This poem is now also sitting in my desk drawer; I received it just last year, in a quite recent copy, handwritten by Stepan Trofimovich himself, with his inscription, and bound in magnificent red morocco. Incidentally, it is not lacking in poetry, or even in a certain talent; it is a strange piece, but in those days (that is, more precisely, in the thirties) that kind of thing was not uncommon. I find it difficult to give the plot, because to tell the truth I understand nothing of it. It is some sort of allegory, in lyrical-dramatic form, resembling the second part of Faust. 8 The scene

1: Instead of an Introduction, II

opens with a chorus of women, then a chorus of men, then of some powers, and it all ends with a chorus of souls that have not lived yet but would very much like to live a little. All these choruses sing about something very indefinite, mostly about somebody's curse, but with a tinge of higher humor. Then suddenly the scene changes and some sort of "Festival of Life" begins, in which even insects sing, a turtle appears with some sort of sacramental Latin words, and, if I remember, a mineral—that is, an altogether inanimate object—also gets to sing about something. Generally, everyone sings incessantly, and if they speak, they squabble somehow indefinitely, but again with a tinge of higher meaning. Finally, the scene changes again, and a wild place appears, where a civilized young man wanders among the rocks picking and sucking at some wild herbs, and when a fairy asks him why he is sucking these herbs, he responds that he feels an overabundance of life in himself, is seeking oblivion, and finds it in the juice of these herbs, but that his greatest desire is to lose his reason as quickly as possible (a perhaps superfluous desire). Suddenly a youth of indescribable beauty rides in on a black horse, followed by a terrible multitude of all the nations. The youth represents death, and all the nations yearn for it. Finally, in the very last scene, the Tower of Babel suddenly appears and some athletes finally finish building it with a song of new hope, and when they have built to the very top, the proprietor of, shall we say, Olympus flees in comical fashion, and quick-witted mankind takes over his place and at once begins a new life with a new perception of things. Well, this is the poem that was found so dangerous then. Last year I proposed to Stepan Trofimovich to publish it, in view of its perfect innocence nowadays, but he declined the proposal with obvious displeasure. My opinion as to its perfect innocence he did not like, and I even ascribe to it a certain coolness towards me on his part, which lasted for a whole two months. And just think! Suddenly, almost at the same time as I proposed publishing it here, our poem was published there—that is, abroad, in one of the revolutionary miscellanies, and absolutely without Stepan Trofimovich's knowledge. He was frightened at first, rushed to the governor, and wrote a most noble letter of vindication to Petersburg, read it to me twice, but did not send it, not knowing to whom to address it. In short, he was worried for a whole month; but I am convinced that in the hidden turnings of his heart he was remarkably flattered. He all but slept with the copy of the miscellany that had been sent to him, hid it under the mattress during the day, and even would not allow the woman to make his bed, and though he expected any day some telegram from

somewhere, his look was haughty. No telegram came. And then he reconciled with me, which testifies to the extreme kindness of his gentle and unresentful heart.

II

I am by no means claiming that he never suffered at all; only I am now fully convinced that he could have gone on with his Arabians as much as he liked, if he had simply given the necessary explanations. But at the time he made a grand gesture, and with particular hastiness took care to convince himself once and for all that his career had been ruined for the whole of his life by a

"whirlwind of circumstances." Though, if one were to tell the whole truth, the real reason for this change of career was a most delicate offer, made once before and now renewed by Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, the wife of a lieutenant general and a woman of considerable wealth, to take upon himself the upbringing and the whole intellectual development of her only son, in the capacity of a superior pedagogue and friend, to say nothing of a splendid remuneration. This offer had first been made to him in Berlin, and precisely at the time when he had first been left a widower. His first wife was a flighty girl from our province whom he had married in his very first and still reckless youth, and it seems he suffered much grief from this—incidentally attractive—person, for lack of means to support her, and for other, somewhat delicate reasons as well. She died in Paris, having been separated from him for the previous three years, leaving him a five-year-old son, "the fruit of a first, joyful, and still unclouded love," as once escaped the sorrowing Stepan Trofimovich in my presence. The nestling was from the very start sent back to Russia, where he was brought up all the while in the hands of some distant aunts, somewhere in a remote corner. Stepan Trofimovich had declined Varvara Petrovna's offer at that time and quickly got married again, even before the year was out, to

DEMONS

Part One

a taciturn little German woman from Berlin, and that, moreover, without any special need. But there turned out to be other reasons, besides, for declining the position of tutor: he was tempted by the then resounding glory of one unforgettable professor, and in his turn flew to the chair for which he had been preparing himself, to try out his own eagle's wings. And so now, with his wings singed, he naturally recalled the offer that had already once made him hesitate.