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| Translator | David Margarshack |
| First Written | 1872 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | Russia |
| Publisher | Penguin Classics |
| My Copy | Penguin Classics |
| First Read | November 12, 2005 |
The Devils
I'm older and a better reader (I think), and so it's time to return to The Devils (aka 'Demons' or 'The Possessed')and give it another spin. This is my new rule: for every two times I come back to reading The Brothers Karamazov, I should give The Devils another spin. It's really much more intelligible this time around, and I know how to conform myself to the rhythm of Dostoevsky's storytelling a little bit better.
That said, it is a slooooow-moving book, even on a second reading. Or perhaps it's like this: I'm judging pace and speed of the book by compiling its events into plot arc - but I lack the ability to sort and prioritize those events. At about 1/4 of the way through the book, there have been lots of plot developments. There have been lots of small episodes, character histories and portraits, off-camera events, arrivals and departures, engagements and rumors of marital strife. But I'm doing really badly at sensing the importance of these events, and they don't all connect into the kind of plotline I expect. Without getting a sense of the arc, every episode just stacks up in a row, without building anything. I imagine it like a long line of train cars: they will need a lot of narrative power to overcome all the inertia they have just sitting there.
Noted on November 30, 2011
A note on translation: yes, I'm reading the David Margarshack again. I'll get my hands on the Pevear & Volokhonsky next time, I guess. Margarshack is serviceable to my needs, and the garrulous colloquial talk of the book comes through just fine.
Noted on November 30, 2011
I don't know if she ever succeeded in being kind, but I do know that she had wanted to and that she went through agonies to force herself to be a little kind.
Quoted on December 9, 2011
Never in her life had she seen such literary men. They were incredibly vain, but made no secret of it, as though they were so on principle. Some (though by no means all) turned up drunk, but they seemed to regard it as some new manifestation of grace they had discovered only the day before. They all appeared to be quite extraordinarily proud of something.
Quoted on December 9, 2011
He was apparently afraid of every movement of his clumsy body. It is a well-known fact that such gentlemen, finding themselves by some miracle in society, are driven into a state of horrible misery by their own hands and their inability to find a place for them.
Quoted on December 9, 2011
His articulation was amazingly clear; his words fell from his lips like large, smooth grains, always carefully chosen and at your service. At first you could not help liking it, but later on you hated it, and just because of his too-clear enunciation, of this string of ever-ready words. You somehow could not help feeling that he must have a sort of peculiarly shaped tongue in his head, a sort of unusually long and thin one, very red and with an exceedingly sharp and incessantly and uncontrollably active tip.
Quoted on May 19, 2010
Your umbrella? But, sir, am I worth it?' the Captain said ingratiatingly.
'Every man has a right to an umbrella.'
'You've defined the minimum of human rights in one short sentence, sir.'
Quoted on May 19, 2010
You're awfully fond of pathetic exclamations, Mr. Verkhovensky. It's no longer the fashion. People today talk rudely but plainly. And you would harp on our twenty yearrs! Twenty years of mutual self-admiration and nothing more. Every letter you wrote to me was not written for me but for posterity. You're a stylist and and not a friend. Friendship is merely a glorified expression. In reality it is nothing but a reciprocal outpouring of slops.
Quoted on May 19, 2010
'What she means is that, for instance, we know that the superstition about God arose from thunder and lightning, ' said the girl student, throwing herself into the fray and staring at Stavrogin with her eyes almost popping out of her head. 'It's a well-known fact that primitive man, terrified by thunder and lightning, deified the invisible enemy, being aware of his own weakness before it. But how did the superstition about the family arise? How did the family itself arise?' - 'I suppose the answer to such a question would be rather indiscreet,' replied Stavrogin.
Quoted on May 19, 2010
There's going to be such a to-do as the world as never seen. Russia will become shrouded in a fog, the earth will weep for its old gods.
Quoted on May 19, 2010