Peter. He then shoots himself. Verkhovensky collects his things and leaves for St. Petersburg, and then abroad.

Further in the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky "Demons" you can read about the fate of the main characters. Stepan Trofimovich died in the booksellers' house in Varvara Petrovna's arms. When he fell ill, he called her to him. Lyamshin betrayed all the members of the five, and all of them, except for Verkhovensky, were arrested. Daria Shatova received a letter from Stavrogin with an offer to come to him in Switzerland, where he bought a house in the canton of Uri. Daria gives the letter to Varvara Petrovna to read. But just at that moment they learn that Stavrogin is in Skvoreshniki. They go there and find Citizen Uri hanged on the mezzanine.

The novel "Demons" on the Top Books website

Over the years, F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" does not become less popular to read. This is not the first time the book has been included in ours. In addition, almost every time the novel gets into our rating. And most likely in the future it will take high places in the ratings of our site.

The action of the novel takes place in a provincial town in early autumn. The events are narrated by the chronicler G-v, who is also a participant in the events described. His story begins with the story of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, an idealist of the forties, and a description of his complex platonic relationship with Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, a noble provincial lady, whose patronage he enjoys.

Around Verkhovensky, who fell in love with the "civil role" and lives "embodied reproach" to the homeland, local liberal-minded youth are grouped. There is a lot of “phrase” and posture in it, but there is also enough intelligence and insight. He was the tutor of many of the characters in the novel. Formerly handsome, now he has drooped a little, is flabby, plays cards and does not deny himself champagne.

The arrival of Nikolai Stavrogin, an extremely "mysterious and romantic" person, about whom there are many rumors, is expected. He served in an elite guards regiment, fought duels, was demoted, and curried. Then it is known that he swaggered, set off into the wildest unbridledness. Having been in his native city four years ago, he did a lot of tricks, causing general indignation: he dragged the respectable man Gaganov by the nose, painfully bit the then governor on the ear, publicly kissed someone else's wife ... In the end, everything seemed to be explained by delirium tremens. Having recovered, Stavrogin went abroad.

His mother Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, a resolute and imperious woman, worried about her son's attention to her pupil Daria Shatova and interested in his marriage to the daughter of a friend Liza Tushina, decides to marry her ward Stepan Trofimovich to Daria. He, in some horror, although not without enthusiasm, is preparing to propose.

In the cathedral, at mass, Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, aka Khromonozhka, unexpectedly approaches Varvara Petrovna and kisses her hand. An intrigued lady, who recently received an anonymous letter informing her that a lame woman would play a serious role in her fate, invites her to her place, and Liza Tushina is also traveling with them. An excited Stepan Trofimovich is already waiting there, since it is on this day that his matchmaking with Daria is scheduled. Soon, Captain Lebyadkin, who arrived for his sister, also appears here, in whose vague speeches, interspersed with poems of his own composition, some terrible secret is mentioned and some special rights are hinted at.

Suddenly they announce the arrival of Nikolai Stavrogin, who was expected only a month later. First, the fussy Pyotr Verkhovensky appears, followed by the pale and romantic handsome Stavrogin himself. Varvara Petrovna immediately asks her son whether Marya Timofeevna is his legal wife. Stavrogin silently kisses his mother's hand, then nobly grabs Lebyadkin's arm and leads her out. In his absence, Verkhovensky tells a beautiful story about how Stavrogin inspired a beautiful dream in a downtrodden holy fool, so that she even imagined him as her fiancé. Immediately he sternly asks Lebyadkin if this is true, and the captain, trembling with fear, confirms everything.

Varvara Petrovna is delighted, and when her son appears again, she asks his forgiveness. However, the unexpected happens: Shatov suddenly comes up to Stavrogin and slaps him. The fearless Stavrogin grabs him in anger, but then suddenly removes his hands behind his back. As it turns out later, this is another testament to his great strength, another test. Shatov comes out unhindered. Lisa Tushina, obviously not indifferent to "Prince Harry", as Stavrogin is called, faints.

Eight days pass. Stavrogin does not accept anyone, and when his seclusion ends, Pyotr Verkhovensky immediately slips in to him. He expresses readiness for everything for Stavrogin and informs about a secret society, at whose meeting they should appear together. Shortly after his visit, Stavrogin goes to the engineer Kirillov. The engineer, for whom Stavrogin means a lot, reports that he still professes his idea. Its essence is the need to get rid of God, who is nothing but "the pain of the fear of death", and to declare self-will, killing himself and thus becoming a human god.

Then Stavrogin goes up to Shatov, who lives in the same house, to whom he informs that he really officially married Lebyadkina some time ago in St. Petersburg, and also about his intention to publicly announce this in the near future. He generously warns Shatov that they are going to kill him. Shatov, on whom Stavrogin had previously had a huge influence, reveals to him his new idea of ​​​​a God-bearing people, which the Russian people consider, advises him to give up wealth and achieve God with peasant labor. True, to a counter question, does he himself believe in God, Shatov somewhat uncertainly answers that he believes in Orthodoxy, in Russia, that he ... will believe in God.

That same night, Stavrogin goes to Lebyadkin and on the way he meets the fugitive Fedka convict, sent to him by Peter Verkhovensky. He expresses his readiness to fulfill any will of the master for a fee, but Stavrogin drives him away. He informs Lebyadkin that he is going to announce his marriage to Marya Timofeevna, whom he married "... after a drunken dinner, because of a bet on wine ...". Marya Timofeevna greets Stavrogin with a story about an ominous dream. He asks her if she is ready to go with him to Switzerland and live the rest of her life in seclusion there. The indignant Khromonopozhka shouts that Stavrogin is not a prince, that her prince, the bright falcon, has been replaced, and he is an impostor, he has a knife in his pocket. Accompanied by her squeals and laughter, the enraged Stavrogin retreats. On the way back, he throws money to Fedka Convict.

The next day there is a duel between Stavrogin and the local nobleman Artemy Gaganov, who summoned him for insulting his father. Seething with anger, Gaganov shoots three times and misses. Stavrogin, on the other hand, announces that he does not want to kill anyone else, and defiantly shoots into the air three times. This story greatly raises Stavrogin in the eyes of society.

Meanwhile, frivolous moods and a tendency to all sorts of blasphemous amusements have emerged in the city: mockery of newlyweds, desecration of icons, etc. The province is restless, fires are raging, giving rise to rumors of arson, proclamations calling for rebellion are found in different places, cholera is raging somewhere , the workers of the Shpigulins’ closed factory are showing dissatisfaction, a certain second lieutenant, unable to bear the reprimand of the commander, rushes at him and bites him on the shoulder, and before that he chopped up two images and lit church candles in front of the writings of Focht, Moleschott and Buchner ... In this atmosphere, a holiday is being prepared for subscription in favor of governesses, started by the wife of the governor, Yulia Mikhailovna.

Varvara Petrovna, offended by Stepan Trofimovich's too obvious desire to marry and his too frank letters to his son Peter complaining that, they say, they want to marry him "on other people's sins", appoints him a pension, but at the same time announces a break.

The younger Verkhovensky at this time develops vigorous activity. He is admitted to the house of the governor and enjoys the patronage of his wife Yulia Mikhailovna. She believes that he is connected with the revolutionary movement, and dreams of uncovering a state conspiracy with his help. On a date with the governor fon-

Lembke, extremely preoccupied with what is happening, Verkhovensky skillfully gives him several names, in particular Shatov and Kirillov, but at the same time asks him for six days to reveal the entire organization. Then he runs to Kirillov and Shatov, notifying them of the meeting of "ours" and asking them to be there, after which he calls in for Stavrogin, who has just been visited by Mavriky Nikolaevich, the fiancé of Lisa Tushina, with a proposal that Nikolai Vsevolodovich marry her, since she is at least and hates him, but at the same time loves him. Stavrogin confesses to him that he cannot do this in any way, since he is already married. Together with Verkhovensky they go to a secret meeting.

At the meeting, the gloomy Shigalev speaks with his program of "final resolution of the issue." Its essence is the division of humanity into two unequal parts, of which one tenth receives freedom and unlimited rights over the remaining nine tenths, turned into a herd. Then Verkhovensky proposes a provocative question, whether the participants in the meeting would have reported if they had known about the impending political assassination. Shatov suddenly rises and, calling Verkhovensky a scoundrel and a spy, leaves the meeting. This is exactly what Pyotr Stepanovich needs, who has already outlined Shatov as a sacrifice in order to cement the formed revolutionary group, the "five", with blood. Verkhovensky ties in with Stavrogin, who has gone out with Kirillov, and in a fever, initiates them into his insane plans. His goal is to cause great confusion. “Such a buildup will go on, which the world has not yet seen ... Rus' will become clouded, the earth will cry for the old gods ...” Then he will be needed, Stavrogin. Handsome and aristocratic. Ivan Tsarevich.

Events are growing like a snowball. Stepan Trofimovich is "described" - officials come and take away papers. Workers from the Shpigulin factory send petitioners to the governor, which causes von Lembke to have a fit of rage and almost pass for a riot. Falls under the hot hand of the mayor and Stepan Trofimovich. Immediately after this, in the governor's house, there is also Stavrogin's confusing announcement that Lebyadkina is his wife.

The long-awaited day of the holiday is coming. The highlight of the first part is the reading by the famous writer Karmazinov of his farewell essay "Merci", and then Stepan Trofimovich's accusatory speech. He passionately defends Raphael and Shakespeare against the nihilists. He is booed, and cursing everyone, he proudly leaves the stage. It becomes known that Lisa Tushina in broad daylight suddenly moved from her carriage, leaving Mavriky Nikolaevich there, to Stavrogin's carriage and drove off to his Skvoreshniki estate. The highlight of the second part of the holiday is the "quadrille of literature", an ugly caricature allegorical act. The governor and his wife are beside themselves with indignation. It was then that they reported that the District was on fire, allegedly set on fire by the Shpigulins, and a little later it became known about the murder of Captain Lebyadkin, his sister and maid. The Governor is driving to a fire where a log falls on him.

In Skvoreshniki, meanwhile, Stavrogin and Liza Tushina greet the morning together. Lisa intends to leave and does her best to hurt Stavrogin, who, on the contrary, is in an uncharacteristically sentimental mood for him. He asks why Lisa came to him and why there was "so much happiness." He invites her to leave together, which she takes with mockery, although at some point her eyes suddenly light up. Indirectly, in their conversation, the topic of murder also comes up - so far only a hint. At this moment, the ubiquitous Peter Verkhovensky appears. He tells Stavrogin the details of the murder and the fire in the District. Lisa Stavrogin says that he did not kill and was against it, but he knew about the impending murder and did not stop it. In hysterics, she leaves Stavrogin's house, not far from her, the devoted Mavriky Nikolaevich, who has sat all night in the rain, is waiting for her. They head to the scene of the murder and meet Stepan Trofimovich on the way, who, in his words, is running “out of delirium, a feverish dream, […] to look for Russia.” Stavrogin to get rid of his wife and take another. Someone from the crowd hits her, she falls. Lagging Mavriky Nikolaevich manages too late. Lisa is carried away still alive, but unconscious.

And Peter Verkhovensky continues to bother. He collects the top five and announces that a denunciation is being prepared. The scammer is Shatov, he must be removed by all means. After some doubts, they agree that the common cause is the most important thing. Verkhovensky, accompanied by Liputin, goes to Kirillov to remind him of the agreement according to which he must, before committing suicide in accordance with his idea, take on someone else's blood. Fedka Katorzhny is sitting in the kitchen of Kirillov drinking and eating. In anger, Verkhovensky snatches out a revolver: how could he disobey and appear here? Fedka unexpectedly beats Verkhovensky, he falls unconscious, Fedka runs away. To the witness of this scene, Liputin, Verkhovensky declares that Fedka drank vodka for the last time. In the morning, it really becomes known that Fedka was found with a broken head seven miles from the city. Liputin, who was about to run away, now has no doubts about the secret power of Peter Verkhovensky and remains.

Shatov's wife Marya comes to Shatov the same evening, having left him after two weeks of marriage. She is pregnant and asks for temporary shelter. A little later, a young officer Erkel from “ours” comes to him and reports on tomorrow's meeting. At night, Shatov's wife goes into labor. He runs after the midwife Virginskaya and then helps her. He is happy and looks forward to a new working life with his wife and child. Exhausted, Shatov falls asleep in the morning and wakes up already dark. Erkel comes in behind him, together they head to the Stavrogin park. Verkhovensky, Virginsky, Liputin, Lyamshin, Tolkachenko and Shigalev are already waiting there, who suddenly categorically refuses to take part in the murder, because it contradicts his program.

