518874

research-article2014
JES44(2)10.1177/0047244113518874Journal of European StudiesAllan

Journal of European Studies

A logical redeemer: Kirillov 2014, Vol. 44(2) 97­–111

© The Author(s) 2014
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in Dostoievskii’s Demons sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0047244113518874
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Derek Allan
Australian National University, Canberra

Abstract
The engineer Kirillov, an important character in Dostoievskii’s Demons, has provoked considerable
critical disagreement. In a well-known section of Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Albert Camus describes him
as a figure who expresses the theme of ‘logical suicide’ with ‘the most admirable range and depth’.
Other commentators have not always been so sanguine, some dismissing Kirillov as a madman in
the grip of a mad theory. While dissenting from Camus’s analysis in certain respects, this article
offers an interpretation consistent with his basic argument. Kirillov’s decision to commit suicide
is based on a simple, if implacable, logic which convinces him that as long as he kills himself for
the right reason, his death will be an act of redemption for all humanity. Kirillov is a wholly
‘metaphysical’ character – one of the earliest in modern fiction – whose ambition to become the
‘man-god’ is explored by Dostoievskii to its ultimate, desolate conclusion.

Keywords
Albert Camus, God, madness, metaphysics, redemption, suicide

David Magarshack, a well-known translator of Dostoievskii’s works, describes Alexei

Nilych Kirillov in Demons as ‘the most metaphysical character Dostoyevsky created’
(Magarshack, 1953: xii).1 One might perhaps wish to quibble and suggest that this dis-
tinction should go to Ivan Karamazov – who wishes to ‘respectfully return [God] the
ticket’ to his creation (Dostoevsky, 2002: 245) – but the description, nonetheless, suits
Kirillov admirably as well. One needs, of course, to be clear about meanings. The term
‘metaphysical’ can be used in different ways and metaphysics in certain branches of
modern philosophy sometimes takes on a rather prosaic, down-to-earth significance,
defined by one contemporary practitioner as the study of ‘the most general and ubiqui-
tous features of reality’ (Garrett, 2006: xiii). This definition would hardly suffice in the

Corresponding author:
Derek Allan, School of Cultural Inquiry, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.
Email: derek.allan@anu.edu.au

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98 Journal of European Studies 44(2)

present case. Kirillov is a metaphysical character in the Pascalian sense – a character

who, like Ivan Karamazov, and like Dostoievskii himself in many moods, is concerned
with fundamental questions about the significance of human life, man’s relationship with
God, and the possibility that there may, after all, be no God.
Kirillov’s metaphysical preoccupations manifest themselves in a particularly dra-
matic form. Here is a character whose reflections on the meaning of life have led him to
decide to kill himself – to put a bullet through his head. Even more remarkably, this deci-
sion is not, as one might perhaps expect, the result of personal misfortune or a sense of
despair. Kirillov lives in poverty and is certainly no stranger to suffering, but his decision
to commit suicide is not based on the conclusion that life is not worth living. His decision
is driven by a certain idea, and at the heart of that idea is a passionate belief that human
life is worth living – or at least can be, if certain conditions are met. Kirillov, in fact,
wants to die to redeem the world – to bring an end to a form of human existence he
judges humiliating and unworthy, and to usher in a radically new era in which man can
at last live in dignity and true happiness. In scriptural terminology, he wants to ‘pour out
his blood for many’ (Mark 14: 24) – although he is not a Christian, has at best a tenuous
belief in God, anticipates no afterlife, and expects the rewards of the salvation he brings
about to be manifest here on earth, not in Heaven.
Not surprisingly, Kirillov has provoked a measure of critical disagreement. Notable
among the admirers are André Gide and Albert Camus, both of whom wrote about him
at some length. For Gide, an early enthusiast for Dostoievskii’s novels, Kirillov is a char-
acter who ‘builds up an entire system of metaphysics, containing Nietzsche in embryo,
on the premise of self-destruction’ (Gide, 1949: 16).2 For Camus, who devotes a section
of Le Mythe de Sisyphe to Kirillov, Dostoievskii traces an ‘indescribable spiritual adven-
ture’ which expresses the theme of ‘logical suicide’ with ‘the most admirable range and
depth’ (Camus, 1965a: 185, 183).3 Joseph Frank, in his detailed and wide-ranging study
of Dostoievskii’s life and works, describes Kirillov as a character of ‘pathos and sublim-
ity’ and ‘one of [Dostoievskii’s] greatest inspirations’ (Frank, 1995: 470), while more
recently, the critic Kenneth Lantz refers to him as ‘the greatest theoretician of suicide in
Dostoevsky’s fiction’ (Lantz, 2004: 427). Not all reactions have, however, been so posi-
tive. The noted scholar of Russian literature and history, Ronald Hingley, describes
Kirillov as ‘one of Dostoevsky’s most overrated characters’, arguing that his ‘philoso-
phizing’ and ‘pseudo-profound’ statements about God and why he should kill himself
‘contribute some of the least interesting pages in [the book]’ (Hingley, 1962: 160, 161).
A more recent critic pronounces Kirillov ‘a madman with a mad theory’ who has ‘lost
most of the skills for living and let his obsessions break down his contacts with reality’
(Belknap, 2002: 139), while another dismisses him rather brusquely as ‘manifestly mad’
(Davison, 1999: 125).4
Who, then, is Kirillov? Is it true that his ‘philosophizing’ is of little account and
that his self-appointed role as redeemer is just a ‘mad theory’? Or are Gide and Camus
closer to the truth in finding something of profound importance in his character –
something that, as Camus argues, corresponds closely with our modern sensibility
which ‘thrives on metaphysical problems’ (Camus, 1965a: 182). The present essay
explores the world of Kirillov’s suicidal idea and seeks to explain why he believes in
it so passionately.5

