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Why are you in the West like Dostoevsky? Constantly I hear from westerners - "there is about a real Russian soul". Stories of lost sick people in a morbid situation as for me.

What? What is "dostoevsky"?

 TheCustomLime wrote:
What? What is "dostoevsky"?

He's a famous 19th century author, though the OP spelled the name wrong (Fyodor Dostoyevsky). He wrote "Crime and Punishment", amongst other works.

As for what the OP is asking, I have no idea.

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Constantly I hear from westerners - "there is about a real Russian soul".

I can honestly say I have never heard this phrase, and have no idea what a "there is about a real Russian soul" is supposed to mean. I'm not familiar with Dostoevsky outside of knowing he exists and is a famous author

I think what he wants to know is why people like Dostoyevsky, when he finds his works depressing.

Can't help you there, I've never read the guy.

 Spinner wrote:
I think what he wants to know is why people like Dostoevsky, when he finds his works depressing.

Can't help you there, I've never read the guy.

Well I don't know about Dostoevsky, but in general literary critics and academics love the feth out of depressing stuff (take a look at nobel prize winning authors sometime). There's this overbearing trend in "high criticism" to heavily favor realism, but more than any other field literature never really moved on from the 19th century obsession with human suffering and struggle. Maybe that;s because we tend to structure narrative as being about struggle, or maybe it's because literary academics love their own farts and like holding up banal, boring, and outright depressing works written by rich white guys from the Victorian era as the greatest there ever was. Who knows?

 Freakazoitt wrote:
Why are you in the West like Dostoevsky? Constantly I hear from westerners - "there is about a real Russian soul". Stories of lost sick people in a morbid situation as for me.

I didn't enjoy reading Crime and Punishment. It felt like punishment for a crime I did not commit.

Maybe because we don't know many russian author.

Basically, we know him and Tolstoy.

I like him. but I prefer Soljenitsyne and Boulgakov.

I know him from the Twelve Chairs...

Had to read The Grand Inquisitor for a class in college, my only real exposure to his writing. Thought it was okay, especially compared to some the other crap I had to read.

Read 'Crime and Punishment' in school too long ago to comment now on how it touched me. The fact that I don't recall it would probably suggest it was read and moved on from without a significant impact, I just don't remember.

I liked Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. I also enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov.


Then again, I didn't mind reading Tolstoy's War and Peace. I must be a sucker for punishment.

I found War and Peace a lot easier to get through when I stopped looking at it as a novel. Still a long as hell read though XD

 LordofHats wrote:
I found War and Peace a lot easier to get through when I stopped looking at it as a novel. Still a long as hell read though XD

Agreed 100%.


It used to be something of a mark of pride to be able to read War and Peace from cover to cover. People I know, who are familiar with the book, think I'm insane for liking it.

 LordofHats wrote:
I found War and Peace a lot easier to get through when I stopped looking at it as a novel. Still a long as hell read though XD

How do you look at it?

 kronk wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I found War and Peace a lot easier to get through when I stopped looking at it as a novel. Still a long as hell read though XD

How do you look at it?

A big book of philosophy, politics, culture, and life.

I see.

it's not that hard actually XD. The entire epilogue is just Tolstoy preaching at the reader anyway

Crime and Punishment is okay. The Idiot is great. I think he speaks to America's perception of Russia moreso than what Russia is really like. For my time, I would rather spend it with Nabakov or the Strugatsky brothers. Roadside Picnic is a work of genius.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
What? What is "dostoevsky"?

Sorry, but this scene immediately played out in my head when I read your comment
Forgive me for being weird!



But as to why Dostoevsky became so popular in the West? I do not know. I guess it is because he wrote books that people in the West liked?
As to the so-called Russian soul, it is difficult to define in literature, even more so in the real world. It is difficult to put it into words, but suffering, cynicism and a resignation to fate are definitely an important part of it, as essential to the stereotypical Russian character as shchi and kasha. That is far from all there is to it of course, but I guess it is what Westerners most often think of when they think of "the Russian soul". And since Dostoevsky uses those themes a lot, it leads them to see his writings as the most stereotypical example of "The Russian soul".

