Notes on reading the Russians
Photo of St. Petersburg by Alexandr Alexeev.
1. Like climbing the Matterhorn it is advisable to read Dostoevsky in a group. This way your reading buddies can throw you a rope if you are slipping into the abyss. In my case I can count on my reading buddy, Fyodor Fyodorovich, to throw me a noose. Not for us the comradely exhortations of “Go on, you can do it!” We would not have chosen Demons if that were the case.
Whenever Fyodor Fyodorovich suggests that we decompress with a leisurely hike through the journals of Andre Gide it is my duty to say, “Are you surrendering? What are you, a little girl? I read the Old Testament when I was a little girl, including the begats! Oh, look at the poor dilettante. Give up now!”
We had agreed at the beginning of the quest that whoever could not continue to the bitter end (Pushkin’s Onegin in the Nabokov translation) would perish of contempt. The thought of ignominious defeat has sustained me through the most trying sections of Demons, i.e. every chapter until The Duel.
2. The names can make you nuts. Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin is called Nikolai Vsevolodovich, Nikolai, Stravrogin, and Nicolas, but Lyamshin is just Lyamshin. Fyodor Fyodorovich complains that the Constance Garnett translation is clear about the cast of characters, but that’s not how it’s supposed to be in the original. Dostoevsky is messy, repetitive, infuriating, and the P/V translation gets that.
I’ve learned that in reading Dostoevsky the important thing is to keep moving forward. Don’t look back! If you keep reviewing the previous chapters to get the names straight, you will get bogged down. The more you slow down, the more likely you are to abandon the novel. You’ll just have to trust your brain to process the information. Keep reading no matter how confusing it gets. Suddenly things will snap into place and everything will make sense. Remember that Dostoevsky’s characters are as boggled as you are.
It’s like using a new phone. The keypad or lack of it may infuriate you at first, but after a few days your mind adjusts to the new system. Also, connections get worked out in the brain during sleep (and new facts get moved to long-term memory). You wake up one morning and your first thought is, “He had something going with Darya Pavlovna and Dasha because they’re the same woman!”
3. Once you get to The Duel, a particularly wacko chapter in which Nikolai Vsevolodovich refuses to aim his pistol directly at his opponent, further insulting and angering the man (by refusing to shoot and possibly kill him), the next chapters just hurtle along.
Even in the most aggravating sections Demons has a manic energy: it’s a novel about people literally driven mad by ideas, the titular demons.
“Good,” mutters Fyodor Fyodorovich, “I was planning to kill myself.”
“Then you have the true spirit of Demons,” I cry, “for everyone in it is offering to kill themselves!”
Truly a novel you have to live.
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