Demons

28 hrs. 16 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrator Sergey Didok

Description

“Demons” is one of Dostoevsky’s most controversial novels. Some see in it a prophetic pamphlet. Others view it as a kind of literary arena for testing various philosophical ideas. A third group sees it as an intricate psychological thriller. The plot is based on a real event—the “Nechaev case,” which shook all of intellectual Russia in the 1870s. Revolutionary members of a small clandestine circle murdered their comrade who decided “to step away from affairs.” However, Dostoevsky is by no means trying to present a factually accurate account of what happened. His work runs much deeper: within a private, single, Russian tragedy, he finds the universal and truly human. In “Demons,” there appears—perhaps a record for a single novel—an enormous number of characters who became milestones of world literature and philosophy. These include Nikolai Stavrogin, whom later Nietzsche and Freud scrutinized so carefully; and Kirillov, whose ideas influenced A. Camus and the philosophy of existentialists. Also there is Pyotr Verkhovensky and his associates from the “cell,” whose images are reinterpreted by L. Visconti and other figures of 20th-century culture, investigating a new “demonry”—fascism.