Is he the GOAT?

[Anonymous No.22566458]

Going to be spending the winter reading Tolstoy. What am I in for? Should I read AK first or W&P?

[Anonymous No.22566471]

>>22566458
Just watch Guiding Light instead, it's easier and less gay than Levin

[Anonymous No.22566480]

>>22566458
I spent last winter reading him. And yes he is the goat. Regardless of how you feel about his later literary developments and political views, he encompassed everything that an artist should be. A perfect harmony.

>In the last thirty years of his life Tolstoy's activity was threefold. He was an artist, producing fictions in various genres and with various ends in view. He was also a religious thinker and publicist, developing and explaining a philosophical system that was mainly ethical in its emphasis. Finally, he was an aesthetician, elaborating a theory of universally comprehensible art which, in effect, provided the theoretical framework within which the artist and the religious thinker could cooperate. His writings for the people represent the unique confluence of these three modes of activity: the moralism of the religious thinker was presented in a manner which both pleased the artist and satisfied the requirements of the aesthetician.

[Anonymous No.22566511]

>>22566458
Dostoevsky is better

[Anonymous No.22566528]

>>22566511
Dostoyevsky was better in the realm of Long novels. Tolstoy has not been surpassed in short fiction and the novella though.

[Anonymous No.22566540]

>>22566480
gonna be a comfy winter
>>22566511
I've already read, and loved almost everything Dosto has written. I was also trying to avoid starting the predictable overdone comparison. can either of these two be talked about without mentioning the other?

[Anonymous No.22566548]

>>22566528
Chekhov and Hemingway both absolutely and unquestionably defeat Tolstoy in short fiction

[Anonymous No.22566573]

>>22566548
Neither Hemingway nor Chekov would ever dream of saying they ever surpassed Tolstoy. Both of them essentially worshipped him.

[Anonymous No.22566577]

compared to the other midwits who get shilled here ..... yes.....he Is he the GOAT?

[Anonymous No.22566580]

>>22566540
>can either of these two be talked about without mentioning the other?
No lol. By spatial and temporal relation they are permanently joined, like Schopenhauer and Hegel are whenever German Philosophy comes up

[Anonymous No.22566584]

>>22566573
One of the many reasons they were better. All true masters are students.

[Anonymous No.22566589]

>>22566540
they are the 2 greatest novelists and wrote at the same time in the same country, hard not to compare them

[Anonymous No.22566600]

>>22566584
>I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy
unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.
-Hemingway comparing his own work to his major influences

[Anonymous No.22566607]

is it true that tolstoy means fatso?

[Anonymous No.22566628]

>>22566589
yeah but it's not a competition

[Anonymous No.22566657]

>>22566600
If you've read Hemingway you know this quote. It doesn't mean he isn't better though. He was better and this expression of humility on his part is representative of that.

[Anonymous No.22566665]

>>22566528
It's the polar opposite. Tolstoy is the greatest novelist just for War and Peace and Anna Karenina alone. His shorter works are not nearly as esteemed, as excellent as many of them are

[Anonymous No.22566729]

>>22566607
No, but tolstiy does

[Anonymous No.22566733]

>>22566607
yes, sort of (maybe spelt slightly differently between name and adjective) but its an old name and I've never heard of anyone at the time using it as a joke

[Anonymous No.22566755]

>>22566665
Literally not. Most critics worth their salt consider his short stories and novels his strongest work. Bloom considered Hadji Murat the best thing he ever wrote, Joyce How Much Land does a Man Need.
Dostoyevsky joins Cervantes, Melville and Joyce as the only authors where a novel longer than 500 pages is justified.
AK and W&P are great works but are excessively long without any real need.

[Anonymous No.22566765]

>>22566733
>I've never heard of anyone at the time using it as a joke
Ha cлoвaх ты Лeв Toлcтoй, a нa дeлe пpocтo тoлcтый.

[Anonymous No.22566767]

>>22566458
Read War and Peace first.

[Anonymous No.22566786]

>>22566528
>>22566755
tolstoy is the superior artist. dosty's novels are interesting modern philosophical dialogues but they have little of the artistry of tolstoy

[Anonymous No.22566809]

>>22566755
No one thinks that his short works are better than his long works, literally no one. Just because Joyce and Wittgenstein liked his short stories doesn't mean they are regarded as highly as his novels. Several of his short works are indeed masterpieces too but overall his reputation is due to his novels which are unmatched in clarity and depth.

