/lit/ - Literature

>>21295347
I got the the Oliver Ready translation. Did I fuck up?

I read all his other books in the Constance Garnett translation and thoroughly enjoyed them but this feels a bit "off". Is dostoyevsky style just completely different for this book or is it just that it's a diff translation that's throwing me off. Or is it all just in my head and unburnt out on Russian books lol?

>>21295393
Garnett is the best translation by far and nothing comes close for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons people generally fail to mention is that she was also the one responsible for popularizing Dosto in the west. In a sense it is responsible for his reputation and when you engage with this version you are engaging with the same version other people have historically speaking, you are more part of the 'conversation' this way.

The revised Garnett is also worth considering and sort of modernizes a few clunky phrases but eh, I wouldn't say either is directly better than the other. Each has strong and weak points.

At the end of the day it comes down to taste, just compare various versions and pick which you like. Pic related.

>>21295347
>This is the most psychologically complete book ever written prove me wrong
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein is better at being "psychologically complete". Too bad though that you're 17 and have read maybe three books, so The Making of Americans will filter you in about two pages.

>>21295347
>This is the most psychologically complete book ever written
>Dostoievski sums up all of humanity in a handful of chapters
You're an arrogant little bastard, aren't you?

>>21296181
I honestly can't tell if this post is ironic or not I really hope it is

>>21296315
OP, you're young and conceited. Try reading more books before you heap superlative praise on a middling melodrama.

>>21296366
this is the pre fabricated midwit criticism of Dosto
I could write entire essays on how it's wrong but why bother? You aren't a serious reader.

>>21296415
Go on. Tell us first how old you are.

>>21295347
Nah, Wagner did it better in the Ring and Parsifal. The character of Kundry feels very Dostoyevskian.

>>21296493
And Eschenbach did Parzival better than Wagner...pseud.

>>21296509
Lmao no. The character of Kundry didn't even exist for Wolfram. Wagner both brilliantly adapted Parzival/the Grail mythos into the form of a drama as well as created something entirely new and situated in modernity.

>>21296460
says the child parroting Nabokov while not even offering anything to suggest you've actually read the thing you are so 'above' and 'expert' about

pathetic faggot

>>21296524
Go on. Tell us how old you are.

>>21296531
969 years. The joke here, since you are clearly very unintelligent and need it explained, is anyone cans anything on the internet, so I'm Methuselah obviously, why not? It's no less true than your comical facade which in fact only reveals your dilettantism.

Go on, say anything original for the first time in your life and prove you've actually read the things you pretend to be so 'above' and 'expertly' about.

>>21296540
unironically btfo holy shit

>>21296540
Go on. Tell us how old you are, bud. Also tell us if this is your first big boy book after reading 1984, Lord of the Flies, and Brave New World in 10th grade English class. Go on, son.

>>21295347
who wants to experience the complete psychology of humans? just believe the vast majority is bullshitters bullshitting and you can live the best way.

>>21295347
Based.
And also based posting a screenshot from the brilliant 1970 Soviet adaptation, which I constantly shill on this and other boards.

>>21296460
I'm 33 years old with a masters in English literature and an undergraduate in political science and history. Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the shortcomings of Dostoevsky's psychology.

>>21296841
His characters are made of cardboard or straw.

>>21296913
His characters play off of each other in the same ways humans do in real life, if only with a little more candour. What you see as sentimentality or excessive emotion displayed in their dialogue is actually just giving voice to the things which trouble individuals but which they're reluctant to share until they've reached rock-bottom. In Dostoevsky's novels, many of the characters are already approaching rock-bottom, either financially, socially, or intellectually, so they give voice to these universal concerns. That's why Dostoevsky is almost universally considered such a brilliant analyst of human psychology: he articulates in plain English was causes the unconscious turmoil in people's minds.

It seems that the quality of /lit/ (which has by now reached rock bottom) is a function of the amount of underage people and Russians on here.

Figures.

>>21296948
Wallowing in self-pity and unimpressive moralizing is not analysis. All Russian novels are a conversation between the authors' hypocritical egos and punitive superegos. It's meaningless wank.

>>21296948
He’s a good writer generally speaking but his writing is far from realistic or sophisticated. It is habitually on the nose and melodramatic, with everything spelled out leaving almost nothing to imagination or interpretation.

At times he even inserts entire essays in the guise of a speech or dialogue and while people sometimes describe him as a philosopher his ideas are not original but simply everything that was circulating in the intellectual milieu of his time.

He was a great writer don’t get me wrong. Let’s just not go overboardwith the hallelujahs

>>21296969
>conversation between authors' hypocritical egos and punitive superegos
How on earth is that meaningless? Dostoevsky himself couldn't reconcile the words of Ivan Karamazov with his own beliefs. So tell me why it's wank, and why other forms of conversation aren't.

