Шатов

And what else are you doing? What are you preaching? Surely you can't help preaching, with such a character!

I preach God, Marie.

In whom you don't believe yourself. That's an idea I never could understand.

One of my favorite characters in literature is Ivan Pavlovich Shatov, of Dostoevsky's Demons. For most of the novel, Shatov plays a supporting role to Dostoevsky's planned hero, Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin. As the novel unfolds, however, Stavrogin becomes an anti-hero instead, a warning instead of an inspiration, a man who cannot overcome the despair accumulating from the wickedness of his life.

I'm not sure that Dostoevsky meant for Shatov to be an inspiration, but unlike Stavrogin, Shatov appears to repent. In one of the very last chapters — A Traveler — he gives Shatov a depth of compassion and holiness that elevates Shatov from a doomed dupe to a tragic hero. That chapter is one of the most beautiful passages I have ever read in literature, and it is the source of the quote above; it comes from an exchange between Shatov and the surprise traveler.

Professor Thomas Beyer of Middlebury College makes the following observation on Shatov and another character, Alexei Nilych Kirillov:

Both Kirillov and Shatov have firm convictions, the former has faith but does not believe in God, and the latter believes in God but has no faith.

That made sense to me when I was reading the novel, but now it doesn't. Rather depressing, that.

I'm still dragging slowly through Les Misérables.