[Anonymous No.22566811]

>>22566458
too unidimensional characters.
his novellas were comfy, but later works like 'the forged coupon' felt extremely flat.

[Anonymous No.22566832]

>>22566765
Hah, fair enough

[Anonymous No.22566918]

>>22566767
OK, im excited.

[Anonymous No.22566947]

>>22566809
> literally no one.
I just gave you several examples ya chowderhead. Most authors who care most about the truth prefer his shorter works (Hemingway, Joyce, Bloom, Cormac) whereas its generally mediocre “”prose stylists”” such as Nabokov, Faulkner, and Mann who champion AK as his greatest novel.

Even Tolstoy himself in the later third of his life that his 2 great long novels were totally worthless since they did nothing to bring anyone closet to God or the Truth. I wouldnt go as far as that, but compared with his later work I understand his POV

[Anonymous No.22566973]

>>22566811
>the forged coupon
delving deeper here, especially bad are his absolute turns of action; people just flipping from absolute evil to absolute good at the drop of a hat.
and worst of all, his championing of that nonsensical heretical "version" of Christianity he tried to create. even he tried to repent and call priests in his final days.

[Anonymous No.22567053]

>>22566947
Bloom said that Hadji Murad was his favorite work of literature ever, that doesn't mean he thought Tolstoy's short works were overall better than his novels, and I've never heard Hemingway or Cormac or Joyce claim that his short fiction is superior. Joyce loving How Much Land Does a Man Need is not evidence of that

[Anonymous No.22567066]

I read his short stories in chronological order and stopped after reading family happiness
I read the Cossacks, Childhood and Boyhood
I'm going to force myself to read Youth one day
Currently I'm 100 pages into War and Peace

[Anonymous No.22567081]

>>22567066
read the rest of the novellas.
Kreutzer Sonata is kino.

Father Sergius a surprisingly orthodox story, and the best imo.

[Anonymous No.22567674]

olstoy is Russia past, and Dostoevsky is the future. Tolstoy is connected with the West with all his gut. He is the great spokesman of the spirit of Peter, even though he denies it ... This is invariably Western denial. The guillotine was also the legitimate daughter of Versailles. This is Tolstoy's bubbling hatred that is broadcasting against Europe, from which it is not able to free itself. He hates her in himself, he hates himself. This makes Tolstoy the father of Bolshevism ...

Tolstoy is an overwhelmingly great reason, "enlightened" and "socially oriented." Everything that he sees around him takes on a late form of a problem inherent in a large city and the West. What is the problem, Dostoevsky is generally unknown. Meanwhile, Tolstoy is an event inside European civilization. He stands in the middle between Peter the Great and Bolshevism. All of them do not see the Russian land point-blank ...

Dostoevsky cannot be counted among anyone except the apostles of the first Christianity. Dostoevsky is a saint, and Tolstoy is only a revolutionary. From him one, the true heir of Peter, comes Bolshevism, this is not the opposite, but the last consequence of the spirit of Peter, the utter degradation of the metaphysical social ...

The authentic Russian is a student of Dostoevsky, although he does not read it. He himself is part of Dostoevsky. If the Bolsheviks, who see themselves as their equal in Christ, simply a social revolutionary, were not so spiritually narrow, they would have recognized their true enemy in Dostoevsky. What gave this revolution its scope was not the hatred of the intelligentsia. It was the people who, without hatred, only from the desire to heal from the disease, destroyed the western world with the hands of his own scum, and then sent after them themselves - with the same road; a people yearning for its own life form, its own religion, its own future history. Tolstoy's Christianity was a misunderstanding. He spoke of Christ, and he meant Marx. Dostoevsky's Christianity belongs to the future millennium

[Anonymous No.22567790]

>>22567674
joke's on Spengler, both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky's Christianity are irrelevant

[Anonymous No.22567804]

>>22566458
You should read War and Peace first. Reading Anna Karenina first is like reading Faust 2 by goethe before the first book. That said, War and Peace is like The Legend of the Galactic Heroes,
Anna Karenina is like The Legend of the Galactic Heroes inside a Flaubert novel.