Shatov is attacked. Verkhovensky shot him point blank with a revolver. Two large stones are tied to the body and thrown into the pond. Verkhovensky hurries to Kirillov. Although he is indignant, he fulfills his promise - he writes a note under dictation and takes the blame for the murder of Shatov, and then shoots himself. Verkhovensky collects his things and leaves for St. Petersburg, from there abroad.

Having set off on his last wandering, Stepan Trofimovich dies in a peasant hut in the arms of Varvara Petrovna, who rushed after him. Before his death, a random fellow traveler, to whom he tells his whole life, reads the Gospel to him, and he compares the possessed, from whom Christ cast out the demons that entered the pigs, with Russia. This passage from the Gospel is taken by the chronicler as one of the epigraphs to the novel.

All participants in the crime, except for Verkhovensky, were soon arrested, extradited by Lyamshin. Daria Shatova receives a letter of confession from Stavrogin, who admits that “one denial poured out of it, without any generosity and without any strength.” He calls Daria with him to Switzerland, where he bought a small house in the canton of Uri to live there forever. Daria gives the letter to Varvara Petrovna to read, but then both learn that Stavrogin has unexpectedly appeared in Skvoreshniki. They rush there and find a "citizen of the canton of Uri" hanged on the mezzanine.

The Nechaev case inspired Dostoevsky to write the pamphlet novel Demons. Probably, Dostoevsky was aware of those compiled by S.G. Nechaev’s anarchist General Rules of Organization, since the actions of Pyotr Verkhovensky are a fanatical adherence to Nechaev’s “rules”, although if we compare the novel with its historical prototypes, Nechaevism and all the underground struggle associated with it far exceeds its literary image in terms of the degree of grotesqueness.

Possessed also reflected two biographical facts from Dostoevsky's life abroad: the final break with him in Baden-Baden in 1867 and Dostoevsky's visit to Geneva in the same year of the first congress of the League of Peace and Freedom.

Dostoevsky's break with I.S. Turgenev had been preparing for a long time, but the reason for it was not personal antipathy, but a clash on the basis of deep ideological differences between two people professing diametrically opposed views and beliefs. I.S. Turgenev is a convinced Westerner, a supporter of the introduction of parliamentary forms of government in Russia. Dostoevsky - after hard labor and exile - a fiery Christian, a convinced monarchist, a fierce opponent of European bourgeois civilization.

In the image of the “great writer” Karmazinov in Possessed, Dostoevsky branded in the person of I.S. Turgenev, the type of liberal-Westerner hated by him, whom he considered the culprit for the appearance of S.G. in Russia. Nechaeva, D.V. Karakozov and the like. This conviction was further strengthened in Dostoevsky when, on August 29 (September 10), 1867, he attended a meeting in Geneva of the first congress of the League of Peace and Freedom. The writer was struck by the fact that from the rostrum in front of an audience of many thousands they openly proclaimed the destruction of the Christian faith, the destruction of monarchies, private property, so that "everything would be common, by order." “And most importantly,” Dostoevsky wrote to his niece S.A. Ivanova - fire and sword, and after everything is destroyed, then, in their opinion, there will be peace.

The terrible theorist of destruction in The Possessed, the "long-eared" Shigalev fully inherits Dostoevsky's Geneva impressions from the first congress of the League of Peace and Freedom, and Stavrogin and Pyotr Verkhovensky share Dostoevsky's impressions from communication then, in Geneva, with the main leader of anarchism, who not only was Vice President of Congress, but also delivered an extremely effective provocative speech demanding the destruction of the Russian Empire and, in general, all centralized states.

However, gradually, in the process of creative work, a pamphlet novel with the main character Pyotr Verkhovensky - S.G. Nechaev - grows into a great tragic romance with another main character, a truly tragic personality - Nikolai Stavrogin. “... This is another face (Nikolai Stavrogin) - also a gloomy face, also a villain,” Dostoevsky wrote on October 8 (20), 1870 to M.N. Katkov, the publisher of the Russky Vestnik magazine, where the novel The Possessed was supposed to be published, but it seems to me that this face is tragic, although many will probably say after reading: "What is this?" I sat down to write a poem about this person because I have been wanting to portray him for too long. I will be very, very sad if I fail. It will be even sadder if I hear the verdict that the face is stilted. I took it from my heart."

Dostoevsky really "took it from the heart." Stavrogin, as it were, completes the writer's many years of reflection on a demonic, "strong personality."

The "main demon" Nikolai Stavrogin in the novel was to be confronted by the monk Tikhon. In the same letter to Katkov, Dostoevsky wrote: “But not everyone will have gloomy faces; there will also be bright ones... For the first time, I want to touch upon one category of persons still little touched by literature. I take Tikhon of Zadonsk as the ideal of such a person. This is also a saint who lives quietly in a monastery. With him I will compare and reduce for a while the hero of the novel. I'm very afraid; never tried; but in this world I know something.”

However, the "positively beautiful" man - the monk Tikhon - was not destined to enter the novel, and the clash between the atheist Stavrogin and the believer Tikhon did not take place. did not miss the chapter "At Tikhon's", fearing for the morality of the readers of his magazine. Meanwhile, the discarded chapter of "At Tikhon's" is a remarkable artistic creation of the writer. It is in this chapter that the struggle between faith and disbelief reaches its limit, and here Stavrogin suffers a final and crushing defeat.

The appearance of S.G. Dostoevsky connects Nechaev first and foremost with unbelief. That is why the writer outlines in the novel "Demons" an ideological connection between the Nechaevites and the Petrashevists and, experiencing the appearance of S.G. Nechaev in Russia and as his own personal tragedy, he considers himself - a former Petrashevsky - also responsible for the spread of atheism.

The whole meaning of Dostoevsky's amazingly frank words about the fact that he could become a Nechaev in the days of his youth became clear only after the death of the writer from the story of his friend. It turns out that in order to prepare the people for an uprising, Dostoevsky, the Petrashevites, decided to start a secret printing house and select a committee of five members for direct leadership, and in order to maintain secrecy “must include in one of the paragraphs of the reception the threat of death for treason; the threat will further cement the mystery by securing it."

Familiar lines, very reminiscent of the discipline in the five of Peter Verkhovensky in "Demons" and in the five of his prototype S.G. Nechaev. But at the center of the novel "Demons" is not Peter Verkhovensky - he is too small for this, he is only a performer with a claim to leadership. In the center is the main demon, Nikolai Stavrogin. In the draft notebook for the novel there is an entry: " Stavrogin is everything". Stavrogin could serve as a prototype (they even have the same name) - cold, impregnable, mysterious, mysterious, even before the Petrashevites, thinking about creating a secret society abroad in the "Russian secret society").

“My name is a psychologist,” Dostoevsky noted in one of his notebooks, “it’s not true, I’m only a realist in the highest sense, i.e. I depict all the depths of the human soul. Only having felt this highest layer of Dostoevsky's poetics, we will understand that "Demons" is not a novel about S.G. Nechaev and Nechaevites, that the exclusion of St. Tikhon from it did not in the least change its general spiritual meaning. "Demons" is a great Christian novel about the immortality of Christ and his work.

ON THE. Berdyaev accurately defines Dostoevsky's approach to man: "Dostoevsky takes a man released to freedom, out of the law, fallen out of the cosmic order and explores his fate in freedom, reveals the inevitable results of the paths of freedom" (p. 42-43).

Man absolutely needs freedom for his existence. This is the main pathos, and "Demons". Christianity is a religion of freedom. But on the paths of man's freedom lies the danger of self-will, when, as a result of the collision of the most opposite forces fighting in him, he is deprived of the ability to make a final choice. This is the main meaning of the image of Stavrogin.

On the paths of freedom there is another danger, another temptation, when a free person can fall under the power of an idea freely chosen by him. Strictly speaking, demonism is the obsession with an idea that separates a person from real, irrational life. Peter Verkhovensky, who passionately believed in Ivan Tsarevich - Stavrogin, Kirillov, who decided to prove the truth of his idea by suicide, and even Shatov, who fanatically preached to Stavrogin his belief in the God-bearingness of the Russian people - they all become slaves to their idea.

But after all, Pyotr Verkhovensky, and Shatov, and Kirillov, and all the other petty demons of the novel are the spiritual children of Stavrogin, who can combine and preach the most opposite principles: both faith in God and unbelief. It is not for nothing that Shatov says to Stavrogin: “At the same time when you planted God and the homeland in my heart, at the same time, perhaps even on the very same days, you poisoned the heart of this unfortunate, this maniac Kirillov with poison. .. You affirmed lies and slander in him and brought his mind to a frenzy.”

And in fact, the entire novel "Demons" is devoted to unraveling the mystery of Stavrogin, since the spiritual confusion of the protagonist, his spiritual duality captures first several of his students, then entire circles and, finally, the whole city, and the collapse of his personality symbolizes for Dostoevsky the religious crisis experienced by Russia .

The writer skillfully concentrates all the action of "Demons" around the personality of the protagonist: the exposition - Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky - Stavrogin's spiritual father, four women - Liza Tushina, Dasha, Marya Timofeevna, wife Shatova - they are all part of his tragic fate; four men - Shatov, Kirillov, Pyotr Verkhovensky, Shigalev - these are the ideas of Stavrogin, who began their own life, and, finally, petty demons - Virginsky, Liputin, Lebyadkin, Erkel, Lyamshin - they were also begotten by Stavrogin.

Using the example of various actors, Dostoevsky shows how Stavrogin's spiritual struggle is embodied in revolutionary conspiracies, riots, fires, murders and suicides. Now it turns out that the crime committed by demons in a provincial Russian town is a hundred times more terrible than the atrocity of Raskolnikov or the debauchery of Svidrigailov, for there is nothing more terrible, according to Dostoevsky, than belonging to an underground group that justifies the shedding of blood of innocent people (he knew this from my own experience, when in my youth I could become a Nechaev, and then repented all my life).

This is the meaning of V.V. Rozanova: “Dostoevsky ... seized the “bastard” in Rus' and became its prophet. Prophet of "tomorrow"" ( Rozanov V.V. Fallen leaves. SPb., 1913. S. 362). Of course, V.V. Rozanov had in mind first and foremost the underground revolutionaries. He does not include Stavrogin and Kirillov among them, who, while sinfully asserting themselves, still did not lose their personalities. They also have their own, unique, inimitable, albeit sinful, face, but Peter Verkhovensky and a gang of mediocre fools-demons, whom he rallied into the revolutionary underground for reliability with the blood of an innocent person, not faces, but masks, they are all from chaos , evil spirits, mold, dreaming of chaos, i.e. the appearance of the Antichrist - "Ivan Tsarevich".

We can say this: the Russian Nietzscheans - Stavrogin, Kirillov (and even earlier Raskolnikov and Dostoevsky the Petrashevsky himself, who anticipated F. Nietzsche) were only possessed, and the underground revolutionaries had already become demons. That is why the attempts of Peter Verkhovensky to persuade Stavrogin to lead the Russian revolution, to become "Ivan Tsarevich" seem naive, since Stavrogin is deeper and more difficult than all socialist ideas put together - miserable, flat and insignificant. Stavrogin, Kirillov, Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov, Svidrigailov want to replace the immortal, shining in the soul of every person from birth, the face of a god-man with the face of a man-god, a superman, to whom everything is allowed.

However, it is not in vain that Dostoevsky draws a line between those who are absorbed in an idea and idealists who live in the ghosts of idealism, which, according to Dostoevsky, inevitably leads to evil. The idealist does not see evil, and therefore evil eventually enslaves him. So, the liberal-idealist Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, the comic hybrid A.I. Herzen with T.N. Granovsky, it would seem, does not harm anyone with his innocent chatter. But it is precisely from the idealism of Stepan Trofimovich that the “demonicity” of his son Peter, a revolutionary and murderer, is born.

Dostoevsky rarely created one-dimensional portraits of heroes (maybe only underground revolutionaries who planned to overthrow the autocracy); for him, life is always an irrational, inexplicable, mysterious, divine miracle. Not without reason, for example, when Raskolnikov, in whom Schiller was always tenacious, calls his youthful love for his mistress's daughter "spring nonsense", Dunya enthusiastically objects: "No, there is more than one spring nonsense." In the image of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, this pure idealist of the 1840s, there is some kind of warmth of life, there is also inner truthfulness: it is clear that Dostoevsky entrusts to him some thoughts and convictions dear to him.

