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Demons · Part Two

Shigalyov's system

Truth and LiesGod and the DivineThe Individual and SocietyRevolution

Summary of the part

A meeting of fifteen people who do not know whether they are at a meeting, and a walk through the mud: in these two chapters Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky shows for the first time what he wants. At Virginsky's house he lets the guests vote without defining what they are voting on, lets Shigalyov read a system that starts from unlimited freedom and ends in unlimited despotism, and trims his nails while the fate of nine-tenths of humanity is discussed. He drops his nonchalance only to ask one question: who would denounce a political murder? Out in the street, far from the audience, the same man begs, threatens, praises Shigalyov's system only to despise it soon after as a goldsmith's work, and reveals the plan that matters: to launch Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin as Ivan Tsarevich, the hidden prince from whom the people would expect the new truth. The question running through both chapters is the distance between a system and its use. Shigalyov arrives at despotism against his will and does not know what to do with the conclusion; Pyotr needs no conclusion at all, he uses what others produce (one man's logical despair, everyone's vanity and fear) to bind the group and choose who leaves it.

Chapter VII: The Meeting at Virginsky's House

God and the DivineThe Individual and SocietyRevolution

Chapter summary

Virginsky lives in the wooden house of his wife, the midwife Arina Prokhorovna, and his birthday is only a pretext: about fifteen people, two tables pushed together, two samovars, neither snacks nor cards, and a seating arrangement in which a session can already be sensed. The chronicler explains that the guests were handpicked by Virginsky from among the reddest liberals in town, and that almost all of them take Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky for a foreign emissary with full powers, an idea that caught on at once and flatters them. When he comes in with Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, the room falls silent. The night that follows is a session that no one knows whether it is a session. It begins with a quarrel between a student newly arrived from Petersburg, a schoolboy and a major, her uncle, about birthdays and the woman question, until the lame professor asks whether this really is a session. The vote comes out so confused that Lyamshin is made to play a waltz on the piano, so that whoever listens from the street hears only party music, and at last they proclaim the session and elect the host as chairman. The guests discuss God and the family like students, vote without knowing what they vote on, and Shigalyov sets out his system, which starts from unlimited freedom and ends in unlimited despotism, with one-tenth of humanity ruling the other nine. Pyotr, trimming his nails during the reading, answers everything with irony and then asks the question that matters to him: who would denounce a political murder? All say no, except Shatov, who leaves without answering and, when told that this is not to his advantage, turns the accusation back on Pyotr and calls him a spy and a scoundrel. Stavrogin and Kirillov leave without answering; Pyotr runs after them and demands that Stavrogin go to Kirillov's house, where he too will go.

Analysis

Among the guests is the quintet that Pyotr has shaped in town, as he had already done in Moscow and among the district officers: Liputin, Virginsky himself, Shigalyov, the hostess's brother, known as the man with the long ears, Lyamshin, and a certain Tolkachenko, who boasts of knowing the people and frequents taverns. The five were born resentful: they came in without criticism, out of fear of being told later that they had not dared, and soon took offense at their own haste, because Pyotr treats them with severity and carelessness and does not grant them so much as a word of reward. Shigalyov already wants to demand satisfaction, but not there, in front of so many people. What keeps the quintet on its feet is the faith the chronicler describes:

Все эти пятеро деятелей составили свою первую кучку с теплою верой, что она лишь единица между сотнями и тысячами таких же пятерок, как и ихняя, разбросанных по России, и что все зависят от какого-то центрального, огромного, но тайного места, которое в свою очередь связано органически с европейскою всемирною революцией, all these five militants formed their first little group with the warm faith that it was only one unit among hundreds and thousands of quintets just like theirs, scattered across Russia, and that all depended on some central place, enormous but secret, itself organically linked to the European world revolution.

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Chapter VIII: Ivan Tsarevich

Truth and LiesRevolution

Chapter summary

Pyotr gives up trying to contain the chaos of the room and, by a shortcut in which he sinks in the mud up to the knees, reaches Filippov's house just as Stavrogin and Kirillov pass through the gate. Kirillov receives him without surprise; Stavrogin reminds him that he said he lived alone, and Kirillov replies that he will see with whom. Pyotr takes from his pocket the anonymous letter he got from Andrei Antonovich von Lembke and places it before Stavrogin: the scoundrel, Captain Lebyadkin, will do as he wrote and will go to Lembke tomorrow, and since he is at Stavrogin's disposal, let him say how to proceed. He asks for fifteen hundred, or two thousand, rubles to send him to Petersburg, with Marya Timofeyevna, if Stavrogin wishes. Stavrogin refuses the money and refuses to send the woman away, and tells Pyotr he will not hand over Shatov; Pyotr, who wants Shatov's blood to bind the groups, moves from command to pleading, swears he carries a knife in his boot and promises to make peace. Outside, almost breathless, he sums up Shigalyov's system in images of mutilation and then dismisses it at once as goldsmith's work, kisses Stavrogin's hand and reveals the plan: he will be Ivan Tsarevich, the hidden prince whom Russia, after a generation or two of depravity and fires, will receive as its savior. Stavrogin calls it folly and asks what for; Pyotr confesses that he invented it looking at him, and Stavrogin climbs the stairs without answering, with three days' grace.

Analysis

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Reading of the part

Analysis

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