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The psychological idiom of Dostoievskii’s novels seems so modern that one easily
forgets that he began his writing career when Romanticism was still a potent force. His
first loves included Walter Scott, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo and George Sand, and
as late as 1876, when he learnt of George Sand’s death, he recalled ‘what that name has
meant in my life; how many delights, how much veneration this poetess has evoked in
me at the time, and how many joys, how much happiness she has given me!’ (Dostoevsky,
1949: 342). Romanticism is a many-sided phenomenon but Albert Camus is surely on
firm ground when he argues that a key theme is rebellion but that ‘at this stage, by putting
emphasis on its powers of defiance and refusal, rebellion forgets its positive content’
(Camus, 1965b: 458). A revealing case is Chateaubriand’s René, one of Romanticism’s
foundational figures and an early example of an anti-hero. The hero or heroine of seven-
teenth-century classical drama – Corneille’s Horace or Racine’s Andromache, for
instance – were essentially affirmative figures for whom human life, to be worth living,
must always be more than a mere succession of transient events. A life lived with integ-
rity and honour, they assert, is a life harnessed to a higher, unifying value, such as patriot-
ism or fidelity in love; and if circumstances require, one must choose death rather than
abandon this indispensable but ennobling transcendence.6 René, also, is ready to choose
death – at one point he resolves to commit suicide – but his motivation might well be
described as the classical aspiration turned inside out. Finding himself in a disillusioned,
post-Revolutionary world in which all notions of transcendence, religious or otherwise,
have fallen by the wayside, René discovers that wherever he turns, everything has
‘degenerated into sophisticated reasoning, impiety, and corruption’. ‘Neither an elevated
language nor profound feelings were required of me’, he observes bitterly, and ‘My time
was spent merely demeaning my existence to bring it down to the level of society’
(Chateaubriand, 1969: 126, 127). Suicide beckons, but not as a means of affirming a
higher value – there are none – but out of ‘disgust’ for life, to use his term, and an over-
whelming feeling of desolation (1969: 130, 131). Romanticism, in this guise at least,
reverses the classical model and experiences transcendence not as presence but as loss
and abandonment – not as a realizable ideal (even if one were prepared to sacrifice one’s
life) but as a door that has closed. There is rebellion of a kind but, as Camus says, rebel-
lion without positive content. Hence the characteristic, Romantic taedium vitae. The
world is a place from which God and all forms of transcendence have departed, leaving
only emptiness and a sense of longing – a place where, in John Keats’s words in ‘Ode to
a Nightingale’, ‘men sit and hear each other groan’ and ‘Where youth grows pale, and
spectre-thin, and dies; / Where but to think is to be full of sorrow’.
Placed beside certain of Dostoievskii’s characters – Ivan Karamazov and Kirillov are
prime examples – this response resembles a form of quietism, and a quietism they refuse
to accept. God must be called to account, these characters insist, and if found wanting,
condemned. In ‘returning his ticket’, as Camus points out, Ivan ‘puts God on trial’,
denouncing his creation as inadmissible (Camus, 1965b: 465), and Kirillov’s aim, as we
shall see, is no less drastic. This is metaphysical struggle of an entirely new kind.
Outraged beyond endurance, and no longer willing to tolerate an absentee deity, these
rebels round on God and storm the gates of heaven. Their aim is to settle the matter once
and for all, even if extreme measures are required. Whatever the cost, they declare, the
voice of suffering humanity must finally be heard.

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Kirillov’s suicide is one such extreme measure. When he kills himself, Kirillov
explains, he will become God – or more specifically the ‘man-god’ – and this one action
will signal the end of the tyrannical regime that humanity has endured since the dawn of
time. ‘There will be a new man, happy and proud’, he announces. ‘And the world will
change, and deeds will change, and thoughts, and all feelings.’ There will be a new meta-
physical order, a new form of human consciousness, and all this will be so profound in
its effects, Kirillov believes, that man may even change physically. God will be dethroned,
and from that moment ‘history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the
destruction of God, and from the destruction of God to … the physical changing of earth
and man’ (Dostoevsky, 1994: 115).7
One obvious temptation is to conclude, along with critics such as those mentioned
earlier, that Kirillov is simply mad, and this view is in fact shared by some of the charac-
ters in the novel. The narrator (who sometimes figures as a marginal character in the
work) listens patiently to Kirillov’s theory that man will replace God and then departs
saying to himself, ‘He’s crazy, of course’ (Dostoevsky, 1994: 116, 117). Shatov, Kirillov’s
erstwhile friend, refers to him as ‘this maniac’ (1994: 248), a view shared by Peter
Verkovensky who, moreover, is counting on the ‘maniac’s’ suicide to further his own
plans (1994: 612). Yet on closer examination, the matter is not as straightforward as it
seems. First, setting aside his suicidal theory, Kirillov is one of the saner and more engag-
ing characters in Demons. He has an unassuming, slightly childlike temperament (at their
first meeting, the narrator notices his ‘most childlike expression’ that seemed to suit him
so well (1994: 96)), which is reflected in his simple, sometimes awkward, way of
expressing himself,8 and, allied to this, there is an obvious generosity, honesty and sense
of human dignity. Thus, for instance, he is exasperated by Liputin’s persistent distortions
of the truth; he tries to protect the defenceless Mary Lebyadkin against her brother’s
drunken rages; he has a simple, unaffected love of children; he willingly offers his mea-
gre funds to assist Shatov when the latter’s wife arrives destitute and on the point of
giving birth; and he has an intense, almost visceral, loathing for the duplicitous Peter
Verkovensky, indignantly calling him ‘scoundrel’ and ‘viper’ to his face. When required,
Kirillov also proves to be sensible and practical, qualities he reveals in the episode in
which he acts as Stavrogin’s reliable second in the duel with Garganov. A second point
to bear in mind is that madness is, after all, a somewhat relative term in Demons (and
perhaps, one might say, in all Dostoievskii’s later novels), where disturbed and extreme
states of mind are hardly a rarity. There is Mary Lebyadkin, for example, who takes ref-
uge in a fantasy world and no longer recognizes her ‘Prince’ even when he is standing
before her; there is Stephan Verkovensky who, after his final breach with Varvara
Stavrogin, sets off on foot ‘raising “the banner of a great idea” and going to die for it on
the high road’ (1994: 630); there is Peter Verkovensky, convinced that Russia must pass
through a period of necessary depravity in which men will turn into ‘vile, cowardly,
cruel, self-loving slime’, after which he will install Stavrogin as the new Tsar (1994: 420,
421); and there is Stavrogin himself, who responds to good and evil with the same icy
indifference and eventually hangs himself. If Kirillov is mad, in other words, there are
others in the novel who are not far behind, and the notion of madness alone tells us very
little about his character in particular. Finally, and most importantly, even his suicidal
credo – his extraordinary belief that man will become God – should not be simply

