Fyodor Dostoevsky [Archive] - World Literature Forum

Stewart

08-Oct-2008, 17:57

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky [sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski or Dostoevskii] (November 11 [O.S. October 30] 1821 ? February 9 [O.S. January 28] 1881) was a Russian novelist and writer of fiction whose works include Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."

RELATED THREADS

The Brothers Karamazov (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/european-literature/2770-fyodor-dostoevsky-brothers-karamazov.html)

RELATED LINKS

Fyodor Dostoevsky on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky)
Dostoevsky Fan Site (http://www.fyodordostoevsky.com/)

Stewart

08-Oct-2008, 17:58

I'm sort of ashamed as regards Dostoevsky on two accounts: one, that it took so long to give him his own thread here; and two, that I've never read him.

Starting points?

titania7

08-Oct-2008, 18:36

Stewart,
Since Dostoevsky is my favorite writer, you can imagine how delighted I am that he now has his own thread. I was going to start one for him myself; however, I'm not currently reading any of his books. So, I'm glad you beat me to it!

First of all, I am surprised that you haven't yet explored the works of this giant of Russian literature. I have been in love with his work since I was in my mid-teens. However, there are several writers I should've read that I haven't yet gotten to. So, you are forgiven--by me, at least ;).

As far as recommendations go, I don't know you personally. So, I'm not completely sure what types of books you like. Obviously, you weren't terribly found of Leskov's Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District. I read it so long ago that I can barely remember it. It's certainly not stupendous Russian literature, however. Leskov is no Turgenev or Gogol, and he shouldn't even be compared to Dostoevsky.

If you liked Salinger a lot I would tell you to start with Dostoevsky's The Adolescent because it's considered to be the pre-cursor to A Catcher in the Rye. Yet I think I recall your saying you haven't read any Salinger (for the record, I've read almost all of Salinger except for The Catcher in the Rye). Thus.....I would say to either start with The Brothers Karamazov or The Possessed. Of course, Crime and Punishment is an obvious choice, and I do *highly* recommend that you read that at some point (preferably, quite soon). If you're more interested in which book is Dostoesvky's masterpiece than you are in my personal recommendation, read The Brothers Karamazov.

If you want to know my favorite, it's The Possessed. I like this work best because it's darkly humorous and very witty--and I appreciate wit, especially in Russian authors (actually, you could almost say that Russian writers have their own "brand" of humor).

The Idiot is also excellent, though (in my opinion) not as spectacular an achievement as TBK (The Brothers Karamazov) or The Possessed.

I would love it, Stewart, if you were to read The Possessed and post your thoughts on it here. It would be interesting to see if it gets you hooked on Dostoevsky. But of course I'm not trying to persuade you to choose The Possessed...am I? :)

Best,
Titania

PS If you haven't yet started on one of those Tolstoy books you recently bought, try Resurrection first. I liked it better than Anna Karenina, and it's *so* much shorter (plus, it's very moving--much more so, I think, than Anna K).

"There's nothing more difficult than being oneself:
no one believes you."
~The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky

titania7

08-Oct-2008, 19:10

You know, I just remembered, in light of my criticisms of Joyce Carol Oates on the Nobel Prize thread, that she wrote a fantastic essay on The Possessed. Regrettably, it's stored in my old computer. I truly do think Oates is at her very best in non-fiction. She has an interesting mind, but I have problems with her imagination ;).

When it comes to Dostoevsky, there is, of course, Notes from the Underground. And it is with a certain amount of chagrin that I admit I've never read it. I have a copy of it that I keep looking at--but I can't seem to actually pick it up and read it. When I was working in theatre, an actor I knew did a one-man show based around the text of Notes From the Underground. I never actually saw him perform this (it was before I knew him), but I heard it was amazing to behold.

Titania

"...the struggle for existence comes into every aspect of
life and, as everyone knows, is its only guiding force."
~The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky

rabbitfast

11-Oct-2008, 03:04

I'm glad to see this thread. :) I was in highschool the first time I read Dostoyevsky. I read The Idiot and loved it but then I took a long break and only picked Mr. D back up earlier this year when I read Crime and Punishment (every time I think of Raskolnikov...I get a splitting headache :D) and The Gambler. I also recently purchased Notes from Underground and hope to pick it up as soon as I'm done with my current read (Love in the Time of Cholera by GGM).

rabbitfast

01-Mar-2009, 22:15

It's been a while now since I finished Notes from Underground and I enjoyed it. It's a bit different than his other works and yet is still typically Dostoyevsky.

ferns_dad

25-May-2009, 20:23

White Nights is a good short story, as is the Insulted and Humilated.

I have a couple of excellent Russian published copies of a few of his books, beautifully manufactured (old Soviet press about 1975 vintage) english language.

I think some of the translators offer a lot of different interpretations on his writing. I like both Constance Garnett and David Margarshack very much.

JeremyDav

26-May-2009, 20:59

Crime and Punishment is forever my favorite novel, probably due to the unique theme of a failed philosophy. I LOVE Russian literature and Dostoevsky is my favorite of the novelists. The Brothers Karamazov was an experience I'll never forget, along with The Idiot. Notes From Underground is bitingly funny and a very insightful and eerie portrayal of the human psyche.

No other novelist has been such a psychologist, such a human critic. I'll always revere Dostoevsky.

Heteronym

31-May-2009, 19:10

Crime and Punishment just captures one's imagination and never lets go. I never felt so close to a protagonist as I did to Roskolnikov. I felt the burden he carried and the confusion, and I cheered at the hopeful ending. It's a pity the author never started the planed sequel wich dealt with redemption.

Inderjit Sanghera

31-May-2009, 19:28

ferns_dad

02-Jun-2009, 02:46

I think FD was one of the best novelists and short stories are great, too. His biographies are good to read to know how and why he wrote.

I always wanted to see a Disney-ization of C & P, in the same way they did Beauty and the Beast, little dancing axes?

How one gets fascistic thought from C & P, I'm afraid it says much more about you than it does about the book

AnnabelLee

06-Jun-2009, 23:57

Daniel del Real

10-Jun-2009, 00:03

Russian literature is abundant with great authors, but I believe,that Dostoevsky is the greatest after Pushkin. I've never read such novels as his, nobody can describe human nature better than Fedor Mikhailovich, his is a genius. And if you have an opportunity to read his novels in original language, it's perfect. Some world known authors cannot be translated rightly...
I'm glad to know that Dostoevsky is famous & loved not only in Russia :)

Hi Annabel, you seem to be an expert on Dostoievksi, and being Russian I have to ask you what would you recommend to read from him.
I've only read Karamazov Brothers about 4 years ago and I wasn't too enthusiast about the experience.
I was thinking to continue with Crime and Punishment, but I await for recommendations.

AnnabelLee

10-Jun-2009, 14:28

Hi Annabel, you seem to be an expert on Dostoievksi, and being Russian I have to ask you what would you recommend to read from him.
I've only read Karamazov Brothers about 4 years ago and I wasn't too enthusiast about the experience.
I was thinking to continue with Crime and Punishment, but I await for recommendations.

I'm not an expert...yet:) and unfortunately I haven't read all Dostoevsky's books, but I can recommend you to read Idiot and Netochka Nezvanova, these books are my favourite. And surely continue to read Crime and Punishment, I hope that you'll like it and I suppose that this book is rather easy to begin with.

JeremyDav

21-Jun-2009, 17:24

ferns_dad

21-Jun-2009, 17:47

Hi Annabel, you seem to be an expert on Dostoievksi, and being Russian I have to ask you what would you recommend to read from him.
I've only read Karamazov Brothers about 4 years ago and I wasn't too enthusiast about the experience.
I was thinking to continue with Crime and Punishment, but I await for recommendations.

I've read the great majority of his work.

I would recco reading some of the short stories first, IMO. Dream of a Ridiculous Man, White Nights, Notes from the Underground...

most of those stories were written in one or 2 sessions, most of his novels were written serialized for magazines, and in desparate need of money. it's amazing the quality of the work that resulted from such extreme situations, and with his epilepsy. An absolute GIANT of world lit.

bo453

23-Jun-2009, 01:07

Dostoesky is my most favorite russian writer I read The Brothers Karamazov and it just made me love dostoevsky.so far the brothers karamazov is one of my top 5 favorite books of all time. I haven't read much of him , I just started reading crime and punishment which is really good book so far.

