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By Root 5547 0

dreaming of the blood and chaos which is going to be unleashed on some day in the distant future. But finally the day arrives and it is not long before the Dream Stage of initial chaos spins rapidly out of control, until some of them are carried over the edge into a deadly vortex of destruction and self-destruction. Such, in a sense, is the greater Tragedy described by the book; and it was this which made the novel historically prophetic. But the greater Tragedy could not have taken place in the way it did without the much more personal and intense tragedy of Stavrogin, beginning with the rape and suicide of little Matryosha in St Petersburg. Without Stavrogin, the chief instigator of the collective Tragedy, Peter Verkhovensky would not have had his inspiration, his imagined leader. Verkhovensky would not have had his excuse to plot the murder of the crippled Maria, the event which more than any other eventually turns the town into a bloodbath, if it had not been for Stavrogin's reckless folly in marrying her. Stavrogin would not have got into the state where he was tempted into the quixotic and heartless gesture of marrying Maria if it had not been for the horrible preceding episode of Matryosha's death. Stavrogin could not have committed his crime against Matryosha, if he had not already lost his moral centre. And neither he nor Peter Verkhovensky would have lost their moral bearings and been reduced to the state where the `devils' could so easily have possessed them in the first place, so Dostoyevsky's thread runs, without the initial weakness of their parents: Mrs Stavrogin's spoiling indulgence of her beloved Nikolai and Mr Verkhovensky's self-deluding fantasies about being a 'dangerous liberal'; which is why these two are placed in such a prominent position at the beginning of the story.

The Devils is one of the blackest of all literary portrayals of the spirit of Tragedy entering the ascendant, taking over men's hearts and minds and prompting them to unleash a torrent of death and destruction which eventually sweeps them away. In fact it provides an appropriate cue for us at last to stand back to look at this kind of story in more general terms: to examine what it is in the inner logic of storytelling which decrees that such disparate figures as Faust and Macbeth, Humbert Humbert and Dorian Gray, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary, Don Giovanni and Nikolai Stavrogin, should all ultimately be trapped in the same black vortex and be carried down to the same violent end. So fundamental is this question to the whole of storytelling (and to the relationship of stories to what we call `real life') that it maybe reserved for a separate chapter.

Brutus, Julius Caesar, ii.i

`Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against itself falleth.'

Jesus, St Luke's Gospel, 11.17

One of the more illuminating ways to look at the pattern of Tragedy is to contrast it with the types of plot we discussed earlier.

In some respects the position of the hero or heroine at the beginning of a Tragedy is not dissimilar to that of the hero or heroine at the opening of, say, a Quest or a Rags to Riches story. We first meet them in some situation which does not give ease or satisfaction, which cries out for change. Then something happens which points the way forward. They receive some kind of `Call' which leads them out of their dissatisfying state into the adventure which is going to transform their lives.

The great difference between Tragedy and other kinds of story begins with the nature of the summons which draws them into that adventure. When the hero of an Overcoming the Monster story or a Quest receives the `Call' - however hazardous the course it opens out to him - we are in no doubt it is right for him to answer it. When the hero or heroine of Tragedy reaches the same point we are uneasy. We are aware that the `Call' is not of the same nature; which is why it may more aptly be described as the `Temptation'.

This is because of the peculiar way in which the summons to action is directed at one