[Anonymous No.22567810]

>>22567674
Dostoievsky is basically a random spic ESL from here. Tolstoi was an aristocrat who learned english and french before he learned russian with his french and english babysitters.

[Anonymous No.22567821]

>>22567674
The only good book of Dostoievsky is Brothers Karamazov. His writing is terrible writing is perceptible even in translations.

[Anonymous No.22567829]

I did indeed read War and Peace, and to be completely honest, I recommend it. The translation I read was good, and the writing wasn't dry. There are parts of that book that make me realize the absolute truth about War and Peace.

It's not famous because it's long.
It's famous because it's meaningful.

[Anonymous No.22567839]

>>22567829
Yeah, it's a mural long and richly detailed of that infamous war with the french. He details with a master's pencil and brilliant understanding the reactions and attitudes of the aristocrat's and lower nobility. He makes an accurate portrait like that englishman made teluric and lurid landscapes. He's painting something you can visualize and feel inside. He's a master writer.

[Anonymous No.22567843]

>>22567804
Objectively and definitively wrong. The two books are so different it doesnt matter which you read first. Tolstoy didnt even consider w&p a novel, by his own accord AK is his first attempt at writing a novel

[Anonymous No.22567857]

>>22566589
It's not all that hard

[Anonymous No.22567860]

>>22567843
kys, zoomer nigger who never read a book in his life. It doesn't matter what he said, he probably was being modest in his ethereal divinely heights. Saying that War and Peace is "his first attempt at writing a novel" is like saying the Brudenbooks is a juvenile attempt. You should understand that what people with exponentially more spirit, intelectual and emotive experience and intelligence than you are by the same measure exponentially more modest because they don't think their efforts the divine and grandiose efforts they were, they think it a little less than what they aimed for. You're a philistine that should kys. Go read your kid's orgies in your Stephen King books.

[Anonymous No.22567870]

>>22567839
Tolstoy's prose style is crazy to me because when you read him it doesn't even feel like he has a style. He's just a wise narrator who utterly immerses you into the story. It feels completely real, you forget you're even reading fiction.

[Anonymous No.22567904]

>>22567870

Don't read this if you don't like spoilers, but I swear to you, when Pierre was wounded on the battlefield, and was looking up at the sky thinking his last thoughts to himself, it was so fucking real. So true. So absolute. Nothing I've ever read has ever felt so real to me. Only actual dreams ever felt as real as that. I've read a lot of books, but never has anything truly and absolutely allowed me to understand a man's existence so vividly.

And the sheer MEANING behind all of it, the actual thoughts Pierre had, I don't specifically remember, but for the record, it's smart. It's wise. It's not like the character is some deeply intelligent man, but rather, he is REAL.

Anyways, if you haven't read War and Peace, do it. It's simply a novel that must really have been Tolstoy's attempt to honestly explain the truth of War - and - Peace.

[Anonymous No.22567923]

>>22567860
>Hey!!!! It doesnt matter what the author said about his own books, what matters is my interpretation!!!!1!!!
See what a chowderhead you sound like, lol. Perhaps actually read the two novels before you go spouting off to other people how they should read them

[Anonymous No.22567982]

>>22566458
>Is he the GOAT?
Haha, thanks for the chuckle, OP. I literally laughed out loud. Like audibly. So really, thanks.

[Anonymous No.22567985]

>>22567982
No offense B, but pynchon himself would laugh in your face for being ignorant enough to put him above Tolstoy

[Anonymous No.22567991]

>>22567985
yeah, pretty much. read any bio of pynchon and you'll see this

[Anonymous No.22568002]

>>22567985
>>22567991
Thanks guys, this thread is better than a stand-up comedy club or sitcom. I'm laughing like crazy. What's next, W&P is better than GR?

[Anonymous No.22568007]

>>22566458
Lol no. He doesn’t even win the Dostoyevsky-Tolstoy face off

[Anonymous No.22568182]

>>22566458
Why don't you try something from this century for a change ?

[Anonymous No.22568185]

>>22568002
are you ESL?