Miriam

23-Jun-2009, 10:41

I like Dostoevsky. He had never written at least one book, which he had't felt himself, I think. Of genius author...

Emerilie

30-Jul-2009, 18:34

I read his Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
He's my favorite Russian writer, because he's not just a writer but a philosopher and a pscychologist. He understands human, madness, desire, fear, goodness, kindness, evil, lie... things about humans and things that make one human. I believe he wrote himself, he makes a connection between his novel, himself and the readers. I didn't read any of his earlier works except The Insulted and Humiliated, but it wasn't as impressive as his later works.

john h

30-Jul-2009, 22:58

All of you Dostoevsky lovers should read Leonid Tsypkin's novel "Summer In Baden-Baden" which takes Dostoesky as it's subject. It details Dostoevsky's gambling addiction and his enabling young wife. If you like books with an obsessive quality--stuff like Thomas Bernhard writes--you'll love this book.

Liam

30-Jul-2009, 23:37

All of you Dostoevsky lovers should read Leonid Tsypkin's novel "Summer In Baden-Baden" which takes Dostoesky as it's subject.
Why not Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg then?

Bjorn

31-Jul-2009, 00:19

All of you Dostoevsky lovers should read Leonid Tsypkin's novel "Summer In Baden-Baden" which takes Dostoesky as it's subject.
Seconded. We have a thread on it here (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/european-literature/111-leonid-tsypkin-summer-baden-baden.html).

beelzebubbles

31-Jul-2009, 01:36

Whether you find Raskolnikov's predicament convincing or not. Crime and Punishment is a mother of a mover. The reader is swept up in it as if they are on a rocket sled descent into hell.

One thing that struck me about the book was the grandiosity of the emotions of every character. I thought upon reading it, "is everyone in Russia a manic depressive." This book should be prefaced by the phrase, "We're all mad here."

I read some other short stories including Notes from the Underground but I was reading Gogol at the same time and my memory may have conflated them with The Overcoat and others.

ferns_dad

31-Jul-2009, 13:24

Too much happiness
By Alice Munro

short story in August Harper's Magazine

some mention of FMD, excellent story, also

kpjayan

31-Jul-2009, 15:22

All of you Dostoevsky lovers should read Leonid Tsypkin's novel "Summer In Baden-Baden" which takes Dostoesky as it's subject.

It might be of no use to anyone here.

There is a similar novel written by a Malayalam writer on the life of Dostoesky. Oru Sankeerthanam Pole ( like a hymn) by Perumbadavam Sreedharan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perumbadavam_Sreedharan).

from wiki :

Oru Sankeerthanam Pole

The novel Oru Sankeerthanam Pole was first published in 1993 and was released in its 37th edition on 1 November 2008[6] (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/#cite_note-5) after setting publishing records in 2005.[7] (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/#cite_note-6) It is a story based on the life of famous Russian writter, Fyodor Dostoevsky (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky) and his wife Anna.[8] (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/#cite_note-7) This highly successful novel has sold over 100,000 copies in about 12 years. This is a record in Malayalam literature (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/wiki/Malayalam_literature).

I dont think it is translated to other languages yet, but I have read the same in Malayalam.

Mirabell

17-Oct-2009, 11:49

Funny, I like "Idiot" the least of his 'great' novels. It's the only one which I won't reread in the new translation that's been coming out in German. I cannot really stand that book.

Manuel76

18-Oct-2009, 14:38

Brothers Karamazov, Demons and Idiot the three novels I love from Dostoievsky. I didn't like Crime and Punishment that much. Only four novels I read, I started The Raw Youth but somehow wasn't in the mood (first 20 pages from any Dostoievsky's book is a real effort, then it's a real pleassure).

Backwords

19-Oct-2009, 04:11

I read almost all of Dostoevski before I knew much about Russian literary history. The intensity of the inter-subjective state i.e. the "static tension" (as Andrei Tarkovsky put it in his book Sculpting in Time.) within his characters, in great contradistinction to the plot ( and "historical happenings") driven works of Tolstoy(and even somehow Turgenev), made Dostoevski a great favorite. Of course, thinking back, this is one of the authors that belonged to "me alone" in my school years.

In one of Samuel Beckett's early (age 26 or so) letters to his brother he says something like "no one captures the madness or mad energy of dialog like Dostoevsky". He then goes on to say "The Possessed must have been badly written even in the original, and is full of newspaper-ease". I can't think of any writer of Dostoevsky's stature who I have so often heard called simply bad.

I claim that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy greatly overshadow, in importance to the western cannon (even the world cannon of today.), the traditional and conservative "nationalist cult" favorites Pushkin and Larmontov. Dostoevsky said that out from under Gogol's Overcoat came Russian literature (or the new Russian novelists of psychology) and Virgina Wolf said of Dostoevski "he is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch." In the Wikipedia article on Dostoevski were Woolf is quoted she goes on to mention Shakespeare.

I remember years ago formulating a category which included Dostoevski, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Melville and Dickens for a kind of monolithic stature of world building, debating which was the best and perhaps still coming up with Shakespeare (although this could be cultural bias due to his lionization in the English speaking world.)

waalkwriter

19-Oct-2009, 06:27

I might be able to accept that, that Dostovetski and Tolstoy are overstated in the western canon. I would argue against that on Tolstoy, he was worshiped as near god in the Russian literary world from a young age and if not for his neurosis and constant personal crisis which led him to bury himself into his strange and reactionary Religious beliefs. Personally, I find War and Peace an awful novel, I would have students read it merely to teach them everything that is wrong and flawed with 19th Century prose; A character is introduced by a lengthy spill completely defining their character and then further paragraphs are devoted to intensely cataloging the subtleties of each infliction of voice and body motion. I love Anna Karenina though, he tempered his faults so much, he is more straight to the point and while the book contains its fair share of flat sections there are some which I marvel at, for instance when his brother dies, I can think of no book or passage that ever disturbed me so much, made me terrified of death, clinging to my bed as if it was I myself dying and trying to hang on to life, and then he amazingly ties then with his reaffirmation of his love and dependence on Kitty. Anna Karenina is in so many ways the better novel, it is the novel about people, the epic of human tragedy, stunning in its depth of emotion, sympathy, and display of hypocrisy in its society, while War and Peace is a novel of events and ideas which people act out in epic fashion.

learna

19-Oct-2009, 09:51

I've just read some essays by Brodsky and his Noble lecture. In his "Catastrophes in the Air" Brodsky developed the theme on literature in general and on Dostoevsky in particular. Maybe it will be interesting for you.

Manuel76

19-Oct-2009, 23:11

@Waalk:

19th century prose wrong and flawed? come on, there's little doubt XIX century is the golden age of the Novel, could it be possible with a prose wrong and flawed. Anyway those students should read George Eliot's Middlemarch (which I like) or anything by Balzac (and I love most of what Balzac wrote) if looking for those lengthy spills, and probably they would love both of them.

But, as I remember, not so many spills about characters in War and Peace, not about characters, not about rooms or dresses or anything but a lot of action and dialogue (well at least in my translation, but it's more than 1000 pages so I doubt there's something missing).

Backwords

19-Oct-2009, 23:58

waalkwriter

20-Oct-2009, 07:14

19th century prose wrong and flawed? come on, there's little doubt XIX century is the golden age of the Novel, could it be possible with a prose wrong and flawed. Anyway those students should read George Eliot's Middlemarch (which I like) or anything by Balzac (and I love most of what Balzac wrote) if looking for those lengthy spills, and probably they would love both of them.

But, as I remember, not so many spills about characters in War and Peace, not about characters, not about rooms or dresses or anything but a lot of action and dialogue (well at least in my translation, but it's more than 1000 pages so I doubt there's something missing).

You prove my other critique about War and Peace really; I noted its a high melodrama, a book of great events and ideas which people act out in epic fashion, while Anna Karenina is a personal epic about human tragedy.

