Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky

Who He Is

Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, his father's Petrusha, is the son of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and his first wife, sent as a child to aunts in Russia, of whom his father is guardian and attorney, and whose little estate, inherited from the mother, the father leased and partly sold in secret (chapter II of Part One). He finished university six years ago, drifted through Petersburg, was involved in a clandestine proclamation, turned up in Geneva, and writes to his father very rarely, with curt instructions, like an old-time landowner to a servant (chapter II of Part One). He arrives in town at twenty-seven, with an elongated head flattened at the sides, thin fair hair, a sharp eye, and thin lips, moves quickly without any hurry at all, and speaks with a clarity like loose beads that ends up tiring (chapter V of Part One). The town takes him for a foreign emissary with full powers (chapter VII of Part Two). What he wants is a center for an organization he does not have: a single magnificent will, an idol's, resting on something outside, and he puts Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin in the place of that will (chapter III of Part Three); before that, a confusion such that everything comes off its axes, and quintets bound by blood (chapter VIII of Part Two, chapter VI of Part Three). What he fears is losing Stavrogin: he begs, threatens, flatters, and kisses his hand in the street (chapter VIII of Part Two), and his flight shakes him (chapter IV of Part Three). What he knows how to do is give each person the lie he needs, to his father, the governor, the writer, Kirillov, Shatov, and make the shame of having an opinion of one's own the cement of the group (chapter VI of Part Two). Where he errs is in counting on men without bodies: he foresaw everything except that those who obeyed him in conversation would shout, scratch, and bite before a dead man (chapter VI of Part Three).

Trajectory

In chapter II of Part One he is only talked about. Stepan Trofimovich, in asking himself why desperate socialists are at the same time incredible proprietors, formulates without knowing it what his son will be:

In chapter IV of Part One Liza says it was he who, in Switzerland, spoke to her of Shatov and pointed Shatov out as someone who knows how to run a printing press, and Shatov's face changes. In chapter V of Part One, in the drawing room of Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, he flies in, ahead of Stavrogin, and announces his friend in a speech without pause; Stepan Trofimovich, coming out of his torpor, embraces him in tears, and he extricates himself. While Stavrogin is away, he offers Varvara Petrovna a flattering version of the Petersburg story, and Captain Lebyadkin, standing, confirms it all point by point:

When Stavrogin returns and portrays him in front of him, his mother listens and he cannot take offense:

Next he reads his father's letter, which speaks of marrying for other people's sins, in a fool's voice, and Varvara Petrovna, who listens instead of reading, expels Stepan Trofimovich from the house.

In chapter I of Part Two, at Stavrogin's house, he enters shouting on purpose so that Stavrogin will hide a letter, confesses that it was he who spread the rumor of the liaison with Shatov's wife in Paris, and explains why he chose to appear as a harmless fool:

The new tactic he announces, after seeing Stavrogin pull back his hands without returning the slap, is to offer himself as an instrument:

On the way out, he fires off offers that sound like news: Gaganov hates him, Fedka is ready for anything, and he himself too. In chapter IV of Part Two, after being told of the duel only the next day, he makes his father, lying down and thin, hear that he was a hanger-on:

And to his father's question, whether or not he is his son, he hands the doubt back:

With the governor Andrei Antonovich von Lembke he uses the truth as a lever:

In chapter V of Part Two he is always at the center of the circle of Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke, who forgives everything on his advice. In chapter VI of Part Two, to win six days of silence from Lembke, he hands over Shatov with curses and stammering, like someone betraying against his will:

And he reduces the conspiracy to the size the governor needs to believe:

To Karmazinov he gives the date on which Russia will collapse, from May to Pokrov; from Kirillov he collects the agreed death; Shatov, sick in bed, he summons to the meeting and hears that Stavrogin will be there; to Stavrogin, on the way to Virginsky's house, he lays out the organization as one speaks to the chief, the uniform, the sentimentality, the pure cheats and, above all, the shame of having an opinion of one's own. He admits that the central committee is he and Stavrogin.

In chapter VII of Part Two, at the meeting, yawning, he lets the group vote without knowing what it is voting on and pares his nails while Shigalyov reads the system; he drops his listlessness only to put the choice in two speeds:

And to mark who does not come in:

Shatov leaves silently, and Pyotr shouts after him:

In chapter VIII of Part Two, in the muddy street, the same person begs, threatens with the knife in his boot, and sums up Shigalyov's system in images of cruelty before dismissing it as goldsmith's work:

Then he lays out the plan that matters: to let loose fires and legends until Russia is shaken, and then to show Ivan Tsarevich, who does not need to do anything, because he is in hiding:

When Stavrogin asks for what, he loses his calm and says what drives him:

Joseph Frank reads the fascination as an aesthetic passion and not only as calculation, tied to Dostoevsky's reaction to the burning of the Tuileries.

And he finds in Bakunin the method Pyotr repeats, violence as the body and falsehood as the soul:

In chapter X of Part Two he runs into the governor's wife's drawing room to shout that they are ruining his old man. In chapter II of Part Three, to Yulia Mikhailovna in tears, he apportions blame to dissolve the idea of conspiracy and says that what society lacks is the initiative to restrain the mischief-makers:

He gives the news of Lizaveta Nikolaevna's flight as if everyone already knew it, which the chronicler finds odd. In chapter III of Part Three, in the anteroom at Skvoreshniki, before Stavrogin, he swears that he did not order the Lebyadkins killed, that the idea crossed his mind but that it was Stavrogin who insinuated it, and he takes responsibility for what is his:

And he says what his organization cannot bear:

He draws the revolver twice and, the second time, hears from Stavrogin to fire. He runs after Liza, who has just heard from Stavrogin what he knew and did not stop, and, with the story of the leaky boat, lets her know that Mavriky Nikolaevich has been waiting for her by the gate since the night; she flees across the field and he retreats to the gate.

