Fëdor Michajlovic Dostoevskij
I demoni

Intricate, dark, even redundant, I didn't feel the instant love for The Devils that sparked when reading Crime and Punishment, but not due to any real inferiority—on the contrary, precisely because of its subtlety: an endemic novel, one that grows slowly within the reader, even after reaching the end and the book has been closed. This masterpiece is a rough diamond, the kind another author might have polished, trimmed, smoothing out the excessive edges; but on the other hand, it’s precisely these impurities that allow the characters of The Devils to take flight, finding life of their own. It’s incredible how this novel, sinister already from its title, can genuinely instill unease, through certain passages, via the grotesque ideas and faces of its protagonists, even though one is not reading horror fiction but drama; Nikolai Stavrogin, Pyotr Verkhovensky, true devils, seem to be characters of the Short Twentieth Century rather than the 19th century lived by Dostoevsky: was I the only one whose mind, reading the adventures of our 'heroes,' drifted to the ideological fanaticisms of the 20th century? To fascism, to National Socialism, to the delusions of omnipotence of small ultra-politicized cliques, institutionalized or not, as in the case of the opposite extremisms that bloodied our country in the '70s; am I really the only one who thought of the terrorists, the armed groups scattered across the territory, their futile communiqués, full of pure fanaticism, the murders committed in the name of a mental representation (of society, of the future, of politics) and not for personal gain? Perhaps, Dostoevsky’s novel is also useful for understanding what ideology is: an indispensable construction, extraordinary yet at the same time dreadful if embraced uncritically, capable of pervading a man's body and replacing his heart, whatever its color.

So, of the many faces of The Devils, I have hinted at one of many, following my instinct; but this masterpiece is much more, I don't want to deceive those who, perhaps, are not as interested in history as I am: the book is not just a political book, but rather, those who read Dostoevsky for his psychological analyses probably won't even give weight to these ideological implications: they will be carried away by the tormented relationship between Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich, or by Kirillov's theory on suicide, reading another The Devils and not the same one I read. There are also entire sections of pages, heavy yet sliding quickly one after the other, where the Russian author lets the pen glide freely, chaotically, giving voice to the most turbid reflections of the protagonists; some speak with frenzy, others consumed by anguish, but also those who calmly recount a murder—even the murder, albeit indirect, of a little girl, who hanged herself in a closet due to the psychological torment she endured—describing their terrible act with meticulousness and detachment: here is Dostoevsky's small town, the fresco of so many small men trapped by their time, some merely small and petty, but then hidden among them are also deep, dark figures like the throat of a well, roaming the village with their gloomy presence, appearing now and then among the men and between the lines of the book, ready to ignite like a fire, thrumming. There is indeed much, in this work, and it is possible to build and then unravel entire arguments based on one's own perspective. Like a starry sky where each person, based on their own sensitivity, can study different lights.