But yes, a great deal of 19th century writing is extremely, exhaustively, lengthy and overwritten, I can only keep shuddering with my nightmare as I remember most of the first 50 straight pages of War and Peace, Anna Pavlovna was it not, where I am given a wonderfully technical outline of her character and then an elaborate ball which consists of a stream of people she meets and in depth commentary on how their tones and body language suggest their opinion and attitude to the neurotic Pavlovna, (neurotic to me), and then it continues with events and defining characters and intricate interactions for quite sometime but with little personal feeling, at least compared to Anna Karenina. And speaking of translations, mine was 1463 pages long ;)

Manuel76

20-Oct-2009, 19:31

?little feeling?!! but Waalkwriter? of course there?s little feeling, it?s a high society soiree in San Peterburg. The atmosphere is oppressive, mundane, affected. And it?s only about 20 pages, almost all dialogued. Descriptions are specific, quick, essential, no abstract concepts here. We know about the characters because of what they say and what they do, there?s no better way I think.

Description is of course important in a third-person narrative, and it would led no way to say too much description or too little. But we still can say ?more? or ?less?: and I think there?s more description in much of XX classic literature: Proust, Mann, Gide, Kafka, Conrad, Lawrence, James?

What a coincidence, my translation is 1462 pages (in Spanish!)

By the way?why did you find Anna Pavlova neurotic?

ferns_dad

20-Oct-2009, 22:48

I think it deserves acknowledgement that FMD was one of the first writers to really get into the psychology of his characters,the characters are so vivid that they still are alive for me today, Ivan and especially Raskolnikov:

"He ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking once more."

Backwords

20-Oct-2009, 23:45

The passage doesn't illustrate the point so far as I can see, but that scene, as I remember, leads into a psychological interrogation of the "injured man's" wife (by the narrator).

Some claim that what marks Dostoevsky out (Beside his singular psychological vision), following in Gogol's footsteps, is a propensity for acute depiction of "ordinary" people, rather then Heroic types etc. Russian lit has a much shorter history then European. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was an outward sign of the general movement towards the recognition of the individual.

Social change in Europe was in the air of Russia from before Dostoevsky's birth, but a lot of his works came after the Emancipation and what twenty years before the rise of the professional revolutionaries like Lenin?

learna

21-Oct-2009, 09:53

Thx for the "Catastrophes in the Air" heads up. /
------

Tolstoy as the exception which proves the cliched boast "more then you can imagine"? or Tolstoy: The Mind of the Moralist.

It's true, Tolstoy has created passages of terrific vision which give one the impression of having met something previously beyond the scope of imagination. This is how bits of My Confession struck me.

I don't know Tolstoy all that well, Dostoevsky too, like Tolstoy, is Idolized in Russia, but also everywhere. I can read anything Dostoevsky wrote with interest but Tolstoy, no.

-------
Usually (by conventional wisdom?) Pushkin is cited as the greatest Russian writer with the caveat that he does not translate well. The Queen of Spadesis a magnificent short story, but is there some kind of mystification in this business about not translating well (only really appealing to Russian's with their shared history...or what have you.)? Give us a link to a thesis on this subject. :P

-----

Back to Dostoevsky, he was planning a sequel to Brother's Karamazov concerning the married life of Alyosha and Liz etc. . Apparently his notebooks were full of this subject at his death. For years tidbits and rummers about a translation and publication. Still not yet?

Google search reveals this very provocative teaser -

DOSTOEVSKY?S ENDGAME: THE PROJECTED SEQUEL TO (http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:r2EMB0h_y2gJ:www.uoregon.edu/%7Ejlrice/Manuscript_2.pdf+brothers+karamazov+sequel&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Can the "living dead" (still remembered dead) Dostoevsky "rise again" in the third century after death to the delight of his fans? :)

"If it is preached that Alyosha has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" - 1. Karamazov 12:3

We can't answer the question: "Tolstoy as the exception which proves the cliched boast "more then you can imagine"? or Tolstoy: The Mind of the Moralist" monosemanticly. He combined both.

As for Pushkin... He is one of the greatest poets and writers. I like "The Queen of Spadesis", like all his works, but this is not my favourite. To my opinion, this story can be translated with only some stylistic losses. But if we say about translation of his poetry which is so picturesque, unique with delicate sense of words, its undertones, maybe it is easier to learn Russian and read Pushkin in originals than translate it. There is a very marvelous piece of poetry "bleak time! Seductive eyes!" that is known to each Russian. In my opinion it can't be translated well. How can we translate "ochi"? "Eyes" ? It's impossible. I don't tell about a possibility of transposition of words in Russian and abundance of suffixes, etc.
These are some links on this theme:
?????? ???????. ?????? '??????? ?????'. ??????? ? ?????????, ??? ??? ? ????????? "??????????? ?????" (http://www.stosvet.net/6/chandler/)
and the second link here:
Google (http://www.google.com.ua/#hl=ru&source=hp&q=%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4+%D0%9 F%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F+%D0%B4%D0%B0 %D0%BC%D0%B0+%D1%81+%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA %D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B3 %D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9+%D0%92% D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1 %82%D1%8C&btnG=%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BA+%D0%B2+Google&meta=&aq=f&oq=%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4+%D0% 9F%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F+%D0%B4%D0%B 0%D0%BC%D0%B0+%D1%81+%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B A%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B 3%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9+%D0%92 %D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D 1%82%D1%8C&fp=1&cad=b)

As for Dostoevsky. We should understand that he was an ill genius. That's why he showed a twilight of the soul and dark sides of the life in general. Some months ago I read a very interesting book "Three Dostoevsky's loves" by Slonim. Maybe it will be interesting for you.
Back to "BK". Unfortunately, I haven't read the article that you'd sent yet.

learna

21-Oct-2009, 18:09

This is the photo of the talented actor Mironov who enacts Idiot irreproachably.

http://s16.radikal.ru/i191/0910/d6/ca1aef81cd91.jpg (http://www.radikal.ru)

Backwords

02-Nov-2009, 01:10

"Dostoevsky gives me more then any thinker, more then Gauss." -Einstein

"There's apparently a character know as Hippopotamus who deals in books. The complete works of Dostoievsky including the diaries costs 250 roubles. I must buy it." - Andrei Tarkovsky Diaries 1971

heroi

04-Nov-2009, 12:27

Crime and Punishment is for me unconvincing in a moral and psychological aspect. Having said that, it remains one of the most powerfull novels I have read.

learna

08-Jan-2010, 13:49

I have wrote about the film aduptation "Idiot" by Bortko. These are two clips from it:

YouTube - ???????? ????? (??????) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYN40R9Hjtg&feature=related)

YouTube - ????? ?? ????? ?? ?????? 1958 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAGU5qoqKY)

learna

08-Jan-2010, 13:58

And from "Brothers Karamazov":

YouTube - Brothers Karamazov Trailer - Subtitled (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyG-kcJmwo4)

sirena

11-Mar-2010, 17:45

Igu Soni

11-Mar-2010, 17:53

sirena

12-Mar-2010, 10:03

I have a math teacher here who's been reading this book for eight years. Not exclusively, but rather fanatically.

My soulmate! Sigh!:)

Bjorn

23-Jun-2010, 09:04

Murals of Dostoevsky in the Moscow metro are so depressing they cause suicides. Maybe. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/22/pass-notes-dostoevsky-russia-metro)

Sif

23-Jun-2010, 23:37

I love Dostoevsky's work very, very much. So far I read "The Brothers Karamazov" three times. Contrary to most people that I've been talking to (they all like Aleksey the most), among brothers I liked Dmitri the most, "the wild beast with a soul". I think this is a fantastic novel, and I'm sure I'm going to read it at least two more times in next five years. I regret Dostoevsky didn't live long enough to make a sequel as he planned.

