Demons
First published in 1872, ‘Demons’ is a rich political novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. It is a testimonial of life in Imperial Russia in the late 19th century.\ The novel follows the travails of a small provincial town beset by a band of modish radicals—and in so doing presents a devastating depiction of life and politics in late 19th-century Imperial Russia. Both a hideous comedy and a shocking illustration of clashing ideologies, Dostoevsky’s famed novel stands as an undeniable masterpiece.\ Dostoyevsky’s life of ideas and spiritual realism concept is presented through his definition of evil as the passion for power. The demons are ideas, such as idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and atheism.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
14mentions
13people
2016–2026years
57% recommend43% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Seeing it as a book about psychology that revolves around theological themes, when it is a book about theology that revolves around psychological themes.
I don't think Dostoevsky's Christianity is genuine. It feels about as genuine as Hegel's Christianity. To both of them it's just a convenient prop where their actual ideas take center stage
Every nihilist main character that he writes follows this pattern where they do something really bad, then destroy themselves as some kind of act of penance. This is the only way that conversion happens in his books. But in this case, it's obviously just a way of processing guilt (and reenacting the author's trauma from near execution most likely)
Maybe I'm psychologizing religion too much, but I don't think religious belief is genuine if it's rooted in some kind of (obvious) psychological trauma
The one thing that stands out in Dostoevsky is the psychological depth of the characters, especially in Demons
- No doubt. Though there's also the fact that more violence could have led to a harsh blowback much sooner, as it has in the past sometimes. I'm thankful Dostoevsky in particular was spared execution. He, in my humble opinion, is the greatest novelist to have ever lived, especially if you can read his works in their original language, with no translation loss. I did not always think that - when I was younger I did not have the benefit of life experience to understand the depth of his works, but now, in the second half of my 40s, I can't get enough, and they _really_ speak to me, and make me really reconsider some things at a really deep level. In retrospect it kind of makes sense - Dostoevsky wrote "The Demons" when he was only a few years older than I am now, so I can relate better to it. Following the same logic, I'll have to re-read "Brothers Karamazov" about 10 years from now, and I'm sure I'll get even more out of it then.
- I read The Road years ago, but I was probably too young to fully understand it; more recently, I read Blood Meridian a few months ago for my book club. Few novels have had me think about them as much (Dostoevsky's Demons and Melville's Moby Dick come to mind). McCarthy was an absolute American treasure.
Rest in peace. His poetic Blood Meridian epilogue really stuck with me:
"In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again."
- - The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) - Jose Saramago
- The War of the End of the World (1981) - Mario Vargas Llosa
Favourites among the books I’ve read lately.
Other than that, there are plenty to enjoy some serious fiction from authors such as:
- Homer (watching Troy is way too far from the book)
- Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain is top pick among his works
- Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities I think is one of the finest pieces of literature
- Albert Camus - pick any of his works, but the shortest is considered to be the finest - The Stranger (~ 80-100 pages)
- Herman Melville - Moby Dick was a wonderful journey I enjoyed thoroughly
- Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace is a book that will raise the bar for fiction, I couldn’t start a new one for a month after finishing it, tried but I was still living in the book. I remember taking a vacation at work to finish the book, couldn’t put it down. Was working as a Java dev at The Ministry of Internal Affairs, must have been 20 or 21 yrs old.
- Dostoevsky - bot reading any of the big five is a missed opportunity: The Demons (one of the finest political fiction work), Brothers Karamazov (Will drain you from emotions), Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from Underground
- Oh, Cervantes - Don Quixote was the book took me 2 years and some more life experience when it started to tick in my mind the depth, importance of the book, perhaps it was 24 or 25.
- And so on, it will be useless to list them all, and many will slip from my mind :)
One important realization an decision I made at the age 18 was that I had to ask around, listen to people who know world literature inside out and follow their suggestions. The reason? At first I wanted to read everything, but pretty quickly that started to sound like a dumb idea which ignored reality and life longevity. Next decision was to read finest of the written works. And the strategy worked.
Books or authors I didn’t enjoy much?
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude - finished it this month and the story felt like the one I’ve already experienced before, emotions I’ve had. If I had read it 8-10 years ago, I would have been dazzled l, but at the age of 29, not much.
- Kafka - The Tower was an awful translation, I felt that, which isn’t authors fault. The next book went smoothly but nothing groundbreaking.
- Ishiguro - mediocre
- Turgenev - mediocre, again
- Calvino - despite my love and respect towards a very good friend, his suggestion didn’t work for me, the book felt like - the author knows too well what’s he’s writing and that’s not a good thing. At first author writes and then he reads it as a reader just to find out what he has written. Calvino and many many more know what they’re writing and hence the mediocrity. - etc.
My next friend will be Ulysses, dragged it a bit too long and finally 2022 is a good year to read it.
Software engineering takes awful a lot of time and energy that it leaves a narrow path to reading something other than technical books and documentation, but the path exists and with discipline we can still enjoy finest pieces of philosophy and literature.
P.S. Many of the printed products are marketed and sold as “books”, but book is a title ought to be earned.
- "Live is suffering and you need something more meaningful than pursuit of happiness to make it bearable" seems to be central idea of everything Jordan B. Peterson writes and speaks about.
If I could add to this list:
- everything by Alexander Solzhenitsyn that was translated to English.
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Ward No 6 by Anton Chekhov
- Lord of the Rings. My mother bought first two books(translated into Russian) randomly because she heard it was good(it was one of the books that Party did not approve of before the Perestroika). I saw it lying around when I was 14. I proceeded to read both first and second basically non-stop skipping school next day. Then figured out that we could not find the third as it was not printed in Russian yet(at least could not find it where we lived), had to wait couple month to read Return of the King. I read it in English about 7-8 times since and as I became fluent the book only became better.
Besy/Demons, Dostoevsky. I read it after I finished Archipelago Gulag I was 15. It is potent stuff, the most powerful thing I ever read by far. Highly recommended. The more you know and read about Russian revolution and what followed the better.