[Anonymous No.22568197]

>>22566947
>Joyce and 3 of the biggest hacks ever
>authors who care about the truth
>Nabokov and Mann
>mediocre
I sincerely hope you're still in high school

[Anonymous No.22568225]

>>22568185
well, at least you tried, mr. redditor

[Anonymous No.22568231]

>>22568225
It's just a question, bro. No need to get upset about it

[Anonymous No.22568233]

>>22568231
ok, this is barely better than the last one. what subreddits do you use to get your reddit-tier insults, mr. redditor?

[Anonymous No.22568259]

>>22566458
Yes he is the GOAT. I read War and Peace first and loved it, it lives up to it's billing and even as good as AK is, I like W&P better

[Anonymous No.22568260]

>>22568185
>>22568225
>>22568231
>>22568233

Why is it in every thread when there’s actual discussion going on 2 idiots (at least 2) have to show up, hurl little boy meme words at each other, all while contribute nothing towards actual literary discussion?

[Anonymous No.22568267]

>>22566511
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.

[Anonymous No.22568310]

>>22568260
Not coincidentally this often occurs in posts centered around critical analysis of texts. It can be assumed those acting in such a juvenile manner as you’ve referenced read a text but can offer no insight of their own, having only a superficial relation to the content. This rouses feelings intellectually inadequacy and jealousy. Ideally, but perhaps I’m being too quixotic, is those anons would foster a greater ability toward in-depth reading. Unfortunately, as that’s not feasible, what we get instead are the infantile-minded posters lashing out with insults in a puerile attempt to derail the thread, i.e. if they can’t discuss it, no one can.

[Anonymous No.22568347]

>>22568310

Is this purple prose right here? The answer ... is no. Of course you're being pretentious, but I fucking like it, and I approve 100%. Your words make sense, despite how they're written, and on /lit/, I honor you as if a god.

And also, you're right.

[Anonymous No.22568356]

>>22568182
I just finished 2666 so suck my juevos bitch. now it's time to go back.

[Anonymous No.22568403]

>>22566458
Tolstoy is considered one of the best writers of human history for good reason. War and Peace is unrivaled. Anna Karenina is unrivaled. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is unrivaled, etc, etc, etc.

[Anonymous No.22568416]

When I first read Anna Karenina, I kinda got irritated by the character of Anna and how unlikeable she was and all of her women moments. Only at the end did I actually start to understand the brilliance of the book and what Tolstoy was trying to do.

[Anonymous No.22568620]

hope you fellas are ready for a winter full of Tolstoy posting.

[Anonymous No.22568740]

I know this wasn't quite the question, and there's been a fair amount of discussion as to Tolstoy vis a vis other Russian authors, as well as discussion surrounding the merit of individual works of his (and obviously specifically War and Peace).

Maybe I can contribute with a slightly different perspective: Tolstoy was, in my view, a god-tier literary theorist and critic.

His "What is Art" is the greatest single work of theory on why people make literature (or Art of any kind, really) and what distinguishes it from everything else in life. He doesn't shy away from the question, he doesn't get squeamish -- he brings the full force of experience to bear and actually gives a genuine, cogent answer. It also happens to be the exact same answer I came to after many years of independent research on the topic. It's also the same answer that Marcel Proust comes to in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

There's an annoying amount of Kierkegaardian-style Christian moralizing in there, but if you just ignore that (and I mean, he was Russian so what are you going to do), it's pure concentrated wisdom.

[Anonymous No.22569876]

>>22568740
is that where he talks about pessimism and how he lacks the constitution for suicide so he choses to write instead? I just read some quotes from him in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Anonymous No.22569929]

>people unironically saying dosto is better than tolstoy
lol
lmao even

[Anonymous No.22570007]

>>22568197
Cormac is certainly better than Russian pedophile.

[Anonymous No.22570010]

>>22569876
it wouldn't be that dangerous, i guarantee

[Anonymous No.22570014]

>>22570010
pardon?

[Anonymous No.22570019]

>>22570014
no i am there right now

[Anonymous No.22570504]

>Is he the GOAT?
Nah, it is forced shit.

[Anonymous No.22570793]

>>22569876
He wrote about his existential crisis in A Confession. in What Is Art he shits on Shakespeare and Dante and Wagner

>>22568740
In what way is Tolstoy's views on art the same as Proust's?