Tag: Dostoyevsky

• White Nights in October

  

  For my next read after Brothers K, I returned to White Nights and Other Stories, which includes several Dostoyevsky short stories translated by Garnett.  This collection was a mixed bag; in spite of that, I give it a cumulative 4 out of 5 stars based on enjoyment level.

  1. The first and feature story is White Nights, a very romantic, fanciful sketch about unrequited love.  Previously, I had read some quotes from it online, and reading the entirety, I was not disappointed.  The ending was so depressing, but the story itself was bittersweet and thought-provoking.  Recommended if you want to read Dostoyevsky in a nutshell.
  2. I skipped Notes from Underground, having already read it.
  3. A Faint Heart was a psychological mystery, reminiscent of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” which I read in September.  (Not to sound like a broken record, but it is worth mentioning that Dostoyevsky’s so-called “existentialist” themes are sometimes compared to Kafka, as was “Bartleby,” and I think I must have a knack for finding this genre everywhere!)  It was very intriguing and also depressing.
  4. A Christmas Tree and a Wedding centers on a minor character from “A Faint Heart” – at least, I think it does.  Either that, or two characters share the exact same name.  This Yulian Mastakovitch reminded me of Totsky from The Idiot.  I really have nothing else to say, except the story made me sick, and also, that Dostoyevsky is very good at portraying evil characters going about their “everyday” disgusting pursuits. 
  5. I got a bit lost reading Polzunkov – not quite sure what it was about. 
  6. A Little Hero was another strange plot, about a boy who has a crush on an unhappily married woman.  Kind of a coming-of-age story, borderline inappropriate, vaguely Dickensian.    
  7. The last story Mr. Prohartchin is about an eccentric old man and his irrational fears.  Definitely Dickensian.  Not gripping, but one of those interesting, obscure sketches that gives you a good idea of “life back then.”

  It was fascinating to read Dostoyevsky on a small scale.  I felt his social commentary came through pretty strongly, and he is good at short stories, in the sense he can get you to care very quickly about the characters.  The plots were hit-and-miss, yet overall I’d recommend this book.  In fact, with Notes from Underground, it’s an excellent introductory volume to this author.

  October 27, 2014

  Dostoyevsky, Russian Literature 2014, update

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• The Brothers Karamazov – 4 & 5: Strains; Pro and Contra

  Click here for other installments in this review series…

  

  The carriage started and raced off.  All was vague in the traveler’s soul, but he greedily looked around him at the fields, the hills, the trees, a flock of geese flying high above him in the clear sky.  Suddenly he felt so well.

  What I got out of these two parts was not so much plot development but character development.  Through the eyes of Alyosha, we finally get to meet the enigmatic Karamazov brother, Ivan.  This in turn shows us their family’s dysfunctional situation through his perspective, which by instinct is less disinterested than he might wish it to be.

  It’s odd, but by far Ivan is my favorite character.  He is somewhat coldhearted, frequently profane, and not without some of the violent emotional tendencies of the oldest brother, Dmitri.  Still it is his anti-heroic traits and heroic potential that make him the most interesting character.  His bitterness is paradoxically deep-rooted and superficial.  He can’t conceal either his loneliness or his confusion.  He expresses self-destructive thoughts, only to confess:

  I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic…some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit.

  And later, as if in response to everything that has happened with his father:

  I don’t understand anything…and I no longer want to understand anything.  I want to stick to the fact.  I made up my mind long ago not to understand.

  The existentialist themes make me think of Notes from Underground, as well as Kafka, in places.

  Ivan’s outlook is, to some degree, summarized in the chapters “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor.”  “The Grand Inquisitor” is a remarkable chapter (containing a paragraph eight pages long), a rather bizarre story told by Ivan about a persecutor from the Spanish Inquisition who meets Jesus and rejects Him.  It is spoken in first-person by the Inquisitor.  While I have not read Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, this chapter seems to have been written in the same style – that is, making a point from the opposite side.

  Of course, maybe it depends on your perspective.  Maybe it can be read from an anti-Christian viewpoint, and quite probably a lot of people take it that way.  What made me question that interpretation were lines like the following (spoken by the Inquisitor):

  You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: “Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you.”  You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous.

  This hearkens back to something the narrator asserts way back in chapter 5: “In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.”  He claims a realist must wish to believe in miracles, and if the realist does not, then “if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact.”  I don’t know about stating things in such generalized terms, but certainly this reminds me of the Pharisees’ refusal to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, even after witnessing numerous miracles.

  But back to the Inquisitor’s words, “faith that is free.” This notion of free will is a recurrent theme in Dostoyevsky.  Not only free will, but the contrast of choosing to be enslaved to something, in a psychological or moral sense.  The Karamazovs’ cruelty and dissipation is something they (except Alyosha) view as a family trait, even as an excuse.   Ivan, at least, even in his cynicism, has given it some thought and questioning, if on a more global scale.