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brushed aside without analysis as a ‘mad theory’. Kirillov is depicted as a thoughtful,

conscientious person and Dostoievskii structures the narrative in ways that allow him
opportunities to explain his theory at considerable length. His manner of expressing him-
self often gives his arguments an air of clumsiness, but there is no suggestion that he is
unintelligent or unable to think coherently. If this is madness, there seems at least to be
method in it. These are not the aimless ramblings of a simpleton or a fool.
What, then, is Kirillov’s reasoning? What steps have led to his fateful conclusion? A
useful place to begin is his view of God – the God he aims to replace. Kirillov is not
given to lengthy disquisitions about the nature of God but the general outlines of his
thinking are not difficult to discern. Kirillov, as Dostoievskii reminds us from time to
time, is an engineer, and his conception of God, not surprisingly, reflects an engineer’s
pragmatic cast of mind. This is a deity without theological complications. God is the
creator of the world and of the laws of nature that govern it. To some extent, he resembles
the divine clockmaker of the eighteenth-century philosophes whose function is little
more than to set the universe in motion and ensure that it runs according to its fixed laws.
But Kirillov is more than a technician. As we have seen, he is also a man of feeling, a
man sensitive to human suffering – something he experienced first-hand in his five dif-
ficult years in the United States where he and Shatov went to ‘test on ourselves the condi-
tion of man in the hardest social position’ (1994: 138). In Kirillov’s eyes, God is
responsible for far more than the physical workings of the world: he is also answerable
for the misfortune and misery that flow from his handiwork, and this is what counts most
of all. The world is God’s creation – his ‘machine’, so to speak – but it is a creation in
which men suffer and are unhappy, and are haunted by the fear of death.
This machine, moreover, is implacable: there is no sign that it might be the creation of
a loving and merciful God. Shortly before his suicide, in a frame of mind somewhere
between ecstasy and delirium, Kirillov speaks briefly about the Crucifixion. He is not a
Christian,9 but he nonetheless retains a deep admiration for the man Jesus, a person of
such purity and goodness, he believes, that he almost seems an exception to the laws of
nature – a miracle. ‘This man was the highest on all the earth’, he tells Verkovensky in
his simple, awkward way. ‘There has not been one like Him, before or since, not ever,
even to the point of miracle.’ Yet even a man like this, Kirillov points out, was not spared.
When he was on the cross, he ‘believed so much that he said to another: “This day you
will be with me in paradise”’. But then ‘the day ended, they both died, went, and did not
find either paradise or resurrection. What had been said would not prove true.’ Thus,
Kirillov concludes, ‘The laws of nature did not pity even This One, did not pity even their
own miracle, but made Him, too, live amidst a lie and die for a lie.’ Manifestly then, God
and his creation are without compassion or mercy. Goodness counts for nothing and the
laws of nature, Kirillov adds bitterly, are merely a ‘devil’s vaudeville’ (1994: 618).
One might perhaps object that, after all, human life is not unrelieved suffering and
that, as the narrator quietly points out to Kirillov, there are certain moments when man
‘loves life’. But Kirillov has already considered this and the thought only rouses him to
anger – an anger that reveals the determined high-mindedness that underlies his thinking.
Happiness, he replies, is simply a lure – a ‘deceit’ to use his word – and to accept an iniq-
uitous universe simply because it affords occasional moments of pleasure is craven and
contemptible. ‘Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear’, he protests indignantly,