It is Stepan Trofimovich who boldly declares that “boots are lower than Pushkin,” and fearlessly says to the nihilists at the celebration: “But I declare that Shakespeare and Raphael are higher than the liberation of the peasants, higher than the people, higher than socialism, higher than the young generation, higher than chemistry, higher than almost all of humanity. for they are already the fruit, the real fruit of all mankind, and perhaps the highest fruit that can be! A form of beauty already achieved; without achieving which I, perhaps, will not agree to live ... Without bread, humanity can live, without beauty alone it is impossible, because there will be absolutely nothing to do in the world! The whole mystery is here, the whole story is here! .. I will not give in! .. "

But Stepan Trofimovich, through whose mouth Dostoevsky aesthetically denounces demons, must inevitably suffer a spiritual defeat, since it is he who, preaching the happiness of all mankind, plays cards against his serf Fedka. And this practical immorality eventually gave rise to the nihilists of the sixties, the demons.

The combination of aestheticism in theory with immorality in practice gives rise, first of all, to the main demon - Stavrogin. ON THE. Berdyaev rightly writes: “Stavrogin is the sun around which everything revolves. And a whirlwind rises around Stavrogin, which turns into a frenzy. Everything reaches out to him as to the sun, everything comes from him and returns to him, everything is only his destiny. Shatov, P. Verkhovensky, Kirillov are only parts of the disintegrated personality of Stavrogin, only an emanation of this extraordinary personality, in which it is depleted. The enigma of Stavrogin, the mystery of Stavrogin, is the only theme of The Possessed. The only "case" in which everyone is absorbed is the "case" of Stavrogin. Revolutionary madness is only a moment in Stavrogin's fate, a sign of Stavrogin's inner reality, his willfulness" (pp. 39-40).

The main vice of Stavrogin, as a result of which he broke away from God and people, is his immense pride. Not without reason, in his will, in his last word, in, said six months before his death, Dostoevsky specifically emphasized: "Humble yourself, proud man, and above all break your pride."

The secret of Stavrogin is imprinted on his face: “His hair was somehow very black, his bright eyes were very calm and clear, his complexion was something very gentle and white, his blush was something too bright and pure. , teeth like pearls, lips like coral - it would seem that a hand-written handsome man, but at the same time, as if disgusting. It was said that his face resembled a mask.

Each new scene of the novel reinforces our impression of Stavrogin's fatal duality, which consists in a combination of two words that define his appearance, his appearance, his face: "disgusting beauty." Superhuman strength of Stavrogin and, at the same time, his complete impotence, thirst for faith and, at the same time, amazing lack of faith, Stavrogin's constant search for his "burden" and at the same time his absolute spiritual deadness.

The bifurcation of Stavrogin reaches its climax in the scene with Dasha, to whom he admits that he is visited by a demon (this scene remained only in, in subsequent editions it was excluded due to the loss of the chapter “At Tikhon”): “I know that it’s me in different forms, double and talk to myself. But all the same, he is very angry, he terribly wants to be an independent demon and that I really believe in him. He laughed yesterday and assured that atheism does not interfere with that.

“The moment you believe in him, you are dead!” Dasha cried out with pain in her heart.

Do you know his topic yesterday? All night long he maintained that I was a conjurer, looking for burdens and unbearable labors, but I myself did not believe in them.

He suddenly burst out laughing, and it was terribly absurd. Darya Pavlovna shuddered and recoiled from him.

There were an awful lot of demons yesterday! he cried, laughing, “an awful lot! They climbed out of all the swamps.

Stavrogin is struck by the mortal sin of pride, the sin of affirming oneself outside of God, for, according to Dostoevsky, if there is no God, then I am God. However, disbelief does not at all prevent one from being superstitious; on the contrary, Dostoevsky believed that atheism will inevitably lead to superstition, which is belief in the devil, demons and their minions. To Stavrogin's mocking question: "Is it possible to believe in a demon without believing in God at all?" - Tikhon replies: "Oh, it's very possible, all the time."

Everything that Stavrogin does in the novel is the agony of the superman. From birth, he was destined for a high calling, but he betrayed the most sacred and dear - he renounced God. Stavrogin's suicide does not change anything, since even during his lifetime he suffered the most terrible punishment - spiritual death. His soul decomposes, and its decay gives birth to Stavrogin's spiritual children: Shatov, Kirillov, Peter Verkhovensky, Shigalev, and they, in turn, infect smaller demons, etc. - devilry began to spin, swirled in Russia (the demon of Stavrogin himself turned into the devil of Ivan Karamazov).

Spiritual disciples of Stavrogin embody all the contradictions of his soul. They treat their teacher differently, but they all came out of his pride and self-will, from his unbelief, from his inability to believe in God.

The spiritual split of Stavrogin turns into Shatov's personal tragedy. Dostoevsky defines Shatov as “one of those ideal Russian beings who are suddenly struck by some strong idea and immediately crush them with it, sometimes even forever. They will never be able to cope with it, but they will passionately believe, and then their whole life then passes, as it were, in the last writhing under the stone that has fallen on them and has already completely destroyed them.

Shatov was crushed by the Russian messianic idea, but the pernicious influence of Stavrogin was reflected in the fact that the bearer of this idea of ​​the Russian God-bearing people, Shatov, did not believe in God. Shatov delivers with inspiration a wonderful monologue about the religious vocation of the Russian people - it is undoubtedly Dostoevsky who entrusts him with his innermost thoughts, but Stavrogin, who no longer cares about anything, asks rather coldly: “I just wanted to know whether you yourself believe in God or not. ? “I believe in Russia, I believe in her Orthodoxy. I believe in the body of Christ... I believe that the new coming will take place in Russia. I believe ... - Shatov babbled in a frenzy. — And in God? In God? “I… I will believe in God.”

The split between faith and disbelief dooms Shatov to death, just as another student of Stavrogin, Kirillov, dooms mind and heart to suicide. Kirillov was also crushed by the idea. No wonder Pyotr Verkhovensky mockingly says to him: “I know that you didn’t eat the idea, but the idea ate you.”

With his mind, Kirillov comes to the denial of God, but in his heart he feels that it is impossible to live without God. But how to "live with these two thoughts"? Kirillov, it seems to him, finds a way out in the idea of ​​a man-god. Kirillov's dialogue with his spiritual teacher is the culmination of his personal tragedy. “Whoever teaches that everyone is good, that world will end,” says Kirillov. But Stavrogin objects: "Who taught, he was crucified." Kirillov clarifies: "He will come, and His name will be man-god." But Stavrogin asks again: "God-man?" Kirillov insists: "Man-God, that's the difference."

Kirillov is absolutely accurate: he replaces Christ with the Antichrist. “If there is no God, then I am God ... If there is a God, then all His will, and without His will I cannot. If not, then all my will, and I am obliged to declare self-will ... I am obliged to shoot myself, because the most complete point of my self-will is to kill myself ... "

The fatal duality of Stavrogin is embodied in Kirillov's personal tragedy: "God is necessary, and therefore must exist, but I know that God does not exist and cannot exist - one cannot live with such two thoughts."

But the ways of human deity, i.e. human self-will, are not exhausted by the image of Kirillov. Dostoevsky goes further and deeper. He creates an ominous image of Peter Verkhovensky. From the formula "If there is no God, then everything is allowed", which is an inevitable consequence of the split and disintegration of Stavrogin, his disciple Pyotr Verkhovensky fully mastered its second part - "everything is allowed."

Dostoevsky understood the dialectic of the development of the godless idea of ​​revolutionary socialism, which ultimately leads to inhumanity, the idea of ​​"everything in the name of man" leads to the extermination of man. For Peter Verkhovensky there is no longer a person, because he himself is no longer a person. And it is no coincidence that the killer by profession Fedka Katorzhny rewards the killer with slaps in the face on the conviction of Peter Verkhovensky, the bloody organizer of the godless revolution. Fedka convict, despite all his great sins, despite the efforts of Peter Verkhovensky, never became a revolutionary, but remained a believer in God.

And here we can recall the spiritual path of Dostoevsky himself, who, in the person of Pyotr Verkhovensky, executes his revolutionary spirit and atheism of the period of the Petrashevites. It was the simple convicts - humiliated and insulted, outcasts, murderers by trade - who returned the true image of Christ to the writer again.

To S.G. Nechaev as the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky and Dostoevsky approaches the Nechaev case from a religious standpoint. For the writer, socialism and revolution are always natural and inevitable consequences of atheism, because if there is no God, then everything is allowed.

The principle of permissiveness leads to complete immorality in politics as well (the moral immorality of Stavrogin gives rise to the political immorality of his student), and Pyotr Verkhovensky becomes an inspired poet of chaos, confusion, destruction, lawlessness: “... We will first let confusion ... We will penetrate into the very people ... We will let drunkenness, gossip, denunciations; we will unleash unheard-of depravity, we will extinguish every genius in infancy... We will proclaim destruction... We will set fires... We will start legends... Well, sir, and confusion will begin! Such a buildup will go, which the world has not yet seen. Rus' will be clouded ... "

Shigalevism inevitably grows out of this terrible monologue. And it is no coincidence that in the process of working on the novel, Pyotr Verkhovensky singled out his additional image - Shigalev, the creator of a new system of "organization of the world." “Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, aluminum columns, all this is only suitable for sparrows, and not for human society,” Shigalev expounds his theory of social organization at a meeting of Ours. “But since the future social form is needed right now, when we are all finally going to act, so as not to think any more, I propose my own system for organizing the world ... I declare in advance that my system is not finished ... I am confused in own data, and my conclusion is in direct contradiction to the original idea from which I come out. Coming out of boundless freedom, I conclude with boundless despotism.

So, according to Dostoevsky, revolutionary atheistic ideas will inevitably lead to Shigalevism, an earthly paradise, when the whole people will turn into an obedient herd, which is controlled by the elect, one tenth of humanity. “But this tyranny, unheard of in the history of the world,” notes N.A. Berdyaev, will be based on a general forced equation. Shigalevism is a frenzied passion for equality, brought to the end, to the limit, to non-existence" ( Berdyaev N.A. Spirits of the Russian Revolution. Pg., 1918, p. 24).

The theoretician Shigalev gives rise to the sinister figure of the Grand Inquisitor, who has already realized "boundless despotism" in practice. But in the Grand Inquisitor Christ is opposed, and Ivan Karamazov is opposed by Zosima and Alyosha. The exclusion of the chapter "At Tikhon's" from "Demons" made this novel, at first glance, a hopeless tragedy. But this is a completely wrong impression.

Of course, the novel "Demons" - a formidable prophecy of the writer about the catastrophes impending on the world - is a warning novel, a call to people's vigilance. Dostoevsky was the only person who drew a conclusion from the Nechaev case: the Nechaevs and similar demonic revolutionaries are advancing on the world, who will walk over corpses to achieve their goals, for whom the end always justifies the means and who do not even notice how gradually the means become an end in itself . (This is well said by Yuri Trifonov in the article "Mysteries and Providence of Dostoevsky" // Novy Mir. 1981. No. 11).

However, the novel "Demons" is by no means a hopeless tragedy, otherwise Dostoevsky would have included M.N. Katkov from a magazine publication the chapter “At Tikhon’s” in But he did not do this, for he understood perfectly well that even without this chapter, “Demons” remain a great Christian novel, a hymn to Christ and His immortal cause.

First of all, even without a saint, there is one person in the novel who opposes demons and their dark deeds and plans. This is the holy fool in Christ, the clairvoyant lame Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, who lives in the world as a hermit. It is to her, the first to expose the main demon, Stavrogin, that Dostoevsky trusts to utter the most intimate words about Mother Earth: what do you think?" - "Great mother, I answer, the hope of the human race." - "So, she says, the Mother of God - there is a great mother of damp earth, and great joy lies in this for a person. And every earthly longing and every earthly tear - there is joy for us; but how will you water the earth under you with your tears half an arshin deep then you will immediately rejoice in everything. the other is our Sharp Mountain, that’s why they call it Mount Ostroya. I will ascend this mountain, I will turn my face to the east, I will fall to the ground, weeping and I don’t remember how long I cry, and I don’t remember then and I don’t know anything then.

This joyful cry of Marya Timofeevna, in which the Divine principle of the world was revealed through the symbol of the Mother of God and Mother Earth, is faith in the victory of Christ over demons.

