>>24790487
I wish I never read him. It's all been downhill since.

>>24790516
I have the same problem. I peaked too early by reading him.

>>24790487
real question is would people even claim there is a 'russian soul' without Tolstoy and Dostoevsky?

I'm a Dostobro. Where do I start with him?

>>24790742
the cossacks

>>24790487
My copy of Anna Karenina came in today. Going to get started on it once I finish this sci-fi series I’m reading through.

>>24790811
It is a decent book though much too long. It struggles to keep my attention especially at parts with Levin and the inner workings of his politics.

>>24790487
I don't see Ressurection being discussed here often. Why is that?

>>24790487
only thing i've read of his was the Death of Ivan Ilych and I really enjoyed it. I think I liked it more than Dostoevsky, it was just easier to read
I bought War and Peace but haven't read it yet as I've got a few to get through first

>>24790487
I liked Hadji Murat

>>24790591
Books are not everything. There is still russian folklore, russian composers, russian dances, and russian orthodox christianity. All of it is impressive.

>>24790881
During Tolstoy’s lifetime, that was his most popular and successful book. Nowadays it’s pretty obscure. It’s very Christian

>>24790487
AK was pretty fun, but what the fuck was he thinking with part 8? It was almost as bad as Atlas Shrugged. The book should've ended with Anna's death.

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>>24790905
>russian folklore
Just feels so right

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>>24790998
True. Also, you don't really need a novelist to pass on your folk tales and the values and soul they contain. By the way, I completely forgot russian painters.

Thinking of jumping in War and Peace next year

>>24790742
Ivan Ilyich is the best introduction

>>24790994
Why would it end with Anna’s death when she’s only the co-protagonist

Gogol and Turgenev mog towelsty

>>24790881
It's his take on Dostoevsky so you would think it's more popular.

>>24790487
That dude knew how to write really well. War and Peace is so well written, it's ridiculous. In terms of sheer scope and scale, nothing even compares.

>>24790895
Even in old age, he was still writing masterpieces.

>>24794064
>In terms of sheer scope and scale, nothing even compares.
Read more.

>>24794103
Please provide examples otherwise you're just cockteasing

>>24794537
Divine Comedy
Faust part 2
Gravity's Rainbow

>>24790832
braincel

>>24794740
>Divine Comedy
It is a very focused story, just because its long with many characters doesn't mean it has big scope, they are simple characters and the world is largely thin too. Doesn't mean I don't love it thoughever but not for its scale.

>Faust
Not even sure why that's there.
>GR
Haven't read it.

>>24790742
How much land does a man need
then
The Devils
then
Death of Ilya Illich
then
Hajdi Murat
then you can jump into his larger works.

>>24794845
I think it's pretty clear that when we hear scope and scale, we mean entirely different things. I consider 100 Years of Solitude a very small novel (by design), in spite of its massive cast of characters and a 100 year runtime.

>>24794064
There are certain chapters, like the horse race in Anna Karenina, where I’m not even sure it’s humanly possible for a person to write better than Tolstoy did.

>>24794876
To me scale means there are many many things with many many things. In War and Peace, there's a lot of things to learn about the politics, geography, characters, themes and plot. There's an overload of relevant information, that is what I mean by scale.

>>24795356
And I agree with the definition, with scale additionally denoting the time scale. Divine Comedy covers everything from Biblical time and the antiquity to Dante's future through prophecy. Between all the mythological references, historical figures from all time periods, Italian politics, symbolism, the litany of saints in Paradiso, medieval cosmology, and theological discussion the Divine Comedy is a very dense poem that you'd be hard-pressed to tackle without annotations due to its sheer density of information.
For me the scope is what the book covers, or how Universal it is to the Human Condition. You have books that are a snapshot of a specific time period, books that cover ideology vast historical forces controlling the human lives, and at the very top there are theological and philosophical books that deal with the human soul directly.
Faust part 2 transforms part 1's deeply personal tragedy and makes it universal. Between Faust dealing with kings, wars, and giant industrial projects and the classical walpurgisnacht, culminating in the eternal-feminine, there are few books with scope as broad as that of Faust. And anyone that made it through the classical walpurgisnacht will tell you that its scale is also massive.

I choose to put zero weight on the characters and the actual plot when talking about scope and scale. Just the pure erudition, the information density, as well as the closeness of themes to philosophy and theology.

>>24795509
To me the amount of commentary or subtext is not scale. it's not about what's underneath the semitiocs, but the sheer amount of them--that dictates true scale. Imagine if Dante's poem also included a Buddhist adventure, a Vedic adventure and a paganistic adventure, that would be scale. The density of the work is not scale to me.

>>24795839
You might enjoy Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse

>>24795854
I've never heard of it so thank you sir anon

>>24795356
That's my favorite thing about Tolstoy. His panoramic quality. It's not a simple narrative, it's a giant sprawling look at human life in so many different dimensions. Even a more straightforward book like Anna Karenina has the same quality to it

>>24795927
That's really the greatest mark of a writer I've found, just effortless exhibition of life. I write but its hard to write anything with so much, high or base, humanity. A flash of a line may hint at an entire life's worth of facts.

>>24795951
For example, this is how Dolly is introduced in Anna Karenina:
>Darya Alexandrovna, wearing a dressing–jacket, the skimpy braids of her once thick and beautiful hair pinned at the back of her head, her face pinched and thin, her big, frightened eyes protruding on account of that thinness, was standing before an open chiffonier, taking something out of it.
In this one sentence you get the whole story of a marriage and the kind of woman that she has become as a result of it.

>>24796062
Not only is this a matter of craft but also a matter of soul. Tolstoy read people, he wept for them, he stored them somewhere and in that folder he kept million different lives to pull from so effortlessly.