How many of you really like Dostoyevsky’s writing? I’m fond of many of his minor works, like <i>Notes from Underground</i>, “White Nights” and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” I love how his writing takes such a timid voice, and how his writing resonates with love for his fellow man. I like literature especially that exudes this quality, this love-thy-neighbor quality (I think Sherwood Anderson as a good example of this).
I’m currently reading his <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>, the Pevear translation. I’m not too terribly fond of Pevear translations, but he annotates so well, and I think that brings the reader back into cultural touch with Dostoyevsky’s society. I’m enjoying it a lot. I find his Perfect Soul construct very interesting. In this case, Alexei Karamazov, who seems very much like Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s <i>The Idiot</i>. I named my kitten Myshkin, by the way. She’s a positively good kitten.
I enjoy Dostoyevsky very much. I prefer his longer works like Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Personally I better relate to his idealistic and angry intellectuals like Underground Man, Ivan and Raskolnikov than his Russian “Christ” figures. But both of these types of characters in the end want to make the world a better place.
This spring during my last semester at my jr. College i did an independent study on the Brothers Karamazov. So once a week me another student and the Teacher would meet for an hour (often longer) and discuss TBK, it was fun. That teacher loved Dostoyevsky in fact his masters thesis was on how the three brothers drew on certain characters from previous works. This revival of elements from his previous works is something that can be said about the book in general because TBK is thematically about everything he had wrote since Notes From the Under Ground.
I have read a good bit of his work, in fact am in the middle of “the insulted and humiliated”
The first piece of his I read was “notes”
Russian lit has been an avid intrest of mine for years. More towards the Soviet rule and late Czar era.
Gogol,“ldead souls”
Gorky,“life of a useless man”
Bulgakov, “heart of a dog”
Tolstoys short stories and plays are fun. Sebastapol sketches and Redemption being my favorites.
I like how despite having been written in Tsarist Russia over 120 years ago the characters seem so modern and so identifiable, and that the books survive the translation to English so well. Of course, I’m considering learning Russian just so I can read the originals…
I have read the 5 major novels of his later career and Notes from the Underground, and consider Crime and Punishment my favorite of his works.
I could look up the order in which his major works appear, but I’m in a hurry now. I just want to say that I can see from which characters Alexei and possibly Dmitri were drawn from, but what about Ivan? That would be a very interesting paper to read.
Well TBK was the last novel he wrote and, it was serialized the year before his death.
My teachers claim was that Ivan drew upon elements of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment. He put some of his masters thesis in a huge packet of TBK criticisms he compiled for me and that other student. He compiled it because the way my Jr. College did independent studies require a student to write a research paper with out side sources and my teacher thought our schools access to literary criticism sucked.
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How many of you really like Dostoyevsky’s writing? I’m fond of many of his minor works, like <i>Notes from Underground</i>, “White Nights” and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” I love how his writing takes such a timid voice, and how his writing resonates with love for his fellow man. I like literature especially that exudes this quality, this love-thy-neighbor quality (I think Sherwood Anderson as a good example of this).
Dostoevsky’s novels made a big impression on me when I was a lad, probably the first classic literature that I ever enjoyed reading. I had literally never read old books that were in any way exciting before, so it opened my mind in that direction. Devils was always my favourite for some reason, and Crime and Punishment is absolutely iconic, although I suspect it is one of those books that benefits from being read as a teenager. At that age I really empathised with the raging, misunderstood intellectuals who won’t tidy their rooms.
Its hard to judge the quality of writing through translation really, nothing wrong with the prose but I don’t think it is a defining characteristic of his work. I never caught up with the other Russian greats like Turgenev and Tolstoy, although I second the greatness of Mikhail Bulgakov; The Master and Margeurita (sp?) is breathtaking.
Dostoyevsky is one of my favorite authors. I was assigned Crime and Punishment in high school as a summer reading project, and ended up reading the entire book inside of a couple of days. I found it absolutely wonderful. I then proceeded to devour many of his other works. As for other Russian writers. . .well, I can’t say I enjoyed Tolstoy much. I read most of Anna Karenina, and it just didn’t do anything for me. I did, however, enjoy Chekhov a great deal (mostly his short stories, oddly enough).
I’m actually looking to re-read C&P again, but a different translation. The version I’ve read was the Garnett translation, which I understand is the standard, and I enjoyed it well enough. Are there any other good-or-even-better translations of note? Sorry for the hijack…
Add me to the list of people who enjoyed Crime and Punishment. I usually can’t stand “classics,” but I really liked it. I think I found Raskolnikov to be more of a sympathetic character than I was supposed to, but damnit, I liked the guy!
I can’t say I liked Raskolnikov, but I did identify with him. Dostoevsky pulled off the feat of making me simultaneously identify with, and be horrified by, this character. I was disgusted with him, but I could imagine myself in his shoes.
You know those sitcom episodes where somebody does something bad—like, they break a window or dent up Dad’s new car or destroy sister’s science project—and they spend the whole rest of the show worrying about getting caught, and trying to cover it up, and worrying about the consequences, and wrestling with a guilty conscience, until at the end they finally either 'fess up or are found out? Crime and Punishment kind of reminded me of that. Only much more intense.