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his eyes flashing – that is, man settles for the inexcusable to enjoy the meagre benefits of
‘life now’. ‘That is base’, he exclaims, ‘That is the whole deceit!’ (1994: 115). The
riposte highlights the strength of feeling behind Kirillov’s metaphysical rebellion.
Compromise is not possible. To consent to an evil creation in exchange for momentary
pleasures is the vile act of a man without compassion or conscience. And Kirillov, we
quickly see, is not such a man.
How, then, should a man of conscience – a man who will not stoop to being ‘base’ –
respond? In particular, if he is a practical man like the engineer Kirillov, and not a mere
armchair theorist, what can he do? Here, as elsewhere, Kirillov reasons logically. Man
cannot change the laws of nature. And he cannot insulate himself from them: there is
nowhere to run and hide. Therefore, there is only one option: he must quit this world; he
must commit suicide. But is that not simply admitting defeat and capitulating to God’s
merciless regime? Kirillov’s answer is no. As long as suicide is freely chosen and not the
result of emotional causes such as grief or despair (which would signify capitulation), it is
a way – in fact the only way – of showing that man is the equal of this tyrant god. Man did
not create the world but he can, nonetheless, choose whether or not to live in it. If he
wishes, he can simply repudiate the system that has been thrust upon him. Certainly, he
might be intimidated by the fear of a painful death. But if death is instantaneous – if, as
Kirillov explains to the narrator, it were like a huge stone that suddenly fell on you – there
would be no pain, so this fear is illusory. The solution to man’s predicament is therefore
obvious. Once he recognizes that death can be painless, man can simply opt out of crea-
tion, and in doing so reveal a power equal to God’s. ‘He who overcomes pain and fear will
himself be God’, Kirillov enthuses. Then the new era will dawn. The new man, ‘happy
and proud’, will emerge (1994:114, 115). Moreover, once Kirillov has committed suicide,
there will be no need for others to follow suit. His freely chosen death will have demon-
strated the power of the human will once and for all. It will be a ‘pedagogical suicide’ as
Camus points out (Camus, 1965a: 185). A modern-day redeemer, a new Suffering Servant,
Kirillov will have ‘poured out his blood for many’ and no further sacrifice will be required.
As long as his suicide is performed for the right reason – that is, without fear, unadulter-
ated by motivations such as grief or despair, and solely as proof of man’s sovereign power
to choose life or death – it will be an act of salvation for all humanity. Man will become
the ‘man-god’, Kirillov explains to Stavrogin, rather than the ‘God-man’ – that is, the man
who raises himself to God’s level, rather than the god who descends and comes among
men. And Kirillov – ‘magnanimous Kirillov’, as Stavrogin later calls him – will be the
first, the one who shows the way (1994: 238, 619, 676).10
But supposing there is no God? What if there is merely some mute, impassive destiny
that governs the affairs of men, dispensing human suffering blindly and arbitrarily?
Kirillov has thought of this too. If God does exist, his tyranny will be brought to an end
and a new, liberated man, no longer cowed by fear, will walk the earth. If God does not
exist, Kirillov tells the sceptical and impatient Peter Verkovensky, man obviously has a
duty (Kirillov stresses the word) to proclaim his power over life and death – his complete
independence, his ‘self-will’. Not to do so, he insists, would be like not stooping to pick
up an object of inestimable value. It would be ‘as if a poor man received an inheritance,
got scared, and doesn’t dare go near the bag, thinking he’s too weak to own it’ (1994:
617). In Kirillov’s eyes, the crucial task is to reverse the relationship between man and

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the laws of nature, whether God is the author of those laws or not. Man must be saved
– not from sin, but from his age-old subjection, his long-held belief that he can never be
the equal of the powers that govern his existence and oppress him. Once this threshold
has been crossed, with Kirillov showing the way, men will become lords of creation
whether God exists or not. Once you recognize this, he tells Verkovensky, ‘You are king,
and you will not kill yourself but will live in the chiefest glory’ (1994: 619).11
Earlier, we noted Ronald Hingley’s comment that Kirillov’s ‘philosophizing’ contrib-
utes ‘some of the least interesting pages’ in Demons. It is not until the passage describing
Kirillov’s suicide, Hingley argues, that he ‘ceases to be the most tedious figure [in the
book]’ (Hingley, 1962: 160, 161). In a similar vein, certain recent commentators, as men-
tioned earlier, have tended to dismiss Kirillov’s theory of suicide as out-and-out mad-
ness, implying, perhaps, that readers might safely dismiss this aspect of his character as
relatively unimportant. Whether or not Kirillov is tedious is, of course, a judgement each
reader must make for himself or herself, although it is worth noting that many, including
André Gide and Albert Camus, have not shared this view. But whatever one may feel
about that matter, it is vital to recognize that Kirillov’s ‘philosophizing’ – his justification
for his freely chosen suicide – is in no sense an optional extra to his character or a mere
intellectual embellishment. Kirillov’s philosophy is fundamental to his psychology – to
the way he thinks, feels and acts – and to appreciate the significance of this point it is
worth reflecting briefly on certain important developments that had taken place in
European literature over the decades preceding Dostoevsky’s novels.
Nineteenth-century literature had seen the growing importance of what André Malraux
aptly calls characters ‘whose acts are determined by an ideology’ – that is, characters
who, in different ways, act according to what they think (Malraux, 1970: 30, 31).12 This
had by no means always been the case. The transcendent values of the heroes and hero-
ines of Racine and Corneille – ardent love or a deep sense of patriotism, for example –
function essentially as predetermined ‘fates’: they are ruling passions that the audience
or reader accepts as ‘givens’ for the characters concerned, in the same way as they accept
Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other or the unalterable enmity of the Montagues and
Capulets. This is not to suggest that such characters lack lucidity; indeed it is their keen
awareness of the predicaments into which their passions lead them that so often height-
ens the sense of tragedy. But their lucidity is ultimately witness and servant to the passion
– the transcendent value – that drives them; it is not the ruling principle of their
psychology.
As Malraux argues, this psychological paradigm was challenged in a fundamental
way at the close of the eighteenth century, most notably by Choderlos de Laclos’s novel,
Les Liaisons dangereuses, and in particular, by the leading characters, Mme de Merteuil
and the Vicomte de Valmont.13 With these two figures, the psychological tables are
turned and lucidity gains the upper hand. Life now becomes something to be ‘thought
out’ beforehand, something in which ‘fate’ plays at best a subordinate role. This was a
psychological sea-change with major consequences for literary creation over the dec-
ades that followed. Merteuil’s and Valmont’s field of action was quite narrow: in the
static world of ancien régime aristocracy, victories and defeats were usually restricted
to the drawing-room or the boudoir. But in the aftermath of the Revolution, and espe-
cially of Napoleon’s dazzling rise from obscurity, the range of opportunities increased