The film of The Double is really good.

“HE GOING TO KILL US” said the Dostoyevsky
“I will shoot at him” said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
“No! I must kill the Dostoyevsky” he shouted
The radio said “No, John. You are the Dostoyevsky”
And then John was a Dostoyevsky.

While my friend above provides useful and insightful remarks to the question...

I read "The Idiot" about 18 years ago for a high school book report. Basically, the main character has epilepsy, he's in "love" with a "not very nice lady", and because he has seizures, everyone assumes he's mentally disabled. Everyone thinks he's an idiot.

A slew of poor life choices drag the reader along and, frankly, left me believing he was indeed an idiot. I didn't even think it was terribly unfair of people to describe him as an idiot.


Since the purpose of the report was to compare a story set in the past [The Idiot] to a story set in the present [A Prayer for Owen Meany] Dostoyevsky's absolutely miserable [if accurate] description of life in the "past" made it really easy to say life was gakky before and has made steady progress towards being better.

Reading that book was probably the least enjoyable reading I've ever done. I was 3/4 of the way through when I asked my teacher if I could just read ANY other book for my report and was denied. Mr Palmer was a great guy, and I wanted to deck him for that. It's a big book. Getting to that point was SOOOoooo miserable I was completely ready to start again on anything else rather than finish it.

I believe that the epilogue basically said how all of the main characters in the book got fethed over, except for maybe Miss Not-Very-Nice who got her gold-digging on and married some rich old feth.

Anyhow, don't read it. It's terrible.

 Ahtman wrote:
“HE GOING TO KILL US” said the Dostoyevsky
“I will shoot at him” said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
“No! I must kill the Dostoyevsky” he shouted
The radio said “No, John. You are the Dostoyevsky”
And then John was a Dostoyevsky.

Spoiler:

That is how I feel when I read this thread

I don't know what I read, but if it were a movie starring Katie Holmes and Gary Busey, I'd watch it.

Crime and Punishment, while highly studied, was a slog. I read at a very rapid pace, and even I was slowed down to a crawl. People have told me The Idiot was better, but C&P was honestly such a drag that I couldn't bring myself to read it.

This was the penultimate book of my AP English course in high school, so the other stuff I read may have made C&P less interesting by comparison (Wuthering Heights, Beloved, Frankenstein, King Lear, the Kite Runner, and something by Frost).

Oddly enough, I did reference it during my AP exam. That sort of suffering is memorable at the very least

 greatbigtree wrote:
While my friend above provides useful and insightful remarks to the question...

I read "The Idiot" about 18 years ago for a high school book report. Basically, the main character has epilepsy, he's in "love" with a "not very nice lady", and because he has seizures, everyone assumes he's mentally disabled. Everyone thinks he's an idiot.

A slew of poor life choices drag the reader along and, frankly, left me believing he was indeed an idiot. I didn't even think it was terribly unfair of people to describe him as an idiot.


Since the purpose of the report was to compare a story set in the past [The Idiot] to a story set in the present [A Prayer for Owen Meany] Dostoyevsky's absolutely miserable [if accurate] description of life in the "past" made it really easy to say life was gakky before and has made steady progress towards being better.

Reading that book was probably the least enjoyable reading I've ever done. I was 3/4 of the way through when I asked my teacher if I could just read ANY other book for my report and was denied. Mr Palmer was a great guy, and I wanted to deck him for that. It's a big book. Getting to that point was SOOOoooo miserable I was completely ready to start again on anything else rather than finish it.

This is quite how I felt as I tried wading through "Brothers Karamazov" I seriously just wish there was a Walter to jump out of the bushes and yell "They're NIHILISTS DONNIE!!" Because they sure as gak felt like nihilists, but not in a cool way, more like a totally lame super-depressed sort of way.