The Possessed: Or, the Devils
In a provincial Russian town teetering on the edge of chaos, a charismatic young man named Nikolay Stavrogin returns from Petersburg to find his world poison. His former tutor, the nihilist Peter Verhovensky, has been assembling a cadre of revolutionaries, each one possessed by their own ideological demons. Shatov, a former radical, struggles between faith and despair. Kirillov believes man must prove his freedom through suicide. And the old invalid Shatova waits for something terrible to unfold. When a murder is committed in the name of the cause, the true nature of their 'possession' is revealed. Written in the aftermath of a real political assassination that horrified 1869 Russia, Dostoevsky's masterpiece crackles with prophetic fury. It is a terrifyingly funny, deeply disturbing portrait of how ideology can hollow out a soul and how revolution can become its own kind of religion. This is the novel that predicted the 20th century's totalitarian nightmares before they happened.
Editions
X-Ray
“If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“God is necessary, and therefore must exist... But I know that he does not and cannot exist... Don't you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.' This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there is no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“In sinning, each man sins against all, and each man is at least partly guilty for another's sin. There is no isolated sin.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I do not wish you much happiness--it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people's philosophy, I will simply repeat: 'Live more' and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“God is the pain of the fear of death””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.””
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