Oh, I shouldn't even admit this because I always get killed for it but Brothers Karamazov is easily my least favorite Dostoevsky work. And you know why? Because Aleksey bores me silly! :p Ivan was my favorite character but I found Dmitri to be fascinating as well. I've had endless conversations about how important Alyosha is and I can accept his important role as a counterpart to Ivan's lack of faith and fatalism and to Dmitri's rashness but in order to be a balance...it has to actually balance! He is so heavily featured and for me, he is easily the least compelling character in the whole book. I know I'm soulless but I can't help it, I don't like him. :p

I go back and forth as far as a favorite Dostoevsky, I can't decide between Crime and Punishment and The Possessed...or however it's translated, in our local bookstore it goes by The Possessed, Demons and The Devils but my copy is the former. I love how Crime and Punishment completely got into my head. I remember telling someone that I actually felt the physical sensation of being 'boxed in'. That as Raskolnikov begins to lose his mind, as his own world is getting smaller and smaller because of this madness, I actually felt my own world getting physically smaller. It's claustrophobic at times and uncomfortable but at the same time, how great is it that an author can create that kind of physical sensation with his words?

And The Possessed! One of the things I love so much about that one is that it's such a great bridge between 19th Century Russia and all it's upper class aristocracy and the revolutionary fervor that would soon take over. I had read a fair amount of 19th Century Russian literature at the time I first read this book and some Soviet era lit and often wondered how one became the other. I understood the sociological and political reasons but you wonder, day to day, how does this switch happen and this book gave me a good idea.

Beth

24-Jun-2010, 03:38

Contrary to most people that I've been talking to (they all like Aleksey the most), among brothers I liked Dmitri the most, "the wild beast with a soul".
I think Mitka is my favorite as well. There is so much humor in his character and his self-awareness as he goes through the trial

Murals of Dostoevsky in the Moscow metro are so depressing they cause suicides. Maybe. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/22/pass-notes-dostoevsky-russia-metro) Eep, did anyone spot a glaring inaccuracy in the summary provided? Dosti would throw a fit!

Oh, I shouldn't even admit this because I always get killed for it but Brothers Karamazov is easily my least favorite Dostoevsky work. And you know why? Because Aleksey bores me silly! :p Ivan was my favorite character but I found Dmitri to be fascinating as well. I've had endless conversations about how important Alyosha is and I can accept his important role as a counterpart to Ivan's lack of faith and fatalism and to Dmitri's rashness but in order to be a balance...it has to actually balance! He is so heavily featured and for me, he is easily the least compelling character in the whole book. I know I'm soulless but I can't help it, I don't like him. :p

No mortar and pestle here. ;) I think the three sons rolled into one would make a fascinating character. That's been done before, eh? I loved each one for what they both possess and lack in the way of characterization. Somehow it makes them seem more realistic to me.

DB Cooper

28-May-2011, 07:29

So the only Dostoevsky Ive read is Notes From The Underground. Im thinking I should correct this. What is your favorite Dostoevsky?

Loki

28-May-2011, 09:52

Well, I've only read Crime and Punishment, but I think you should really give it a try, it won't disappoint you!

Bjorn

28-May-2011, 13:28

I'll second Loki's suggestion; while all of the Big Five (Crime & Punishment, Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent and Karamazov) are essential, C&P is probably the best starting point; it's accessible, it's pretty tightly plotted (for Dostoevsky) and it establishes all the themes that made Dostoevsky one of the most important writers ever.

Liam

28-May-2011, 21:13

C&P is probably the best starting pointI concur. Start with Crime and Punishment. Read it in the original if you can. (I mean, if I could, why can't you?).

DB Cooper

29-May-2011, 06:17

Thanks guys. Definitely leaning toward Crime and Punishment now, and being 200 pages shorter is something Im ok with. Liam, you read Russian?

Liam

29-May-2011, 06:23

Liam, you read Russian?
DB, I am shocked and hurt that you're not aware that Russian and Ukrainian are among the languages I am proficient in. (I usually don't push the other ones, what with being dead and forgotten tongues, all of them :o).

DB Cooper

30-May-2011, 07:06

Color me impressed. You should post exclusively in Russian from now on. Ill use google translate and post the results, that should be good for a laugh.

Liam

30-May-2011, 18:26

Color me impressed. You should post exclusively in Russian from now on. Ill use google translate and post the results, that should be good for a laugh.Ладно, давай посмотрим што из этого получится. Но на твоем месте я бы не очень надеялся на гугл-переводчика, они никогда ничего не переводят правильно на сто процентов, :). Лучше использовать старый проверенный на деле метод книжных словарей, как наверное делает Эрик когда переводит с эстонского...

DB Cooper

31-May-2011, 06:35

Okay, let's see INTO happens. But in your shoes I would not really hoping for a Google-translator, they never did not translate correctly a hundred percent. Better to use old proven in practice the method of book dictionaries, as surely as does Eric translation from Estonian ...

DB Cooper

31-May-2011, 06:36

Wow Liam your Russian is pretty rusty, may need to practice a bit

Loki

31-May-2011, 07:51

Ладно, давай посмотрим што из этого получится. Но на твоем месте я бы не очень надеялся на гугл-переводчика, они никогда ничего не переводят правильно на сто процентов, . Лучше использовать старый проверенный на деле метод книжных словарей, как наверное делает Эрик когда переводит с эстонского...

Having an important Russian exam tomorrow, I'm happy I have understood most of it without looking anything up in the dictionary. Maybe you've written in a simplified Russian, it may be that! Only one thing: isn't што supposed to be что (although the pronunciation is the same)?

Liam

31-May-2011, 15:31

Wow Liam your Russian is pretty rusty, may need to practice a bitDude! Your translation is horrible. At least my bit was gramatically correct with the exception of that little orthographical mistake that Loki was able to catch, kudos to Loki!

Yeah, my aunts have been complaining that in my letters I basically spell things the way I hear them, not the way they are properly spelled.

Having an important Russian exam tomorrow, I'm happy I have understood most of it without looking anything up in the dictionary.Good work and good luck, :)!

Loki

31-May-2011, 16:12

большое*спасибо!

altai

25-Apr-2012, 23:09

Nabokov on Dostoevsky:

Vladimir Nabokov, from Lectures on Russian Literature:

"My position in regard to Dostoevski is a curious and difficult one. In all my courses I approach literature from the only point of view that literature interests me--namely the point of view of enduring art and individual genius. From this point of view Dostoevski is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one--with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between. In Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov for some reason or other kills an old female pawnbroker and her sister. Justice in the shape of an inexorable police officer closes slowly in on him until in the end he is driven to a public confession, and through the love of a noble prostitute he is brought to a spiritual regeneration that did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. . . .

. . .All the humiliation and hardships he endured are described in detail [in [I]Memoirs from the House of Death], as also the criminals among whom he lived. Not to go completely mad in those surroundings, Dostoevski had to find some sort of escape. This he found in a neurotic Christianism which he developed during these years. It is only natural that some of the convicts among whom he lived showed, besides dreadful bestiality, an occasional human trait. Dostoevski gathered these manifestations and built upon them a kind of very artificial and completely pathological idealization of the simple Russian folk. This was the initial step on his consecutive spiritual road. . . .