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enormously, giving rise to that familiar nineteenth-century figure, the ambitieux (such as
Julien Sorel or Eugène de Rastignac) for whom the arena of victory and defeat is much
larger. Many of Dostoievskii’s characters also bear the marks of this literary heritage.
Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment is a direct descendant of Rastignac and the ech-
oes of Napoleon can still be clearly heard, even if Raskolnikov’s ideology gives them a
new and more perilous significance. Where a number of Dostoievskii’s characters are
concerned, however, the field of action becomes broader still, moving from the social to
the metaphysical – from the individual within society to the place of man within creation
as a whole, from relationships between people to the relationship between man and God.
To describe Kirillov as a ‘metaphysical character’, to borrow Magarshack’s useful
phrase again, means precisely this. Kirillov is not simply a character possessing certain
psychological traits who also happens to ‘philosophize’. He is a character whose phi-
losophy is integral to his psychology. In the tradition we have been considering, Kirillov
is a person who acts according to what he thinks, and who thinks, above all, in meta-
physical terms – in terms of the ‘scheme of things’ and man’s place within it. His essence,
his driving force, is his ideology – his suicidal ‘idea’ to borrow his own term – which is
not simply a philosophical abstraction but something felt, something that shapes his
hopes and fears, and makes him the being he is. ‘Felt a thought?’ Kirillov repeats with
interest when Stavrogin happens to use the phrase. ‘That’s good. Many thoughts are there
all the time, and suddenly become new’ (Dostoevsky, 1994: 236). The thought – the idea
– that Kirillov feels so intensely is his ambition to redeem mankind from its metaphysical
subjection and he himself recognizes how powerfully the idea has affected him. ‘I know
it was not you who ate the idea’, Peter Verkovensky tells him derisively, ‘but the idea that
ate you, and so you won’t put [your suicide] off’. But Kirillov is not at all discounte-
nanced by the remark. ‘What?’ he replies. ‘The idea ate me? … Not me the idea? That’s
good. You have some small intelligence’ (1994: 558).14 Naturally enough, Dostoievskii
marries this metaphysical preoccupation to personality traits that help make it more plau-
sible: Kirillov, as we have seen, combines a serious, high-minded disposition with a kind
of childlike simplicity – qualities that might well go hand in hand with a conviction that
one decisive, redemptive act will change human life forever and usher in a new man
‘happy and proud’. But these traits are the accoutrements, so to speak, of his psychology,
not its essence. In Kirillov we see the merging of a determined will to challenge God –
the metaphysical combat discussed earlier that is one of the features distinguishing
Dostoievskii’s later novels from Romanticism – with the urge to act according to what
one thinks. The result is a character whose deepest thoughts and feelings are shaped by
an abhorrence of man’s metaphysical condition and a determination to change it. One
might, like Ronald Hingley, still find this tedious. It is, nonetheless, the very heart of
Kirillov’s psychology, not a mere appendage.15
Where does Kirillov’s apocalyptic state of mind ultimately lead? What are its deepest
implications? Here one needs to look more closely at his dealings with Peter Verkovensky
and the events on the night of his suicide. Prior to the action recounted in the novel,
Kirillov had been a member of the revolutionary group that Verkovensky is still leading
and manipulating. When the members of the group originally learnt of Kirillov’s inten-
tion to kill himself, they had asked him to postpone doing so until his suicide could prove
useful to their cause, their proposition being that Kirillov could leave a suicide note

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Allan 105

falsely claiming responsibility for one of their actions, thereby throwing the police off
the scent. This scheme comes to a head in the closing stages of the novel. As part of his
plan to murder Shatov (of which Kirillov is initially unaware), Verkovensky wants
Kirillov’s assurance that he will go through with his suicide when given the word, leav-
ing an appropriate note. Kirillov, as mentioned, detests ‘the viper’ Verkovensky and
becomes particularly hostile when the latter implies that he is under an obligation to kill
himself – that he has made ‘an agreement’ and given a ‘pledge’ to do so, which he must
now honour. Kirillov is incensed not only by Verkovensky’s characteristic distortion of
the facts (‘I did not pledge, I consented’, he points out (1994: 375)) but above all, as we
might expect, by the suggestion that his decision to kill himself will be influenced by
anything other than his own free, untrammelled will. The tense interactions between the
two provide a vivid picture of their very different psychologies – on the one hand, the
devious, spiteful Verkovensky who, despite a show of interest, understands little and
cares less about Kirillov’s real motives for killing himself (privately regarding him as a
‘maniac’, as we have seen), but who is alarmed, nonetheless, at the possibility that
Kirillov might not go ahead with his plan; and on the other hand, the honest, kind-hearted
Kirillov, striving to control his loathing for Verkovensky, but driven above all by his
fervent desire to redeem mankind, and flaring up at the least suggestion that his suicide
will be a consequence of anything but his own free will.
Why, however, does Kirillov agree to go along with this sordid plan? He gives his
answer: ‘I determined tonight that it makes no difference to me’, he tells Verkovensky
in response to yet another offensive remark from the latter: ‘We’re not going to back
out, eh?’ (1994: 611). But why does it make no difference? Kirillov’s thinking can be
guessed easily enough. To be concerned about the motives others might attribute to
his suicide would be to allow that act to remain linked in some way to the world of
human affairs.16 It would indicate that he has not yet succeeded in cutting all ties and
is still influenced by factors other than his own will – a possibility which, of course,
he cannot accept. This becomes even clearer when his decision that ‘it makes no dif-
ference’ is put to one last, agonizing test. In his final conversation with Verkovensky,
Kirillov learns that the crime to which his suicide will be linked is the murder of
Shatov and that Verkovensky is the perpetrator. At first the news is too much. Kirillov
baulks and refuses to cooperate. Shatov, after all, had been his friend. ‘Not Shatov, not
for anything’, he cries. But this ‘anything’ cannot, of course, be allowed to stand:
Kirillov would then be permitting Shatov’s murder and his loathing of Verkovensky
to influence his act of suicide. So in a state of mind close to frenzy, he reverses his
decision. ‘For three years, I have been searching for the attribute of my divinity’, he
exclaims, ‘and I have found it: the attribute of my divinity is – Self-will. That is all,
by which I can show in the main point my insubordination and my new fearsome
freedom.’ The freedom is ‘fearsome’ because it will baulk at nothing, not even the
despicable murder for which he will now assume responsibility. And this total disen-
gagement from the world – this ‘insubordination’ – leads on to a kind of scornful
hilarity. ‘I’ll sign that I killed Shatov’, he tells the relieved Verkovensky. ‘Dictate
while I’m laughing. I’m not afraid of the thoughts of arrogant slaves!’ And the scorn
even stretches to childish mockery: ‘Wait!’ he says, ‘I want a face at the top with its
tongue sticking out’ (1994: 612, 619, 620).

