/lit/ - Literature

>>23209785
Just see his face. He has that evil arrogant look.

>>23209785
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.

>>23209813
stfu nabofag

>>23209820
I think his criticism is absolutely devastating to Dosto. If you read Dosto's novels, they are chock full of a grotesque macabre fascination with suffering and shame, with murder and sex and the subsequent groveling misery of those who find themselves in such situations. This type of tripe is 100% on the level of a typical harlequin romance novel, but because it's some old Russian who added Christian Orthodox themes as an accent to the sadomasochism, /lit/ eats it up. It's perverse.

>>23209785
Someone needed to do it. We should never let myopic literature like Dosto's go unchallenged.

>>23209813
>Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him.
Sounds like Dostoyevsky was slipstream before it was a thing. Truly ahead of his time.

>>23209831
>I think his criticism is absolutely devastating to Dosto.
In your mind only
lol
>>23209839
oy vey

>>23209845
Dosto is essentially sadomasochistic, he loves dwelling on characters who revel in how depraved they are, but who also prostrate themselves in the just punishment or humiliation of their depravity. Again, sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes imply the exact situation he adored, all the violence and sexual intrigue he desired so much, but with the approval of his super ego since they ritualistically degrade themselves in a kind of spiritual fetishistic pleasure in confessing, being punished, and then being "redeemed". It's lurid and partakes of a sick kind of gratification in self flagellation.

>>23209785
No one that matters rates Turgenev above Dostoevsky. Turgenev wrote 1 good thing in his life.

23209897
look mom

>>23209831
I agree with Nabokov's criticism. Dostoyevsky's work is sadomasochistic fetishistic tripe.
I tire when reading Dosto of encountering the same bland nihilistic characters (they all have tuberculosis and cough) and rant about how nothing has meaning and then do some horrendous act like killing themselves
Or whores who must be redeemed by the heroic christlike protagonist.
It's all so sickeningly over the top, melodramatic, sappy, and self indulgent. I don't know who could possibly like this crap

>>23211034
>sadomasochistic fetishistic tripe
But enough about Lolita.

>>23209785
Did he ever comment on that character that's supposed to be him in Demons?

>>23211158
How is Lolita sadomasochistic or fetishistic? Please be detailed in your reply

>How’s Lolita fetishistic?
lol

>>23211176
Please be detailed in your lol

>>23209785
Tolstoy almost murdered him. He was a Westernized cuck

>>23211161
The somewhat absent narrator is supposed to be his selfinsert? Reading it right now

>>23211158
Lolita was a lovely romance story that simply had a tragic ending. What are you on about?

>>23211034
It's no wonder Peterson praises it constantly: the faux-deep philosopher types really get off on it as it caters to their particular depraved inclinations. Anyone with an ounce of objectivity can see the cheap tricks Dosto employs.

>>23209785
He wasn't. Turgenev was one of the most courtly and likeable people to have ever lived. He likely lent Dostoyevsky money for gambling in Baden. Dostoyevsky happens to speak of him in a very rude manner in his letters.

That is only natural: a rich, tall atheist cosmopolite hunter and opera buff is a polar opposite of poor, small, orthodox introvert nationalist.

This serves as a clue if not completely explains, why Dostoyevsky is the non-reader's token Russian writer. I usually only see Dosto namedrops from impressionable newfags who really need to read more, or in agenda-driven contexts (Putin, Dugin, Karaganov).

Of course he wrote some great books, but this democratic appraisal is very much over the top.

>>23209900
There is much more lasting beauty in Turgenev than, let me guess, Fathers and Sons. Only few realise this.

>>23212285
Bad take. Tolstoy should have change his title to Cunt, because that's what he was, especially in his youth. Only a person hopelessly stuck with today's wretched sentiments would say that spending your life meeting the most important people of the world's culture (Dickens, Flaubert, Garcias/Viardot, Liszt, etcc) and politics (a salon that hosts German or Austrohungarian royals) is cuckoldry.

Tldr: read more faggots

>>23214068
>Fathers and Sons
A book of its time. Reads like a cheap satire or parody today. A Sportsman’s Notebook is legitimately great. The story with the boys in the meadows is one of the best I’ve seen

dostoyevsky was a chud, and a traitor

>>23211034
Nabokov, besides the fact that he was a pedophile pervert, he even went on to criticize Dostoevsky for being antisemitic. Sure, I agree with the fact that he is overcrowding his books with nihilists and degenerates, as Tolstoy also argued, but that doesn't mean he was into any sadomasochistic ideas. Dostoevsky was a humanist and an empath who deeply suffered after his time in Siberia, and he was very concerned with the modern human condition. That is why he wrote so much about depression, suffering and nihilism, because it reflected the condition of the modern intellectual such as he was. If you think Nabokov had a point in anything, you're an idiot.

Nabokunt was arguably one of the biggest degenerates of his generation. Evil hates what is good. Hence why Nabokov hated Dostoevsky. Turgenev was also an insufferable cunt. And also a mega simp. I’m halfway through his bibliography atm. I’m enjoying most of what he writes, and has a nice style, but his plots are very forgettable.

Only pretentious poofters like faggitakov places T over D.

>>23209813
>>23209831
>>23209897
There is definitely something high-strung, neurotic, and morbid in Dostoyevsky’s character, and it seems typical of a certain type of the Slavic, Eastern European/Balkan, or Russian soul, but it’s also balanced and transcended by Dostoyevsky’s deep contemplation of various philosophical and religious matters and even a sort of proto-existentialism of his; that, at his best, turns him into something far profounder than “just another lurid murder-mystery/crime/Gothic/European-romance-inspired novelist”.

