Well /lit/?
Not again.
>>23538004Tolstoy and it's not even close
>>23538004Dostoyevsky and it's not even close
>>23538004Only a dumb fucking retard would choose between the two when both are freely available. Fanboyism is for dumb redditors
I once stumbled upon a YouTube video of a pajeet contrasting the two and it was such fucking garbage I was appalled
>>23538004>Dostoplebsky or ChadstojIt's not even close
>>23538004Dostoevsky fits my personal taste more so im gonna choose him because newsflash pal: It all boils down to personal choice
>>23538004Gogol
Tolstoy, but both were bad.
>>23538004If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’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." Crime and Punishment’s plot 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. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
>>23539964Based,
>>23538004Pasternak and Grossman
tolstoys strengths and weaknesses both stem from the fact that he was a chad man of action who wasn't afraid of putting his money where his mouth was and walking the walk. this was based and highly respectable because he actually took steps to live out his values, much to the distress of his aristocratic wife, but it became a problem when the the need for action transforms into taking responsibility for more and more of the world around him, which inevitably drove him into becoming super neurotic about politics and activism, opting for this or that -ism impotently scrambling to fulfill his self-imposed obligation to save the world, kind of like your modern day internet culture warrior this is the aspect in which Dostoevsky far surpasses him. He already went down that path and grew out of that phase by the time he was writing his masterpieces and his work is ultimately much more mature than Tolstoys because of it Dostoevskys work (and tolstoys best works) feel like meditations and reflections on the human experience chock full of relatable emotion and wisdom and sentiment, wheras the later you get into Tolstoys repertoire, the more he feels like an open-mouth basedjack shoving pamphlets for his latest tax scheme or political manifesto in your face and you just know its dumb impotent nonsense and the snake will eat its own tail regardless. it just feels childish and petty then again I am of course judging him via the power of over a hundred years of hindsight so i could be being too hard on him. either way it makes his work less enjoyable
>>23539995Based Nabokov enjoyer
>>23539480nigger
Dostojevski. Still, Gogol effortlessly surpasses both.
>>23538004most complex intellect in literary fiction vs amateur psychologist, naïve simp and hypocritical christ shillto be fair, dosto managed to get far more chuckles out of me, both intentionally and unintentionally
>>23539480Both being freely available has nothing to do with prefering one over the other, tardo-kun.
>>23544276That's fair. But /lit/ is already flooded with "do you prefer X or Y" threads
>>23539995based
>>23538004Dosto when you're an edgy teen. Tolstoy for when you're a well-rounded man.
>>23538004both writers were boring autists and major hacks
Dostoevsky is funny, Tolstoi can't write comedy.