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/lit/ - Literature

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5249951 No.5249951 [Reply] [Original]

>Your age/country/profession
>Who is better? Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky?
>Why?

I start:

*26/Germany/Engineer
*Tolstoy
*It starts with the fact that he is much more varied than Dostoyevsky. He presents a much larger palette of human beings and scenes of life. He is confortable not only with the champagne world of the rich and idle upper class, but also with the lower class civil servants and the miserable muzhiks. Dostoievsky is mainly a painter of the poor and government employees in their offices and gray buildings. Tolstoy is also more concerned with nature (wheat fields, pine forests, mossy woods, rivers, snowy prairies) than Dostoyevsky, who is generally a creator of inner landscapes who doesn’t seem to be interested at all in fauna and flora, rivers and steppes. Also I like the language of Tolstoy better, which is more symmetrical, organized, clear and pure. As for characters, I think the characters of Dostoyevsky are in general kind of unnatural, and he has a bad habit of always mention tics and expressions of anxiety, page after page, page after page, in his books. All his characters, it seems, suffer from nervous diseases (I must say here, however, that Svidrigaïlov in C&P and the Old bawdy Karamazov are some of the best characters I have ever seen to be incarnated with words). Moreover Dostoyevsky doesn’t seem to have the same ability to create female characters as Tolstoy. A last thing: I don’t think that any writer was capable of the same level of detailing of personal characteristics of human beings as Tolstoy, and that is something that make me valorize his work even more over the work of Dostoyevsky (that I like, but not as much – actually not even near as much – as that of Tolstoy).

>> No.5249984

Wow you put a lot of effort into a post I'm not gonna even read.

Good job Hans

>> No.5249985
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5249985

>>5249951
HEUTE SCHON WAS FÜR DIE ALTERNATIVE GETAN, MEIN ARISCHER FREUND?

>> No.5249995

>>5249985
Bist du behindert?

>> No.5250009
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5250009

>>5249995
Just being völkisch

>> No.5250013

>>5249984
>Wow you put a lot of effort into a post I'm not gonna even read.

You must have shattered his heart, Anon. So cruel ;_;

>> No.5250030

>>5249951
>Also I like the language of Tolstoy better

So you're fluent in Russian I assume?

>> No.5250071
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5250071

>this kills the /lit/

>> No.5250112

>>5249951

20/Murrica/Student

Tolstoy

I just like him more, but OP's reasons seem good ones.

>> No.5250151

>>5249951
*23/Canada (Quebec)/Literature student, part-time bookstore clerk
*Dostoyevsky
*I prefer Dostoyevsky because he's messy, unrefined and clearly mad. Most of his characters are on the verge of mental breakdown, and there's some kind of unease or nervousness to Dostoyevsky's prose that I like. I also appreciate the (unintentional?) humour of Dostoyevsky's work, and the fact that each character so transparently embody a philosophical idea. Dostoyevsky, because he was so unconventional in the way he approached the writing of a novel, paved the way for modernist and even postmodernist literature (most of my favourite writers of the 20th century were all deeply influenced by Dostoyevsky). Tolstoy is more restrained and is in many ways a better writer than Dostoyevsky, his characters are more grounded and believable, but he does not resonate as much with me, though I concede that The Death of Ivan Illych is one of the best things I've ever read.

>> No.5250159

*73/UK/atheist
*neither
*They are both christfags who believe in a magical sky wizard.

>> No.5250164

>>5249951
18 US CLERK
TOLSTOY
I like his book better. I also appreciate that Tolstoy is a Christian Anarchist.

>> No.5250173

>>5250159
>Knowing nothing about natural theology
>Actually saying magical sky wizard

You like Dawkins, don't you?

>> No.5250334

>>5250151
>unintentional humor

You know, I hear this way too much. The humor is fucking intentional. He purposely makes jokes at the exact times when the characters shouldn't be joking, like Mitya's outbursts in the courtroom, or the extremely weird cadence of the Moscow doctor when he visits Ilyushechka.

>> No.5250360

>>5250159
>thinking Tolstoy believed in God.

>> No.5250391

>>5250360
Even if you question him believing in God, he was still definitely a Christian.

>> No.5250412

>>5250334

Do you think that the first pages of Brothers Karamazov are intentionally funny? You know, the description of the old Fyodor Karamazov? To me it’s one of the funniest things I have ever read: I actually caught myself laughing loudly while reading it.

The same thing happened to me in Lolita, in most parts of the book. Nabokov was a great master of wit and comedy.

>> No.5250419

>>5250412
Yes, definitely. My favorite chapter title is 'The First Son Sent Packing'

>> No.5250550

23/NOR/Electrician
Gogol

>> No.5250877

Dostoevksy is reddit trash

anyone with half a brain knows Tolstoy is the more talented and influential writer

youd have to be underage or entry level to think dostoevsky has any bearing

critics laugh at his antics

>> No.5250967

>>5249951
>22 / austria / retail
>no idea.

>>5250009
always got a bit of a hitler-youthy vibe from those paleo/crossfit lunatics.

>> No.5251037

>>5250877

>critics

Get the fuck out you opinionless half-human

>> No.5251089

>>5251037
whats the matter, pleb? can't justify critical opinion?

>> No.5251220

>>5249951
>19/Denmark/Student

>Tolstoy

>Dude could actually write and construct stories and characters

>> No.5251766

>>5250159
>>5250173
>73
>UK
>atheist
Holy shit, he is Dawkins