>>21296986
>How on earth is that meaningless?
Because it's a hypocrite's hot air. Whiney weak men are not meaningful, they are whiney weak men.

OP, this you?
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/z28whn/i_just_read_dostoyevskys_crime_and_punishment_and/

>>21296991
His characters are not "whiny, weak men". I asked why other forms of conversation--that is, conversations between characters representing conflicting points of views--is wank.

>>21297030
Dostoevsky was a whiny weak man. The characters don't exist.

Why do Russian novels make the reddit migrants here seethe so hard lately? Is it really an extension of the Ukraine groupthink? So disgusting to see these newfags spam their autistic shit flinging when Dosto has been a tried and true favorite of /lit/ since the beginning.

>>21296991
Observing what makes them weak and whiney and how they can or can't overcome their weakness is exactly what makes it meaningful.

>>21297669
>>21297669
No one ever said Dostoyevsky was bad retard. People weren't agreeing with OP's superlative. I suggest you kill yourself for being a tranny polchud.

>>21295347
>baby's first serious literature

>>21296958
>>21296969
>>21296991
>>21297052
you left your name field filled in you sad schizo retard

>>21295347
it's boring

>>21298885
>36 replies
>11 ips
damn schizos are scary

>>21297669
nabochads have been dunking on dostotards for years
most newer dostotards read him cause of peterson and fridman

>>21299506
>nabochads
Nabokov is the pseud's pseud. The only reason he 'dunks' on other authors is because they are better esteemed and more read than he is, it's a siphoning of relevance and a narcissistic defense for want of an audience as witness to its insipidity. Simpletons mistake this sort of pretension for superiority. In reality it is the most pathetic kind of reflexive inferiority. You might as well be watching 'react videos' on youtube or something.

>most newer dostotards read him cause of peterson and fridman
I don't like to use the ever retarded colloquialisms and buzzwords typical of nu-4chan but...is this not the definition of 'rent free'? The fact anyone is even capable of suspicion about e-celebs when it comes to a literary work is a kind of tragedy, but as a priority over actual literature, to actually think this condition gives grounds to disregard the substance of the thing for the sake of checking perceived popular opinion...is to be guilty of the same sorry dilettantism you're looking for in others. Why should it matter why anyone reads a thing? The words are the same. Unless of course you're an obsessed mental invalid whose faculties have been rotted and reshaped by the worst the internet has to offer.

Reading this thread gave me cancer and reminded me why I so seldom come here anymore. Thank god /a/ at least is holding up, but Christ on a cracker how this board has fallen. To think I almost posted my Svidrigailov theory just now instead of calling you all the faggots you are...bullet not dodged I guess.

oh no, not animeposter's svidrogailov theory..what are we gonna do

You'll keep spending yourself on the nothingness that you are, obviously.
>tfw actually have things to talk and think about
Feels good, man.

>>21299598
Good post.

>>21299598
>To think I almost posted my Svidrigailov theory just now instead of calling you all the faggots you are...bullet not dodged I guess.
what you did there, I see it

>>21299691
groomed you into wanting to get it?

>>21299598
I would agree with you but you are an anime poster which means your opinion is immediatly invalidated

>>21299696
What do you think?

>>21299776
That's big of you anon. I'll point out why; you can't be ready to agree, even conditionally, with something the acceptance of which renders your agreement a case of ironic retardation extraordinaire, except as tacit admission of said retard state condition or no. Maybe you need to read that twice. Maybe that's an overestimation of you, if anything.

Also my choice of images is no accident, I welcome and even seek your dismissal. For lack of a better word I would call it 'indirect edification', it doesn't raise me up except relative to you, which so far as I'm concerned is better than actual improvement.

Also anime website, Manchu kite convention etc, and other fine platitudes.

>>21299899
>it doesn't raise me up except relative to you
A dangerous seduction of power. Is it not the 'Nabokov's pipeline'? Also, on the thread's topic: Dosto never escaped Hegelianism, there is always a master-slave and the economy stemming from their perverted 'love story'.

>>21299930
>: Dosto never escaped Hegelianism, there is always a master-slave and the economy stemming from their perverted 'love story'.
Where do you see this in C&P? I'm genuinely curious because I've never understood why the character of Sonia exists as she does, she's the closest thing to a shameless plot convenience in Dostoyevsky.

>>21297669
>that hivemind bad >:(
>this hivemind gud :)

>>21299947
>classical literature is a hivemind
you have no mind lol

>>21299936
Hm, everywhere? Mainly it is within Dostoevsky himself and from there it is getting stamped unto his characters and plots.

Think perverted notion of a holy prostitute — only a perverted soul could conceive of that. Straight soul wills purity as purity, impurity as impurity. But a sinister one is always about the ambivalence, feeding on it, spreading it. And here's the Hegelianism: it cannot conceive of a master without a slave. Which is the self-propelling wheel.

