/lit/ - Literature

If you read P&V, you didn't read Dostoevsky, you read goyslop.
If you read a trannyslation, you didn't read Dostoevsky or great literature in general, you read goyslop.
Translations are for trannies.

Sure, but is it true that if god is dead, then everything is permitted?

>>21257571
>Can we try to have one?
Sure OP. We had a great Crime & Punishment thread a few weeks ago here, the trick is to just grab a certain excerpt or theme from the book and discuss it exclusively (the more general a thread is the more bad-faith actors you're going to attract). In that case we talked about Raskolnikov's article about Great Men and Napoleon, and the supposed justification and mechanics of them acting out in their endeavors, together with his justifications for why he wouldn't be disqualified for feeling guilt over the murders. At the time I hadn't finished the book (We were in the section where he talks to the inspector about the article), now having finished it I think I have some better insights; Rask evidently did think of himself as a new Napoleon and still tried to rationalize things through the lenses that Great Men would still feel guilt over their actions (in fact, Great Men and Napoleons would have to go through suffering and pain and resist it anyway to qualify in the first place), and we're supposed of course to believe that he wasn't a Napoleon (as he finally realizes at the end of the book), but do anons here believe that this is a necessary refutal of his thesis considering how much Rask lies to himself throughout the book as a whole? If not for the fact that he himself would qualify, then that men such as Napoleon would have the right (and duty) to overstep the boundaries set before them to build a new path? if Rask had used the resources he got from the old woman to help people, as he intended, in a wider sense instead of leaving it all buried, would he have become a great man? Also, what did you guys think about the later chapters, after his sister's suitor learns about Rask's secret but before he kills himself?

>>21257591
This is probably true. It’s just hard to find motivation to put time and effort into a thread. Morale is low. Anyway, I’d be curious about critiques of these characters:
>Kolya
>Lise
I’m sure they would have had a larger and more clearly defined role in part 2 but without it, they are open ended. Also:
>differences between Ivan, Smerdyakov and Kolya. Maybe Lise, too
They are all cut from the same cloth IMO
>Importance of Father Zossima
IMO he’s the lynchpin for a major theme in the book.

>>21257638
I always thought of Father Zossima as a foil to Ivan and their two opposing views on Christianity. Both characters love humanity and everything it stands for, but this love leads them to develop a very different worldview with regards to theology in Russian society. Zossima is also the root of Alyosha's beliefs.

>>21257638
>Kolya
My theory is that Koyla is the narrator. He's the only character, other than the siblings, who could know everything the narrator knows and also see Alyosha as his hero. One of the theories about the sequel, going by the little we know about it, is that Koyla and his friends were going to be the ones attempting to kill the Tsar and Alyosha at the end would have taken the blame to save them.

>>21257663
I would not worry too much about the narrator knowing things all of Dostoyevsky’s narrators are essentially omniscient and the first person POV of the townsman is just a narrative device

>>21257663
Interesting and makes sense. I sometimes think TBK is better because it’s not finished in the grand sense. We get a nice wrap up with the main plot line but there are a lot of secondary questions remaining. I would be worried part 2 wouldn’t do justice to part 1 and it would be soiled for me. Then again I love every novel Dostoyevsky has written
>>21257657
I’ve always thought Dmitri embodies a lot of Zossima’s teachings. The wedding at cannae references are parallel to Dmitri’s sprees.

>>21257663
The sequel was going to be so kino. TBK is already the best novel ever written, but the sequel was going to be at least twice as good. Dostoyevsky wanted to write the ultimate redemption story. The only reason he wrote TBK was because he wanted his readers to truly understand that before Alyosha was a mundane man, a sinner no better than his siblings or even his father, he was a pure boy who wanted to dedicate his life to God. The whole ending, with Alyosha telling the boys to never forget that moment, because even if one day they become evil they can always remember that once they were good, was a foreshadow of the sequel's plot.

