Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
It’s a strange mixture of Christianity, the industrial revolution, the Russian national character. But it is also about 20th-century Russia. It’s about what is coming. All we were talking about from the days of Basil the Dark One, the 18th-century age of Enlightenment, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, the golden age of Russian culture: it all culminates in Demons. Demons is Russia’s future... It gives you a flavour of the nascent 20th-century Russia with all its ups and downs: the literature, horrors, terrors, revolutions, bloodshed, the peaks, the depths – you already feel it.
And Demons?
You can’t retell the book, but it’s about Russia and what’s coming out of it. It’s the chaos of politics and morals and religion at the end of the imperial period, reflected in this mystical Russian national character. It sounds silly to speak of, but there is a certain mystical quality to the Russian soul.
The chaos is coming from outside?
Not necessarily. A lot of it is coming from outside, also Dostoevsky was not impartial, but for me in this book it’s coming from within. It’s all homegrown. It’s a strange mixture of Christianity, the industrial revolution, the Russian national character. But it is also about 20th-century Russia. It’s about what is coming. All we were talking about from the days of Basil the Dark One, the 18th-century age of Enlightenment, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, the golden age of Russian culture: it all culminates in Demons. Demons is Russia’s future. It’s about what has happened, and what’s going to happen to Russia’s intelligentsia and nobility. It gives you a flavour of the nascent 20th century Russia with all its ups and downs: the literature, horrors, terrors, revolutions, bloodshed, the peaks, the depths – you already feel it. You smell it and you taste it in Demons. On top of it, for someone who’s a good reader, it’s extremely entertaining and horrifying. I think it’s a good book to finish off the imperial period.
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Andrei Maylunas is an eminent historian on pre-Soviet Russia with unique access to the Moscow archives. He has edited and compiled several books on the Romanoffs. He says Dostoevsky’s book Demons is about Russia’s future. ‘It’s about what has happened, and what’s going to happen to Russia’s intelligentsia and nobility. It gives you a flavour of the nascent 20th-century Russia with all its ups and downs: the literature, horrors, terrors, revolutions, bloodshed, the peaks, the depths – you already feel it. You smell it and you taste it in Demons.’