>>21299899
>I'm superior to you because I jerk off to anime children
Kek, the absolute cope

>>21299958
All I can really say is I don't find your argument very comprehensible or convincing, for one thing master is fundamentally a comparative term, it cannot exist without some kind of dichotomy else it has no meaning whatsoever. Can you provide an example to prove this wrong? An example of a master without those mastered? As for Sonia, the character is troublesome precisely because she without any impurity, her being a prostitute at all is framed precisely as an argument of her purity.

>>21299982
precisely because she is*

forgot a word

>>21299982
>it cannot exist without some kind of dichotomy else it has no meaning whatsoever.
A child is a master without slaves. Child's play is related purely to the void of being (the groundless ground).
>is framed precisely as an argument of her purity.
And that is abhorrent logic. Those caught in it will justify (their) wrongdoing by amounts of suffering they have endured: economies of damage taken and retribution. I.e. never existing JUST and out of itself but always in relation to an economy of the other. Producing and imposing guilt, etc. Absolutely archon-pilled.

>>21295347
Raskolnikov is literally me guys.

>>21299598
if you think that all nabokov does is "dunk" on authors you're retarded. you might not agree with him, but his points are valid and well argued

>>21300004
>A child is a master without slaves. Child's play is related purely to the void of being (the groundless ground).
How are their family not such slaves? In our very example here Sonia prostitutes herself precisely in order to secure and maintain the children in her family.

There's no more self-propelling wheel in history or nature than the continuation of families by paying for life with life.

>And that is abhorrent logic.
Why?
>Those caught in it will justify (their) wrongdoing by amounts of suffering they have endured: economies of damage taken and retribution. I.e. never existing JUST and out of itself but always in relation to an economy of the other. Producing and imposing guilt, etc. Absolutely archon-pilled.
Sonia never once tries to justify what she did to anyone in the book as far as I know.

Again, I don't find your argument either convincing or very comprehensive.

>>21300020
>if you think that all nabokov does is "dunk" on authors you're retarded.
Yes that's true, but not as retarded as you who answers an argument no one made because he doesn't know how to read but wants to be heard and to write.

>>21299953
if you require unwavering devotion to the "tried and true favorites" of this board (or even require said favorites in the first place) you're the little bitch here

>>21300029
>There's no more self-propelling wheel in history
There is no salvation in history. 'Self-propelldom' happens in art and in genuine act of humanity such as love. (But the other side will always try to reduce it to their own level of misunderstanding.)
>Why?
Because it creates a binding economy of guilt and revenge and it subjugates the being to its logic. If there were malignant forces (like archons of Gnosticism) they would instil exactly this culture.
>Again, I don't find your argument either convincing or very comprehensive.
That's fine. I see shitposting as a solitary activity (a self-perpetuating one) rather than a dialogue to establish ''truth''. If it could be beneficial to anyone I publicly announce my self to be incorrect and cringe.

>>21300011
Same

>>21300053
>if you require unwavering devotion to the "tried and true favorites" of this board
said no one never
you dumb fags keep making shit up, getting called out on it, and then just making more shit up lol
do your really have no idea why you ruin every discussion? are you actually retarded?

>>21300084
the niggas who get salty because someone has the gall to not worship le sad russian guy are the biggest impediments to good discussion here

>>21300064
>I told you just now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food, no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a ruble. Razumikhin works! But I turned sulky and wouldn’t. (Yes, sulkiness, that’s the right word for it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You’ve been in my den, you’ve seen it . . . And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that closet! And yet I wouldn’t leave it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days on end, and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Nastasia brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I went all day without food; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, because of my sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust is lying an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking . . . And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe them! Only then I began to imagine that . . . No, that’s not it! Again I’m getting it wrong! You see, I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—I still won’t be any wiser?

>>21300502
I spent two entire years in uni doing nothing and rotting in my bed, and now I am working and studying at the same time to make up for it to my mom that trusted me and was very disappointed.
Sorry mom, I'll get that degree, I promise.

>>21300532
>>21300502
As someone who has spent the last decade as a parasitic neet you can't imagine how shattering it is to have your entire self laid bare like that

don't fuck around guys just do what's expected of you and don't make life harder for yourself, the philosophy morality or reason for anything be damned, just think of what will be easiest and safest

>>21299958
The fallen woman prostitute was a common trope of the era and certainly not unique to Dostoyevsky. You see it in Gogol for example

>>21295347
One of the least IMHO. The dying breath of moralism in the face of cold, hard reality.

>>21300630
Elaborate on that.

>>21300630
>One of the least IMHO. The dying breath of moralism in the face of cold, hard reality.
kind of ironic to hear considering what's followed is an era of neuroticism and complete delusion in the west, the fruits of your so called reality, science has revealed the world to itself and man has got sick eating them

the future is remarkably in line with Dostyovskis predictions and analysis, he anticipates everything from communist atrocity to the malaise of modernity