But even without Marya Timofeevna, the Christian meaning of the novel would not have changed. Dostoevsky always "light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not embrace it." Using the gospel parable of the healing of a demon-possessed person by Christ, Dostoevsky believes that Russia and the world will eventually be cured of demonic revolutionaries. The exclusion of the chapter "At Tikhon's" from the final text of the novel led to the fact that its meaning began to contain "proof by contradiction." Everything that the “demons” arrange in a small provincial town is a murderous verdict on their cause.

Dostoevsky's worldview is expressed in the symbolism of Good contained in his works, and this symbolism of Good, i.e. the dialectical result of the whole, grows with full consideration of all logical comparisons and contrasts, with full consideration of all ideas-images that are crowned with the idea of ​​Good. Only taking into account this symbolism of Good, one can understand the Christian meaning of "Demons", understand the "Legend of the Grand Inquisitor", understand the silence of Christ before the Grand Inquisitor, as well as, by the way, the silence of Christ before Pilate. They did not understand that the silence of Christ is the best refutation of their arguments, for what the demons and the Grand Inquisitor are doing is so clearly contrary to Christ and his teaching that it does not even need any special refutation.

Christianity teaches that every human person is the supreme shrine, it is sacred and inviolable, even the most fallen person retains the image and likeness of God; for demons who deny the moral law, a person is only a means to achieve their goals. True, demons love to justify their denial of God by the existence of evil in the world. But the whole novel "Demons" is the best answer to this objection. “God exists precisely because there is evil and suffering in the world,” N.A. Berdyaev, the existence of evil is proof of the existence of God. If the world were exclusively kind and good, then God would not be needed, then the world would already be God. God exists because evil exists. This means that God exists because there is freedom” (p. 86).

But the victory of evil, the victory of demons, can only be illusory, temporary, short-lived. The novel "Demons" ends with a bright prophecy about Russia, when the bookseller Sofya Matveevna reads to Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky in the inn the gospel story about the healing of the demoniac. “These demons,” Stepan Trofimovich said in great agitation ... “these are all ulcers, all miasma, all impurity, all demons and demons that have accumulated in our great and small patient, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries! .. But a great thought and a great will will overshadow her from above, like that crazy demoniac, and all these demons will come out. All uncleanness... But the sick person will be healed and "sit down at the feet of Jesus"... and everyone will look in amazement..."

With faith in the Christian path of Russia, Stepan Trofimovich regains faith in the idea of ​​immortality: “My immortality is already necessary because God does not want to make a lie and completely extinguish the fire of love that once kindled for him in my heart. And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and how is it possible that being is unyielding to it? If I loved Him and rejoiced in my love, is it possible for Him to quench both me and my joy and turn us into zero? If there is a God, then I am immortal!”

These words contain the great Christian meaning of the novel "Demons", for all human destiny is completely determined by the idea of ​​immortality, and if there is immortality, then demons are always doomed.

Belov S.V. F.M. Dostoevsky. Encyclopedia. M., 2010. S. 98-105.

The plot situation of the novel is based on a real historical fact. On November 21, 1869, near Moscow, the head of the secret revolutionary organization "People's Punishment" S.G. Nechaev and four of his accomplices - P.G. Uspensky, A.K. Kuznetsov, I.G. Pryzhov and N.N. Nikolaev - a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I.I. Ivanov.

S.G. Nechaev (1847-1882), teacher, volunteer at St. Petersburg University, took an active part in student unrest in the spring of 1869, fled to Switzerland, where he became close with and. In September 1869 he returned to Russia with the mandate of the "Russian Department of the World Revolutionary Union", which he received from Bakunin. Posing as a representative of the "International Revolutionary Committee" that did not really exist, endowed with unlimited powers and who came to Russia to organize the revolution, Nechaev created several "five" (groups of five people) from the supposed extensive network of such groups, consisting mainly of students of the Petrovsky agricultural academy. In the "People's massacre" led by him, Nechaev enjoyed the rights of a dictator who demanded unquestioning obedience to himself. Conflict with I.I. Ivanov, who repeatedly expressed distrust of Nechaev and was about to leave the organization, led to the massacre of Ivanov.

Dostoevsky learned about Ivanov's murder from the newspapers at the very end of November-December 1869. Beginning in January 1870, reports, correspondence, notes about Nechaev, his accomplices, and the circumstances of Ivanov's murder began to be systematically published in the press. In July 1871, the trial of the Nechaevites began (Nechaev himself managed to escape abroad). This was the first open political process that attracted close public attention in Russia and abroad. The materials of the trial (including program documents, proclamations and other materials of Nechaev) were widely published in the Government Bulletin newspaper and reprinted by other newspapers. These messages were for Dostoevsky the main source of information about the Nechaev case.

The program document of the "People's massacre" is the so-called. The Catechism of the Revolutionary, in which the tasks, principles and structure of the organization were formulated, the relations of the revolutionary "to himself", "to his comrades in the revolution", "to society", "to the people" were defined.

The goal of the "People's Reprisal" was proclaimed to be the liberation of the people through the "all-destroying people's revolution", which "will destroy at the root of all statehood and destroy all state traditions of order and classes in Russia." “Our cause is a terrible, complete, widespread and merciless destruction,” was declared in the Catechism (State crimes in Russia in the 19th century. Stuttgart, 1903. T. I. C. 337).

Deliberate violation of the norms on the principle “the end justifies the means” in the name of the abstract slogan “common cause”, adventurous tactics, dictatorial methods of leadership, a system of denunciations and mutual surveillance of members of the organization one after another, etc. - all this received the common name of "nechaevism" and caused just public indignation both in Russia and in Europe. Negatively reacted to the program and tactics of Nechaev, and some other figures of the populist movement.

The idea of ​​the novel "Demons" dates back to December 1869 - January 1870. Systematic references to the novel appear in Dostoevsky's letters from February 1870. The new idea captivated the writer with its topicality and relevance. In a letter to A.N. Maykov dated February 12 (24), 1870. Dostoevsky brings together the novel he conceived about an ideological murder with: “I sat down for a rich idea; I'm not talking about execution, but about the idea. One of those ideas that have a definite effect on the public. Like "Crime and Punishment", but even closer, even more urgent to reality and directly touches on the most important modern issue.

In letters relating to the winter - spring of 1870, and in draft sketches of the same period, the sharp political tendentiousness of the future novel is clearly outlined.

The main characters of numerous February and March plans are Granovsky (the future S.T. Verkhovensky), his son Student (later Pyotr Verkhovensky; in draft notes he is often referred to as Nechaev, after his real prototype), Prince (Stavrogin), Princess (Stavrogina ), Shaposhnikov (Shatov), ​​Pupil (Dasha), Beauty (Liza Tushina). Somewhat later, the “great writer” (Karmazinov), Captain Kartuzov (Lebyadkin), and a chronicler appear. The plot schemes change, but the motive of Shaposhnikov's (Shatov's) “nechaev murder” by Student (Nechaev) remains.

Having conceived the novel as a political pamphlet on the modern Nechaevs and their "fathers" - Western liberals of the 1840s, posing questions about the origins and causes of modern nihilism, about the relationship between representatives of different generations in society, Dostoevsky turned to the experience of his literary predecessors, and first of all to the experience of the author of the famous novel "Fathers and Sons", the artistic discoverer of nihilism.

The orientation towards Turgenev's novel is especially noticeable at the early stage of Dostoevsky's work on The Possessed. The generation of "fathers" is represented in the novel by Granovsky, a liberal idealist of the 1840s, and the generation of "children" is represented by Granovsky's son, Student (aka Nechaev). In the February notes of 1870, the conflict between father and son is already described in detail, and Dostoevsky to some extent uses the plot and compositional scheme of Turgenev’s novel (the arrival of a nihilist at a noble estate, his communication with local “aristocrats”, a trip to a provincial town, a novel with a secular woman - Beauty). Like the author of Fathers and Sons, Dostoevsky seeks to reveal his heroes primarily in ideological disputes and polemics; that is why whole scenes are thrown up in the form of dialogues setting out the ideological clashes between the Westerner Granovsky, the “soiler” Shatov, and the nihilist Student.

In ideological disputes, the moral and psychological image of the Student (Nechaev) and his political program, oriented towards general destruction and annihilation, emerge.

Drawing his nihilist, Dostoevsky combines in him the features of Bazarovism and Khlestakovism, due to which the image is reduced, appears in a parodic-comic plan. This is a kind of reduced and vulgarized Bazarov, deprived of his high tragic beginning, his "great heart", but with an exorbitantly inflated "Bazarovism".

The creative difficulties that Dostoevsky complained about in the summer letters of 1870 to friends were largely connected with his painful search for a central hero.

In August 1870, a radical turning point took place in the creative history of the novel "Demons", as a result of which the political pamphlet and its hero Nechaev-Verkhovensky cease to occupy a central place in the novel. "Demons" develop into a tragedy novel with its main character Nikolai Stavrogin. On October 8 (20), 1870, Dostoevsky spoke in detail about this turning point in a letter to Katkov. The writer explains to Katkov the general plan of "Demons" and reports that the plot of the novel is "the murder of Ivanov, known in Moscow by Nechaev", and he knows about the participants and circumstances of the murder only from newspapers. The writer warns against attempts to identify Peter Verkhovensky with the real Nechaev. “My fantasy,” writes Dostoevsky, “may differ in the highest degree from the former reality, and my Pyotr Verkhovensky may not at all resemble Nechaev; but it seems to me that in my stricken mind my imagination has created that face, that type, which corresponds to this villainy<...>. To my own surprise, this face comes out half comic for me, and therefore, despite the fact that the whole incident occupies one of the first plans of the novel, it is nevertheless only an accessory and setting for the actions of another person who could really be called the main character. novel.

This other face (Nikolai Stavrogin) is also a gloomy face, also a villain. But it seems to me that this face is tragic<...>. I sat down to write a poem about this person because I have been wanting to portray him for too long. In my opinion, this is both a Russian and a typical face<...>. I took it from my heart. Of course, this is a character that rarely appears in all its typicality, but this is a Russian character (of a well-known stratum of society)<...>. But not all will be gloomy faces; will be bright<...>. For the first time, for example, I want to touch upon one category of persons who have not yet been touched by literature. I take Tikhon of Zadonsk as the ideal of such a person. This is also a saint who lives quietly in a monastery. With him I compare and reduce for a while the hero of the novel. Dostoevsky expressed a similar thought in: “I personally do not touch on the famous Nechaev and his sacrifice, Ivanov, in my novel. Face my Nechaev, of course, does not look like the face of a real Nechaev.

The turning point in the creative history of The Possessed, which occurred in August 1870, coincided with Dostoevsky's refusal to realize his cherished plan in the near future -. Obviously, at this time, the writer decided to transfer some images, situations, ideas of the Life ... to the "Demons" and thereby give the novel a religious, moral and philosophical depth. So, in particular, Bishop Tikhon, who was supposed to bring Stavrogin to trial of the highest, popular truth, which, according to the writer, is inseparable from Christian ideas about good and evil, passes from The Life of a Great Sinner into Demons in a creatively transformed version.

In the summer and autumn of 1870, Dostoevsky creates a new edition of the first part of the novel, partly using materials from the rejected original edition. Along with the creation of new preparatory sketches (plot plans, characterizations, dialogues, etc.), the coherent text of the chapters of the first part of "Demons" is being designed. At this time, the composition of the novel and its volume had already been determined in general terms.

On October 7 (19), 1870, Dostoevsky sends half of the first part of the novel to Moscow. From October to December, the writer works on the last chapters of the first part. From January 1871 begins.

The protagonist of the novel, Nikolai Stavrogin, is one of Dostoevsky's most complex and tragic characters. Creating it, the writer often resorted to New Testament symbolism, life, and instructive literature.

Stavrogin is a richly and versatile gifted person by nature. He could become. Already the very name Stavrogin (from the Greek. σταυρός, cross) alludes, as Vyacheslav Ivanov believes, to the high purpose of its bearer. However, Stavrogin betrayed his destiny, did not realize the possibilities inherent in it. “A traitor before Christ, he is also unfaithful to Satan. He must present himself to him, like a mask, in order to seduce the world with imposture, in order to play the role of a false Tsarevich - and he does not find the will in himself to do so. He changes the revolution, and changes Russia (symbols: the transition to foreign citizenship and, in particular, the renunciation of his wife, Khromonozhka). He betrays everyone and everything and hangs himself, like Judas, without reaching his demonic lair in a gloomy mountain gorge.

In Stavrogin, moral nihilism reaches extreme limits. "Superman" and an individualist who transgresses moral laws, Stavrogin is tragically powerless in his attempts at spiritual rebirth.

