What did I think of it?
>>25032978
>>25032983maybe the first and last christcuck to write good lit and you shit on him
>>25032978Does anybody have that greentext where some retard tried to make up an anime opening for this?
>>25032983crazy how all religious moralistic fiction is brutally mogged by the hell sermon in portrait of the artist
One of these should ask "What did none of us think of this?"
>>25033159Crazy how that's an unbearably dull and artifical passage that stretches on for far too long and exposes Joyce's inadequacy
>he actually read itlmao we got another one
>>25033175no one cares what you "think" fatty
dost is for self-help addicts, real ones read russian poetry
>>25032978Looking to read this, what are the translations I should consider?
if you enjoyed the Brothers Karamazov you will enjoy picrel (dropping in < 1 week)
>>25033862Ignat Avsey or McDuff
like most of dostoevskys major novels, you thought that the content itself was great, but as a whole package, it was structurally janky and unrefined
>>25032983Nowhere in Dostoevsky's novel is there such a flagrant and bastardized moral dilemma. The character from the Underground and Raskolnikov have it, but it is not expressed before the act is committed, and again - nowhere is it so simplified. Not to mention the novels in which the Christian feelings of the main characters prevail. This discourse in this picture represents a single passage in the novel Notes from the Underground, and even then it is very crippled.
>>25032983this reads nothing like dostoyevsky
>>25034742pretty well put
>>25032978which one had bigger tits: Grushenka, Katya or Ms Khokhlakov?
>>25032978If 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.
>>25033044It is, as in all Dostoyevsky'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. Dostoyevsky 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 Dostoyevsky 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 18th and early 19th centuries.
>>25035272It is questionable whether one can really discuss the aspects of ''realism'' or of ''human experience'' when considering an author whose gallery of characters consists almost exclusively of neurotics and lunatics. Besides all this, Dostoyevsky's characters have yet another remarkable feature: Throughout the book they do not develop as personalities. We get them all complete at the beginning of the tale, and so they remain without any considerable changes, although their surroundings may alter and the most extraordinary things may happen to them. In the case of Raskolnikov in ''Crime and Punishment,'' for instance, we see a man go from premeditated murder to the promise of an achievement of some kind of harmony with the outer world, but all this happens somehow from without: Innerly even Raskolnikov does not go through any true development of personality, and the other heroes of Dostoyevsky do even less so. The only thing that develops, vacillates, takes unexpected sharp turns, deviates completely to include new people and circumstances, is the plot. Let us always remember that basically Dostoyevsky is a writer of mystery stories where every character, once introduced to us, remains the same to the bitter end, complete with his special features and personal habits, and that they all are treated throughout the book they happen to be in like chessmen in a complicated chess problem. Being an intricate plotter, Dostoyevsky succeeds in holding the reader's attention; he builds up his climaxes and keeps up his suspenses with consummate mastery. But if you reread a book of his you have already read once so that you are familiar with the surprises and complications of the plot, you will at once realize that the suspense you experienced during the first reading is simply not there anymore. The misadventures of human dignity which form Dostoyevsky's favorite theme are as much allied to the farce as to the drama. In indulging his farcical side and being at the same time deprived of any real sense of humor, Dostoyevsky is sometimes dangerously near to sinking into garrulous and vulgar nonsense. (The relationship between a strong-willed hysterical old woman and a weak hysterical old man, the story of which occupies the first hundred pages of ''The Possessed,'' is tedious, being unreal.) The farcical intrigue which is mixed with tragedy is obviously a foreign importation; there is something second-rate French in the structure of his plots.
Reading this now for the first time right now, a bit more than halfway through. Gotta say the more I read of Dostoyevsky the less impressed I become. The Idiot I read last year was charming at first to read, but it grew more and more cartoonish and I lost interest several hundred pages in and didn't care to finish it. I was expecting "Brothers" to be some profound psychological novel, and it started out pretty promising, but it ended up becoming more of the same basically. Idk, I'd heard so much about the greatness of these Russian classics, but they don't hold a candle to the english or german lit that I love. Maybe I made the wrong choice to start out with Dostoyevsky and should still check out Chekhov and Tolstoy. But overall, just as my initial gut feeling was to have no interest in russian lit/culture when i was younger, now that I've read some it affirms that it just doesn't seem to resonate with me. The poets while somewhat good are also missing something integral to me that I find often in the German and English poetry i like, perhaps it's a moral depth, a deeper soul, and a true originality. writing this as an american thirty-something married to a russian lady and currently living in a post-soviet country
>>25032978Nabokov was right on the technical side: his prose is not very good, he's full of inconsistencies (the age of starec Zosima keeps changing), characters first appear on the scene and are then introduced to you with their full life story two or three chapters later, there is not a single conversation on normal or everyday topics and everyone is only musing about theological stuff all the time... it is a very chaotic book.But Nabokov also seems autistic and unable to have fun with Dostoevskij. The book is not at all realistic, everything is always on the verge of revealing itself as a nightmare or a surrealist fantasy - there are characters entering houses from the back door, characters appearing from behind drapes, characters eying from half-closed doors, etc. and everyone talks like a nightmare-person: monologically and with no connection to the topic. It's an extremely entertaining read. He seems to have his fingerprints on every European monological author, such as Bernhard and Krasznahorkai.
>>25036948Perhaps this lack of dynamism of the characters has its roots in the Russian soul and their worldview. For example, they display this dynamism throughout the novel, they have broad souls and in one scene they are like this and in another they are somehow different, so there is no need for their "complete" change. This breadth of soul is best seen in Dmitri Karamazov (and Grushenka changes).After all, what I love about The Brothers Karamazov is the spirituality of the dialogue. It is as if there is some secret meaning behind every ordinary sentence and it is so beautifully presented that the formally spoken words almost fall into the background. And it is not only that, but this secret meaning that governs the plot and the novel. Only a very spiritual man like Dostoevsky can do that. For example, Smerdyakov's words are all coded and in Alyosha's conversation with Krasotkin - now God is on one side, now on the other.
>>25037005In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky seems to have deliberately thrown out all the aestheticization of scenes and segments and only focused on... The Idea.At least, the work cannot be said to have a purely cultural-decorative character because it explores the Russian soul.Everything is subordinated to the relationship between sons and father and the parallel relationship between sons and Heavenly Father. This does not mean that the plot is purely theologizing, he very well disburdened the novel with Grushenka and the humorous dialogues of Fyodor with his sons.Nabokov may be right about the technical side, but that is less important and can be attributed to style or some hidden intention that (what do I know) can also serve good.
>>25037202Dosto is essentially sadomasochistic, he loves dwelling on characters who revel in how depraved they are, but who also prostrate themselves in the just punishment or humiliation of their depravity. Again, sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes imply the exact situation he adored, all the violence and sexual intrigue he desired so much, but with the approval of his super ego since they ritualistically degrade themselves in a kind of spiritual fetishistic pleasure in confessing, being punished, and then being "redeemed". It's lurid and partakes of a sick kind of gratification in self flagellation.
>>25032978I have more respect for the 105 IQ women really endeavoring to read this book after dosto blew up on tiktok than I do for the chucklefuck morons here trying to do their best Nabakov impression.
>>25032983Only Notes from Underground sound even remotely like this.
>>25037202I don't buy this "Russian soul" argument because it's not exactly monolithic throughout Russian literature, it's a very Dosto trait.
>>25032983>this is who /lit/ takes as their literally me