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106 Journal of European Studies 44(2)

In Kirillov’s last moments before shooting himself, the radical withdrawal from life
implicit in these words even manifests itself in his physical being. The suicide note com-
pleted, he rushes into the next room which is in darkness. Verkovensky follows, candle in
hand, and finds him standing in a corner, half-concealed behind a wardrobe – ‘and standing
very strangely, motionless, drawn up, his arms flat at his sides, his head raised, the back of
the head pressed hard to the wall, in the very corner, as if he wished to conceal and efface
all of himself’. Bewildered, Verkovensky shouts and lunges at him, but the figure ‘did not
move, did not even stir one of its members – as if it were made of stone or wax’. Kirillov
is now like a living corpse: ‘The pallor of the face was unnatural, the black eyes were com-
pletely immobile, staring at some point in space.’ Provoked by Verkovensky seizing him by
the shoulder, Kirillov at last reacts and, in a gesture combining his loathing for this man
with his childish urge to ‘stick out his tongue’ at the world, he bends down, knocks the
candle from Verkovensky’s hands, and bites hard on his little finger. Verkovensky strikes
him with his revolver, tears his finger free and flees. A few moments later, a shot rings out
and Kirillov kills himself with a bullet through the temple (1994: 623−5).
Ultimately, then, Kirillov’s suicide discloses more about the nature of his divinity than
he himself seems aware. Self-will – total independence of action – is undoubtedly the
basic element: he kills himself to demonstrate that man is not a helpless victim but can
act with godlike freedom. Yet, as this final scene reveals, this divine independence ulti-
mately transforms Kirillov into a human replica of the God of indifference he is seeking
to supplant. Here we see Dostoievskii determinedly exploring the full implications of the
character he has created. As discussed, God in Kirillov’s theology is responsible for the
laws of nature and those laws are utterly indifferent to human concerns. But if his suicide
is to be the ‘right suicide’ (as he might say) it also must, as these final episodes reveal, be
indifferent to human concerns, including human suffering. This, one might interpose,
points to the one serious criticism to be made of Albert Camus’s valuable account of
Kirillov. Camus’s analysis is similar in many respects to that given here, but he does not
make it clear that although Kirillov’s action springs initially from high-minded aspira-
tions, it ultimately implies a callous unconcern, even contempt, for the suffering human-
ity he is ostensibly seeking to redeem.17 In the end, this generous, high-minded man, who
loves children, tries to protect Mary Lebyadkin, helps Shatov in his hour of need, and is
ready to sacrifice his life to redeem mankind, is the same man who allows himself to be
a tool in Peter Verkovensky’s vicious intrigues, takes responsibility for the murder of a
former friend, and goes to his death reviling men as ‘arrogant slaves’. Like the old God,
the new one soars far above human affairs, viewing good and evil with equal indiffer-
ence. In the final analysis, Kirillov’s act of self-sacrifice – his suicidal act of redemption
– produces a simulacrum of the aloof, heartless divinity against whom he is rebelling.
It should be stressed, however, that nothing in Kirillov’s final moments indicates a
breach, or inconsistency, with what has gone before. George Steiner writes that ‘Kirilov
(sic) kills himself in abject despair, because he could not kill himself in an affirmation of
freedom’ (Steiner, 1996: 213), while another critic argues that the ‘gruesome details’ of
Kirillov’s death suggest that Dostoievskii changed his mind and decided to ‘punish’ him
for his heretical ideas (Brody, 1975: 295, 296).18 But interpretations of this kind raise two
major difficulties. First, they suggest that Dostoievskii may have created an incoherent
character – one that is internally inconsistent – and Kirillov does not give that

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Allan 107

impression; and, second, they provide a solution to a non-existent problem. Kirillov no