In chapter IV of Part Three, the next day, at Gaganov's house, he presents himself as a confidant of Yulia Mikhailovna deceived by her; on learning that Stavrogin left for Petersburg, he asks who could have let him leave. That evening, at the house of the ensign Erkel, he finds the quintet in revolt, turns the tables (by what right did they set the town on fire without permission?) and announces a denunciation he has never seen:

The five give in within ten minutes, which the chronicler describes as flies in the web of an enormous spider:

With Liputin at his side, he dines on a steak while the other hates him, goes to Kirillov's house, hears from Fedka that the promise of money was not kept, is knocked down with fists, and threatens Kirillov with hanging him like a fly if he runs away. He predicted to Liputin that Fedka would drink no more vodka, and the prophecy comes true. In chapter V of Part Three he has Erkel tell Shatov that he is dismissed from the society and that he, Pyotr, leaves the next day at eleven in the morning; he leaves, in fact, at six. In chapter VI of Part Three, in the Stavrogins' park, Virginsky says that Shatov, happy, will not denounce, and Pyotr hands back the question he has just answered:

Shigalyov withdraws, saying that the crime contradicts his program, and Pyotr cocks the revolver and calls him Monsieur Fourier. It is he who shoots Shatov, aiming steadily at the forehead, searches the dead man's pockets, and ties the stones to the corpse. When Virginsky shouts that this is not it, and Lyamshin squeals like an animal, Pyotr looks at Lyamshin in astonishment: he had thought something quite different of him. He addresses those who shouted:

Liputin catches up with him on the road and asks whether there is only one quintet or a thousand:

At one in the morning he goes to Kirillov, eats the chicken he left untouched without taking his eyes off him, discusses the act, dictates the note and, when Kirillov bites his finger, strikes him three times with the revolver and flees, returning only on hearing the shot, to check the corpse and close off Fedka's passage. At ten to six, at the station, he leaves instructions with Erkel and changes carriages to play cards, extending his hand through the window: Erkel never sees him again. By the time the order to arrest him arrived, three days later, he was already in Petersburg under a false name and had slipped abroad. In chapter VIII of Part Three Lyamshin hands the authorities a printed program and a draft in his own hand, and three months later, at the club, there are those who treat Pyotr almost as a genius.

Themes Embodied

Pyotr is Revolution without conviction, and for that reason Truth and Lies turned into method: nothing he says is worth anything for being true, it is worth its usefulness, and the usefulness changes with the listener. The same conspiracy has seven people before Lembke (chapter VI of Part Two), a network covering Russia before Liputin and Virginsky's room (chapter VII of Part Two), and a single quintet at the end, when it no longer matters (chapter VI of Part Three). His symbols are the fire at Zarechye, which he was saving for the critical hour (chapter III of Part Three), and the leaflets, which serve to make Kirillov take responsibility for Shatov's death (chapter VI of Part Three). And he is a son: Family is the first thing the book gives him, and the question of whether or not he is Stepan Trofimovich's son comes back to him in chapter IV of Part Two as a joke.

The mechanism he operates is not force, it is adhesion, and the book shows it in three moments. First he exploits Yulia Mikhailovna's wish to be seen, the town's frivolity, and the quintet's vanity (chapter IV of Part Two, chapter VII of Part Two). Then he gives each person the sliver of truth that binds him: to Shatov, an invitation that isolates him; to Lembke, a small conspiracy; to Virginsky, a question he answers himself (chapter VI of Part Two, chapter VI of Part Three). Finally, when the organization fails from within, he is already at the station (chapter VI of Part Three). Whoever goes unpunished in the novel is whoever knew how to leave beforehand, and the book does not punish the opportunist; it only shows what he left behind.

Relationships

• Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky: the father, whom he makes weep and from whom he asks for the text of the matinée (chapter IV of Part Two), and who includes him among the pigs (chapter VII of Part Three).
• Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin: the idol he invented (chapter VIII of Part Two) and who tells him that, if he were not such a clown, he might perhaps answer yes (chapter III of Part Three).
• Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina: whom he seduces with the version that suits her (chapter V of Part One) and whom he advises to reconcile with Stepan for his own ends (chapter IV of Part Two).
• Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke and Andrei Antonovich von Lembke: the governor's wife who believes him devoted to her and the governor he surrounds (chapter IV of Part Two, chapter VI of Part Two).
• Karmazinov: to whom he gives the date of ruin and from whom he hears the thesis of the right to dishonor (chapter VI of Part Two).
• Alexei Kirillov: the one who counts on the agreed death (chapter VI of Part Two) and who bites him before firing (chapter VI of Part Three).
• Ivan Shatov: the member who refuses to answer the question, who calls him a spy and a scoundrel at the door (chapter VII of Part Two) and whom he has killed (chapter VI of Part Three).
• Liputin: the quintet's aide who hates him and follows him, and who asks, too late, whether there is only one quintet (chapter IV of Part Three, chapter VI of Part Three).
• Shigalyov: the author of the system he praises and despises (chapter VIII of Part Two), and who withdraws before the crime (chapter VI of Part Three).
• Fedka: the runaway serf he uses and who knocks him down with his fists (chapter IV of Part Three).
• Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina: to whom he tells the story of the boat (chapter III of Part Three).
• Ignat Lebyadkin: the captain who confirms his version of the Petersburg story (chapter V of Part One) and whose death he swears he did not commission (chapter III of Part Three).