>>21257748
Where does this theory come from? It sounds like a rehash of Demons. TBK was all of his other novels coming together to form his magnum opus. It’s crazy that masterpieces like C&P, Demons, The Idiot, and NftU just seem like practice for his big one. Dostoyevsky is truly in a class of his own as a novelist. Probably the greatest ever

>>21257578
Isn't your first line redundant given your second line?

>>21257571
It was kinda weird reaching part 4 and suddenly we're in the shoes of completely new characters with none of the old ones except for that one Alyosha cameo.

>>21257571
Anons, what is your favorite chapter(s)?
>>21257891
Ignore the troll. They feed on you’s. Let them shout into the void

>>21257571
While Fyodor is great writer, it is needful to have Christ on every breath. In him all things hold together and Fyodor would want us to proclaim that Christ is king.

>>21257765
>Where does this theory come from?
The info about the sequel is all scattered around and many of the details contradict each other. When I finished TBK a few years ago I immediately looked all over the internet for info about the sequel and I only found bits and pieces. Mostly commentaries from his friends or his wife, or theories from scholars. It seems like his original plan was to write a story about a man sentenced to death for trying to kill the tzar. But after thinking about it, he realized he needed to flesh out the character more, so he wrote TBK as a prologue. His wife said that at the end of the sequel Alyosha was going to go back to the temple to live as a monk, so he probably got forgiven in the last minute, like it happened to Dostoyevsky himself.
Googling a bit I found these. Can't recall if they are the same texts I read back then or not, but they should at least give you some ideas about the sequel and the context in which TBK was written.
https://www.waggish.org/2010/dostoevskys-sequel/
Here's the whole text from where that passage above comes from:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24663296
More things that could interest you:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt1zxsjft.11.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A6832c652903d15f9f84ad4c84590f359&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781618116826-005/html?lang=en

>>21257897
that threw me off quite a bit the first time read it too. in fact Im pretty sure i made a thread about it on /lit/ years back when I was reading it. but in the end i enjoyed the story and began to appreciate it more in subsequent read throughs where you know ahead of time what you're in for

>>21257945
man its sad to think that we probably missed out on his ultimate magnum opus, in which he was going to pour his entire life experience

>>21257945
Thank you. Crazy that to flesh out a character he wrote a 750 page novel. I like the theory that it is Kolya narrating. I’ll pay closer attention to his sections and see if there is any give away. I’ll get around to reading the links but any idea how far in the future part 2 would take place? Would we have Dmitri in America? Possibly the goldmines in the Wild West? I also wonder what was planned for Ivan, Lize and Katerina. I’ve always read TBK as a story of redemption for Dmitri and Grushenka with Alyosha being the main character only thematically or in spirit

>>21257663
An under the radar suspect for the narrator is Ratikin. He was already writing, wanted to be a journalist and was privy to the gossip

For me this book was the worst case of wanting to like it but just not finding it interesting. It had plenty of moments but didn't justify its word count

>>21257591
It's funny that this is the first post discussing literature I have seen on the literature board

>>21257571
>slap fights between atheists and Christians
That's what Dostoevsky is all about, anon! (and usually the Christians win)

