Dostoevsky is the slavjank of literaturewhich is to say, his work is overflowing with soul and extremely compelling, but also a complete god damned mess in particular Demons and the Idiot, for example. both books are full of soul and extremely compelling scenes, characters, narratives, but taken as a whole are structural disasters that go off the rails into a confusing muddled mess part way through, only to come back together for their endings I always questioned how crime and punishment came to be *the* dostoevsky novel, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense, because its the most structurally coherent and consistant novel he produced, even though his other novels could often be more compelling at times
Этo тoчнo тaк и ecть, кaк ты гoвopишь.
>>25296373B-but muh Karamazov
>>25296373If he actually had an editor and wrote for the sake of writing and not paying off debts, if he had some money and leisure, his books would have been much better. The Idiot was pleasant as a concept but what an absolute drag going nowhere.
>>25296373I can see the argument for The Idiot, but Demons? I think it's structurally pretty sound and straightforward, at least for a Dostoevsky novel. Like half of it takes place in a single day. I think TBK is looser.
>>25297330whos to say if he would've written at all if he had everything he ever wanted
>>25297491for me in Demons theres a point where Stavrogin kind of just disappears from the narrative after the whole thing seemed to revolve around him and it leaves the whole thing feeling super disjointed like the whole narrative starts with his mother and stepan then shifts to mainly revolving around him, feeling like its all building up to something with him, then he just disappears like half way through and youre left thinking "wait then what the fuck is even going on then" and it all becomes quite messy and like i said just feels very disjointed
>>25296965I guess Karamazov is also more consistent than the others
>>25297330>The Idiot was pleasant as a concept personally i would go further and say the idiot was still extremely good at times, not just as a concept, it just has these bizzare diversions from the plot like the ippolit shit that feels tacked on and completely disrupts the flow of what should have been a straightforward tight narrative everything directly involving the dynamics between mishkin, nastasya, Rogozhin and aglya was quite enjoyable.
Why did Dostoyevsky have such a big head?
>>25299103because he was bald, of course.
what's the problem with mess?
>>25296373If 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.
>>25300372Holy GPTslop, Batman
>>25300474It 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.
>>25300477>woah dude, like, the book is just not the same when you've already read it once and already know the plot..... so sad dudeI take it back. Enjoy your GPTslop that rearranges itself every time you go for another read. At least then you'll be reading something I suppose.
>>25300491Those four years of penal servitude Dostoyevsky spent in Siberia he spent in the company of murderers and thieves, no segregation having been yet introduced between ordinary and political criminals. He described them in his ''Memoirs from the House of Death'' (1862). They do not make a pleasant reading. All the humiliations and hardships he endured are described in detail, as also the criminals among whom he lived. Not to go completely mad in those surroundings, Dostoyevsky had to find some sort of escape. This he found in a neurotic Christianism which he developed during these years. His emotional life up to that time had been unhappy. In Siberia he had married, but this first marriage proved unsatisfactory. In 1862-63 he had an affair with a woman writer and in her company visited England, France and Germany. This woman, whom he later characterized as ''infernal,'' seems to have been an evil character. Later she married Rozanov, an extraordinary writer combining moments of exceptional genius with manifestations of astounding naivete. (I knew Rozanov, but he had married another woman by that time.) This woman seems to have had a rather unfortunate influence on Dostoyevsky, further upsetting his unstable spirit. It was during this first trip abroad to Germany that the first manifestation of his passion for gambling appeared which during the rest of his life was the plague of his family and an insurmountable obstacle to any kind of material ease or peace to himself. Just as I have no ear for music, I have to my regret no ear for Dostoyevsky the Prophet. The very best thing he ever wrote seems to me to be ''The Double.'' It is the story - told very elaborately, in great, almost Joycean detail (as the critic Mirsky notes), and in a style intensely saturated with phonetic and rhythmical expressiveness - of a government clerk who goes mad, obsessed by the idea that a fellow clerk has usurped his identity. It is a perfect work of art, that story, but it hardly exists for the followers of Dostoyevsky the Prophet, because it was written in the 1840's, long before his so-called great novels; and moreover its imitation of Gogol is so striking as to seem at times almost a parody. Dostoyevsky characterizes his people through situation, through ethical matters, their psychological reactions, their inside ripples. After describing the looks of a character, he uses the old-fashioned device of not referring to his specific physical appearance anymore in the scenes with him. This is not the way of an artist - say Tolstoy - who sees his character in his mind all the time and knows exactly the specific gesture he will employ at this or that moment.
>>25296373Every time I see someone try and make a serious critique of Dostoyevsky it's like their brains turn off. I've seen people I otherwise respect and agree with sputter out half way through the discussion and fall back on Nabokov, usually in a way that doesn't even make sense for the specific book or character that they are talking about. These are discussions not even taking place on /lit/ and they are with people who I know have actually read the man's books in most cases. I wonder what it is about him that seems to defy literary criticism, why everyone cannot seem to grasp the obvious flaws in his work and instead clamp on to irrelevant details. I've started to wonder if it's some sort of inside joke, because I refuse to believe that the people giving these criticisms actually believe what they are saying.
The french really improved him
any recomendations of this guy as a booklet , I like to read multiple non related books at the same time as well
>>25300958Some artists are just untouchable. Criticising Dostoevsky for not describing the weather is the same as criticising Vergil for "copying Homer" or Botticelli for drawing "crooked feet". It's pure nonsense parroted by clueless idiots and is ultimately meaningless.
So why did it become a fad among zoomers to shit on dosto
>>25301107? You're confusing /lit/ shitposts with actual events, zoomers love Dostoevsky cause of the White Nights and Crime and Punishment craze a little while back. The dude's got fancam edits of him and his work