Dostoevsky explains the reasons for the spiritual death of Stavrogin with the help of the apocalyptic text: “And write to the Angel of the Church of Laodicea<...>I know your business; you are neither cold nor hot; Oh, if you were cold or hot! But because you are lukewarm, and not hot or cold, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16). The tragedy of Stavrogin in Dostoevsky's interpretation is that he is "not cold" and "not hot", but only "warm", and therefore does not have a sufficient will to rebirth, which in essence is not closed to him (he is looking for a "burden", but can't carry it). In Tikhon's explanation (as it appeared in the later expelled, under pressure from the editors of the Russkiy vestnik, the head of "At Tikhon's"), "a perfect atheist", i.e. "cold", "stands on the penultimate, upper step to the most perfect faith (whether he will step over it or not), but the indifferent has no faith, except for bad fear." The following lines from the above apocalyptic text are also important for understanding Stavrogin: “For you say: “I am not rich, I have become rich and have no need for anything,” but you don’t know that you are unhappy, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17), emphasizing the idea of ​​Stavrogin’s spiritual impotence despite his seeming omnipotence.

In the individual fate of Stavrogin, whose entire “great idle power”, in the figurative expression of Tikhon, has gone “deliberately into abomination”, the tragedy of the Russian intelligentsia, carried away by superficial Europeanism and having lost blood ties with their native land and people, is refracted. It is no coincidence that Shatov advises the idle “barich” Stavrogin to “get God”, the ability to distinguish between good and evil by “peasant labor”, showing him the path of rapprochement with the people and their religious and moral truth.

Stavrogin is characterized not only by morality, but also by mental duality: he is able almost simultaneously to inspire opposite ideas in his students: he captivates Shatov with the idea of ​​the Russian people, the “God-bearer”, called to renew Europe, and corrupts Kirillov with the idea of ​​a “man-god” (“superman”), who is "on the other side of good and evil." Not believing in the “cause” of Peter Verkhovensky and deeply despising him, Stavrogin, nevertheless, out of idleness, out of boredom, develops the foundations of his monstrous “organization” and even composes a charter for it.

The image of Stavrogin constantly doubles in the minds of the people around him, they still expect great achievements from him. For Shatov, Kirillov, Peter Verkhovensky, he is either the bearer of grandiose ideas, capable of "raising the banner", or a powerless, idle, trashy "Russian barchon". The dual nature of Stavrogin is also felt by the women associated with him (Varvara Petrovna, Marya Timofeevna, Liza).

Marya Timofeevna (along with Bishop Tikhon in the original plan) represents people's Russia in the novel. Purity, openness to good, joyful acceptance of the world make Khromonozhka related to other "bright" images of Dostoevsky. The writer endows her, weak-minded and holy fool, with clairvoyance, the ability to see the true essence of phenomena and people. And this is not accidental: with its deepest essence, Khromonozhka is connected with the "soil", the religious and ethical folk truth - in contrast to Stavrogin, who has lost these blood ties. However, Khromonozhka is also a victim of the demonic charms of Stavrogin, whose image doubles in her mind and appears in the guise of either a prince of light or a prince of darkness. In a moment of insight, Khromonopozhka exposes the "wise" Stavrogin as a traitor and an impostor, and this costs her life.

Dostoevsky left no indication of Stavrogin's real prototypes. Among them was a famous anarchist named Petrashevets. By the 1920s refers to the controversy between L.P. Grossman and V.P. Polonsky on this subject. In the very text of the novel, the chronicler, characterizing Stavrogin's willpower and self-control, compares him with the Decembrist M.S. Lunin.

The literary-genetic type of Stavrogin goes back to his demonism, pessimism and satiety, as well as to the spiritually related type of the Russian "superfluous person". In the gallery of "superfluous people" Stavrogin is most related to Onegin and even more so to Pechorin.

Stavrogin resembles Pechorin not only in his psychological makeup, but also in some character traits. Rich spiritual endowment - and a keen awareness of the aimlessness of existence; the search for a "burden" - a big idea, deed, feeling, faith that could completely capture their restless natures - and at the same time the inability to find this "burden" due to spiritual split; merciless introspection; amazing willpower and fearlessness - these features are equally inherent in Stavrogin and Pechorin.

Summing up their failed lives, both heroes come to the same disappointing results. “I run through my memory of all my past and ask myself involuntarily: why did I live? for what purpose was I born?.. But, it’s true, it existed, and it’s true, I had a high appointment, because I feel immense powers in my soul ... But I didn’t guess this purpose, I was carried away by the lures of empty and ungrateful passions ; I came out of their crucible as hard and cold as iron, but I have lost forever the ardor of noble aspirations - the best color of life, ”Pechorin writes in his diary before the duel with Grushnitsky. "I tried everywhere my strength<...>. On tests for myself and for show, as before in my whole life, it turned out to be boundless.<...>But what to apply this force to - that's what I've never seen, I don't see now<...>I poured out one denial, without any generosity and without any strength. There wasn't even a denial. Everything is always small and sluggish, ”Stavrogin admits in his suicide letter to Dasha.

The turbulent youth of Stavrogin and his bizarre amusements, not without reason, evoke in the memory of Stepan Trofimovich the way of life of the young Prince Harry, the hero of the historical chronicle of W. Shakespeare "King Henry IV".

A well-known analogy can also be seen between Stavrogin and Steerforth, the "demonic" hero of Charles Dickens' novel The Life of David Copperfield, Told by Himself (1849-1850). The son of a rich widow, a highly gifted and educated young man, Steerforth fruitlessly squanders his abilities and dies tragically. In him, as in Stavrogin, courage, nobility and generosity of nature are combined with early depravity, arrogance and cruelty.

Dostoevsky intended to oppose the "common man" and cosmopolitan Stavrogin in the person of Bishop Tikhon with a truly Russian Orthodox person, deeply rooted in the people's soil. Of extraordinary interest in this regard is the chapter "At Tikhon", which tells about Stavrogin's visit to Tikhon and his failed attempt at repentance. According to Dostoevsky's original plan, the chapter "At Tikhon" as "chapter nine" was supposed to complete the second part of the novel (the seventh and eighth chapters - "At Ours" and "Ivan Tsarevich" - appeared in the November book). The chapter "At Tikhon", conceived by Dostoevsky as the ideological, philosophical and compositional center of the novel and already typed in proofreading, was rejected by the editors of the "Russian Messenger". As N.N. Strakhov L.N. Tolstoy on November 28, 1883, “Katkov did not want to print one scene from Stavrogin (corruption, etc.)” (quoted from: Dostoevskaya A.G. Memories. 1846-1917. M., 2015. S. 596). The chapter "At Tikhon's" consists of three small chapters. In the first, Stavrogin informs Tikhon of his intention to publish the "Confession", in which he talks about the violence against the girl and his other misdeeds. In the second, Tikhon reads "Confession" (its full text is given). The third describes Tikhon's conversation with Stavrogin after reading it.

Stavrogin, who offended "one of these little ones", committed a grave sin. However, the path to spiritual rebirth is not closed to him, because. according to the Christian faith, the most grievous sin can be expiated if the penitent's repentance is true. The idea of ​​confession, individual and public repentance as a path to moral purification and rebirth has an ancient Christian tradition, and Dostoevsky, when he conceived the chapter "At Tikhon", undoubtedly took into account the rich experience of ancient Russian and Byzantine literature.

It is no coincidence that in the preparatory materials for "Demons" the names of John of the Ladder, Theodosius of the Caves, Nil of Sorsky and some other spiritual writers are mentioned. Tikhon must unravel what brought the unbeliever Stavrogin to his cell. What are the true motives of Stavrogin’s intention to publish his “Confession”: is it genuine repentance and a desire to atone for his crimes at a heavy cost (the need for a “cross” and “nationwide punishment”) or is it just a “daring challenge from the guilty to the judge”, the demonic pride of a strong a person who considers himself entitled to boldly transgress the moral law? The reader becomes a witness to an amazing psychological duel between Tikhon and Stavrogin.

In the end, Tikhon is convinced that Stavrogin is not ready for a spiritual feat, he cannot bear the ridicule that his “Confession” will cause in society because of the “minority” of the crime. Tikhon predicts that Stavrogin will commit an even more terrible crime in order to avoid the publication of the Confession. With an angry remark: "Damned psychologist!" Stavrogin leaves Tikhon's cell, and this remark testifies to Tikhon's deep psychological insight.

In order to keep the chapter in the composition of the novel, Dostoevsky was forced to agree with the requirements of M.N. Katkova. He creates a softened edition of the chapter, in which, "leaving the essence of the matter, he changed the text so as to satisfy the chastity" of the publishers of Russkiy Vestnik. Insisting on the publication of a new version of the chapter, Dostoevsky in a letter to N.A. Lyubimov (late March - early April 1872) emphasized its importance for understanding the image of Stavrogin. Inseparably with the idea of ​​confession (the path to moral purification and spiritual rebirth of a person through repentance), this letter gives the author's interpretation of Stavrogin as a representative of a certain social stratum of aristocratic Russia, idle and depraved "out of sadness" due to the loss of blood ties with the Russian people and their faith. This letter can serve as a refutation of the point of view, widespread among literary critics, according to which the rejection of the chapter "At Tikhon's" was allegedly an act of free creative will of the writer and was caused by the concept of Stavrogin's image that changed in the process of working on the novel. However, the softened version of the chapter was also rejected by Katkov and Lyubimov. I had to complete the publication of the novel without the chapter "At Tikhon's". The only one came out immediately after the completion of the journal publication (at the end of January 1873) and was printed on its basis. Unable, due to lack of time and the above reasons, to restore the chapter "At Tikhon", Dostoevsky limited himself to a slight compositional restructuring of the novel and removed from the text some lines leading directly to Stavrogin's "Confession".

Significant creative evolution in the process of creating the novel has undergone the image of Peter Verkhovensky, who acquired the features of an internal complexity that was not characteristic of him before.

Elements of Bazarovism and Khlestakovism are intricately combined in Pyotr Verkhovensky with Nechaevism. The influence of materials from the Nechaev trial on the evolution of Verkhovensky's image is especially noticeable in the second and third parts of the novel. It is curious that he perceived Nechaev as a legendary, demonic person, compared him with Proteus, the devil. Pyotr Verkhovensky also belongs to the ideological heroes of Dostoevsky. Stavrogin calls Verkhovensky a "stubborn man" and an "enthusiast." “There is a point,” Stavrogin says of Pyotr Stepanovich, “where he ceases to be a jester and turns into ... a half-mad man.” Indeed, the terrible essence of this plain-looking, talkative person is unexpectedly revealed in the chapter "Ivan Tsarevich", when Pyotr Verkhovensky throws off his jester's mask and appears in the form of a half-mad fanatic.

He has his own idea, nurtured and nurtured in his dreams, he also has a plan for social order, the main roles in the implementation of which he assigns to Stavrogin and himself. Verkhovensky is a fanatic of the idea of ​​unheard-of destruction, turmoil, "buildup", from which "Rus will be clouded."

Under the conditions of destruction, decay and loss of ideals, when “the earth cries for the old gods”, Ivan Tsarevich should appear, i.e. an impostor (Verkhovensky assigns this role to Stavrogin) in order to deceitfully enslave the people, depriving them of their freedom.

Pyotr Verkhovensky puts himself as a “practice”, as an inventor of the “first step”, which should lead to a “merry buildup”, even higher than the “brilliant theorist” Shigalev: “... I invented the first step,” mutters Pyotr Verkhovensky in a frenzy. - Shigalev will never invent the first step. Many Shigalevs! But one, only one person in Russia invented the first step and knows how to take it. That person is me." However, he does not limit his role to this. Verkhovensky also claims to be the builder of the future public building (“... let's think about how to put up a stone building”) after “the booth collapses”. “We will build, we, we alone!” he whispers to Stavrogin in ecstasy. "Shigalevshchina" and "Verkhovenshchina" are the theory and practice of authoritarian and totalitarian "democracy".

Pyotr Verkhovensky sees the "genius" of Shigalev in the fact that he invented the "equality of slaves." “He [Shigalev],” he explains to Stavrogin, “each member of society looks one after another and is obliged to denounce. Everyone belongs to everyone, and everything belongs to everyone. All slaves, and in slavery are equal<...>without despotism there has never been either freedom or equality, but there must be equality in the herd, and here is Shigalevism! In Shigalev's theory, Dostoevsky brilliantly parodies the varied programs of the future ideal order, from Plato to contemporary petty-bourgeois ideologists and left-wing revolutionaries. A special place among these programs, of course, is occupied by the Revolutionary Catechism and other writings by Nechaev.

