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By Root 5195 0

at: Dostoyevsky's great prophetic novel on the social and spiritual disintegration of late-nineteenth century, pre-Revolutionary Russia, The Devils (or The Possessed). For a long time - nearly 400 pages of a 700-page book - it is not entirely clear what plot is shaping the narrative, or even whether the book has a clearly defined plot at all. But when the plot does finally emerge we see that one reason why this novel is in some ways so puzzling is that it is made up of two quite distinct but interwoven tragedies which eventually converge. The first is a collective tragedy, drawing in a large group of people, and this has a very long Anticipation Stage which occupies the greater part of the book. The other is the personal tragedy of the character who becomes the story's `dark hero, Nikolai Stavrogin - and this has already been through its initial stages before the opening of the story, as Dostoyevsky unfolds it.

The early chapters of the novel, as we are introduced to the life of a provincial Russian town, are in fact dominated by two middle-aged characters, the rich, indulgent widow Mrs Stavrogin and her weak, vain hanger-on Mr Verkhovensky, who likes to flatter himself that he is feared by the government in distant St Petersburg as a `dangerous liberal'. But eventually we come to see these two primarily in their role as mother and father to the other two leading characters of the book, who return to the town after some years in the capital: Mrs Stavrogin's son Nikolai and Mr Verkhovensky's son Peter. The handsome Nikolai is a mysterious, romantic figure who returns with something of a scandalous reputation for having lived strangely and dissolutely, Outwardly he seems grave and wellmannered, but he shocks polite society in the town by one or two apparently inexplicable lapses, such as biting the ear of the provincial governor. His friend and admirer Peter Verkhovensky has apparently been associated with a secret society of revolutionaries.

Even after their return, life in the town continues for a long time to flow fairly placidly onwards, like a great river. But then odd little incidents occur, as if the surface is being disturbed by eddies, warning of the approach of some mighty cataract. A strange, crippled girl, Maria Lebyatkin, arrives, and it seems she maybe married to Nikolai Stavrogin. A psychopathic criminal Fedka turns up in the town, and shortly afterwards everyone is scandalised by the theft of precious stones from a much-prized icon in the church. One night Fedka waylays Stavrogin and offers to murder his embarrassing wife for money, a suggestion Nikolai angrily dismisses. Finally there is a meeting of 15 people of loosely-assorted progressive or revolutionary views, organised by Peter Verkhovensky and attended by Stavrogin; and the outlines of the plot at last begin to emerge. We gather that Verkhovensky has a wild dream of unleashing chaos in the town as a preliminary to revolution. He is somehow inspired by a vision of Stavrogin as the charismatic figure of destiny who will then emerge as leader; but Stavrogin will apparently have none of this, and has already turned angrily on Verkhovensky, accusing him of wishing to arrange for the murder of his wife Maria and of another revolutionary Shatov, suspected of being a police spy, as a way to cement the revolutionaries' determination. What we are seeing, well over halfway through the book, is the culmination of a subtly sketched Anticipation Stage, where a whole mass of disparate dreams and vague fantasies about chaos, violence and some future revolution are at last being given their Focus round some specific plan.

But our attention is then abruptly switched to the much more personal tragedy which has already been unfolding for a long time in the life of Nikolai Stavrogin himself. He visits a wise old monk, Father Tikhon, and presents him with a written confession of a hideous episode which had taken place when he was living in St Petersburg. Finding himself alone one day in his lodgings with the daughter of the house, a 12-year old girl called Matryosha,