/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16597602]

just finished this. the ending was sad

[Anonymous No.16597703]

Same here OP, finished it rn as well. Almost cried imagining the futility of his compassion. Just goes to show you cant help people be happy, they have to help themselves

[Anonymous No.16597734]

>>16597602
Such a great book. Good taste, anon.

[Anonymous No.16597747]

>>16597602
This book was good at first but the scenes at that family’s dacha or whatever were so boring I had to tap out

[Anonymous No.16597764]

Over the last couple of years, I read everything of Dostos, and of all his books, this is the one that I think of the most.
Rogozhin talking about that painting in his house, the exchange of crucifixes. It is very haunting.
Also my favourite opening of his, no actually that might be Humiliated and Insulted, have you read that one OP?
Would recommend.

[Anonymous No.16597795]

>>16597703
i got a little teary-eyed too (just a little bit) just at how it all worked out - general ivolgin dead, nastasya dead, ippolite dead, the prince back at the sanatorium, rogozhin sentenced to fifteen years hard labour in siberia, aglaya married to that fraud and now a catholic. myshkin's a deeply relatable and almost archetypal character, christ-like, certainly, but wholly his own. kind of feel like a part of my innocence returned to that sanatorium in switzerland with him.

>>16597734
>Such a great book
agreed
>Good taste, anon.
thanks anon, you too

[Anonymous No.16597797]

Btw theres a pretty good serialization of the book on dailymotion done in russian with english subs worth checking out, 10x1h episodes

[Anonymous No.16597814]

>>16597764
>Humiliated and Insulted, have you read that one OP?
i haven't, thanks for the recommendation. i tried to read the idiot when i was 16 and failed and i've just now finished it for the first time at 28. plan to read crime and punishment, demons, and the brothers karamazov next, but i'll read humiliated and insulted after

[Anonymous No.16597847]

>>16597814
The Idiot was an odd choice for you to start with, did you pick it up at random when you were younger then?
I did the same thing, but with C&P, which I only read in full when I was 25.

[Anonymous No.16597951]

>>16597847
i tried reading a bunch of shit that was too advanced for me at 16, like being and time and on grammatology. i don't remember what drew me to it initially. recently i've been interested in themes of, like, victimhood, moral people being made to suffer by the world and stuff, so i wanted to read it. did manage to read notes from underground when i was a teenager.
cool re: crime and punishment, i'm going to read that next. feel like i should have read it first, but it'll probably compliment the idiot reading them in reverse chronological order too

[Anonymous No.16597959]

>>16597602

[Anonymous No.16597988]

>>16597602
The ending is DUMB. I couldn't bring myself to read the last thirty pages (book is boring as fuck) but I know how it ends and it's honestly quite unimpressive

[Anonymous No.16598018]

>>16597959
kek

>>16597988
dude just read the last thirty pages, they're great they're not dumb

[Anonymous No.16598379]

Maybe I was reading against the text but I found myself pretty disgusted by Myshkin. There are parts that suggest he was so wrapped up in "the sublime" (with his epilepsy) that he couldn't bring himself to immerse himself in life. He's an archetype of the mystic, not of Christ

[Anonymous No.16599379]

>>16597988
filtered

[Anonymous No.16599402]

>>16597959
the middle path is still in there tho

[Anonymous No.16599606]

To whoever read the book, I have a HUGE doubt, what do you think:
Why did Myškin go for Nastasha? She was crazy, I am still not sure, absolutely not, that she loved Myškin.. if she truly did she wouldnt have made him suffer so, so badly.
I mean, from what I remember she seemed to love also Rogozin, AND it was evident that Aglaja and Myšking loved eachother, of true love
The love that Myškin proves for Nastasha is of the form of piety and not passion.
Dostoevskij depicts him as Jesus, but... but in my opinion, Jesus wouldn’t have accepted to marry Nastasha, and maybe even Aglaja. By doing so, yes, he may have “saved” Nastasha from her terrible demons, but at what cost? To fucking rip Aglaja’s heart. He broke her heart in one of the worst ways and for this I can’t and never will consider him as “Jesus”

[Anonymous No.16599713]

>>16599606
like you said, myskin's love is entirely spiritual - as a contrast to ganya's (material) and roghozin's (carnal); he cannot "love" either aglaya or nastasya in the way the latter and especially the former expected
he chooses nastasja because he wants to "save" her (one of the prince's chief qualities is being able to peer into a person's "core" very quickly) because he knows that if she keeps self-destructing because of her internalization of being the "fallen woman", she will willingly accept roghozin, and with him, her ultimate death, which she knows he'll give her
christ loves all of us, and similarly myskin shows unconditional love to almost every character in the novel, even those who slander him (ippolit & boxeur) insult him (ganya) or try to murder him (roghozin) but he is but a man, a christ on earth, and he's shorthanded in the living hell that is dosto's depiction of petersburg. Despite the prince's many attempts to "set things right" and "save" many of the conflicted people in the novel, in the end, he fails at almost everything he sets out to do. roghozin even shows him nastasja's corpse as final act of spite, just to show him the ultimate worthlessness of his actions. Basically, the Idiot's final message is that a modern day christ would not only be berated and belittled as either a naive idiot or a love rival and a schemer, but would also utterly lose his mind in a sanatorium - the city life corrupts people to the point where even jesus can't do a thing about it. at least karamazov ends on a more optimistic note

[Anonymous No.16599733]

>>16599606
The point of the novel was to put a totally christlike character into the world and see how they would act in society and how it would act back. This is why Myshkin fell for Nastasha christ was selfless he would not fall in love and gain something for himself i.e a healthy relationship, and instead he gave all and received nothing with his love.

