Devils

The Devils

'Know thyself,' a wry oracle once said.

Dostoyevsky was and is the master of the introspective. If Tolstoy is the cartographer of man's world, Dostoyevsky is its spelunker. The Devils is overwhelming--even its title is debatable-- a blizzard of people, motives, histories, personalities, action, and contemplation that threatens to be reducible to a Rorschach Test. It is so ambitious that many aspects can be isolated and analyzed individually with great satisfaction. Male-female, liberal-radical, nationalism-internationalism, pagan-Christian,  theistic-atheistic, landed-serf, rules vs. convictions are just a few of the numerous, rewarding, symmetrical oppositions of moral and social doppelgangers that Dostoyevsky somehow organizes in this story.

Dostoyevsky loved Dickens. And he loved the gothic. Indeed this novel was originally published as a serial. The contemporary setting was the death of a radical Russian revolutionary, murdered by his fellows who thought him an informer. Dostoyevsky saw this as emblematic of the social unrest simmering in Russia where, in a godless, Western-drenched world, the only constraint on personal behavior is cowardice.

The book opens with a gathering of the clans as people with no love or respect for each other try to unify for some poorly articulated greater purpose. Unsettled youth, dedicated revolutionaries, flint-eyed anarchists, soothing liberals, random lunatics and morons, settled aristocracy, optimistic gospel-sellers, all converge upon the small town. The chickens coming home to roost. Complex personal dynamics, cruel ambitions, nihilism, the new Western science, cold-hearted manipulations, rumors and partial truths all marinate until they flare into a conflagration of murders, deaths, and the destruction of the town to, amazingly, little resolution. In all of this, the foolishness, insincerity, ignorance, pretense, and shallowness give the horror a savage human comedy. Drama is driven by melodrama. Thoughtful battles can be silly among the spiritually unarmed.

Everyone is ridiculed--except for Stavrogin. There is nothing funny about Stavrogin. He is introduced as a prince, a man of physical and intellectual distinction, loved both for his potential and his fearlessness to act upon his emotions. He is Prince Hall, poised at the edge of his metamorphosis. But when we meet him he is far past that. The edge has become a precipice. Hal is a wastrel; Stavrogen is a killer. What he doesn't destroy, he seduces--or rapes.

One wonders if the entire story could be told without Stavrogen. The social and political conflicts, the progression from foolishness to craziness, the hopelessness of mere change, the destructive force of soullessness, the chaos of weaponized shallowness, the conversion of Stepan--all could be achieved, self-contained, without Stavrogin, who broods amid the action, often off-stage, like a brutal Hamlet.

But, as Dostoyevsky wrote, Stavrogin is the center of the novel. He personalizes the story's cold, unmotivated squid of a being with touch everywhere but no soul. No belief, no fire. An emptiness beyond effort or rationalization, that cannot be escaped in Switzerland.

There is a terrible moment when the reader sees the direction here. Wandering in his desert, Stavrogin is offered everything by an evil one. He can be a hero; he can marry Liza. All that has to happen is the Lame Girl must die. The reader's heart leaps with hope. Perhaps Stavrogin will see the horror he is unleashing. Perhaps he will intervene and the Lame Girl--and he--will be saved. No such luck. He pays The Convict and runs off for a night with Liza.  Consistent and soulless to the end.

But Stavrogin is anything but a superman. He is brave and honest in facing a godless world but there is something wrong with Stavrogin, something that gives him nightmares and visions of the violated child, something strangely optimistic that Darya sees when she says she can not save him with her love but will be his nurse. There is an element in him that is inexplicable and Dostoyevsky is willing to accept it. The author is willing to accept a mystery in his major character! Stavrogin is intellectually able to live in a godless world but his basic nature will not let him. Bravery and honesty are not enough. Somewhere in him was--or is--a good, responsible element that he has no access to. And it haunts him. When he finally kills himself, he is not insane. And he is not sorry.

Oates wrote a good commentary on the novel and included this terrific section from Troilus and Cressida. Ulysses is looking at the Greek camp that is roiled with dissension and says,

The specialty of rule hath been neglected;

And look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
Th’ unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
. . .
But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion— in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! 0, when degree is shak’d,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick.
. . .
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong—
Between whose endless jar justice resides—
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite,
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey
And last eat up himself.

Ulysses Act I, Scene iii in Troilus and Cressida

Know thyself? Art is to reveal. But as, Tiresias says to Oedipus, "Don't look too far, you might find yourself."

On a political level, Devils is quite resilient; Rules for Radicals apparently don't change much. 

And it is still provocative. A few possible questions:

Does indulgence by liberals lead to radicalism? 

The Point of View, First Person, is violated in countless ways. Why does it seem to make no difference?

The West seems to be a decompression chamber for the radicals. It is said that radicalism has its home in the West and they have some comfort there. If so, why is America so hostile to the two immigrants? And why does the Lame Girl specifically refuse to leave her native Russia?

Is The Lame Girl from the earth, like an oracle? As such, is her violation suicidal? Oats thought that. Does she have a divine possession?

Are women calming and protective in the bulls' corral or are they ineffective?

What is the function of Mavriky?

Why does Darla receive the last testaments of two dying men?

And, finally, what is the real diagnosis of 'brain fever?'