Clavis Libri
Plans Sign in

Demons · Part Three

The party and the fire

GuiltTruth and LiesThe Individual and SocietyRevolution

Summary of the part

In twenty-four hours the town that the first two parts built up comes apart in public, and the novel changes genre midway: the matinée is a comedy of manners, the ball begins as farce and ends in fire, and the next morning brings the dead. What unites the three scenes is not a plan. Each gesture comes from someone who wants something else: Yulia Mikhailovna wants a party that will consecrate her, Karmazinov wants to leave to applause, Stepan Trofimovich wants to reconcile the generations, Liputin wants to amuse himself, Lembke wants order, Lizaveta Nikolaevna wants to live one whole hour. Pyotr Stepanovich appears around all of them, arranging what each already wanted, and the disaster comes out of the sum. The question left at the end of the third chapter is who answers for a crime in which everyone had a hand and no one decided alone.

Chapter I: The Literary Matinée

The Individual and SocietyRevolution

Chapter summary

The party of Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke goes ahead despite the day of confusion the day before, because she invests it with such great meaning that she would have held it even if her husband had died the night before. Blind until the last minute, she does not realize that the whole town expects a scandal and that the ladies hate her as one, and she remains convinced of being "surrounded" and of having people fanatically devoted to her. The chronicler, who is one of the twelve "young men with ribbons" in the organization, explains the atmosphere before recounting the day: in times of transition the rabble rises to the surface of every society, without aim or thought, only restlessness and impatience. The day divides into two parts, the literary matinée at noon and the ball at night, and the matinée is the first to fall apart. Yulia rejects the middle course the committee proposes and makes the party the proclamation of a great idea, while the town, convinced there will be a buffet, only waits for a scandal. On stage, Captain Lebyadkin appears drunk, laughs, and is taken away, and Liputin reads in his place verses that mock the governesses, whom the party is meant to benefit. Karmazinov reads his farewell story, "Merci," is interrupted by voices saying it is mere style, and takes leave of the audience with three "merci"s. Stepan goes up next, determined to reconcile the generations, defends beauty above usefulness, and is booed; a seminarian accuses him of having lost his serf Fedka at cards, and he flees, cursing everyone. A third reader, the obsessive professor, cries out that Russia has never been so ashamed and is applauded by half the hall. The chronicler keeps his ribbon and goes to Stepan's house.

Analysis

эта сволочь, сама не зная того, почти всегда подпадает под команду той малой кучки «передовых», которые действуют с определенною целью, и та направляет весь этот сор куда ей угодно, this rabble, without knowing it, almost always falls under the command of that small handful of "advanced" men who act with a definite aim, and that handful directs all this trash wherever it likes.

The chronicler writes after the disaster, when the town already blames everything on the International, and so he distrusts the ready-made explanation: he says he does not know what that so-called troubled time consisted of. Even so, the sentence makes the rabble an instrument, and admits, along the same line, that whoever commands may be a band of "perfect idiots." Who gives the orders is not guaranteed, and the mechanism works just the same.

Unlock with a subscription

Subscription

The complete analysis of every part of Demons comes with a subscription, along with the explanation of each quote, the quiz, the PDF guide, and the study workbook.

See the plansAlready subscribed? Sign in

Chapter II: The Ball and the Fire

The Individual and SocietyRevolution

Chapter summary

The chronicler hurries to the house of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, who does not receive him: he is locked in, writing, and answers through the door that he has done with men, good and bad alike. He writes to Darya Pavlovna Shatova, whom he has forgotten "in an unforgivable way," and takes leave of his friend with a "merci," as Karmazinov did with the audience. Faced with the chronicler's warnings, which fear he will attempt something even more foolish, he shows an unexpected firmness, with the same sarcasm and the same careful phrasing as always, and this is what reassures the chronicler: a man so little changed, he concludes, is not inclined to anything tragic. "And, my God, how wrong I was!" he adds, summarizing the opening of the letter that Darya Pavlovna will receive the next day: the die is cast, he is leaving the town forever and does not know where to.

At the house of Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke, the chronicler witnesses a scene that revolts him and that he cannot prevent. He finds her in tears, almost hysterical, before Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky and the prince, who does not open his mouth. She reproaches him for "apostasy" and blames him for the morning's shame through his absence; Pyotr is, for the first time, serious and irritated, and says he fell ill at Gaganov's house. The question on the table is whether there will be a ball, and Yulia Mikhailovna, who does not want to go, in fact wants to be forced to go, and by him; Pyotr, for his part, needs the ball to take place and her to attend. His power over her, the chronicler observes, comes from having approved from the start all her dreams of influencing society and the ministry, from having invented plans for her and flattered her crudely, until he became as necessary to her as air.

Analysis

Unlock with a subscription

Chapter III: The Finished Novel

GuiltThe Individual and Society

Chapter summary

At Skvoreshniki, in the large room from which the fire can be seen as plain as the palm of one's hand, Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina watches the glow that goes out at six in the morning, in the light dress of the day before, crumpled and put on in haste. Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin enters, says he sent a mounted messenger and that, according to what is said, the fire has burned part of Zarechye, near the wharf, to the right of the bridge, since after eleven at night; she receives him with tense humor: she lives by the calendar, every step of hers is calculated, "we will not stay together long," she has lived her hour in the world and that is enough, and she does not want to resemble Khristofor Ivanovich of Lausanne, the visitor who said "just a minute" and stayed the whole day. She recalls that the day before, when she came in, she presented herself as dead, and that he preferred to forget it. He swears he loves her more than yesterday and wants to leave with her today; she refuses, because the only ideal left to her is that of Moscow, of visits paid and received, and that is impossible for a married man. When he asks whether she is avenging the "fantasy of yesterday," she answers that it is a base thought, and when he says he has paid with his life for this hope, she asks: "With yours or with someone else's?" He rises, turns pale, swears he knows nothing, and then smiles slowly: they were speaking of two different things.

Analysis

Unlock with a subscription

Reading of the part

Analysis

Unlock with a subscription