. . .His attitude toward the Government had completely changed since the days of his youthful radicalism. "Greek-Catholic Church, absolute monarchy, and the cult of Russian nationalism," these three props on which stood the reactionary political slavophilism were his political faith. The theories of socialism and Western liberalism became for him the embodiments of Western contamination and of satanic sin bent upon the destruction of a Slavic and Greek-Catholic world. It is the same attitude that ones sees in Fascism or in Communism--universal salvation. . . .
. . .Dostoevski never really got over the influence which the mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence supplied that kind of conflict he liked--placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. When after his return from Siberia his essential ideas began to ripen--the idea of salvation to be found through transgression, the ethical supremacy of suffering and submission over struggle and resistance, the defence of free will not as a metaphysical but as a moral proposition, and the ultimate formula of egoism-antichrist Europe on one side and brotherhood-Christ-Russia on the other--when these ideas. . .suffused his novels, much of the Western influence still remained, and one is tempted to say that in a way Dostoevski, who so hated the West, was the most European of the Russian writers. . . .
. . .Dostoevski's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity--all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of "sinning their way to Jesus" or, as a Russian author Ivan Bunin put it more bluntly, "spilling Jesus all over the place." Just as I have no ear for music, I have to my regret no ear for Dostoevski the Prophet. . . .
. . .It is, as in all Dostoevski's novels, a rush and tumble of words with endless repetitions, mutterings aside, a verbal overflow which shocks the reader after, say, Lermontov's transparent and beautifully poised prose. Dostoevski as we know is a great seeker after truth, a genius of spiritual morbidity, but as we also know he is not a great writer in the sense Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Chekhov are. And, I repeat, not because the world he creates is unreal--all the worlds of writers are unreal--but because it is created too hastily without any sense of that harmony and economy which the most irrational masterpiece is bound to comply with (in order to be a masterpiece). Indeed, in a sense Dostoevski is much too rational in his crude methods, and though his facts are but spiritual facts and his characters mere ideas in the likeness of people, their interplay and development are actuated by the mechanical methods of the earthbound and conventional novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. . . ."

pigeonweather

26-Apr-2012, 00:17

Just as I have no ear for music

I knew there was something about Nabokov that always bothered me. Maybe this is it.

altai

26-Apr-2012, 10:20

Dostoevsky is a polarizing figure in Russian literature. He was definitely a great storyteller, had a keen sense of dark comedy, and managed to create convoluted intense literary worlds full of maniac youngsters in search for the ultimate truths, neurotic women, psychotic villains and twisted plots. He seemed to recreate especially well the world of a repressed humiliated suffering psyche of a "small man", infused with peculiar messianic moralism of his own personal type of Orthodox Christianity. Readers seem to either love him and fully accept his salvationist pathos of universal ambitions, or feel repelled by the oppressive psychotic suffocating atmosphere of his books. Perhaps, the strongest accusation leveled against him is his tendency to idealize the "mysterious Russian soul" as a spiritual antipode to the rotten materialistic rational and dead world of the Western bourgeois modernity. But what I find most amusing is that many of his vociferous critics, like Nabokov, tended to confess great affection for Tolstoy, who, it seems to me, wasn't so much different from Dostoevsky in what concerns spiritual moralizing. It's curious how Nabokov picks on Dostoevky's "slavophilic" sentimentality while neglecting to spot the similar sort of messianic zeal (many would say hypocritical) in Tolstoy's wordy novels full of pages and pages of direct essay-like rant on the role of an individual in history, the holistic world of a Russian peasant and other attempts at a universal moral high ground.

What I personally dislike in Dostoevsky is his writing style, which after Pushkin, Lermontov and Turgenev appears lacking in finesse. He wrote badly, hardly any paragraph of his long novels could stand out as a piece of stylistic beauty, but he managed to capture a reader, to suck the reader into his books, shake him and transform. He had this genius ability to convince readers, to deeply impress with the depth of his characters, none of which is anywhere close to the real people we might observe around, but which seem to symbolize some universal human patterns magnified on a mythic scale. His novels reed like a mixture of a macabre comedy, a psychological investigation into possessed troubled mind, a Greek like tragedy of destructive passions, and a dull insipid theosophic rant loosely based on Orthodox values.

toshiro

27-Apr-2012, 22:49

Liam

28-Apr-2012, 20:53

I have never been a huge fan of English speaking literature... I find little substance but more emphasis on style, there is a huge play on words, which maybe due to commercial considerations and cultural ones , takes precedence, over the story.Right, so from Beowulf to Banville and stretching across five continents (joke to say!) you find very little substance in Anglophone literature? This makes me wonder how much English literature you have "actually" read, :rolleyes:.

toshiro

29-Apr-2012, 17:09

Liam,
Funny enough I have read Beowulf!
And maybe I should try to read more, at the moment I'm reading a Jack London novel, so I do try!

I think one of the reasons I wrote my piece, was to question the reasons why, I don't enjoy Anglophone literature, and not a personal attack on such literature.
of course such a personal question is difficult for outsiders to answer. But and maybe I should have worded the question better now that I think about it, and, that question is! Do other people find any 'differences' in English-speaking literature and other literature.
Now, rationally this could be deemed to be a strange question at first, why would nationality and cultural differences make any difference, be it in style or substance and tone for that matter, of a piece of literature? Maybe this phenomenon is peculiar to me! However , I do find differences, enough to make me only read Non-English literature.
I am not asking for lines to be drawn and for people to take sides, but for ideas.

pigeonweather

29-Apr-2012, 18:51

Toshiro
It's a fascinating question! I'm an English-speaking American who has known enough of only two other languages (Italian and Spanish) to read them, but I've enjoyed literature from all over the world mainly in translation. Everything I've read of Japanese or Russian or German or French literature has all been in the English language. How can I know to distinguish what is "native" to those books and what is a product of those translations?

Here in this very thread are people saying what a 'terrible' writer Dostoevsky was - I presume these people are speaking of his original writing in Russian and that they know that language (like Nabokov). I always heard what a great writer Kafka was in the original German but I have no idea of that. I've always loved him, but only know him in English!

Quite a large percentage of my favorite writers have been from Argentina, but I've never been there. I can't say I know the culture. I can't even begin to guess what possible affinity I might have with that place that would lead me to admire its writers so much.

Who can say what draws us to one region or language or another? Why do I like Flannery O'Connor so much while generally not a big fan of the American South? What does it say that the writer who has most impressed me, in terms of sheer writing, is Guy de Maupassant? I wish I could say what it is that all these strands in my personal taste have in common with one another, besides the generally human.

Eric

29-Apr-2012, 20:54

It's fair enough to say you don't really like various aspects of the way, for instance, Dostoevsky writes, though it is always handy to say what specifically it is you don't like. But if any one of us Brits and Yanks were to make the sweeping statement that "I don't like Russian literature", all the Russophiles here would be down on that someone like a ton of bricks.

Yet we have people here who generalise incredibly about everything written in the English language, as if it's all much of a muchness. If you compare Anthony Powell with Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson with Carol Ann Duffy, Patrick White with Charles Bukowski and then claim that you didn't like them because they are all part of some mythical "English-language-literature", I would think that you were adopting the method of Procrustes to make your case.

Hamlet

30-Apr-2012, 11:48

altai,
You wrote an interesting piece, thanks.

His writitng style maybe is considered weak, but as you strongly mention his stories suck you in. Some of his novels are better than others. And,any writer who can write stories such as, Notes From the Underground, is tops in my mind.

This leads me to another question which I would like to ask and hear peoples ideas, in relation to style.
I have never been a huge fan of English speaking literature, and sometimes i wonder if it is a question of style over story. I find European and Japanese literature strong in substance, with English literature, however, I find little substance but more emphasis on style, there is a huge play on words, which maybe due to commercial considerations and cultural ones , takes precedence, over the story. There are many theories I could put forward, however, what is a theory, but just another formation of thoughts , clumsely articulated in language. I much rather hear other peoples views.

Which writers, what were they writing about.... ?

European literature, for example, shares a common heritage with English Literature, we have the Greeks, Homers Iliad/Odyssey, and much of this influenced the Renaissance, where in England we find the dominating figure of Shakespeeare, who has travelled well over time and throughout the world.

If you consider French classicism and the English approach, in short, we muddled through and are more experimental, it's the Shakespeare vs Ben Jonson debates over the purpose/place of drama but since then the novel, play, poem has taken many and multiple forms and offshoots, how can you compare Walt Whitman in poetry, Don DeLillo in fiction, or Harold Pinter in drama, the diversity is just too great....

Literatures around the world, at similar periods bare a lot of similarities, but authors are individuals, you seem to have missed out on much reading, if you add Horror, SF and Detective fiction to this, and if you are in Japan, the influences of the Western, or English novels etc on Japanese contemporary fiction, it's difficult to pull a grand theory out of the bag that says... what's up with the substance of English lit... it's all style... ??

Hamlet

30-Apr-2012, 11:54

To add, Nick Hornby, the popular English novelist said something about schools, and traditions, he mentioned that his Cambridge University education had held him back as a novelist, he didn't qualify these remarks unfortunately, but clearly he disagreed with much of what he was taught, via influence, or possibly the approach of New Historicism, or Determinism, or whatever theory held sway at Cambridge at the time he was there. So there's not always agreement on English vs European or whatever camp, to begin with in terms of content.

altai

02-May-2012, 16:40

Ok, after 7 off topic posts I wanna hear anything interesting on Dostoevsky, please.

