/lit/ - Literature

/lit/ is a Christian board

>>15388391
>Dostoevsky
>not christian


go away

I honestly think Demons is overrated on this board just because it's a slightly more obscure Dosto. The first 300 pages or so are a complete waste of paper where nothing fucking happens whatsoever, they could've been condensed down to less than a tenth of that without losing anything.
The last half wasn't bad. The character of Stavrogin is great and the turmoil they finally cause in the town is well-done. It's not really as prophetic as you think when you realize every other contemporary Russian was either advocating for or warning of the exact same shit Dostoevsky was though.

>>15388411
his name was fyodor not christian, it is in the cover anon

>>15388466
To this day I can't understand the character Kirilov, what was he supposed to be? Yes I read Camus's essays but it still feels kinda thrown there.

>>15388564
Remind me which one Kirilov was, I always forget names

total ad absurdium that egoist would eventually kill himself. no, they are just fine, not everyone has the same super consciousness as D thinks they have.

>>15388582
the nihilist engineer that blows his brains out to prove his point.

>>15388605
Oh right, I liked him. I guess he was the type who wanted to martyr himself, but couldn't find a fight to make somebody else fire the bullet.

>>15388564
I read Kirillov as the embodiment of what athiesm and the resulting nihlist philosophy can do to a man in a more extreme case. Perhaps he is a contained parallel for a large portion of the contemporary suicides, which were increasing during Dostoevsky's time. I found him to be an essentially good person, seeing how he helped Shatov in his time of need with his returned wife, just warped by his rootless philosophy and ultimately brought to his spiritual and physical knees as a result.

>>15388466
I can definitely see why you would think that, but I believe that the specificity of Dostoyevsky's descriptions in Demons shows a special awareness and unique quality of forethought that many of his contemporaries lacked. For example, the final speaker at the Quadrille sounds almost word for word a man like lenin- balding, small beard, raises his fist and brings it down, like crushing his enemies. Also, the writhing and sorrowful pontifications of characters like Kirillov predict the writings of Nietzsche, and the ideas of transcending good and evil are embodied in Pyotr Verkhovensky- though not in the decidedly positive light that Nietzsche would eventually depict them.

>>15388368
>the character of Stavrogin seems to be sabatogong his own life with little reason to do so.
too irl for me.

>>15388635
Kirilov is not a nihilist, he translocated god from the transcendent to his own self. To him the ultimate act of freedom (killing himself) was the proof of this translocation. If you are alive because of a transcendent god then taking your life is the negation.

When the revolutionist guy come up with the greatest social system in the world, why did none of his friends point out how stupid it was?

>>15388466
>The first 300 pages or so are a complete waste of paper

Maybe try fixing your ADHD before posting dumb shit

>>15389589
they were all idiots

Verkhovensky is the greatest villain in literature history and he's so close to reality at the same time with how all those people who preached brotherly love through history achieved their goals through bloodshed and manipulation.

Wow, it's been so long since I read this
Wasn't this the one where the dumb bitch gets lynched at the end and there's this weird guy who pops up near the after wandering with not-dementia or am I getting mixed up