Demons (Dostoevsky novel) Demons (Dostoevsky novel) Demons (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ; sometimes also called The Possessed or The Devils) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal "The Russian Messenger" in 1871–2. It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with "Crime and Punishment" (1866), "The Idiot" (1869) and "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880). "Demons" is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoevsky's most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily 'tragic' work." According to Ronald
Prince Myshkin the Prince have much in common. It is occasionally evident that Ippolit shares Myshkin's sense of the sacred and the beautiful, and he consciously addresses himself to that sensibility when constructing his atheistic philosophy. Ippolit's interpretation of the book's key religious symbol, Holbein's painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb", as something that perfectly illustrates the omnipotence of 'blind nature', is posited precisely because it is Christ who is depicted: 'nature' has "senselessly seized, smashed and devoured, dully and without feeling, a great priceless Being, a Being worth all of nature and its laws, worth the whole