Somewhat apart from the "demonic" environment of Peter Verkhovensky are Shatov and Kirillov. These are people of greater moral purity. However, they are also obsessed. Having broken with Peter Verkhovensky, they become victims of the “spiritual provocateur” (S.N. Bulgakov’s definition) Stavrogin, who seduces one with the idea of ​​deifying the people, and the other with the idea of ​​deifying the individual. The very name "Shatov" already indicates the mental "shakyness" of its bearer. The theme of the “unsteadiness” of the Russian intelligentsia occupies a significant place in the preparatory materials for The Possessed.

Shatov and Kirillov are among those people who were "eaten by the idea." “It was one of those ideal Russian creatures,” the Chronicler characterizes Shatova, “who will suddenly be struck by some strong idea and immediately immediately crush them with itself, sometimes even forever. They will never be able to cope with it, but they will passionately believe, and then their whole life then passes, as it were, in the last writhing under the stone that has fallen on them and has already completely crushed them. According to the writer, the idea acquires such unlimited power in transitional times over the unstable, shattered consciousness of representatives of the “Russian cultural layer”, who do not have deep roots in their native soil, who have lost touch with folk traditions and faith.

In the image of Shatov, the life fates, beliefs, and partly the character traits of K.K. Golubova, V.I. Kelsiev and. Traces of the influence of the ideas of the latter, which in turn go back to the philosophy of history of Schelling and Hegel, can also be found in Shatov's concept of the "god-bearing" people.

In the novel "Demons" and in the preparatory materials for it, the central place is occupied by the problem of generations.

Turgenev's conflict between "fathers" and "children" in Dostoevsky is aggravated. It takes on sharp forms also because Stepan Trofimovich is the father of Pyotr Verkhovensky and tutor of Stavrogin. In addition, the "fathers" in "The Possessed" are not provincial landowners and not a county doctor, but characteristic figures of the era of the 1840s. (S.T. Verkhovensky, Karmazinov). Recognizing the ideological affinity of his generation with the "children" - the nihilists of the 1860s, Stepan Trofimovich is at the same time horrified by the ugly forms into which modern nihilism has poured out, and in the end breaks with the latter. Not only ideological strife and mutual misunderstanding, but also the spiritual continuity that exists between the “pure” Westerners (i.e., the generation of “liberal-idealists” of the 1840s) and the “impure” (i.e., modern Nechaevs), moral the responsibility of the former for the sins of the latter; Westernism with its characteristic detachment from the Russian "soil", the people, from the indigenous Russian beliefs and traditions as the main feature of the manifestation of nihilism - such is the set of ideas with the help of which Dostoevsky, in the spirit of the soil movement, rethought Turgenev's concept of "fathers and children" in a peculiar way.

Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, being a generalized portrait of a liberal Westerner of the 1840s, combines the features of many representatives of this generation (T.N. Granovsky, B.N. Chicherin, and others). Served as the main real prototype of Karmazinov. The very surname "Karmazinov", as noted by Yu.A. Nikolsky, goes back to "karmazinny" (from French cramoisi - dark red) and hints at the writer's sympathy for the "red". Some features of Turgenev were also reflected in the image of S.T. Verkhovensky. However, the role of Turgenev, as evidenced by the preparatory materials for the novel, was more significant than it seems at first glance: the personality of the writer, his ideology and creativity were reflected in "Demons" not only in the parodic image of Karmazinov, but also in terms of a broad ideological polemic with him as a prominent representative of modern Russian Westernizers about the historical fate of Russia and Europe.

The main core of the concept of generations, which was formed already at an early stage in the history of the novel, and later expanded and clothed by Dostoevsky in the religious and philosophical symbolism of the gospel demons, was preserved to the end unchanged, although the direct analogy with the novel "Fathers and Sons", very tangible in the initial draft recordings, gradually weakens.

The problem of generations is revealed in Possessed primarily in the story of the relationship between father and son Verkhovensky, filled with acute drama, although Karmazinov and von Lembke also belong to the generation of “fathers”, and Nikolai Stavrogin and members of the circle of nihilists belong to the generation of “children”. Karmazinov, who, like Stepan Trofimovich, is a representative of the "generation of the 1840s", is given by Dostoevsky in a clearly caricatured way and therefore is not suitable for revealing a dramatic collision in the relationship of generations. Dostoevsky's attitude towards Stepan Trofimovich gradually changes in the course of the action, becoming warmer and more sympathetic, although the irony towards him remains. The chapter describing Stepan Trofimovich's "last wandering" and his death is full of deep pathos. As the embodiment of the type of a noble idealist and wanderer, disinterested and irreconcilable to worldly vulgarity, Stepan Trofimovich at the end of the novel reveals features that make him related to Don Quixote. Dostoevsky explains in detail the concept of generations he gave in The Possessed in a letter to the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich of February 10, 1873, sent along with a separate edition of the novel.

“This is almost a historical sketch, with which I wanted to explain the possibility in our strange society of such monstrous phenomena as the Nechaev crime,” Dostoevsky writes about his novel. - My view is that these phenomena are not accidental, not isolated, and therefore in my novel there are neither written off events, nor written off persons. These phenomena are a direct consequence of the age-old isolation of all Russian enlightenment from the native and original principles of Russian life. Even the most talented representatives of our pseudo-European development have long ago come to the conclusion that it is a crime for us Russians to dream of our own identity.<...>. Meanwhile, the most important preachers of our national lack of originality would have turned away with horror and the first from the Nechaev cause. Our Belinskys and Granovskys would not believe if they were told that they were the direct fathers of Nechaev. It is this kinship and continuity of thought that developed from fathers to children that I wanted to express in my work.

To understand the concept of generations in Possessed (the ideological strife and ideological continuity between the generation of advanced Russian Westernizers of the 1840s and the nihilists of the late 1860s), of undoubted interest - in a broad ideological plan - are also those relations full of sharp drama that developed in late 1860s between the prominent Westernizer and the recognized leader of the nihilists, Herzen, on the one hand, and the young revolutionary Russian emigration of Geneva, on the other. Herzen's conflict with representatives of the "young emigration", who denied the public merits of their liberal "fathers", was reflected in the article "Once again Bazarov" (1869) and in "Past and Thoughts" (chapter on "young emigration", 1870) - works, known to Dostoevsky and attracted his attention during the period of work on "Demons". It is characteristic that Herzen invariably perceived this conflict through the prism of Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons. In a number of letters from Herzen in 1868-1869. representatives of the "young emigration" are invariably referred to as "bazaar". Bazarov, reduced to "Bazarovism", becomes for Herzen a synonym for everything negative that he saw in the young Russian revolutionaries of the new formation and which later received artistic reflection in the image of Peter Verkhovensky.

The break with the people, characteristic, according to Dostoevsky, for today's youth, is "continued and hereditary since the fathers and grandfathers."

In a letter to A.N. Maykov dated October 9 (21), 1870, Dostoevsky gave the author's interpretation of the title, the gospel epigraph, the ideological-philosophical and moral-religious concept of the novel, in a peculiar way rethinking the New Testament episode about the healing of the Gadarene demoniac by Christ (Lk. 8: 32-36).

Dostoevsky wraps his reflections on the fate of Russia and the West in gospel symbolism. The disease of insanity that has engulfed Russia is, in the writer's mind, first of all, the disease of the Russian intelligentsia, carried away by false Europeanism and having lost their blood connection with their native soil, people, their faith and morality. This idea is emphasized in the above-mentioned letter to A.N. Maikov: “And note to yourself, dear friend: whoever loses his people and nationality, he loses both his paternal faith and God.” That is why Russia, which had been torn off from its folk roots, was swirled by “demons”.

The disease of Russia, which has gone astray and is being swept by "demons", is also indicated by Pushkin's epigraph to the novel from the poem "Demons" (1830), especially the following lines:

For the life of me, no trace is visible
We got lost. What should we do?
In the field the demon leads us, apparently
Yes, it circles around.

The general background of "Demons" is very tragic. In the finale, almost all the characters die: Stavrogin, Shatov, Kirillov, Stepan Trofimovich, Lisa, Marya Timofeevna, Marya Shatova. Some of them die on the threshold of insight. The "monkey of nihilism" Pyotr Verkhovensky remains alive and unharmed.

However, Dostoevsky firmly believes that Russia's illness is temporary; it is a disease of growth and development. Russia will not only be healed, but will also renew the morally "Russian truth" of sick European humanity. These ideas are clearly expressed in the gospel epigraph to "Demons", in its author's interpretation, in the interpretation of the gospel text in the novel itself by Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky.

Stepan Trofimovich, who, by his own admission, "all his life<...>lied”, in the face of imminent death, as it were, sees the higher truth and realizes the responsibility of his generation of “pure Westerners” for the deeds of his “impure” followers, the Nechaevs. In the interpretation of Stepan Trofimovich, “these demons that come out of the patient and enter the pigs are all ulcers, all miasma, all impurity<...>accumulated in our great and dear patient, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries!<...>But a great thought and a great will will overshadow her from above, like that insane demoniac, and all these demons, all impurity, all this abomination that festered on the surface will come out ... and they themselves will ask to enter the pigs.<...>But the sick person will be healed and "sit down at the feet of Jesus"... and everyone will look with amazement..."

Laconic, but accurate and specific descriptions of the provincial city in "Besy" make it possible to establish that, recreating it, Dostoevsky started from the impressions of his life in Tver in 1860. Like the then Tver, the provincial city in "Demons" is divided into two parts, connected pontoon bridge. That part of the city (Zarechye), where the Lebyadkin brother and sister lived, resembles the Trans-Volga region, Shpigulin's factory corresponds to the Kaulin textile factory located on the outskirts of Tver, founded in 1854.

Some of the real persons of interest for the creative history of "Demons" were also associated with Tver (Bishop Tikhon of Zadonsky of Voronezh and Yelets, who lived for some time in the Otroch Monastery on the banks of the Tvertsa and Tmaka and served as the prototype of Bishop Tikhon in "Demons"; ; ; him; an official for special assignments under Baranov - the alleged prototypes of the characters in the novel.

The pamphlet task of the novel, on the one hand, its complex philosophical and ideological problems and the tragic atmosphere, on the other hand, determine the “two-part” poetics of The Possessed. Dostoevsky generously uses in the novel the methods of illogical grotesque, caricature, caricature, which are directly adjacent to tragedy in the novel, and the pages of political and criminal chronicle are combined with confessional confessions and philosophical dialogues of the main characters.

The form of provincial chronicle used by Dostoevsky in Possessed (later, in a modified form, it also found application in) required the author to create a new figure for him - a chronicler narrator. The narrator in Possessed, unlike Ivan Petrovich, is not a metropolitan person, not a writer, but a provincial inhabitant with a somewhat (albeit moderately) archaic language. The author of "Demons" sought to create a psychologically complex image of a passive, baffled by the unexpected pressure of events approaching him, an intelligent layman. The narrator-chronicler in "Demons" acts not only as a person who retrospectively describes and comments on the events of the novel, but also as a participant in these events, in which he plays the role of a younger friend and admirer of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky to the very end. While at times allowing himself to venomously criticize Stepan Trofimovich and other persons, the narrator nevertheless usually does not socially and psychologically oppose them; on the contrary, he is lost and “shadowed” in front of them, emphasizing their superiority, his relative insignificance compared to the heroes of the first plan. At the same time, the author often takes the place of the narrator, subtly entrusting his voice and his irony to him.

Russian liberal-democratic criticism generally negatively assessed the novel "Demons", seeing in it a distorted image of the Russian social movement and its representatives. The tendentious attitude towards The Possessed by liberal-democratic critics is primarily due to the fact that, in accordance with the spirit of their time, they approached the novel from narrow ideological, party positions, seeing in it a deep ideological and philosophical content and a warning about the danger of Nechaevism. This tendentious attitude towards The Possessed remained until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when the newly awakened interest in the problems of a religious and philosophical nature among the Russian intelligentsia largely led to an ideological and artistic reassessment of the novel. Critics - symbolists and representatives of Russian religious and philosophical thought (A.L. Volynsky, S.N. Bulgakov, N.A. Berdyaev, Vyach. I. Ivanov, D.S. Merezhkovsky, V.V. Rozanov, etc.) - appreciated the ideological and philosophical depth and artistic merits of the novel, read and comprehended it in a new way. For some of them, the ideas and images of "Demons" served as a starting point for building their own religious-philosophical and historiosophical concepts. S.N. Bulgakov very subtly described Nikolai Stavrogin as a "spiritual provocateur" - in contrast to Pyotr Verkhovensky, a "political provocateur", noting the complex interaction of these images: the fraudster and provocateur Verkhovensky himself becomes a victim of a provocation by Stavrogin, and only Verkhovensky's extreme ideological obsession does not allow him to notice all the futility of his choice (a bet on the spiritually devastated Stavrogin).