more dies in despair than he lives in despair, and there is nothing in his determined attack
on Verkovensky or his final, repeated cries of ‘Now, now, now, now …’ before he pulls
the trigger, that suggests a change of heart or a disavowal of his redemptive ambitions.
Kirillov goes to his death resolutely, in fulfilment of his ‘idea’. As we have seen, the
implications of his act are not fully apparent to him: he is unaware, or so it seems, that
the state of mind demanded by the ‘right’ suicide – indifference to all human concerns
– is the very state of mind against which he is rebelling, and that concealed within the
would-be man-god lies the vacant stare of a figure ‘of stone or wax’. Dostoievskii
describes the scene with merciless precision (the term ‘gruesome’ is excessive) and there
is no mistaking the nature of this final consequence, but it is a manifestation of some-
thing always implicit in his ‘idea’ not a deviation from it or a last-minute recognition by
Kirillov that he has somehow been mistaken.
In an essay on Saint-Just, André Malraux compares this ‘Archangel of the Terror’ to
‘so many of Dostoevsky’s characters whose simple and implacable logic he shares’
(Malraux, 1970: 125). The comment sums up Kirillov admirably. The engineer Kirillov
certainly attempts to solve his metaphysical dilemma through logic, and his logic, like
the conception of God on which it is based, is indeed simple.19 But it is also implacable.
In Kirillov’s eyes, the redemption of man is no mere subject for philosophical debate.
Action alone will decide the matter. Either man is capable of freely chosen suicide or he
is not: either he is able to quit the tyrant-god’s domain at will – for example, by simple
pressure on a trigger – or he is not. There is no half-way house – no ‘theoretical’ redemp-
tion. Kirillov’s logic leads necessarily to suicide.20
As we have seen, this logic hides a contradiction. A proposition that bore all the hall-
marks of a noble, altruistic aspiration harbours within itself an underlying contempt for
the humanity it professed to save: Kirillov the redeemer becomes the Kirillov who scorns
mankind and withdraws into corpse-like immobility, sinking into a state closely resem-
bling insanity. None of this, however, diminishes his stature as a fictional character.
Despite the reservations expressed here about aspects of Albert Camus’s commentary, it
is hard not to agree with his view that Kirillov articulates the theme of ‘logical suicide’
with ‘the most admirable range and depth’ – Dostoievskii pursuing this theme to its ulti-
mate, desolate conclusion. In addition, as we have seen, Kirillov, is important as a wholly
‘metaphysical character’. He is one of the earliest figures in modern literature whose
psychology is founded entirely on a metaphysical ambition – on a goal that transcends
man’s social condition and is based instead on concerns about the fundamental meaning
of human existence. These themes are, of course, familiar enough in European philo-
sophical thought, where they evoke names such as Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche,
but with Kirillov and similar figures such as Ivan Karamazov, they move squarely into
the field of fictional literature, escaping the realm of abstractions and entering the domain
of human psychology – the realm of human fears, joys and aspirations. This development
had major consequences in European literature, as we know: metaphysical concerns
became central for a number of leading twentieth-century writers such as Malraux,
Ionesco and Camus. Dostoievskii’s Kirillov, however, is one of the prime movers. If
Camus is correct in saying that modern sensibility ‘thrives on metaphysical problems’,
Kirillov was part of that sensibility from the outset.

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Notes
  1. The novel’s title has been translated as Demons, The Devils, or The Possessed. The translation
used for the present article is Dostoevsky (1994).
  2. Gide’s study was first published in French in 1923.
  3. All translations from French sources are my own.
  4. In an essay in the same volume, M. V. Jones writes that ‘Kirillov seems entirely superflu-
ous, whether as a contributor to the plot or to the philosophical dialogue’ (Jones, 1999: 111).
Kirillov is clearly not superfluous to the plot since Peter Verkovensky’s plan to murder Shatov
involves using his suicide as a cover. Jones does not specify what he understands by ‘the
philosophical dialogue’ (presumably of the novel as a whole). As we shall see, Kirillov’s
own ‘philosophical dialogue’ is by no means superfluous to his character. Interestingly,
Dostoievskii’s notes for Demons indicate that Kirillov was originally introduced for reasons
specifically related to the plot (see Wasiolek, 1968: 302).
  5. I should like to thank Dr Diane Oenning Thompson for her helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this article.
  6. I have discussed this issue in more detail in Allan (2012: 124,125,128,129).
  7. After ‘from the destruction of God’, the narrator interjects: ‘To the gorilla?’ but the enthusi-
astic Kirillov ignores him.
  8. Some commentators claim that Kirillov’s imperfect mastery of Russian indicates that he is a
‘Westernizer’ who has lost touch with Russian culture, a consequence, it is sometimes argued,
of his time abroad or the fact that he is an engineer. See, for example, Leatherbarrow (2005: 13,
118) and Peace (1992: 156, 157). The proposition is questionable. First, Kirillov himself explic-
itly rejects it: Narrator: ‘why do you speak Russian not quite correctly? Can it be you forgot in
your five years abroad?’ Kirillov: ‘No, not because of abroad. I’ve spoken this way all my life’
(Dostoevsky, 1994: 116). Second, while the term ‘Westernizer’ might reasonably be applied to
Stephan Verkovensky and Karmazinov, both of whom are intellectuals well read in European
literature, Kirillov is portrayed as a practical man – an engineer – and his time abroad was spent
in the United States where he went with Shatov to ‘try out the life of the American worker
[and] … to test on ourselves the condition of man in the hardest social position’ (1994: 138).
The fact that Kirillov is an engineer does not necessarily imply that he is ‘Westernized’. Russia
had its own engineering schools – Dostoievskii himself attended the prestigious Academy of
Engineers in St Petersburg – and there is no suggestion anywhere in the novel that Kirillov
gained his qualifications in the West or that engineering is in some way a non-Russian profes-
sion. Kirillov’s background as an engineer is certainly important, but for quite other reasons, as
we shall see. Also worth noting is the following comment in Dostoievskii’s notes for Demons:
‘Kirilov (sic) embodies an idea which belongs to the people: to sacrifice oneself, without a
moment’s hesitation, for the truth … To sacrifice oneself, to sacrifice everything for the truth
– that is the national trait of this generation’. The comment sits uncomfortably with the thesis
that Kirillov was intended as a ‘Westernizer’ (Wasiolek, 1968: 408).
  9. One senses that Kirillov may perhaps have been a devout Christian at an earlier stage in his
life although this is not stated explicitly. Dostoievskii makes it clear that both Kirillov and
Shatov have been influenced by Stavrogin and while the precise nature of this influence is not
indicated, one might perhaps conjecture that, for Kirillov, one result was a parting of the ways
with Christian belief.
10. It has been suggested (see Boertnes, 1983: 65) that the inversion – ‘man-god’ instead of ‘God-
man’ – implies that Kirillov is an Antichrist. The proposition seems questionable. Although
biblical descriptions vary, the Antichrist is generally seen as a being who aims to deceive
man and lead him astray, perhaps to destruction. Kirillov’s intentions are quite the reverse.

