Dostoevsky’s Devils*

WARNING: I give away important plot details in what follows. ‘What constituted the turbulence of our time and what transition it was we were passing through I don’t know, nor I think does anyone, unless it were some of those visitors of ours. Yet the most worthless fellows suddenly gained predominant influence, began loudly criticising [...]

Dostoevsky’s The Idiot

Reflecting about that moment afterwards, now in a condition of health, he often told himself: that after all, those gleams and lightning flashes of higher self perception and self-awareness and consequently of ‘higher existence’ were nothing but an illness, a violation of the normal condition, and, if that were so, then it was not higher [...]