Eric

02-May-2012, 18:23

Did Dostoevsky ever visit Helsinki, Altai? That too would be interesting as you live there.

But I agree that these threads can quickly deteriorate into idiotic slanging matches and luv-ins, neither of which have anything to do with the subject of the thread.

So Altai, which of the several Dostoevsky novels you've read stood out for you? Do the Finns still read Doestoevsky avidly?

altai

03-May-2012, 13:09

I don't know about Dostoevsky in Helsinki, other Russian writers visited here and couldn't find any connection with the locals. What I know is that Dostoevsky spent a lot of time in Germany playing in casinos wasting his and his wife's money, getting into debts.
Actually, his life was quite interesting and can serve as a key to his literary worlds.

His father was a surgeon, an impoverished member of a gentry land owner class, he abused his serfs and ultimately was murdered by them. I've read somewhere that he served as a source for Fedor KAramazov's character. Young Dostoevsky had a close relationship with his mother and a distant one with his father whom he feared. When he was 16 his mother died. This was a shock for a young boy, who was sent to study to Saint Petersburg. Two years later his father was murdered. As a young man, Dostoevsky was not very sociable. He was a gloomy loner, always thinking, analyzing things, very sensitive, suspicious of others' motives and easily offended. He also suffered from epilepsy.

In Saint-Petersburg he participated in the popular literary-political progressive groups. He wasn't an active revolutionary, but he participated in the Petrashevsky secret circle and helped spreading the forbidden by censorship letter of Belinsky to Gogol. When the circle was discovered Dostoevky was one of those found guilty of subversive activity and sentenced to death by firing squad. Already at the gallows awaiting the final moment he learned that the sentence was reduced to 8 years of conviction in Siberian camps. This was arguably one of life defining moment for the writer, who was completely shaken by the brutality of experience as he stood there many minutes preparing for death only to be granted life.

Dostoevsky got back from Siberia when Alexandre II got to power. I've read somewhere that he wrote a flattering poem commemorating the ascend of Alexandre to the throne and was allowed to move back to Saint-Petersburg.

Death of loved ones followed Dostoevsky through all his life. His first wife died from tuberculosis. Almost at the same time his brother died. His little daughter also died, and later a little son, events which probably traumatized him most.
Later in life, already acknowledged as a brilliant writer, he was known for addictive gambling. He could lose all his money and all the money of his family playing in casinos, thus forcing himself into debts and having to write novels in a constant hurry to pay off the creditors.

His relations with women also stand out for their supposed sado-masochistic aspects. His second wife was more than twenty years younger than him and he suffered from acute bouts of jealousy and wallowed in it giving himself fully to the masochistic paroxysms. He spent a lot of time in Germany where he wrote many of his novels. But typically for Russian writers he disliked German culture considering it too materialistic and lacking spiritual spontaneity. This trait is curious as it largely follows many other Russian writers, like Nabokov, who openly disliked all things German while spending a lot of time in Germany. Many Russian writers also juxtapose German character to Russian as two opposite archetypes on the spirit-body axis.

There is a new Russian series on Dostoevsky's life. Can be seen here (in Russian):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RAQpfOUjec&feature=related

altai

03-May-2012, 13:22

So Altai, which of the several Dostoevsky novels you've read stood out for you? Do the Finns still read Doestoevsky avidly?

From his novels I've read only "Crime and Punishment" as a teenager and was shocked and consumed by the suffocating neurotic atmosphere of the novel. I think it's a very strong psychological and philosophical work, although now, many years later, I'd probably dislike many sides of it. I don't really like the Christian sin-fall-repent-atone-return to human society cathartic scheme.
"Brothers Karamazov" I've read a year ago and was somewhat disappointed. I've heard too much about the novel and was expecting a masterpiece, but I found many flaws in it. But still the novel reads very easily and the plot is twisted like a Brazilian soap-opera.
Finns do read Dostoevsky. I actually know some fans of him here. I think Finns like depressive literature with humanistic values based on a 'little man'. I mean, most of Finnish literature is quite Dostoevskian, if I dare say so.

Hamlet

03-May-2012, 16:39

Okay Altai from Helsinki, will this do?

He suffered from epileptic fits, very vioent and disabling, after the Petrashevsky circle was disbanded, apparently he wasn't even a card-carrying member, but dabbling, and sent to Siberia, he was submitted to heavy physical labour, and was mercilessly goaded for his class roots, but the labour, backbraking though it was, improved his health and strength and reduced the fits.

I once read most of his novels and short stories over a year or two. House of the Dead has a preface/scene where he reported how fearsome some of the murderers and rapists and child killers he was housed with really were; one prisoner was so dangerous that the only way to suppress him was by seven or so of the others charging him at once, and kicking and pounding him until he became unconscious, they would then proceed to carefully, and even gently and consolingly wrap him up in a blanket and put him back into his bunk, until the next time, this was after a great quantity of drink. He was a drunk and appears to have been a real prisoner rather than just a character in the book, and physically tough in the extreme. The fights abated post- 15 good kickings, after his body broke. Dostoyevsky was so traumatised by his Sib experiences he could only write them down by projecting through a narrator who is clearly him.

Dostoyevsky kept a prison diary, full of criminal slang so that he was able to transcribe/use the dialogue in his novels.

The psychological and the morbid runs through his works, but he is an astute observer of peculiar mental states, in one novel he speaks comically about 'administrative enthusiasm' -- as a strange disorder where -- for example-- a lowly clerk who keeps records, and who has we assume a fairly straightforward day and duties will suddenly go out and order a thousand pencil sharpeners, or exceed his duties in some excessive and deranged way. You can see what he is doing here, it's a rebellion perhaps without any succes, the human spirit asserting itself perhaps, something along those lines. Dostoyevsky doesn't place human beings, thank goodness, into neat little categories. He once said -

'my aim is to find the human in a human being' -- that about sums it up to me.

Bobok and A Nasty Story are interesting. As a short story "A Nasty Story" has a nobleman enter a churchyard and sit on the tombstones and listen in on the conversations of the long dead and the very recently dead, the device is a way of grouping people from classes who would never meet all together in one plot, like a cyber cafe gathering, underground, the newly dead take a few weeks to realize the game, wake, hear chatterings, you can be heard and speak below ground, those who have been buried for many years are fading away, they seem to wake up only once in a while, and are faint, not quite with it --they are dead afterall-- and are on the far reaches of some divide, drifting towards what feels like oblivion.

This is a device to get the classes bitching and bickering. And it's very effective. With insults and comments about each other which include such niceties as 'you stink' or you rotten putrid corpse, or similar-- the upper classes are fair game, if I recall.

It's part of his wit and humour, not for everybody, but very funny and grotesque, and satirical and sharp.

Demons is worth a read, essential, the book is comprised of three types of novel, three novels in one, I'm not going to elaborate, but it appears to be a favourite of those who ordinarily don't warm to Dostoyevsky, I have a friend in NYC, a writer, who prefers Tolstoy, but Demons is his favourite Dostoyevskian novel.

As you read him, progressing from the pre-Siberian literature, to his post-Sib state you see the great novels take shape, he has undergone a transformation in Siberia, a few critics have said that Dosto' went insane in Siberia, I think he's very sane and with the gambling addiction and epilepsy, perhaps it's part of a fevered mind. How would we all be post-Siberia?

Education, he was educated in military engineering if I recall, later married his stenographer, she assisted him with writing and overcoming the oppressvie legal contract by composing The Gambler in only 28 days, (?? - on exact time frame) if I remember the time period; whatever, it matters not, but he was given to feeling very proud of his scrbbling achievements, remarking in letters, 'let's see Turgenev achieve that, he'd have fainted', or similar, he was given to great feelings of pride, ego, call it what-you-will on such occasions, and Belinsky, who wrote 'congratulations to the young poet, and so forth' boosted his confidence early, he was a genius and Russia's foremost critic acknowledged him early on in his career.