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His ambition is to save mankind and to inaugurate a new era of human dignity and happiness.
Rowan Williams also suggests that Kirillov is a ‘kind of Antichrist’. (Williams, 2008: 92).
11. One critic writes that Kirillov’s suicidal logic ‘begins with the despair that comes from living
in a godless world’. Yet Kirillov, as we have seen, is not sure that God does not exist – his
logic holds whether God exists or not – and his point of departure is, in any case, not despair
but indignation at the humiliation of man condemned to live in a world in which he is merely
a victim (see Lantz, 2004: 427).
12. As this implies, Malraux is not using the term ‘ideology’ in its more limited, political sense.
13. See my more detailed discussion of this point in Allan (2012).
14. One might perhaps object that Kirillov’s strong attachment to his idea seems to clash with
his insistence that his suicide must be freely chosen. But there have been many systems of
belief – religions and ideologies, for example – that claim not only to be compatible with free-
dom but well-springs of freedom in its authentic form. Witness, for instance, the well-known
Christian claim in John 8:32: ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’,
and the Marxist belief that true freedom can only be found in commitment to the class strug-
gle. Kirillov, similarly, claims to be a herald of true freedom. His ‘logic’, unusual though it is,
is not invalidated by the mere fact that he is so strongly attached to it.
15. Mikhail Bakhtin comments perceptively:
If one were to think away the idea in which [Dostoievskii’s characters] live, their image
would be totally destroyed. In other words, the image of the hero is inseparably linked with
the image of an idea and cannot be detached from it. We see the hero in an idea and through
the idea, and we see the idea in him and though him.
Kirillov is not the ‘hero’ of Demons (with the dubious exception of Stavrogin, there is no
hero) but the comment is apt nonetheless (Bakhtin, 1984: 87).
16. Kirillov’s determination to sever all ties with human affairs – to be completely free – results
in an experience of ‘eternal harmony’ during one of his long, sleepless nights meditating on
his coming suicide. But he is aware that this experience is not his ultimate goal. When Shatov
warns him that an epileptic fit could result, he replies: ‘It won’t have time’ (Dostoevsky, 1994:
590, 591).
17. A similar criticism of Camus’s account has been made by certain other commentators,
although on grounds rather different from those given here (see, for example, Vincent, 1971;
Brody, 1975). However, these writers go somewhat further and in places suggest that Camus’s
basic understanding of Kirillov is mistaken, a view not shared by the present writer.
18. Ray Davison also seems to endorse the view that Kirillov dies in despair and suggests that his
final moments illustrate an inability to ‘reconcile the conclusions of his reason with the joyful
and optimistic feelings which spring from the heart’ (Davison, 1997: 80). But there is no indica-
tion in the episode in question that Kirillov is undergoing an internal struggle of this kind and,
if there were, it might well raise the possibility of internal inconsistency, as discussed here.
19. One further criticism that might be made of Camus’s analysis is that he makes Kirillov’s
thinking appear more complex than it is. The reasoning, Camus writes, is that ‘If God does not
exist, Kirillov is God. If God does not exist, Kirillov must kill himself. Kirillov must therefore
kill himself to become God’ (Camus, 1965a: 183). But as we have seen, whether or not God
exists is ultimately a matter of indifference to Kirillov. The crucial question is whether or not
man is capable of godlike powers, and above all the power to freely choose between life and
death. Kirillov must certainly kill himself to ‘become God’ but whether an existing God is
thereby displaced is ultimately a secondary concern. Camus clarifies his thinking a little later
by arguing that, in Kirillov’s eyes, ‘To become god is merely to be free on earth, not to serve
an immortal being’ (Camus, 1965a: 184). This is more satisfactory as long as one understands

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110 Journal of European Studies 44(2)

‘immortal being’ in a sufficiently vague sense, given that, for Kirillov, the power he is contest-
ing is sometimes seen simply as ‘the laws of nature’.
20. Commentators occasionally suggest that Kirillov’s ideas are based on the philosophy of
Ludwig Feuerbach. Richard Peace, for instance, writes that ‘[Kirillov’s] central belief is the
thesis of Feuerbach that man is god’, glossing Feuerbach’s position as the view that man ‘had
alienated his godhead to some non-existent mythical being, but it was man, or rather human-
ity that was god’ (Peace, 1992: 156) (see also Lantz, 2004: 140). The obvious difficulty this
argument encounters is that, for Feuerbach, the realization that, as he puts it, ‘religion is the
solemn unveiling of man’s hidden treasures’ and that ‘God is the manifestation of man’s
inner nature’ (Hanfi, 1972: 109) is an achievement of the intellect – a truth revealed through
enlightened philosophical thought: there is no suggestion that man’s attainment of divine
status might require a freely chosen act of suicide. Speculation about a ‘religion of humanity’
certainly seems to have been part of the intellectual ferment in Russia in the years prior to the
composition of Demons, and Feuerbach’s thinking, which was influential at the time, doubt-
less contributed to this. The suggestion that Kirillov is in some way a fictional realization of
Feuerbach’s philosophy is, however, quite another matter and is open to serious question.

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Author biography
Derek Allan is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra. His principal
research interests are European literature, visual art, and the philosophy of art. His most recent
publication is a book entitled Art and Time (2013). His article on Laclos’s Les Liaisons dan-
gereuses appeared in the Journal of European Studies in June 2012. A list of his publications
and conference papers can be found on his website at http://home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/
publications.html.

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