Now, Nabokov, while also Russian, certainly didn’t have this passionate, neurotic, deeply conflicted character like Dostoyevsky did and as inspired so much of Dostoyevsky’s works, likely because he grew up as a relatively pretty sheltered, wealthy, cosmopolitanly-educated (in French and English, besides Russian) son of Russian nobles (although he and his family did of course lose this with the Bolsheviks, but this childhood had already had his mark on him, and he was simply able to move to the West and start over as a well-educated cosmopolitan upper-class emigre and academic).

I’m not saying Nabocuck didn’t have a heart, or didn’t suffer through anything. He definitely did, and it peeps out in his literature from time to time. But the passion (and morbidity, to be fair) of a figure like Dostoyevsky, born as he was to relative poverty in Russia, with an abusive father, becoming interested in revolutionary politics as a youth and exiled to Siberia, where he faced a mock-execution (making him think he was going to be executed but being saved at the last moment), and then becoming a passionate, fervent believer in Orthodox Christianity — all this makes Dostoyevsky far more hot-blooded compared to the relative coldness (and at times smugness, snobbishness) of a Nabokov, who can be accused at his worst of becoming too much of a clever aesthete. So it’s unsurprising Nabokov had this antipathy towards Dostoyevsky. They’re very different characters, and Nabokov’s artistic/literary philosophy was far more explicitly centered around sheer aesthetics, instead of having as much deeper existential or religious meanings to his works. Whereas Dostoyevsky, in the original Russian, has an infamously clunky style (many have said he reads better in English and other translations), not caring so much about the style as he does about the themes and characters — becoming something like a philosopher-sermonist in the guise of a novelist and short-story writer.

I like them both for what they offer, but they’re on very different wavelengths. And all criticisms aside, Dostoyevsky will (hopefully) be indefinitely remembered and loved by other similarly brooding, passionate souls who’ve faced similar psychological dilemmas as he did (torturing themselves over matters of atheism vs. faith, the very meaning of life, the goodness of God, etc.) I understand this makes me sound like a corny faggot

>>23214598
> traitor
Traitor to what?

>>23215982
Dosto's depth is much overstated. He was painfully one dimensional when it came to religious thinking and he was literally incapable of fathoming a person who truly did not believe in God without automatically making them an unthinking psychopath like Smerdyakov or merely a temporarily embarrassed believer like Ivan. In this way, every character conforms to his narrow minded philosophy. This is partly why I compare it to a harlequin romance novel, it will only be intriguing to a reader who already agrees with the worldview of the author, so the characters and story can deliver the same hackneyed tropes and "just so" philosophizing the reader wants in a purely safe and predictable manner.

>>23209785
Jealousy perhaps

>>23216467
>unthinking psychopath like Smerdyakov or merely a temporarily embarrassed believer like Ivan
Lebeziatnikov is neither

>>23209831
>This type of tripe is 100% on the level of a typical harlequin romance novel,
Reading his novels feels like watching crappy American television. I imagine it's because American television was influenced by his work, but I won't pretend that it isn't as cheap and vulgar as what they play on TV.
The fact that Russians have such disdain towards American culture when their greatest achievements are equal to our trashiest exports is a great display of how delusional and narcissistic they are.

>>23214727
>Nabokunt was arguably one of the biggest degenerates of his generation. Evil hates what is good.
I really hate this latest wave of litizens that are incapable of evaluating literature on any other grounds than an extremely simplistic moralism. In what way was Nabokov a degenerate? I've read several of his novels. If anything Nabokov is criticizes vulgarity, consumerism, and the indulgence of lower base impulses, what you would call "degenerate"
In Invitation to a Beheading for example the lower base and vulgar sexual impulses are, in a Gnostic fashion, depicted as a falsity that entraps and distracts the artist away from full contemplation and realization
I've noticed that people on here tend to just regurgitate these lines, labeling an author "degenerate" without offering any complex analysis. It is extremely low effort and bad criticism

Why the fuck do retards think this thread is about Nabokov

>>23216044
progress. intellectualism,. the working class.

he used to be a chad socialist but being arrested buck broke him into producing christcuck and reactionary filth. he is a traitor.

>>23216693
Poor Folk was already pretty reactionary desu. It makes the unique association of poverty being caused by the same Freudian sexual complexes that he writes about in all his later books instead of the typical socialist reasons

>>23216550
>Andrey Semyonovitch really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the cause of progress and 'our younger generation' from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.
Dosto invariably portrays this type of character as stupid, evil, or dishonest. Again, he was totally one dimensional in this regard

>>23217843
still neither unthinking psychopath or merely a temporarily embarrassed believer

>>23218268
*nor

>>23218268
Describing someone as "stupid" is basically calling them unthinking. You're being pedantic.

>>23218268
Did you read the description Dosto wrote about him? It exactly fits the criteria of "unthinking". Your reading comprehension is dismal.

>>23218268
Dosto's description of him perfectly fits the criteria of "unthinking". You're being pedantic because you know I've proved my point that Dosto was incapable of writing characters with nuance in this regard.

>>23218967
I don't need such motivations to be pedantic.

>>23209897
You're a fucking idiot, you're like sub 80iq like if I asked you a hypothetical question you wouldn't understand what I'm telling you type of shit

>>23220308
>Generic insult
>Can't actually engage with the criticism
I think we can all see who the sub 80IQ is here