A visit to the scientific fare, The Great Exhibition, in England left him reeling, if you look up "The Crystal Palce and Dostoyevsky" you'll see his violent reaction, disapproval where many from Russia as eslewhere were impressed, the fare showcased the latest gadgets, machinery, it was like a current IPad event hosted by Microsoft; he fled back to Russian alarmed and filled with disquiet by the progressive aspects of the Industrial Revolution in full bloom. This ties in with certain Christian viewpoints, but it's too complex to say much about.... I've read a few books on Dosto', and returned to some of the novels over the years, but as with any author of note, all you can do is extrapolate a few soundbites from his life and works.

This has been rushed, I may be wrong about a few of the details here, but is this closer to what you wanted Altai.

I'd say, read all of his books, everything, he's incredible, Crime and Punishment is not only a great 'psychological novel', whatever that means, it's a rollicking detective story, LOL- funny, one critic once called it the "King of Detective stories and thrillers, and when you read it the first time it is fevered and exciting, has great pacing, and oh, when you read it for the second time...!"

There's a huge philosophical and Christian base to his works, but I don't believe it is easily explained or explained away. When I first read his novels, I largely ignored this aspect, it seemed to be only one part of it, and since, hearing this person, or that critic, I wondered if I'd understood him at all. But then I realized, it's part of the fabric, along with the politics, the nihilists, the political character types or nutballs, the entire gallery.

At the same time I was reading most of Conrad's novels, and The Secret Agent reminded me of the same obsessives and dysfunctional types, like Shakespeare, he seems to think on the man, he studies human beings in all their weird and wonderful states and representations, and if they are say political radicals, you feel as though he is stripping them away, down to their core motives, he doesn't believe them, showing you what they really are, but again, oversimplified.

Take one character, I've read C &P 4 times, and I still don't recall much of what's in the novel, but look at Raskolnikov, on the good side ofour two columns, he's this young intellectual, a law student, a friend, he listens to helpless drunks whom everybody else ignores, leaves his last coins to assist their starving family, even though said drunk has and does drink all the family income until he goes home and gets beaten by his wife, which is LOL-funny, but tragic. He's aslo very good to hisfamily, protects his sister, but volatile,and malicious and unpredictable at times. he then slumps after such moods as his moods return.

There's that brillant quote at the beginning of C & P, he lives in his little room, a whole, it's under the roof, like a closet, and his maid enters and asks 'what is it he's doing, why doesn't he work? And he say, 'oh, but I do work!' and she replies... 'what work is it that you do?' Rask' looks at her and says "thinking!"

Rask' also follows a dandy along the canal side, he knows he's following a drunk girl and is going to try and rape her, but he intervenes, and alerts a policeman, Rask' is good down to his core, he's the full ticket, a human being, if he could do what he does, so could you. That is what disturbs you as a reader, but look closely at the crime he commits, the fever seems to give him something of an excuse but we're never sure. John Jones the critic once said, 'I'm going to tell you about conspiracies between the characters and the author behind the back of the narrator' - well, there you have it.

I don't see this as Nabokov or others see it, as some kind of new slant on redemption, mechanical-process, we'll get back to being good Christians in the end after the wheel has turned. I see it as real.

A young man, a 'moral' young man becomes preoccupied with a philosophy, the "Napoleonic Complex" which is a form of inflated ego and intellectual distortion, the one weighed against the many, it's Hamlet's ..... vicious mole of nature' ; men just seem to have flaws and sometimes they grow into a full---well, neurosis, is one modern take but that seems to underserve the Dosto portraiture and observation, somehow. Demeans it.

Dosto' seems to blame society for this or if not 'blame' see it as a function of society in making characters/personality; shortly after a real life crime almost identical to the one in CP cropped up in the press --and boosted sales of C&P -- Dosto' rejoiced in this life imitates art episode, confirmation of all that he sensed, saw or interpreted as going on around him in the streets, his judgement, psychic- sensing, what-have-you... he was a voracioius reader of newspapers, seeking out patterns, societal forces. We do it now, '...crime as barometer of society', as one newscaster put it last week.

Prior to my current career, I spent some time in law enforcement, and met real life characters of every description, Dostoyevsky for me, captures the baffling array of personality traits, I've met murderers and many other types of criminals, and some of them were very nice, others were unexplicably dangerous, the personality traits you see in House of the Dead. I knew a guy who'd stick a knife in you if he felt like it that day, it was a game to him, a mere glance or mood. The next moment he was bragging about stealing cars and laughing.

So, for me at least, outside of Shakespeare, our friend Dosto' probes into the dark and malignant aspects of human psyches, souls, whatever you wish to call them, and shows us the reality, I think Nabokov in some article I read earlier here said [he] described 'such people as never existed' ... really Nab?

Another thing Dosto' mentioned in House of the Dead is that he was impressed by the criminals he met, that doesn't mean 'good chap, sit down and have some tea old bean....', it meant, if I understood him, that the force of personality and strength of character had to be admired, despite the fact that they had done the most vicious and unwholesome and nasty crimes.

This is what I think divides readers on him, these are not always worlds and experiences to be drawn to and spend time around; people now seem to thrive on CSI bodyparts approach, or Scandinavian crme thrillers, bizarrely, but they are not so dissimilar, I've personally seen enough dead people in my prior work to have stemmed my appetite, so the grahical sid is probably not somethign that would shock or interest me, but sometimes I think the shock and unreality of crime, or low and rubbernecking style drive past of car wrecks watchers is in many of us. Dostoyevsky doesn't show us that specifically, although the murder in C&P is brutal, he seems to show us the deeper motivations or the actions that flow up to the surface out of warped and unhealthy human beings.

He also shows us the distortions, blown up or writ large, like a Dickensian caricature, but defined through/by personality rather than in comic grotesques, or comic book style physical features; he enjoyed Dickens, I understand, and Shakespeare whom he was reading prior to the great novels and delighted in, he wasn't too keen on the English, Germans, French, or West in general I gather, saw mother Russia as having a soul that was being corrupted by such influences.

Will that do, anything else we can add? Would you like your slippers fetching, or tea and biscuits after our literary deliberations perhaps?

I'm not going to chase out the hundred typos, I've typed this as fast or faster than Dostoyevsky wrote the fvcking Gambler, so there you go, read, disagree, ignore, do as you please.
:cool:

toshiro

06-May-2012, 23:23

sorry altai, i didn't mean to take train of thought off topic,
the question I asked should have been in a different section.

Dostoyevsky's life was an amazing one and his books mirror his experiences
in the sense of the individual over the mass, or the individual in society
in this respect his philosophical and especially his psychological insights are above the norm

Many of his books have been covered here.

One of his short stories I mentioned earlier 'Notes from the underground' came to my attention from a philosopher i was reading at the time, he regarded it as one of the gems of literature, mostly for its psychological insights.
The hero of the story is a complicated personality, and Dostoyevsky potrails him exceptionatly well. Dostoyevsky understood the character well, possibly!
his 'passion' regarding the individual in his stories is equal to Hesse's 'calmness' in regard to the individual.
This passion could be mirrored in the extraordinary life he lead.

altai

08-May-2012, 15:38

Very nice post, Hamlet from medieval Denmark.

What I find interesting and debatable, you say that Dostoevsky's characters can be very much real and you draw on your experience in law enforcement. I guess in life real people can be more bizarre, complex and interesting than any fictional character, but what Nabokov meant, and the way I also understand it, it's more about whether or not you believe in the character. Of course, any soap opera twist can be redeemed by finding real life counterpart to the event. And I'm sure there is plenty of it in real life, of "I am your son!" kinda moments. And there might be real types like Raskolnikov, passionate revolutionaries killing people for a grand idea (here, icons like Che Guevara come to my mind). And I haven't read (yet) the Gambler and the Idiot, but still based on Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov I can spot the melodramatic sopa-opera like twists and characters. And there is definitely a lot of Christianity here. A saint like hooker saving the soul of our fallen hero, crime-fall-redemption story of Raskolnikov, or the story of Mitya in Brothers K and the woman who saves (or wants to save) him. There is a lot of schematization in his novels. You have typically very lively, flawed, passionate, soulful characters, who are ultimately redeemed by their humane qualities, there are soulless Europeans (like the Poles in Brothers K), there are neurotic high class women, a lot of tears and melodrama, misunderstandings and noble pride, women who want to save our heroes, go with them to Siberia, a lot of sacrifice, and the whole ever-present pathos of atonement.