[Anonymous No.16599867]

>>16599713
Ooh yes, I forgot that Myškin was able to “see” through people’s heart, a lot of time has passed since I read that book
It’s interesting your partitioning of different kinds of love, where can I read more about this?
Now I get it more. He couldn’t have married Aglaja because he couldn’t just leave Nastasha destroying herself like that. (She thought she didn’t deserve love, right?)
The part where Ippolit insults Myškin is heartbreaking

Yeah.. it’s quite depressing.. he tried to save everyone, but failed at everything and in the end he couldn’t even save himself. But at least, unlike Jesus, he seems to be loved by everyone

Another interpretation of the book may be that.. not everyone can be saved, and you have to choose. Trying to save everyone would inevitably lead to a failure and this is the harsh truth of this world.. the world won’t be saved by beauty
What do you think?

Brothers karamazov was also about on a completely different theme, if i remember correctly.
Pjotr’s love somehow prevails his punishment.
Aleksjej was very ambiguous.. I need to read it again

[Anonymous No.16599892]

>>16597602
>the ending was sad

spoiler!!

[Anonymous No.16599952]

>>16599606
Myshkin's purpose was to save Russia

[Anonymous No.16599969]

>>16597602
The ending is the worst part. Dostoevsky obviously had no idea how to end the thing and it had already been >600 pages and the philosophical oppositions were threatening to spiral out of control, so he just brought down the guillotine and killed everyone. Quite disappointing really.

[Anonymous No.16599993]

>>16599606
Kind of an incel analysis anon. Passionately loving and trying to save someone who is bad for you is hardly uncommon in real life.

[Anonymous No.16600017]

>>16599867
>She thought she didn’t deserve love, right?
exactly, because of her abuse as a teen, she decided to embrace her "fallen woman" persona by acting in a scandalous and unpredictable manner. in many ways nastasja is torn between this side, and the side that yearns for a simpler life (she herself admits that all she wants is wash clothes in some poor district and that she used to daydream about a man like the prince) which is exemplified by her constant back-and-forth between the prince and roghozin. Her ultimate choice of going with the latter is her resigning herself to her "fallen woman" persona, and the confirmation of the belief that she doesnt deserve the type of love that the prince is willing to give her
>Trying to save everyone would inevitably lead to a failure and this is the harsh truth of this world..
could be also that way. if we think about it, even christ's sacrifice may be seen as pointless nowadays, as people sin and forgo their god more and more, and so even he, at the end, was unable to truly save everyone. the book may be a testament as to how human nature cannot let go of its sinful side, to the point where even the best of us are either killed on a cross or sent to a mental asylum
>Brothers karamazov was also about on a completely different theme, if i remember correctly.
there are many parallels
alexei, like myskin, is a christ-like figure, who sets out to "fix" the lives of the many tormented characters in the novel
the difference is that where the prince fails (with the exception of maria in the swiss village) alexei succeeds, for example by bringing ilyusha and kolya together before the former's death, redeeming grushenka (another nastasja-like figure) as well as ivan and dmitrii (who overlap with roghozin, respectively, for their atheism and sensuality, though portrayed in a more positive manner - roghozin is a lost cause). it's implied that ivan's mental state will recover and that dmitrii may escape his sentence to siberia and still redeem his soul
and of course, the parallel between the painting of christ's corpse in roghozin's house and zosima's rotting carcass

[Anonymous No.16600243]

>>16597764
Just finished that yesterday. The book is a great example of why forgiveness and letting go is so important.

[Anonymous No.16600282]

>>16597747
I have to agree with you. The dacha scenes were very boring (excluding Ippolit's manifesto and the morning talk on the park bench)

[Anonymous No.16600589]

>>16599892
i thought myshkin would die in the end, so that was surprising

[Anonymous No.16600683]

ending is probably the saddest thing i've read.
'come on.'
'come closer.'

[Anonymous No.16601606]

>>16597602
Genuinely loved this book. I was detached for a few days following my completion. I remember walking to my dorm right after and ignoring everyone that tried to get my attention.
All I have left to read out of Dosto's big five is TBK, and I'm waiting on that since I might read it with some friends and they're still deciding on it. I'm currently going through some of the shorter works I have on my bookshelf (Lolita currently).

[Anonymous No.16601996]

>>16600683
>>16601606
i felt pretty sad today and had a strange sense of internality that i'd long lost, and, going outside, all the people muttering to themselves seemed crazy, i even talked to one i thought was talking to me and he was literally just mumbling unintelligible nonsense... going to rewatch kurosawa's adaptation of it now

>>16600017
> zosima's rotting carcass
damn dude spoiler that shit

[Anonymous No.16602138]

>>16600017
But weren’t Ivan and Aleksjej
supposed to free Pjotr by “attacking” his train leading to siberia?
Many people say that Dosto meant to make Aleksjej murder the zar in the never written second part! (But I’m still doubtful.. how could he call hero someone who killed the zar?)
I have also read some books about the psychoanalysis of the characters and Aleksjej’s chapter was quite disturbing, the book, not translated yet, is called “Il delirio di Ivan”
I don’t really think Ivan will ever change his faith even id he’ll recover from his illness: as it’s said in the book, he is the most similar to his father, and not Pjotr.
I think that Aleksjej is an imperfect Christ figure, because he, in some way, is also responsible (as Ivan is), for his father’s death. Zosima may be more suitable to be the “Christ” in this novel

[Anonymous No.16602147]

>>16601996
Giacomo Vaccari - The Idiot(1959) seems to be pretty good too

[Anonymous No.16602155]

>>16602147
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8G-RYyfrM
it looks alright

[Anonymous No.16603121]

>>16602155
Nice!!

[Anonymous No.16603841]

>>16601996
I had felt similar, as if the world was a play and I didn't have the script.