  The concept of “national identity” is somewhat controversial.  Throughout The Brothers Karamazov, the characters have been making certain statements, usually derogatory, about the Russian identity.  I find it quite fascinating, the way you can interpret subject matter in this book as referring to specific characters, Russia, or the world at large.  It is one thing to read it from a detached, Western perspective and find some thread of connection throughout Russian historical events, up to the present day.  At the same time, it is extremely important to read it autobiographically.  The subject matter hits much closer to home than we might be comfortable to admit.

  I did not mean for this post to be so long!  For sure, this was the most thought-provoking section so far.  This is why I can’t enjoy reading Dostoyevsky.  He inevitably reminds me of people I have met and real topics discussed, and then I start to feel claustrophobic.  Appropriately enough, philosophy is less enjoyable when it is least abstract.

  June 17, 2014

  Dostoyevsky, philosophy, Russian Literature 2014, The Brothers Karamazov

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• Weekend Quote: Prison

  At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept thinking that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours … But afterwards I thought one might find a wealth of life even in prison.

  Dostoyevsky has been on the brain lately, which means his unhappy character Prince Myshkin is always in the background, too, somewhere.  I can understand his wish for “walking straight on” without stopping, trying to escape reality, his illness and eccentricity which separate him from the world.  It’s the last line that makes it, though – finding life and liberty “even in prison.”  And I think there is something even stronger than Stoicisim in those words, because he doesn’t just say life, but a wealth of life.

  Does Myshkin find this wealth in the prison of his life?  I don’t know, but his dream is beautiful.

  July 13, 2013

  Dostoyevsky, Russia, Russian, thoughts, Weekend Quote

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• Notes from Underground

  
  © Yanis Chilov [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  My introduction to Fyodor Dostoyevsky was through (surprise!) Crime and Punishment.  Unable to swallow its psychopathic elements, I gave up just when the story was picking up and could not, in fact, bring myself to finish it.  Fast-forward to summer/fall 2011 – I was taking History of Russia and the USSR, picked up The Idiot because it seemed timely, and found it almost as equally disturbing but vastly more fascinating than C&P.  Now, after several people have (independently of each other) inadvertently recommended him to me this year, I’ve returned to Dostoyevsky via Notes from Underground.
   
  “I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.”  The anonymous narrator’s self-deprecatory sense of humor is strangely charming, at least initially.  A retired government official, he lives now in seclusion in the “Underground” (or underworld) of St. Petersburg, talking to himself about his past youth and professional life.  Part I of the book focuses on his philosophical perspective, which, according to Wikipedia, is considered existentialist.  Part II expounds upon this with specific scenarios from his past which still haunt him.

  I liked the book.  For the first two-thirds or so, I felt I could often empathize with the narrator.  He seems to have some form of social anxiety disorder, preventing him from forming close relationships, be they platonic or romantic.  His antagonists are, alternatively, the people around him and himself, and he is never quite sure which is the true cause of his failure to fit in.  This anxiety is much more intense than anything I have personally experienced, but anyone who has felt isolated in conventional society will find something here to relate to.

  Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is typically cited as the novel which exemplifies how books can influence a person’s life, but I would argue that Notes from Underground is an even more powerful example.  One of the narrator’s great obstacles is his Romanticism (Part II, chapter I gives Dostoyevsky’s definition of the Russian romantic, as opposed to the German or French romantic).  The Underground narrator dreams of duels and poetic speeches – indeed, he finds himself unconsciously talking like a book, which does not necessarily work its intended effect upon his more contemporary listeners.

  But though he hates his lack of social skills, the narrator also loathes the “paltry, UNLITERARY, commonplace” reality of shallow society.  Trying to be like other people, he adopts a dissipated lifestyle, plagued all the time by the knowledge that he is not, in his heart, as low as that.  He wants desperately to be like other people, but more than that, he wants to be himself.

  The last 1/3 of the book was, to me, deeply depressing, just like the last part of The Idiot.  The general themes of Notes are more significant than the story, so I cannot say the last subplot ruined the book, but it was disappointing enough to deduct some stars.  On Goodreads I gave this a 3; here I can give it 3.5 out of 5.  I recommend Notes in spite of the ending, and – being a short, quick read – it would be a great introduction to Dostoyevsky’s writing.

  ***

  A note on the translation: this was the one by Constance Garnett (am fairly sure I also read her translation of Fathers and Sons).  From what I read online, it seems her translations tend to favor readability over accuracy.  I certainly found Notes readable and happily devoid of 21st-century vocabulary.  The downside is the Britishness of Garnett’s word and phrase choices – fun to read, but a bit too British for Russian literature.  I plan to read multiple translations of Dostoyevsky, as I am doing for Eugene Onegin (of course, my goal is to read the original Russian, someday!).   

  Some favorite quotes:
  

  • I will observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself.
  • Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
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  • May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it . . .
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  • “My face may be ugly,” I thought, “but let it be lofty, expressive, and, above all, extremely intelligent.”
  • At one time I was unwilling to speak to anyone, while at other times I would not only talk, but go to the length of contemplating making friends with them. 
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  • He was the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now. But I only went to see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one human being, actually existing.  
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  • …man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. . . . What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

  July 1, 2013

  Dostoyevsky, philosophy

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