Another interesting side of Dostoevsky's work I've noticed, is that his worst and most tedious (for me personally) characters are the most positive ones for the author. Brothers Karamazov starts with an introduction that makes clear that this is the novel about Alyosha, but Alyosha hardly does anything in the novel. We follow author's attempts to portray a perfect, positive character but what comes out is just an idealized cardboard figure which has no inner life of his own. I remember reading about Gogol's attempt to write a second part to his Dead Souls where he wanted to depict all the positive sides of Russian people, but he failed in the attempt and burnt the manuscript. In his Idiot Dostoevsky also tried to depict a pure soul. I haven't read it yet, so I wonder how his project materialized.

PS. toshiro, don't worry, it just happens often on the forum, where one thing leads to another and then it's just endless picking on each other's statements.

Hamlet

11-May-2012, 20:25

Yeah, it's a shame that we get sidetracked, I tend to be a little tongue-in-cheek at times, the web does that to you, jumping on that boat ride as we go off topic...

BUT .... yes, what I think I was trying to suggest was that when I was reading Dostoyevsky's works (and bizarrely, I've just taken out 'The Village of Stepanchikovo' btw, from my local library, it's one of his works which came late in translation, unless you really searched) was at the same time as I was pursuing the criminal elements down dark and misty alleyways, and as you say, seeing some strange and dramatic things, and yet I found his works still believable, but not perhaps in the way we think of 'realism' but because of certain aspects of human nature.

I can see what you are referring to when you set out some of Nabakov's concerns, and I know he's been criticised for writing in a.... what is it called... "less-than-literary style' ... is the closest I can get, whatever that means, so for example .... using some of the effects of the detective genre, pivotal scenes, cliffhangers... and these are undoubtedly tricky topics to deal with and defend or otherwise. Taste applies...

Nabakov seems to suggest a type, with Dosto's characters, as though they are confined by this type, the pure prostitute, or certain characters who crop up, but he describes a less genteel type of person, and examines complex psychology, at a certain period in Russian history, and the malignancy perhaps of those types he saw around him in the streets and exaggerated this... or perhaps he even composed characters to convey ideas in part, they are believable but they operate on some other level.

What I like about his work is the instability and feverish vibe, things are overcranked, and distorted and I admit it takes a certain state of mind to buy into that, but I think it's there if you roll with it. And there's this big human thing in there, ikt's not miserable or impoverished characters, there's a concern for the human condition, and maybe that's where if you don't feel that, you tend to see these wretched souls as just that, wretched and squalid types and the feeling is then, 'get me out of here!'.

Strangely, I just finished a factual book where a guy and his girlfriend when they got together and exchanged novels and opined on literary standpoints, agreed that they just don't get C & P and were in a minority for having this opinion, until they met and 'clicked' over this outlook ... all Raskolnikov's pacing up and down in his room and so on annoyed them..... so you're not alone by any means.
;)

altai

15-May-2012, 13:41

There is a new mini series on Dostoevsky in Russian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmtlX1IxqyQ

marianna

18-May-2012, 14:42

Crime and Punishment is by far the most banal and tepid of Dostoevskii's novels, morally it is unconvincing, the characterisation is poor, the ideas it propagates unoriginal and borderline fascist. I also dislike the Idiot, but I do like 'The Demons' and especially 'The Brothers Karmazov', though Dostoevskii is still, in my opinion, inferior to the other Russian greats of the 19th century-Pushkin, Lermentov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoi and Chekhov, besides he was not really appreciate in Russian literary circles; Turgenev, Tolstoi, Nabokov, Chekhov and Bunin all disliked him, the first two personally.

I'll have to disagree with you. You can't judge writers by the opinion their contemporary writers had about them. Over the years there have been numberless writers and artists whose talent had not been appreciated until their death. Since I am from Greece I can tell you that such an example was Konstantinos Kavafis; he was regarded by his contemporaries as a midiocre poet and today is writely regarded as one of the best Greek poets. So this is not a criteria. In addition, many times jealousness doesn't let people to admit the magnitude of another person. Dostoevsky was a genious, an incredible and unique "painter" of the people' soul and disposition. The worth of Turgenev, Tolstoi, Nabokov, Chekhov and Bunin is also insisputable.

Svidrigailov

15-Jul-2012, 19:28

This is a very strange discussion. Dostoevsky is possible to love or not to love. Any arguments will be useless.
(@ toshiro - I think I understand what you say about Dostoevsky and English-language literature).

Hamlet

16-Jul-2012, 23:19

Please elaborate Svidrigailov...

...but Dostoyevsky was influenced by English language literature, the novel, experimentation, etc. This is friendly btw, not to draw sides, we already know that English Language literature is the greatest. (wink)
:p

but seriously, what is the argument here, we have to nail that down and proceed from there, it could become interesting, as I love both English Language Lit and Russian Lit, and also Japanese, where's Toshiro disappeared to... ??

Liam

16-Jul-2012, 23:38

we already know that English Language literature is the greatestWhy, who said anything different?

Hamlet

17-Jul-2012, 18:23

Somebody earlier, ahem, made a suggestion that it had some intrinsic flaw.

If I recall Liam, once upon a time, before the Russian revolution, but shortly after Napolean, :p the novel reached it's zenith, and the great writers were glancing at one another (much as they do now in the great stewing pot of world literature) and learning, learning, learning, developing, experimenting, and Europe from a writing pov, if not always politically, perhaps, functioned like this. Traditions.

Now, I know that Dostoyevsky let's say, came over to Britain to see the Crystal Palace, and there's all types of cultural conflicts and wrinkles we could add in, but put simply, great artists respect one another, or some of them do at least, we know that Mr Henry James, ahem, said something about "baggy monsters" but that aside, I'm curious to know how English Language Literature is somehow lacking or lacks somethingeven which has been caught by the Japanese or the Russians or any other literatures, for that matter?

Okay, in short, I can't see it, it's an entirely and even wholly and even ill-conceived and fallatious argument based upon some lack of comprehension as far as i can see, IMO of course.

No, scrub the modesty, so western and British hey, that's a FACT dudes.

Liam

17-Jul-2012, 20:38

fallatious argumentI'm relieved to see I'm not the only one confusing a fallacy with fellatio, :o.

Hamlet

17-Jul-2012, 22:24

I knew you'd pick up on that one, Liam, nearly hit delete, but left it in. :p

Liam

17-Jul-2012, 23:00

*Of course you did,* ;).

Svidrigailov

18-Jul-2012, 15:37

I can't explain in English (about Dostoevsky and about the English-language literature). For me, it would be difficult to do even in Russian language (or in my native language). Too many exact definitions and nuances.

Hamlet

18-Jul-2012, 16:36

No problem! Welcome to the forum anyway!
:D

I probably have an idea of wht you may be struggling with. A few of the texts rely upon some cultural understanding, which may be difficult or rather, is difficult for we natives.

Liam

18-Jul-2012, 17:18

What is your native language, out of curiosity?

Svidrigailov

18-Jul-2012, 20:36

Well. But now there is no time to think. I later write. My native language - Bashkir (Kipchak group of Turkic languages - Altaic language family). I can fully thought in both languages, but is now used as the "operating system" of the Russian language (bilingual - a very strange thing :)).

Svidrigailov

20-Jul-2012, 13:17

I thought a little. Yet also a little bit of thought. (This I liked :)). Understand that there is no sense of anything to write. Because all logical thinking in the long run lead to a totally subjective assumptions (like/don't like, good/bad, etc.). Himself dispute initially carries too many personal factors (education, culture, character, etc.). Pointless to argue about what tastier: Apple or cherry. This individual characteristics. This applies to the creative work of Dostoevsky (and in relation to English literature). There is no point in dispute.