#besyposting

[artechna]

varvara petrovna and stepan trofimovich 😢

i know stepan is like. not a great guy. but i couldn’t help but feel endeared by him while reading. and varvara is like the original girlboss. she treats him like her friend sometimes, her enemy at others, her child occasionally, her doll, her invention, her responsibility… aughhh me when queerplatonic old people!!! genuinely cried at the end

[artechna]

I need to show you guys the 1968 Heron Books edition of Demons (The Possessed) by Dostoevsky! It is divided into two volumes and contains these cool gesture drawing ink illustrations by Philippe Jullian! It was only $30ish for both of them on Etsy and it was such a steal!!!!!!!!

We start off with this cool sketch of Dostoevsky in the front. Then we get my favorite: Stepan and Varvara yapping

Then we have all these bangers. There are a surprising amount of illustrations! Seeing as I didn't know there were any at all, I was very pleasantly surprised to find all of these:

1: Stavrogin pulling Gaganov by the nose 2: Varavara talking to Dasha about the marriage 3: Lizaveta and Mavriky 4: The Lebyadkins 5: Pyotr 6: Shatov and Stavrogin 7: Fedka 8: The von Lembkes 9: The Duel 10: Lyamshin playing his Franco-Prussian war composition 11: Karmazinov 12: The Meeting at Virginsky's 13 & 14: The Fête 15: Lizaveta after the fête 16: The Death of Shatov 17: The Death of Kirillov 18: Stepan's Last Peregrination

Overall a very cool edition of Demons! I genuinely cannot believe I scored it for so cheap... It's a real prize in my Dostoevsky collection now

[artechna]

Mentioned this to a few others and they were very surprised at this overlooked detail in Demons

In the scene where Pyotr leaves, he refers to Erkel as his “relative” meaning that the two are actually somehow related???? And no it’s not a mistranslation. In the original russian he refers to Erkel as his “родственникь” which refers to familial relation

So the two options are 1. this is true and Erkel is related to Pyotr (likely via Pyotr’s mother’s side, I like to think.) Or 2. this is totally fake and Pyotr was lying for the sake of a convenient introduction. What do you think? Did any of yall catch this in the book?

Oh yeah also doesn’t help how in the 2014 adaptation the actors for Pyotr and Erkel actually look pretty similar in my opinion