According to S.N. Bulgakov, in "Possessed" the problem of provocation is artistically posed, understood not only in a political sense, but also in a spiritual one. “Stavrogin is both a provocateur and an instrument of provocation. He knows how to influence what is the individual aspiration of a given person, to push to death, igniting his special fire in each, and this sizzling, evil, hellish flame shines, but does not warm, burns, but does not cleanse. After all, it is Stavrogin who directly or indirectly destroys Lisa, and Shatov, and Kirillov, and even Verkhovensky and others like him<...>. Each of those subject to his influence is deceived by his disguise, but all these disguises are different, and none of them is his real face.<...>...So his healing did not take place, the demons were not expelled, and the "citizen of the canton of Uri" suffers the fate of Gadarene pigs, like everyone around him. None of them finds complete healing at the feet of Jesus, although others (Shatov, Kirillov) are already looking for him ... "

ON THE. Berdyaev in the article "Stavrogin" described "Demons" as a world tragedy, the main character of which is Stavrogin. The theme of "Demons", according to the critic, "is the theme of how a huge personality - the man Nikolai Stavrogin - completely disappeared, was exhausted in the chaotic madness generated by it, emanating from it.<...>Possession instead of creativity - this is the theme of "Demons".<...>"Demons" as a symbolic tragedy is only the phenomenology of the spirit of Nikolai Stavrogin, around which, as around the sun, which no longer gives either heat or light, "all demons revolve." The main characters of "Demons" (Shatov, Kirillov, Pyotr Verkhovensky) are only an emanation of the spirit of Stavrogin, a once brilliant creative person.

Criticism of the beginning of the XX century. noted the connection between the image of Stavrogin and decadence. “Nikolai Stavrogin is the founder of many things, different lines of life, different ideas and phenomena,” wrote N. Berdyaev. “And Russian decadence was born in Stavrogin.” According to A.L. Volynsky, "Dostoevsky<...>outlined in the person of Stavrogin a great psychological phenomenon, which at that time was not yet at all indicated in Russian life and was barely indicated in Europe, a phenomenon that later received the name of decadence.

After the October Revolution [coup. — Note. S. Rublev ] 1917 in Soviet Russia, the novel "Demons", regarded as a slander on the Russian revolutionary liberation movement, was actually banned. The intention of the publishing house "Academia" in 1935 to publish "Demons" in two volumes with an article and notes by L.P. Grossman failed to implement: out of print (almost immediately withdrawn from sale and libraries).

Attempts to overcome the narrow-class, vulgar sociological approach to The Possessed actually began only on the eve of the publication of the PSS, launched in 1972 by the IRLI (Pushkin House) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Initially, these attempts were of a compromise nature and relied on the negative attitude towards S.G. Nechaev and his tactics: it became possible to "rehabilitate" the novel "Demons" in this way, while at the same time recognizing Nechaevism as an exceptional phenomenon, generally not characteristic of the Russian revolutionary liberation movement. Thus, the deep anti-revolutionary pathos of the novel was reduced only to criticism of Nechaevism. This bias in the interpretation of "Demons" can now be considered already overcome, as well as a one-sided interest only in the ideological content of the novel.

In the light of the historical experience of the XX century. with its destructive wars, revolutions, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and "democracies", the magnificent cult of leaders, on the one hand, and the violation of individual rights, unprecedented mass repressions, on the other, the immense ideological-philosophical and religious-moral depth of the novel is revealed in a new way. "Demons". This is not a pamphlet novel (although pamphlet and parody elements are strong in it), but above all a tragedy novel, a foresight novel that has enduring universal significance. S.N. Bulgakov, following Vyach. Ivanov, who called "Demons" a "symbolic tragedy", rightly noted that it is not representatives of political parties who compete in the novel: Here is a different, higher court, here it is not the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, not the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, not the Black Hundreds and the Cadets who compete. No, here "God is fighting the devil, and the battlefield is the hearts of people", and therefore the tragedy of "Demons" has not only a political, temporary, transient significance, but contains a grain of immortal life, a ray of unfading truth, like everything else. great and genuine tragedies, also taking shape for themselves from a historically limited environment, in a certain era.

Budanova N.F. Demons // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 19-29.

The current state of the study of "Demons" is characterized, firstly, by the complete ideological rehabilitation and updating of the novel in the historical and political context (works by Yu.F. Karyakin, L.I. Saraskina), and secondly, by its various interpretations in line with Russian religious philosophy and folk poetic tradition, thirdly, a certain change in the research paradigm, which affected the revision of a number of traditional concepts of both the work as a whole and its individual images and problems.

One of the post-Soviet interpretations belongs to Yu.F. Karyakin, who declared "Demons" "the most political novel in world literature" and "artistic anticipation" of future politics in Russia in the 20th century. Not limited to the political actualization of the work on the scale of national and world history, the researcher analyzed the function of the narrator-chronicler, proposed his own solution to the textological problem associated with the withdrawn chapter "At Tikhon's", insisting, unlike the PSS commentators, on its inclusion in the canonical text.

The latest separate editions of "Demons" differ in that in some () this chapter is placed in the main text, while in others (preparation of the text by N.F. Budanova, V.N. Zakharov) is published as an appendix to it.

The poetics of the novel - its inner world, the artistic calendar, the image of Stavrogin, the element of "writing" - in. It “desacralizes” the image of the Cripple, destroys its traditional interpretation: the heroine is characterized as “a woman in love with the devil”; the context of the interpretation of "Demons" was also expanded due to a typological comparison with the works of Akutagawa Ryunosuke, R. Tagore and the domestic novel "Men and Women" by B. Mozhaev.

Scientific and cultural interest in "Demons" continues. Among the many talented works of A. Vaida stand out; in literary criticism, attention is obviously paid to new aspects of the poetics of the novel: to the implementation of the iconographic plot in the work as a whole and in the epilogue in particular (T.A. Kasatkina), to the poetics of chapter titles (E.A. Akelkina), to the dictionary description of the artistic language of the novel ( E. L. Ginzburg, Yu. N. Karaulov), to “realism in the highest sense” (K. A. Stepanyan), etc. Modern researchers include "Demons" in the "big time" of culture, discovering in them "the tradition of an age-old spiritual rebuff to devilry."

Borisova V.V. Demons // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 29.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1871—1872 — M .: In the University type. (Katkov and Co.).

1871: January. pp. 5-77. February. pp. 591-666. April. pp. 415-463. July. pp. 72-143. September. pp. 131-191. October. pp. 550-592. November. pp. 261-294.

1873 — In three parts. SPb.: Type. K. Zamyslovsky, 1873. Part I. 294 p. Part II. 358 p. Part III. 311 p.

The decisive impetus for the creation of the novel "Demons" (1871-1872) was the so-called "Nechaev case". While staying abroad at the end of 1869, Dostoevsky drew attention to a note in Moskovskie Vedomosti:

“We are informed that yesterday, November 25, two peasants, passing in a remote place of the garden of the Petrovsky Academy, near the entrance to the grotto noticed a hat, hood and club lying around; with a black belt and a hood ... Two bricks tied with ropes and another end of the rope were found immediately.

From the subsequent reports of the newspaper it became clear: it was about the murder of a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy, Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, by five members of the secret society "People's Reprisal", headed by its leader Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev.

The program of the illegal organization provided for the undermining of state power, the Christian religion, social institutions, and moral principles. The goal is the implementation of anarcho-revolutionary transformations in Russia. To do this, Nechaev created several fives, consisting mainly of students.

Achieving the set goals required strict obedience to the leader. The participants were held together by the use of any, the most immoral and predatory means, mutual espionage and bloody revenge.

The factual basis of "Demons" was: political prerequisites, organizational principles of the society "People's Reprisal", the personality of Sergei Nechaev, his activities, the circumstances of the ideological murder.

It was important for Dostoevsky not only to reveal the content and meaning of the current event, but also to reveal its origin, to determine the fertile ground for such ideological practice.

The murder of a student once again resurrected the memories of his youth in the mind of the writer. In Petrashevsky's circle, he himself was fond of the theories of utopian socialism and, by his own admission, was internally ready for a similar act:

"Probably, I could never become a Nechaev, but I can't vouch for a Nechaev, maybe I could ... in the days of my youth."

The artistic concept of the novel, according to Dostoevsky himself, was as follows:

"I wanted to raise the question, and as clearly as possible, in the form of a novel, give an answer to it: how in our transitional and amazing modern society, not Nechaevs, but Nechaevs are possible, and how it can happen that these Nechaevs recruit Nechaevs at the end" .

The ideological and artistic conception of The Possessed required such an image of a single event that it would reflect the main trends in the development of modern society, reveal the connections of the present with the past and future, and subtle transitions of the high into the low would appear.

Image disclosure

Dostoevsky emphasized that in his work there are no real "portraits or a literal reproduction of non-Chaev's story." It was important for him to create a type of pseudo-revolutionary who could not at all resemble the real Nechaev, but who had to fully correspond to the perfect villainy.

In the image of Peter Verkhovensky and his accomplices, in their thoughts and actions, the true appearance and real motives of the behavior of imaginary fighters for a just reorganization of society are concentrated and prominent.

Dostoevsky shows what a boomerang the nihilistic desire to destroy the very social forms and institutions through which these values, ideals and traditions were transmitted from century to century, from generation to generation, can and is turning into a boomerang.

Militant unbelief, lack of a family hearth and main occupation, superficial education, ignorance of the people and its history - these and similar spiritual and psychological prerequisites form "a mind without soil and without connections - without a nation and without a necessary deed", corrupting the soul.

As a result, the protagonist of the novel "Demons" Pyotr Verkhovensky was unable to understand the noble and "idealistic" dimensions of life, but with his "little mind" he learned well how to use the weaknesses of human nature (sentimentality, servility, fear of one's own opinion and original thinking ).

People for Peter Verkhovensky are a kind of "material that needs to be organized" for some kind of indistinct progress.

"Imps"

Serving humanity in theory, which is occupied in the novel by "imps", in fact turns into spiritual and physical destruction. At the heart of such ministry is a contemptuous division of people into entitled "geniuses" and disenfranchised "crowd".

For example, Shigalev suggests "in the form of a final resolution of the issue - the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One tenth share receives individual freedom and unlimited right over the remaining nine-tenths. primitive innocence, like a primitive paradise, although, however, they will work ... ".

Lyamshin, on the other hand, would like to somewhat transform Shigalev’s methodical despotism in order to speed up the final resolution of the issue: “And instead of paradise, I would take these nine-tenths of humanity, if there is nowhere to go with them, and blow them up into the air, and I would leave only a handful educated people who would begin to live, live like a scientist ... "

The most terrible thing is that not only theoreticians, the so-called ideologists of "scientific" and "progressive" life, are obsessed with these ideas. The "muddy" influence of this principle of "universal destruction for good final purposes" is experienced by other characters in the novel who are afraid to fall behind fashion and be branded as retrogrades.

The father of the main "demon" Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky asks the question:

"Why, then, are all these desperate socialists and communists at the same time such incredible misers, acquirers, owners, and even so that the more he is a socialist, the farther he goes, the stronger the owner. Why is this?"

The fact is that Verkhovensky senior does not understand the laws by which the humanistic ideas professed by him are reduced, changed and reborn.

“You cannot imagine what sadness and anger seizes your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long and sacredly revered, is picked up by inept people and dragged out to the same fools as yourself, on the street, and you suddenly meet it already on the street. pushy, unrecognizable, in the mud, placed ridiculously, at an angle, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid guys! No! In our time it was not so, and we did not strive for that.

Stepan Timofeevich himself most clearly expresses in the novel the collective features of Russian Westernizers and typifies the peculiarities of the worldview, mentality and psychological make-up of the "idealist liberals" of the 1840s.