>>21257591
>if Rask had used the resources he got from the old woman to help people, as he intended, in a wider sense instead of leaving it all buried, would he have become a great man?
Yes, absolutely. Raskolnikov himself, at the prison, knew this to be true.
>but do anons here believe that this is a necessary refutal of his thesis considering how much Rask lies to himself throughout the book as a whole?
Yes, but it wasn't refuted through argumentation or reasoning, rather through Raskolnikov's action of finally falling in love with Sofia, and him finally stopping his excuses and his reasoning to justify his actions, and just accepting Christ into his heart. I think one of the themes throughout the book, was the fact that Raskolnikov's rational ideas and the actual practice of those rational ideas were in two utterly separate worlds. His ideas make sense, and his Napoleon philosophy still holds up from a logical standpoint, but in practice it doesn't actually work. You see this with Luzhin as well, where his plans to scandalize Sofia was well thought-out, but it utterly backfired on him in the end. Luzhin was basically a mirror image of Raskolnikov as his rational self (whereas Sofia represented Raskolnikov as a potential spiritual/Christian self). Raskolnikov was at a crossroads between these two options, where Luzhin fully devoted himself to rational egoism, and Sofia fully devoted herself to Christ. Sure, you could rationalize Raskolnikov's and Luzhin's failures as mere miscalculations, but what if it simply wasn't? What if, just maybe, Christ is simply the answer? I think that's Dostoevsky's theme
>Also, what did you guys think about the later chapters, after his sister's suitor learns about Rask's secret but before he kills himself?
Svidrigailov was fucking insane. He represents Raskolnikov's Napoleon in the flesh: a man who does not act as if laws applied to him. And Svidrigailov shows just how unsightly and dishonourable Raskolnikov's "Napoleon" really is in practice: he is a pedophile, who "likes" little kids and was planning ob grooming Sofia's. But he also likes them in an honest way too. Svidrigailov, the Napoleon who could do whatever he wanted, unmitigated by mere morals, wanted Raskolnikov's sister to love him. Note: he did not want her, he wanted her to want him. But having no morals doesn't necessarily mean you're an all-powerful God: Svidrigailov couldn't get what he wanted. Duneshka simply did not want to love him, because Razmukhin has that BRC. So, he kills himself. Based.

Thank you for your reply, Anon. I hadn't really considered the parallels you've mentioned here that deeply when reading C&P for the first time, I'll keep an eye out for any future re-reads. About the ending in the prison, and "What if, just maybe, Christ is simply the answer? I think that's Dostoevsky's theme", I haven't read any other of his works (I'm getting to it) and am not too aware of what his real-life thoughts were, or even what he intended with his books, but purely based on the text my take-away from the ending wasn't necessarily that Raskolnikov had found peace in Christ by Himself, but through association with Sonia's faith and maybe more-so his love for her. This passage;

>How it happened he did not know. But all at once
something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet.
He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first
instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale.
She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the
same moment she understood, and a light of infinite
happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt
that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the
moment had come....
They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in
their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick
pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a
full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by
love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the
heart of the other.

Happens before Rask reads the new testament again in the barracks and has his "Maybe her faith could become his own" realization at the very end, so I feel like his love for her would, by itself, be enough to change him here, even if loving her would inherently mean taking up her faith, Sonia being who she is and reconnecting with, how you said, "his potential spiritual/Christian self"

>>21259181
Forgot to (you) in the last post friend
>>21258840
Honestly all it takes is one moderately high-effort post and the entire thread shifts into gear, be the change you want to see anon

Good thread. Bump

i like the part where the kid lays down on the tracks as a train rolls over.

Do any of you guys think Alyosha and Zosima’s brand of Christianity almost smells like some kind of Protestantism? The whole “we no longer need to believe in omens” thing contrasted with Ferapont struck me as odd. Although that I believe was further complicated by Alyosha later in the book saying that he was at one with Ferapont in sometimes seeing (real?) demons in his room. Where does /lit/ stand on the question of superstition in this book?

>>21260433
I think the ending answers that. Alyosha desperately wanted to to see some type of omen like with Zossima’s smell, despite Zossima’s teachings being everything to the contrary. At the end, Alyosha is simply there for some kids and a poor family when they need it. There wasn’t some grand symbolic gesture or omen.

>>21260433
All of the superstition is exactly that. There’s not a single authentic instance of divine grace in the novel. It’s an atheistic work. Everything is imagined by characters either with brain fever or just looney mystics who are out of their mind. There’s a reason zosimas corpse is made to stink.

>>21257571
This thread is one of the last gasps of /lit/.
What was up with Lise? Strange character slamming her finger in a door and shit

>>21257578
Fpbp

>>21261626
/lit/ is dead.