The external and internal appearance, thoughts, feelings, desires of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky are characterized, on the one hand, by sublimity, nobility, “something in general beautiful”, and on the other, some kind of indistinctness, indistinctness, half-heartedness. He is a brilliant lecturer, but on historical topics abstracted from life, the author of a poem "with a touch of higher significance", which, however, went only "between two amateurs and one student." Verkhovensky Sr. was going to enrich science with some kind of research, but the good intentions of an intelligent and gifted scientist went, as they say, into the sand of semi-science.

For Verkhovensky, father, his native country "is too great a misunderstanding for us to resolve it, without the Germans and labor."

As conceived by Dostoevsky, the misunderstanding of Russia, its historical achievements and spiritual values, the unconditional imitation of the West without analyzing all (not only positive, but also negative) consequences arising from this created favorable conditions both for borrowing "short" and vague ideas, and for the subsequent decline in .

At the end of the novel, the ironic illumination of the image of Verkhovensky Sr. is complemented by dramatic intonations when he goes on his "last wandering", realizes the tragic isolation of his generation from the people and its spiritual values, seeks to penetrate into the secret path of the Gospel. In the very possibility of such a "wandering" the writer sees a guarantee of the true revival of his hero, trusts him with the author's interpretation of the epigraph of the novel, puts into his mouth the idea of ​​the apostolic message about love as a powerful force and the "crown of being".

Thus, Dostoevsky also suggests such a way out of the indefinite generosity of the "pure and ideal" Westernism of the "fathers", although in reality the "supremacy" turned out to be on the side of the tendencies of the "impure" nihilism of the "children". By the way, the name of the characters itself carries a very definite semantic load in the work. In the notebook, the author notes that the father is constantly "dive with the son of supremacy."

In one of his letters, Dostoevsky emphasized that although Nechaev's story and its generalized pamphlet depiction are in the foreground of the novel, all this is nevertheless "only an accessory and setting" for the actions of the real protagonist.

In the writer's mind, the raging nihilist, his "team" and "fans" not only find nourishment in half-conceived ideas and unfinished theories, but also find support and justification in the depths of consciousness of the so-called "superfluous", idle people suffering from the lack of a genuine cause of people .

The truly "superior" in the "demons" is Nikolai Stavrogin. This is a kind of extreme, pointed and polemical expression of the Onegin-Pechorinsky type of personality.

The main disastrous consequence of the rupture of the upper stratum of society with the "soil" and "earth" Dostoevsky considered the loss of living ties with traditions and traditions that preserve the atmosphere of direct Christian faith. The image of Stavrogin, as it were, thickens and reveals the results of the situation of the modern world, in which, to use the well-known words of Nietzsche, "God is dead." According to Dostoevsky, Stavrogin makes "suffering convulsive efforts to renew himself and begin to believe again."

Stavrogin's heart is withered and makes him incapable of sincere faith. At the same time, he perfectly understands that without the "fullness of faith" and, accordingly, absolute comprehension, human existence acquires a comic shade and loses true rationality. Therefore, Stavrogin is trying to get the faith "in a different way", with his own mind, in a rational way. But this "self-propelled knife of the mind" (I. Kireevsky) takes him even further from the desired goal.

As a result, Stavrogin found himself as if crucified (his very name comes from the Greek word σταυρός - cross) between the boundless thirst for the absolute and the equally boundless impossibility of achieving it.

Dostoevsky admitted that he took Stavrogin not only from the surrounding reality, but also from his own heart, since his faith went through the crucible of the most severe doubts and denials.

Unlike his creator, Stavrogin, however, turned out to be organically incapable of overcoming the tragic duality and finding the "fullness of faith" that fills the emptiness of the soul in any way.

In The Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky wrote that without faith in the immortality of the soul and eternal life, the existence of an individual, a nation, and all mankind becomes unnatural, unthinkable, unbearable: beliefs in their immortality, the connection of man with the earth break, become thinner, rotten, and the loss of the highest meaning of life undoubtedly leads to suicide.

Dostoevsky shows that "a fire in the minds" captivates after the "worthless little people" not only every "bastard", "filibusters" and "buffet personalities". He discovers with deep regret that in times of upheavals and changes, doubts and denials, even simple-minded, pure-hearted people are involved in monstrous social atrocities. "That's the horror, that in our country you can do the most vile and vile act, sometimes not being a scoundrel at all! .."

The absence of a fundamental spiritual and moral core and a truly great beginning of life determines, according to the author's logic, the formation of an incomplete, incomplete, unfinished person, capable of ambiguous actions.

Without perfect individuals there can be no perfect society.

And Verkhovensky, the father, in yet another bewilderment, asks his son: “Is it possible that you are yourself the way you are, do you want to offer people instead of Christ?”

The author considered the question of Stepan Timofeevich as the main problem, on the solution of which the future of Russia and all mankind depends, and which is posed in its own way in the epilogue. The series of big and small catastrophes in the last part of the work ends with Stavrogin's coldly rational suicide, as if turning the artistic perspective of the novel into a hopeless apocalyptic circle.

The main idea of ​​the novel

But it was precisely in the loss of age-old ideals, great thoughts, in the absence of higher consciousness, higher development, higher meaning, higher goals of life, in the disappearance of "higher types" around Dostoevsky, that Dostoevsky saw the roots and main cause of the spiritual illnesses of his age. "Why are we rubbish?" he asked and answered: "There is nothing great." And not by education, not by outward culture and secular gloss, not by scientific and technical achievements, but only by "excitement of higher interests" can the deep structure of egoistic thinking be rebuilt.

In the view of the writer, the choice of the path of all mankind is associated with spiritual well-being, an increase in light and love in the soul of an individual. The creative experience of "Demons" teaches everywhere and in everything to look for a moral center, a scale of values ​​that guide the thoughts and actions of people to determine which, dark or light, sides of the human soul are based on various phenomena of life. Speaking about his work and the dramatic quests of today's youth, Dostoevsky emphasized:

"To sacrifice oneself and everything for the truth is the national trait of the generation. God bless him and send him an understanding of the truth. For the whole question is what to consider as truth. That is why the novel was written."

Literature

Karen Stepanyan. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. // Encyclopedia for children "Avanta +". Volume 9. Russian literature. Part one. M., 1999

B.N. Tarasov. Eternal warning. // Fedor Dostoevsky. Demons. M., 1993. S. 5–26.

N.I. Yakushin. F.M. Dostoevsky in life and work: a textbook for schools, gymnasiums, lyceums and colleges. M.: Russian Word, 2000

Stepan Trofimovich is an unusual person, because being in his fairly middle age, he still often behaves like a capricious child. He managed to become a widow twice, and therefore agrees with Varvara Petrovna Stavrigina to become for her son, Nikolai, both a friend and just a teacher in order to teach the boy. They live together, and soon Stepan Trofimovich becomes for him both a friend and a good teacher. Nikolai's mother almost tamed the naive Stepan Trofimovich, and he became her own invention, as she skillfully guided him.

Soon Nikolai goes to study at the Lyceum, and upon returning from there, he becomes very unusual in his behavior. And there are even rumors about him as a drunkard, a frivolous young man. But then I begin to suspect that he is mentally ill. And he is sent for treatment. When he recovered, he traveled to different countries. Soon, one general's wife, a friend of Nikolai's mother, reports that he began to communicate closely with a girl named Lisa, which greatly worried his mother, who was going there immediately.

When they return, Nikolai's mother proposes an unequal marriage to Dasha, her pupil, with Stepan Trofimovich, although the age difference is large. In the end, it turns out that Nikolai has actually been married to a woman, Maria, for a long time. And she turns out to be a little crazy.

Read more summary of Dostoevsky's story Demons

Half a century after the release of the work of F. M. Dostoevsky "Demons" he was recognized as prophetic, a novel that foresaw everything that later happened in Russia. The whole world, both Russian, and Asian, and American, everyone who was faced with the events taking place in Possessed, said the same phrase: "Everything came true according to Dostoevsky." Such was the astonishing fate of the novel.

The novel "Demons" is not only one of the most politicized works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, but also a real religious drama. Demonicity is the highest degree of social and moral insanity: demagoguery, provocateurism, historical and scenic irresponsibility. This concept is timeless and repetitive.

All events take place in the provincial city, the prototype of which is Tver. All the heroes come here, and the action is played out. It ends with many deaths. There are murders and suicides. And at the very end comes the local apocalypse - the suicide of the protagonist.

Demonicity is projected onto modern life, as there are many similarities in it. The novel "Demons" is Dostoevsky's artistic response to nihilism, to the desire of radical youth to change the world only through violence. Dostoevsky thinks differently: for him, the root of evil is not in society, but in the soul of the individual. And until a person overcomes egoism and self-will in himself, until he acquires that faith that gives him the strength to create and live in the world, no social harmony is possible. It is in disbelief that the main tragedy of the protagonist of the novel, Nikolai Stavrogin, lies.

The story is conducted either on behalf of the author or on behalf of the narrator, who is a friend of Stepan Trofimych. Stepana Trofimych Verkhovensky is a former writer and traveler. At the request of the widow Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, he becomes her son's tutor. In the provincial town, everyone is waiting for the arrival of Nikolai.

Despite the fact that the protagonist of the novel was a very self-absorbed boy, he was prone to philosophical reasoning and sentimentality. Stepan Trofimych often wept with him. Nikolai was a military man, but he got so drunk that he was demoted to the ranks of soldiers.

Arriving earlier in this city, Stavrogin held Gaganov by the nose in the literal sense of the word, bit the governor's earlobe and kissed someone else's wife. But soon he had a fever, so everything was attributed to illness, and Nikolai went abroad.

Five years before, Stavrogin lived in St. Petersburg, where he married Maria Timofeevna in a dispute over a bottle of wine. Lebyadkin, a graphomaniac poet, brother of Mary, engineer Kirillov and Pyotr Verkhovensky, knew about this. Nikolai rented three apartments. In one of them, he once raped an 11-year-old girl who, as a result of such abuse, hanged herself. This bad story constantly tormented him. And even living and studying abroad did not help. This rather vulgar scene was cut out of the novel by censors, and later came out as a separate chapter.

In anticipation of her son, on Sunday, Varvara Petrovna goes to church for Mass. There he meets Lisa Tushina, Nikolai's admirer in love. And then a large company of relatives and admirers of Nikolai Stovrygin goes to the "birdhouses" - the place of residence of Varvara Petrovna.

Wishing for her son a better life, Stovrygina dreamed of marrying him to Liza. And for this it was necessary to somehow eliminate his pupil, the former serf Daria, whom Nikolai was very passionate about. Varvara Petrovna planned to marry her to Stepan Trofimych, completely ignoring the 25-year age difference.

Upon arrival, the main character receives a slap in the face from Ivan Shatov, who accuses him of cheating. Stavrogin, taking him by the shoulders, suddenly abruptly lets go of his hands and steps back. Lisa faints, and, waking up, leaves with her fiancé.

8 days pass. Nikolai Stavrogin, not accepting anyone, sits alone. But Verkhovensky comes and informs about who he needs to visit. In the rain, Nikolai goes to the house where Kirillov and Shatov live. After talking with the first, he learned the idea that by killing yourself, you can become a God.

The next day, a duel takes place between Stavrogin and Gaganov's son. Stavrogin fires into the air, not planning the murder at all. After this event, many began to respect Nicholas.

At this time, some strange things happen in the city. Fedka the convict stole precious stones from the icon, and Pyotr Verkhovensky planted a mouse there. During the service in front of this icon, mass donations begin. In addition, the workers at the factory are raging, and the 25-year friendship between Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimych ends because the latter refuses to marry Daria.

All events predict an impending disaster. Stavrogin adjoins the revolutionary circle, which puts forward the idea of ​​dividing society into 90 and 10%. The smallest number is given the role of managers by the majority. Shatov is also seen in this circle, whom Stavrogin warns about murder and advises to beware.

There is an inventory of the apartment of Stepan Trofimych, who, perplexed, comes to the governor's wife. But she does not give an explanation for what is happening, since in the city during the governor's ball the Lebyadkins are stabbed to death and a fire breaks out. During the stampede, Liza Tushina dies. And soon Stepan Trofimych also dies, who left the city and went away, completely unaware of his path.

The series of senseless deaths continues. Fedka the convict was stabbed to death, Ivan Shatov was killed, and his corpse was thrown into the lake. Feeling unkind, Ivan's wife dies, having given birth to a son the day before.

Nikolai Stavrogin left after the fire and lived in the stationmaster's house. He writes a letter to Daria, offering her to live together. Arriving with his mother at Nikolai's address, they find him hanged.

A life novel that teaches overcoming life's hardships and pain, moral rethinking and purification. Dostoevsky's "Demons" should be read carefully and consciously.